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Value, Price and Profit
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry based upon a materialist interpretation of historical development, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis of class-relations within society and their application in the analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. In the mid-to-late 19th century, the intellectual development of Marxism was pioneered by two German philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist analyses and methodologies have influenced multiple political ideologies and social movements throughout history. Marxism encompasses an economic theory, a sociological theory, a philosophical method and a revolutionary view of social change.
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1898
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About the author
Karl Marx
3,237 books6,468 followersWith the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
(1848) and
Das Kapital
(1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 199 reviews
June 15, 2023
“You can’t compress a course of political economy into one hour. But we shall have to do our best.” (Marx to Engels)
Highlights:
--This work is based on an 1865 speech by Marx, rebutting citizen John Weston’s concerns that struggling for higher wages would not benefit the working class because it would lead to rising prices.
--Marx finally completed Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 in 1867, so this speech offers a useful preview of some key concepts (see linked review for comparison).
--I did find this tedious despite its relative brevity (perhaps due to lingering exhaustion from finishing Volume 1 and Harvey’s A Companion to Marx's Capital) …At least Volume 1 is a diverse tome with snippets of history, philosophical/methodological musings and hilarious mockery of “vulgar economists” to break up the abstract economics and dull accounting.
…Of course, when trying to write a review, I learned to appreciate how difficult this topic is to make concise... “But we shall have to do our best.”
--The finale of the work:
1) Wages vs. Profits, not Prices:
--In summary:
a) Prices reflect the “total quantity of labour” (Marx is using the popular usage here) in the commodity
b) Wages and Profits reflect the distribution of paid/unpaid labour in the commodity
c) thus, increasing Wages directly decreases Profits, but does not directly (“broadly speaking”) affect Prices.
…For (a), Marx gets past the supply/demand fluctuations of “market price” to consider “natural price” (Adam Smith).
…Marx then explains that profit is made selling commodities at their natural price, then considers what this is made of: “Value” (Marx’s Value theory advancing prior “labour theory of value”).
…So where does the profit come from? To answer (b), Marx introduces the uniqueness of “labour-power” (capacity to labor) as a commodity: it is purchased and then used to create Value beyond its own Value (thus, Marx’s “Surplus Value”/“exploitation” theory).
…What is its own Value (Value of labour-power)? “the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the labouring power” (this, as Harvey points out, is glossed over in a couple paragraphs in Volume 1 Ch.6).
…So, once workers are worked beyond the time it takes to produce the Value of their labour-power (paid in Wages), the remaining time is unpaid (Surplus Value i.e. Profit for capitalist, so capitalists will seek to increase this; Volume 1 has more on technology's impacts here, ex. reducing Value of labour-power, creating surplus labor, etc.).
...The trade union’s “resistance” (i.e. not “final emancipation” of “abolition of the wages system”) is over the capitalist pressure to expand the unpaid portion of this distribution, which “broadly speaking” is separate from the Price (total labour in commodity). I highlight “broadly speaking” over concerns of economizing (see below).
2) Wages vs. Prices… and Austerity’s Money vs. Prices:
--Marx’s rebuttal highlights how economic propaganda relies on:
(a) naturalizing the status quo to hide power struggles
(b) by assuming the status quo, many factors are kept fixed (i.e. every other factor held constant in order to conjure a direct relationship between wages vs. prices).
…This is exactly the situation of the “Monetarist” “quantity of money” trick of claiming increased State spending (on essential goods/services, not the military of course) would directly lead to price inflation of these goods/services (too much money chasing too few goods/services).
…What is kept fixed is the goods/services, which would actually increase when they receive funding (also addressing underemployment, increasing demand, etc.).
…What is kept hidden is the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector’s mountain of toxic debt from private bank lending (the focus is always on the State’s welfare to the public, never corporate welfare) which act as costly middlemen to goods/services while creating massive speculative bubbles on assets (felt most directly as exploding housing prices, where mortgage interest payments go to banks; this form of “asset price inflation” is naturally avoided in “price inflation” hysteria).
