In many cases, Marx observes that labor produces surpluses beyond what is needed at the subsistence level, and he is interested in who benefits from these surpluses. For instance, in societies that had slavery, the masters benefited. In societies based on serfdom, lords and vassals did.
Under capitalism, Marx argues that employees produce surpluses and their employers profit from it. In Das Kapital, Marx explores how commodities assume value on the market, how wages are calculated, and which mechanisms capitalists use to produce surpluses that translate into profits. The following sections explore these key concepts, as well as how Marx uses them to develop the labor theory of value. Marx’s conclusions have galvanized mass movements, and inspired many subsequent scholars who have expanded upon his work.
Commodities, use values, and exchange values
Das Kapital begins with an analysis of the concept of commodities. For Marx, in the simplest terms, commodities are objects created in the sphere of production (e.g. in factories) and then sold to consumers for a profit. He was interested in how value is ascribed to these inanimate objects within capitalist societies and, from there, how they are priced and exchanged for one another on the market, as mediated by money. To better understand this, he makes the distinction between use values and exchange values.
For Marx, use values refer to the worth of a commodity purely based on its utility in terms of satisfying a particular need or desire. For example, bread and water have use values as sources of sustenance, and a bicycle’s worth lies in the fact that it helps you to get around. Understanding value in this way is not unique to capitalism, as it simply characterizes the importance of different objects based on their functionality. Exchange value, on the other hand, is something that uniquely pertains to market societies.
For Marx, exchange value refers to the worth of an object in relation to other objects that are sold on the market. For example a diamond is considered to be worth much more than bread and water, even though the practical utility of the former would be much lower than that of the latter. Marx was intrigued about the ways in which commodities assume an exchange value, and this is where he takes inspiration from the classical economists’ labor theory of value: