Contents
Volume 1 – The Process of Production of Capital
Part One: Commodities and Money
Chapter 2 – The Process of Exchange
Chapter 3 – Money, or the Circulation of Commodities
Part Two: The Transformation of Money into Capital
Chapter 4 – The General Formula for Capital
Chapter 5 – Contradictions in the General Formula
Chapter 6 – The Sale and Purchase of Labour-Power
Part Three: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
Chapter 7 – The Labour Process and the Valorisation Process
Chapter 8 – Constant Capital and Variable Capital
Chapter 9 – The Rate of Surplus-Value
Chapter 10 – The Working Day
Chapter 11 – The Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value
Part Four: The Production of Relative Surplus-Value
Chapter 12 – The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value
Chapter 13 – Co-operation
Chapter 14 – The Division of Labour & Manufacture
Chapter 15 – Machinery & Large Scale-Industry
Part Five: The Production of Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value
Chapter 16 – Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value
Chapter 17 – Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in Surplus-Value
Chapter 18 – Different Formulae for the Rate of Surplus-Value
Chapter 19 – The Transformation of the Value (and Respectively the Price) of Labour-Power into Wages
Chapter 20 – Time-Wages
Chapter 21 – Piece-Wages
Chapter 22 – National Differences in Wages
Part Seven: The Process of Accumulation of Capital
Chapter 23 – Simple Reproduction
Chapter 24 – The Transformation of Surplus-Value into Capital
Chapter 25 – The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation
Part Eight: So-Called Primitive Accumulation
Chapter 26 – The Secret of Primitive Accumulation
Chapter 27 – The Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land
Chapter 28 – Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated since the End of the 15th Century
Chapter 29 – The Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer
Chapter 30 – Impact of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry
Chapter 32 – The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation
Chapter 33 – The Modern Theory of Colonisation
Volume 2 – The Process of Circulation of Capital
Part One: The Metamorphoses of Capital and their Circuit
Chapter 1 – The Circuit of Money Capital
Chapter 2 – The Circuit of Productive Capital
Chapter 3 – The Circuit of Commodity Capital
Chapter 4 – The Three Figures of the Circuit
Chapter 5 – Circulation Time
Chapter 6 – The Costs of Circulation
Part Two: The Turnover of Capital
Chapter 7 – Turnover Time and Number of Turnovers
Chapter 8 – Fixed Capital and Circulating Capital
Chapter 9 – The overall Turnover of the Capital Advanced. Turnover Cycles
Chapter 10 – Theories of Fixed and Circulating Capital. The Physiocrats
Chapter 11 – Theories of Fixed and Circulating Capital. Ricardo
Chapter 12 – The Working Period
Chapter 13 – Productive Time
Chapter 14 – Circulation Time
Chapter 15 – Effect of Circulation Time on the Magnitude of the Capital Advanced
Chapter 16 – The Turnover of Variable Capital
Chapter 17 – The Circulation of Surplus-Value
Part Three: The Reproduction and Circulation of the Total Social Capital
Chapter 18 – Introduction
Chapter 19 – Former Presentations of the Subject
Chapter 20 – Simple Reproduction
Chapter 21 – Accumulation and Reproduction on an Expanded Scale
Volume 3 – The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole
Chapter 1 – Cost Price and Profit
Chapter 2 – The Rate of Profit
Chapter 3 – The Relationship between Rate of Profit and Rate of SV
Chapter 4 – The Effect of the Turnover on the Rate of Profit
Chapter 5 – Economy in the Use of Constant Capital
Chapter 6 – The Effect of Changes in Price
Chapter 7 – Supplementary Remarks
Part Two: The Transformation of Profit into Average Profit
Chapter 8 – Different Compositions of Capital in Different Branches of Production and the Resulting Variation in Rates of Profit
Chapter 9 – Formation of a General Rate of Profit (Average Rate of Profit) and Transformation of Commodity Values into Prices of Production
Chapter 10 – The Equalisation of the General Rate of Profit through Competition. Market Prices and Market Values. Surplus Profit.