-Varoufakis' Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present:
-Michael Hudson's The Bubble and Beyond and video lectures: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...
…Another similarity is how easy Weston’s “wages vs. prices” and the Monetarists “money vs. prices” is to regurgitate given our “common sense” of “economics” (J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception). Today, the Monetarist line is alive and well in austerity politics, where the State must “balance its budget” like a “responsible household”. A one-liner is enough to sell it!
...Whereas to debunk it, we need to unravel the false economic assumptions/vocabulary, leading to Marx’s “tedious exposition”. Example: Varoufakis trying to refute his own “Citizen Weston”: https://youtu.be/YZNwdcESn90
…coincidentally, Varoufakis uses the example of Marx’s rebuttal of Weston to illustrate his major critique of Marx: while Marx’s dialectics (in particular: conceptualizing “capital” as a process in motion, highlighting capitalism’s fluidity, and of course power struggle) highlights indeterminacy, Marx can get caught up in his own economized formulas in order to prove someone wrong (keep an eye out for “broadly speaking” and footnotes with exceptions!): https://youtu.be/A3uNIgDmqwI?t=1664
Highlights:
--This work is based on an 1865 speech by Marx, rebutting citizen John Weston’s concerns that struggling for higher wages would not benefit the working class because it would lead to rising prices.
--Marx finally completed Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 in 1867, so this speech offers a useful preview of some key concepts (see linked review for comparison).
--I did find this tedious despite its relative brevity (perhaps due to lingering exhaustion from finishing Volume 1 and Harvey’s A Companion to Marx's Capital) …At least Volume 1 is a diverse tome with snippets of history, philosophical/methodological musings and hilarious mockery of “vulgar economists” to break up the abstract economics and dull accounting.
…Of course, when trying to write a review, I learned to appreciate how difficult this topic is to make concise... “But we shall have to do our best.”
--The finale of the work:
After this very long and, I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions:
Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities.
Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages.
Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
1) Wages vs. Profits, not Prices:
--In summary:
a) Prices reflect the “total quantity of labour” (Marx is using the popular usage here) in the commodity
b) Wages and Profits reflect the distribution of paid/unpaid labour in the commodity
c) thus, increasing Wages directly decreases Profits, but does not directly (“broadly speaking”) affect Prices.
…For (a), Marx gets past the supply/demand fluctuations of “market price” to consider “natural price” (Adam Smith).
…Marx then explains that profit is made selling commodities at their natural price, then considers what this is made of: “Value” (Marx’s Value theory advancing prior “labour theory of value”).
…So where does the profit come from? To answer (b), Marx introduces the uniqueness of “labour-power” (capacity to labor) as a commodity: it is purchased and then used to create Value beyond its own Value (thus, Marx’s “Surplus Value”/“exploitation” theory).
…What is its own Value (Value of labour-power)? “the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the labouring power” (this, as Harvey points out, is glossed over in a couple paragraphs in Volume 1 Ch.6).
…So, once workers are worked beyond the time it takes to produce the Value of their labour-power (paid in Wages), the remaining time is unpaid (Surplus Value i.e. Profit for capitalist, so capitalists will seek to increase this; Volume 1 has more on technology's impacts here, ex. reducing Value of labour-power, creating surplus labor, etc.).
...The trade union’s “resistance” (i.e. not “final emancipation” of “abolition of the wages system”) is over the capitalist pressure to expand the unpaid portion of this distribution, which “broadly speaking” is separate from the Price (total labour in commodity). I highlight “broadly speaking” over concerns of economizing (see below).
2) Wages vs. Prices… and Austerity’s Money vs. Prices:
--Marx’s rebuttal highlights how economic propaganda relies on:
(a) naturalizing the status quo to hide power struggles
(b) by assuming the status quo, many factors are kept fixed (i.e. every other factor held constant in order to conjure a direct relationship between wages vs. prices).
…This is exactly the situation of the “Monetarist” “quantity of money” trick of claiming increased State spending (on essential goods/services, not the military of course) would directly lead to price inflation of these goods/services (too much money chasing too few goods/services).
