Aman’s Reviews > Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1 > Status Update

Covered relative surplus-value, which begins to draw out how profits are recovered and increased when a cap is placed on the working day. Also, there is an interesting discussion on cooperation, which I just happened to read in Discipline and Punish.

Labour-power produces products, so long as labourers are provided with enough mula to reproduce said labour-power, i.e. income for food, shelter, future labourers. However, if a capitalist advances capital, they're not looking simply to receive what they advanced. So, labourers work beyond what's necessary to reproduce their labour-power, creating surplus-value, which capitalists appropriate, thus exploiting workers.

Chapters 4, 5, 6: Marx introduces labour-power to understand how the M-C-M' circulation is logical, or how it actually happens. Its M' because of the augmentation of money (M) by the end of the circulation.

This M-C-M' movement, which creates surplus-value using (Marx doesn't touch exploitation quite yet) labour-power, converts money into capital.

This was an incredibly interesting section, not as difficult as I heard. I think the onion analogy is apt: starting with the commodity, we are inside the onion's core, and as we progress throughout the book, we slowly work our way to the surface.

And like if you found yourself inside an onion, you might begin have an idea of where you are, but things don't quite become clear until you start seeing the surface.

Yo, I'm not ready for chapter 3.

Part 1 complete, though I may need to reexamine the section on commodity fetishism.