Chapter 11 – The Effects of General Fluctuations in Wages on the Prices of Production
Chapter 12 – Supplementary Remarks
Part Three: The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit
Chapter 13 – The Law Itself
Chapter 14 – Counteracting Factors
Chapter 15 – Development of the Law’s Internal Contradictions
Chapter 16 – Commercial Capital
Chapter 17 – Commercial Profit
Chapter 18 – The Turnover of Commercial Capital. Prices
Chapter 19 – Money-Dealing Capital
Chapter 20 – Historical Material on Merchant’s Capital
Part Five: The Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise
Chapter 21 – Interest-Bearing Capital
Chapter 22 – Division of Profit. Rate of Interest. ‘Natural’ Rate of Interest
Chapter 23 – Interest and profit of Enterprise
Chapter 24 – Interest-Bearing Capital as the Superficial Form of the Capital Relation
Chapter 25 – Credit and Fictitious Capital
Chapter 26 – Accumulation of Money Capital and its Influence on the Rate of Interest
Chapter 27 – The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production
Chapter 28 – Means of Circulation and Capital. The Views of Tooke and Fullarton
Chapter 29 – Banking Capital’s Component Parts
Chapter 30 – Money Capital and Real Capital: I
Chapter 31 – Money Capital and Real Capital: II
Chapter 32 – Money Capital and Real Capital: III
Chapter 33 – The Means of Circulation under the Credit System
Chapter 34 – The Currency Principle and the English Bank Legislation of 1844
Chapter 35 – Precious Metal and the Rate of Exchange
Chapter 36 – Pre-Capitalist Relations
Part Six: The Transformation of Surplus Profit into Ground-Rent
Chapter 37 – Introduction
Chapter 38 – Differential Rent in General
Chapter 39 – The First Form of Differential Rent
Chapter 40 – The Second Form of Differential Rent
Chapter 41 – Differential Rent II – First Case: Price of Production Constant
Chapter 42 – Differential Rent II – Second Case: Price of Production Falling
Chapter 43 – Differential Rent – Third Case: Rising Price of Production. Results
Chapter 44 – Differential Rent Even on the Poorest Land
Chapter 45 – Absolute Ground-Rent
Chapter 46 – Rent of Buildings. Rent of Mines. Price of Land
Chapter 47 – The Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent
Part Seven: The Revenues and their Sources
Chapter 48 – The Trinity Formula
Chapter 49 – On the Analysis of the Production Process
Chapter 50 – The Illusion Created by Competition
Chapter 51 – Relations of Distribution and Relations of Production
Chapter 52 – Classes
Summary
Capitalism is based upon commodity production: things are produced for sale not for immediate consumption.
The value of a commodity is not the amount of (concrete) labour actually expended, but that portion of social (abstract) labour that is credited to that commodity. This can only be known in exchange (in the market).
Prices diverge from values because of the tendency for profits to be equalised between different capitals.
The circulation of capital: M – C – M’ (Money – Commodities – More Money)
How does money increase into more money? i.e. How can capital self expand?
This additional value is surplus value.
Marx’s great insight was that the source of surplus value lies in the difference between the value of labour-power (wages) and the value created in the course of the working day.
Labour is the source of surplus value, i.e. the source of all profit, interest & rent.
The capitalist by seizing the means of production leaves the labourer with no choice but to sell his labour to the capitalist to survive. The capitalist keeps some of the value that the labourer produces.
Surplus value can be increased by lengthening the working day – absolute surplus value.
Or by curtailment of the necessary labour (the proportion of the day the worker has to work to produce his means of consumption) – relative surplus value.
Competition drives capitalists to increase labour productivity. This increases the organic composition of capital, i.e. the amount of constant capital (machines, raw materials) to variable capital (wages).
This increase in the organic composition of capital puts downward pressure on the rate of profit (even if the first capitalists to introduce the new methods initially reap higher profits).
Capitalists only produce for profit; if the initial outlay of capital will not increase in value they won’t produce.
To the capitalists it doesn’t matter that people need things.
Exchange-value rules use-value.
The system is a set of social relations, it is not nature.
It hasn’t always been this way and probably will not always be this way.