…What is kept fixed is the goods/services, which would actually increase when they receive funding (also addressing underemployment, increasing demand, etc.).
…What is kept hidden is the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector’s mountain of toxic debt from private bank lending (the focus is always on the State’s welfare to the public, never corporate welfare) which act as costly middlemen to goods/services while creating massive speculative bubbles on assets (felt most directly as exploding housing prices, where mortgage interest payments go to banks; this form of “asset price inflation” is naturally avoided in “price inflation” hysteria).
-Varoufakis' Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present:
-Michael Hudson's The Bubble and Beyond and video lectures: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...
…Another similarity is how easy Weston’s “wages vs. prices” and the Monetarists “money vs. prices” is to regurgitate given our “common sense” of “economics” (J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception). Today, the Monetarist line is alive and well in austerity politics, where the State must “balance its budget” like a “responsible household”. A one-liner is enough to sell it!
...Whereas to debunk it, we need to unravel the false economic assumptions/vocabulary, leading to Marx’s “tedious exposition”. Example: Varoufakis trying to refute his own “Citizen Weston”: https://youtu.be/YZNwdcESn90
…coincidentally, Varoufakis uses the example of Marx’s rebuttal of Weston to illustrate his major critique of Marx: while Marx’s dialectics (in particular: conceptualizing “capital” as a process in motion, highlighting capitalism’s fluidity, and of course power struggle) highlights indeterminacy, Marx can get caught up in his own economized formulas in order to prove someone wrong (keep an eye out for “broadly speaking” and footnotes with exceptions!): https://youtu.be/A3uNIgDmqwI?t=1664
July 26, 2018
Marx sends a fire ass diss track to Owenite and member of the General council of the International, John Weston.
March 12, 2024
Our friend Weston makes the Latin proverb his own: repetitio est mater studiorum, that is to say, repetition is the mother of study; this is why he takes up his original dogma in another form, namely that the tightening of the means of monetary circulation caused by the rise in wages would lead to a reduction in capital, etc. As I have already demonstrated the falsity of his outdated theory of the means of monetary circulation, I consider it completely unnecessary to dwell on the fanciful consequences, which in his imagination result from the imaginary avatars of economic circulation.
A single remark clearly shows the lack of critical spirit in which he treats his subject. He stands against rising wages or the high wages that result from them. But in this case, I ask him: What are high and low salaries? Why is, for example, 5 shillings a week considered low pay and 20 shillings a week high pay? If five is low compared to 20, 20 is even softer than 200. If someone lectures on the thermometer, they will only teach us something by ranting about lower and higher degrees. He will first have to explain how water's freezing and boiling points are determined and demonstrate that these comparisons are fixed by natural laws and not by the whim of merchants or thermometer manufacturers. Now, concerning wages and profits, citizen Weston should have deduced these fixed points from economic laws, but he did not even feel the necessity of looking for them. He was content to adopt the current terms high and low as if they meant something fixed when it is apparent that one cannot describe wages as high or low only compared to a standard according to which we measure their size.
He will need to find out why we pay a certain amount of money for a certain amount of work. If he answered me: "The law of supply and demand establishes the thing," I would ask him what law supply and demand are regulated by. And such a response would immediately put him out of action. The relationships between supply and demand for labor are subject to constant modifications, and with them, labor prices on the market change. If demand exceeds supply, wages rise; If supply outweighs demand, wages fall, although it is necessary to test the actual state of demand and supply, for example, by a strike or any other method. If you consider supply and demand as the law regulating wages, it would be as childish as it is useless to declaim against the rise of salaries because, according to the supreme law you invoke, the periodic increase of wages is as necessary and justified as their regular decline. But if you do not consider supply and demand as the regulating law of wages, I return to my question: "Why do we pay a certain amount of money for a certain amount of work?"
Source: https://www.marxists.org/francais/mar...
