What is Karl Marx’s Capital about? Volume One

One of the things I have been doing during lockdown is undertake a close reading of all three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital.

Here’s a short video I’ve put together on Volume One (and below the transcript). It’s one of three videos, covering volumes one, two and three. I’ll be releasing the volume two and three videos in the next few weeks.

Video transcript

This is the first of three short videos on the three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital, covering some of the main themes and line of argument.

In this video, I discuss volume one, the only one of the three volumes Marx managed to complete in his lifetime.

Volume one was first published in 1867. Here’s how it starts:

The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.

A commodity, Marx argues, combines two characteristics. It must first of all be useful; it must fulfil a human need. It must, secondly, be exchangeable, for another commodity of equal value.

A man goes to the market with 20 yards of linen, Marx writes. He sells the linen, and with the money he buys a bible. The bible-seller, in turn, buys a bottle of brandy. The linen-seller, the bible-seller, the brandy-seller each get an equivalent, in value, for what they sell.

But when the capitalist goes to the market, Marx observes, something else happens. The capitalist first appears as a buyer, not a seller. He or she buys the workers’ capacity for labour, and means of production, such as raw materials, machinery, and buildings.

With the newly-purchased labour-power and means of production, she or he produces new commodities. When these commodities are sold, the capitalist ends up with more money than he or she started with.

The difference between the money originally spent by the capitalist, and the money the capitalist receives when she or he sells the commodities, Marx calls ‘surplus-value’.

Where does this surplus-value come from? Marx devotes the majority of volume one to this question.

Surplus-value, Marx argues, is produced by the workers during production, because some of the labour the workers perform is unpaid. The new commodities produced by the workers, which includes this surplus-value are appropriated by the capitalist, who sells them and turns them back into money.

The wage-labour relationship between worker and capitalist is therefore one based on exploitation, a relationship concealed by the apparent fair and equal exchange of labour for a wage.

Marx argues that this relationship of exploitation was made possible by the violence of original, or ‘primitive’, accumulation, from the fifteenth century on. This resulted in the dissolution of the feudal system and its replacement, in the countryside by capitalist farming. Much of the peasantry were forced off the land, congregating in the growing towns and cities. Lacking access to land, they formed newly emergent class of wage-labourers.

I hope you found this brief overview useful. You can also check out my overviews of volumes two and three to see how Marx developed his overall argument.