A single remark clearly shows the lack of critical spirit in which he treats his subject. He stands against rising wages or the high wages that result from them. But in this case, I ask him: What are high and low salaries? Why is, for example, 5 shillings a week considered low pay and 20 shillings a week high pay? If five is low compared to 20, 20 is even softer than 200. If someone lectures on the thermometer, they will only teach us something by ranting about lower and higher degrees. He will first have to explain how water's freezing and boiling points are determined and demonstrate that these comparisons are fixed by natural laws and not by the whim of merchants or thermometer manufacturers. Now, concerning wages and profits, citizen Weston should have deduced these fixed points from economic laws, but he did not even feel the necessity of looking for them. He was content to adopt the current terms high and low as if they meant something fixed when it is apparent that one cannot describe wages as high or low only compared to a standard according to which we measure their size.
He will need to find out why we pay a certain amount of money for a certain amount of work. If he answered me: "The law of supply and demand establishes the thing," I would ask him what law supply and demand are regulated by. And such a response would immediately put him out of action. The relationships between supply and demand for labor are subject to constant modifications, and with them, labor prices on the market change. If demand exceeds supply, wages rise; If supply outweighs demand, wages fall, although it is necessary to test the actual state of demand and supply, for example, by a strike or any other method. If you consider supply and demand as the law regulating wages, it would be as childish as it is useless to declaim against the rise of salaries because, according to the supreme law you invoke, the periodic increase of wages is as necessary and justified as their regular decline. But if you do not consider supply and demand as the regulating law of wages, I return to my question: "Why do we pay a certain amount of money for a certain amount of work?"
Source: https://www.marxists.org/francais/mar...
May 13, 2021
Checkmate, Citizen Weston.
January 10, 2017
A good primer before diving into Capital
July 27, 2019
I got a lot more out of this the second time around - maybe I was just paying more attention. It's a neat self-contained pamphlet that sets out to pinpoint a few practical aspects of the labour theory of value:
1) Why an increase of wages does not increase the value of a commodity, nor the price; analogously, wages that are forced down won't causally make the value of the commodity drop.
2) Why supply and demand are only a dynamic in the fluctuations dictating prices, not the dynamic.
3) Why the working class is right!!
Ideal reading material to train yourself with. The margins of my copy are suffused with little diagrams visualising the relations between all the different variables. Contains neat formulas for which you don't need to be an economist to understand them:
1) Why an increase of wages does not increase the value of a commodity, nor the price; analogously, wages that are forced down won't causally make the value of the commodity drop.
2) Why supply and demand are only a dynamic in the fluctuations dictating prices, not the dynamic.
3) Why the working class is right!!
Ideal reading material to train yourself with. The margins of my copy are suffused with little diagrams visualising the relations between all the different variables. Contains neat formulas for which you don't need to be an economist to understand them:
Deduct from the value of a commodity the value replacing the value of the raw materials and other means of production used upon it, that is to say, deduct the value representing the past labour contained in it, and the remainder of its value will resolve into the quantity of labour added by the working man last employed.
June 15, 2023
If you are having issues or would like an easy-ish primer to Kapital this is the book to start with. It’s said a billion times but the fact that texts like these are predictive of current struggles among the working class still proves Marx scientific method. The talks of technology advancement even mirroring what is going on currently with AI etc. Marx hits the shmoney dance on John Weston
March 25, 2023
Da hat der Karl einfach mal auf ca. 40 Seiten zentrale Funktionsweisen des Kapitalismus erklärt. Wer die Grundlagen dieser Ausbeutung verstehen möchte, kann mit diesem Pamphlet beginnen (nicht mit dem „Kapital“). Gewerkschaften und Lohnkämpfe werden auch innerhalb weniger Absätze eingeordnet. Lest es!
(1 Stern Abzug wegen der schlechten „Verpackung“ dieser lesenswerten Inhalte – der manifest-Verlag bringt tolle Bücher heraus, aber gestalterisch ist hier wirklich Nachholbedarf zu leisten).
(1 Stern Abzug wegen der schlechten „Verpackung“ dieser lesenswerten Inhalte – der manifest-Verlag bringt tolle Bücher heraus, aber gestalterisch ist hier wirklich Nachholbedarf zu leisten).
October 25, 2022
கூலிக்கு ,விலைக்கும் , லாபத்துக்குமான உறவுமுறையை விளக்கும் மார்க்ஸின் ஒரு சிறு தொகுப்பு.மார்க்ஸின் செந்தரமாகிய "மூலதனத்துக்கு " ஒரு முன்னோட்ட வாசிப்பாக இந்த சிறிய நூல் கண்டிப்பாக இருக்கிறது. நான் வாசித்தது மு.சிவலிங்கம் அவர்களால் தமிழில் மொழிபெயர்ப்பு செய்யப்பட்ட பதிப்பு . என்னைப்போன்ற ஆழ்ந்த பொருளாதார பாட அறிவு இல்லாதவர்கள் புரிந்துகொள்ளுமளவிற்கு எளிதான மொழிநடையில் மார்க்ஸின் எந்த நூலுமே இல்லை என்பது என்னுடைய கருத்து . இந்த நூலும் அதற்கு விதிவிலக்கல்ல . பொறுமை காத்து ஒவ்வொரு வரியையும் வாசித்து கிரஹிப்பது என்பது ஒரு வலி மிகுந்த அனுபவமாகவே அமைந்தது என்றாலும் அதனுடைய ஆழமான உட்கருத்து மிக முக்கியமானது .ஆனால் இதில் கூறப்பட்டிருக்கும் அனைத்தும் எனக்கு புரிந்துவிட்டது என்று நான் சொன்னால் அது பொய்யாகத்தான் இருக்கும் . வசிப்பதற்கு முன்னால் பொருளாதார சொல்லகராதியின் பரிச்சயம் மிக அவசியம்.
March 26, 2021
Short and enjoyable pamphlet making a detailed exploration of a couple of the main contradictions of capitalism discussed in Capital, Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, particularly the impact of competition, and the fundamental conflict of interests between labour and capital.
September 4, 2021
the mistake most of the people ,who want to understand Marxism or Marxist economics, make is to start das capital directly and stop reading after few pages and give up the efforts all together. all the basics are in pamphlets like these with simple explanations and examples to make it clear . if you are novice to Marxist economy or Marxism , this short booklet is a must read
December 3, 2024
Pues gratamente sorprendido (y eso que suelo esperar grandes cosas de cada texto de Marx), tanto por la claridad como por todo lo que abarca en tan poco espacio, es un muy buen texto para iniciarse en la crítica de la economía política, que leer El Capital así de primeras asusta un poco.
Al principio, empieza polemizando con un tal Weston, ya que esto es la postura de Marx para un debate que se dio en la AIT. Ese estilo de ir respondiendo a lo que otro plantea a veces puede dar la impresión de lioso, pero en realidad para nada. De hecho, permite matizar mucho las explicaciones. Simplemente uno tiene que resistirse a la absurda tentación de querer leer a ese tal Weston, recordándose que si no lo había oído mentar nunca hasta ahora por algo será (menudas barbaridades decía el pobre).
Luego ya va dejando al Weston cada vez más atrás y desarrollando su propio argumento, sobre el valor y el precio de las mercancías, los salarios, la distinción entre trabajo y fuerza de trabajo, la ganancia y su reparto en ganancia industrial, renta e intereses, y la necesidad y los límites de la lucha por el salario por parte de los sindicatos.
Una maravilla.
Al principio, empieza polemizando con un tal Weston, ya que esto es la postura de Marx para un debate que se dio en la AIT. Ese estilo de ir respondiendo a lo que otro plantea a veces puede dar la impresión de lioso, pero en realidad para nada. De hecho, permite matizar mucho las explicaciones. Simplemente uno tiene que resistirse a la absurda tentación de querer leer a ese tal Weston, recordándose que si no lo había oído mentar nunca hasta ahora por algo será (menudas barbaridades decía el pobre).
Luego ya va dejando al Weston cada vez más atrás y desarrollando su propio argumento, sobre el valor y el precio de las mercancías, los salarios, la distinción entre trabajo y fuerza de trabajo, la ganancia y su reparto en ganancia industrial, renta e intereses, y la necesidad y los límites de la lucha por el salario por parte de los sindicatos.
Una maravilla.
April 11, 2025
Ya he puesto 5 estrellas a tres libros hoy, cosa que intento no hacer, pero es que esto es esclarecedor a niveles que no había sospechado.
Marx explica con palabras sencillas y datos comprensibles que el beneficio del empleador sólo puede venir de la bajada de salario del trabajador.
Esclarecedoras son especialmente las matizaciones a la así llamada ley de oferta y demanda y las cavilaciones sobre el precio de las mercancías.
Estas cosas parecen lógicas de entrada, pero, igual que el Sol no rodea la Tierra, no todo lo que parece obvio es lo correcto y leerlo desarrollado en su complejidad para llegar a esta conclusión asienta el polvo de la intuición para descubrir la razón.
Marx explica con palabras sencillas y datos comprensibles que el beneficio del empleador sólo puede venir de la bajada de salario del trabajador.
Esclarecedoras son especialmente las matizaciones a la así llamada ley de oferta y demanda y las cavilaciones sobre el precio de las mercancías.
Estas cosas parecen lógicas de entrada, pero, igual que el Sol no rodea la Tierra, no todo lo que parece obvio es lo correcto y leerlo desarrollado en su complejidad para llegar a esta conclusión asienta el polvo de la intuición para descubrir la razón.
October 14, 2025
Ja, lange und, wie Du gefürchtet hast, ermüdende Auseinandersetzung, aber based (aber ich bleibe überzeugt, dass wir schon im Sozialismus leben würden, hätte der Dude sich kürzer gefasst!).
August 22, 2024
This is a frustrating book. It begins with the premise of attempting to refute the works of a man called John Weston. It might be a good place to begin, but to any modern reader even remotely versed in economics, the theory put forward by Weston is so obviously wrong that it barely deserves refuting.
Marx then brings us on a whistle-stop tour of Marxist economic theory, with a chunk of discussion on surplus labour followed by a comparison to the feudal system. Marx is often extraordinarily verbose (and I say that as somebody who enjoys reading Kierkegaard), but he manages to reign in his excessive style in this text, and focuses quite effectively on the topic at hand. What we're left with is a satisfying introduction to some fairly complex ideas, all set up inside a slightly silly framing device.
Marx then brings us on a whistle-stop tour of Marxist economic theory, with a chunk of discussion on surplus labour followed by a comparison to the feudal system. Marx is often extraordinarily verbose (and I say that as somebody who enjoys reading Kierkegaard), but he manages to reign in his excessive style in this text, and focuses quite effectively on the topic at hand. What we're left with is a satisfying introduction to some fairly complex ideas, all set up inside a slightly silly framing device.
May 16, 2018
في واحد من شراح ماركس إتكلم عن الكتاب ده إنه أكتر كتاب ماركس بيتكلم فيه شبه الإقتصاديين الكلاسكيين وده حقيقي وكويس جدا، الكتاب كمان مدخل لإزاي ماركس بيفكر، بالرغم من إنه عبارة عن محاورة مع شخص تاني، حسيت للحظات إني بقرأ النسخة الماركسية من "حوار مع صديقي الملحد" بس تمام يعني في نقاط شرحها كان جيد وفهمت هو بيفكر فيها إزاي.
ملحوظة النسخة العربية كانت مرهقة وصعبة التتبع، النسخة الإنجليزية بسيطة ومكتوبة بلغة سهلة وكمان عارفة تلقط اللحظات اللي ماركس بيقول فيها إيفيهات دمها خفيف وهو بيتريق على الشخص اللي بيحاوره في دماغه :D
ملحوظة النسخة العربية كانت مرهقة وصعبة التتبع، النسخة الإنجليزية بسيطة ومكتوبة بلغة سهلة وكمان عارفة تلقط اللحظات اللي ماركس بيقول فيها إيفيهات دمها خفيف وهو بيتريق على الشخص اللي بيحاوره في دماغه :D
January 22, 2016
Marxian economics.
In this small synopsis of various chapters of the Das Kapital, Marx gives answers to questions regarding wages. What is the difference between "price" and "value"? What is the relation between wage levels and price levels? How does rise and fall of wages affect profits of businesses? How can we predict the long term profit of an industry? What are the main parameters that affect wage values and prices?
Spoiler alert: every worker isn't paid for all his working time.
In this small synopsis of various chapters of the Das Kapital, Marx gives answers to questions regarding wages. What is the difference between "price" and "value"? What is the relation between wage levels and price levels? How does rise and fall of wages affect profits of businesses? How can we predict the long term profit of an industry? What are the main parameters that affect wage values and prices?
Spoiler alert: every worker isn't paid for all his working time.
March 11, 2023
Mano esse Cidadão Weston... juro-vos que é uma pior que a outra. O gajo pegou num livro de economia, viu um gráfico e deve ter depois tirado das vozes da cabeça dele as conclusões que apresentou. Era óbvio que Marx ia dar-lhe três estalos com a sua barba enquanto fazia duas piruetas pra trás e desconstruir todo o argumento dele porque literalmente um bebé o conseguia fazer. Bué bom 👍
July 14, 2020
m€g@ v0rtrag!! k@rl m@rx ist d€r hamm€r
February 1, 2021
Karl does not like our friend Citizen Weston
July 27, 2023
Quem se dedica a estudar marxismo vai cair nesse texto eventualmente. Livro curto, denso (no sentido de ter muita informação), mas de fácil acesso.
October 26, 2023
Incredibly useful text. It's surprising how many of the dumb arguments that Marx destroys with this text are still touted today by Conservatives and liberals.
August 20, 2024
Zelfs met een 5 voor m'n economie eindexamen was dit goed te begrijpen 🙏
November 13, 2025
Quero dar rt numa review: "Que bien habla sus verdades el barbudo"
Muito bom para começar a ler teoria política/económica (ou mesmo sociológica), está muito bem organizado e explicado, se o objetivo é entender, isto cumpre-o muito melhor que o manifesto. Fica a sugestão para os meus amigos interessados.
Muito bom para começar a ler teoria política/económica (ou mesmo sociológica), está muito bem organizado e explicado, se o objetivo é entender, isto cumpre-o muito melhor que o manifesto. Fica a sugestão para os meus amigos interessados.
November 10, 2020
Piyasanın devamlılığını sürdürmek için gereken işgücünün nasıl oluştuğu ve bu iş gücünün minimum maliyetle ve işverene maksimum faydayı sağlayarak, kısacası onu sömürerek nasıl öz sermayesini değerlendirdiğini anlatan kısa ve öz bir eserdi. Marx'ın bu konudaki görüşlerine giriş anlamında gayet yeterliydi.
February 14, 2021
This book puts to bed, the "If wages increase, prices increase!" Mentality, we're all too often presented with. Give it a read if you'd like to understand why the argument is garbage, or recommend it to others that want to spew borgouise propaganda.
February 23, 2021
Eine kompaktere und dabei gut nachvollziehbare Zusammenfassung von Marx‘ ökonomischen Thesen wird man wohl kaum bekommen - allein das macht die ca. 80 S. für jeden auch nur halbwegs interessierten zur Pflichtlektüre — auch wenn aus heutiger Sicht der Kern der ökonomischen Thesen (dh insb die Arbeitswertlehre) wissenschaftlich nicht mehr haltbar ist.
Der Reclam Band hätte einen einordnenden Kommentar verdient, aber trotzdem gut das es den Text in einer so gut zugänglichen und günstigen Ausgabe gibt.
Der Reclam Band hätte einen einordnenden Kommentar verdient, aber trotzdem gut das es den Text in einer so gut zugänglichen und günstigen Ausgabe gibt.
June 14, 2020
In comparison to Wage Labour and Capital, this little pamphlet of Marx’s felt infinitely more dense. The first half is a web that’s hard to parse through but you do end up getting rewarded with a pretty clear minded description of his labor theory of value. Maybe not the best introduction to Marx, but it’s certainly worthwhile supplementary reading.
June 28, 2023
Great book, essentially a short Capital Volume I, tho of course without all the in-depth logic to back it up, but still enough to understand the Labour theory of value, and the extraction of the value of labouring power crystallised into commodities by the capitalist through profit.
September 24, 2025
After a full year and a few more months of going through the cycle between attempts to accustom myself with the world of economics, the wages system, and how to see the world; coming back to this pamphlet (it's not even a book); and becoming frustrated with myself, I've finally managed to finish the book.
I don't think this is particularly difficult to understand. Most people who aren't as illiterate as I am would spend less time to finish this than I did. And the length of the pamphlet made my reading pace even more embarrassing.
My inexperience with subjects such as economics, politics, history, etc. were my main excuses.
But here are the ways in which the book could be quite difficult in a good number of parts for a beginner. The first few chapters of the book where Marx's battle against an Owenite take place felt to me like an application of the labor theory of value before it is even laid down. A comrade told me that this is because Marx wrote dialectically. I have no clue how dialectics manifested in the flow of information in this pamphlet.
Then there are explanations that require mastery of the previous chapters. Marx's explanation for the source of profit is my personal favorite example for my incompetence. Marx explained that the only source of profit is the labour crystallized in a commodity. Profit cannot be extracted from selling a commodity above its value, because if every capitalist sells their commodities this way, then the profit obtained from the artificially heightened value would cancel out in the exchange between capitalists, hence there would be no reason for a capitalist to do this. This was confusing to me at first, because wouldn't profit extraction be possible from selling above a commodity's value if the exchange happens between a capitalists and a worker? Even exchange between capitalists could produce profit, when the condition is favorable to one party in the exchange. But then later I realized this is a matter of supply and demand, which has the tendency to reach equilibrium, and once equilibrium has been reached, labor becomes the sole source of profit once again. This phenomenon of supply and demand is explained in the previous chapters.
Overall, the book is a rich source of economic theory, and arguably the best for beginner Marxists. It is completely normal for beginners like me to not comprehend everything in one, two, five, or ten go's. A good strategy to tackle theory books would be to read several simultaneously, and to read Marxist news in order to see how these theories are applied to interpret the world.
I don't think this is particularly difficult to understand. Most people who aren't as illiterate as I am would spend less time to finish this than I did. And the length of the pamphlet made my reading pace even more embarrassing.
My inexperience with subjects such as economics, politics, history, etc. were my main excuses.
But here are the ways in which the book could be quite difficult in a good number of parts for a beginner. The first few chapters of the book where Marx's battle against an Owenite take place felt to me like an application of the labor theory of value before it is even laid down. A comrade told me that this is because Marx wrote dialectically. I have no clue how dialectics manifested in the flow of information in this pamphlet.
Then there are explanations that require mastery of the previous chapters. Marx's explanation for the source of profit is my personal favorite example for my incompetence. Marx explained that the only source of profit is the labour crystallized in a commodity. Profit cannot be extracted from selling a commodity above its value, because if every capitalist sells their commodities this way, then the profit obtained from the artificially heightened value would cancel out in the exchange between capitalists, hence there would be no reason for a capitalist to do this. This was confusing to me at first, because wouldn't profit extraction be possible from selling above a commodity's value if the exchange happens between a capitalists and a worker? Even exchange between capitalists could produce profit, when the condition is favorable to one party in the exchange. But then later I realized this is a matter of supply and demand, which has the tendency to reach equilibrium, and once equilibrium has been reached, labor becomes the sole source of profit once again. This phenomenon of supply and demand is explained in the previous chapters.
Overall, the book is a rich source of economic theory, and arguably the best for beginner Marxists. It is completely normal for beginners like me to not comprehend everything in one, two, five, or ten go's. A good strategy to tackle theory books would be to read several simultaneously, and to read Marxist news in order to see how these theories are applied to interpret the world.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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