In the first part of this work devoted to Book I of Capital (cf. Programme Communiste, No. 46, The Method of Capital...), we have briefly outlined the method followed by Marx, and which he himself explained in various texts. This study was necessary to refute the well-known prejudice according to which the results of Book III would be in contradiction with those of Book I, as if Marx had ‘revised’ himself. Although widespread, this prejudice has no other source than the usual superficiality of bourgeois ‘thinkers’ who draw from this negative virtue the confidence necessary to assert that Marx was wrong and that Capitalism could therefore never disappear one day in an apocalyptic revolution. To dispel it, a few lines by Marx himself sufficed for us, indicating that while in Book I he had studied ‘capital in general, capital as a whole’ and deliberately abstracted from the multitude of real capitals and their competition with each other, in Book III, on the contrary, he had set out to distinguish and describe the concrete forms of Capital as it manifests itself in society, ‘on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals upon one another, in competition, and in the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production themselves’. At the same time, we have shown that far from ‘contradicting’ himself, Marx followed a process of ‘progressive reduction of abstraction’ which is ultimately that of all science.

Book I of Karl Marx’s Capital (Critique of Political Economy) is titled The Process of Production of Capital. This study is complemented, in Book II, by that of The Process of Circulation of Capital and in Book III by that of The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. However, as we saw in the first part of this report, it would be wrong to simply consider Book I as the first third of the whole work. It is complete in itself because it completely finishes the study of all the abstract determinations necessary for understanding the phenomena of the capitalist economy and because this study already implies a reference to circulation, since the production of Capital in general rests on the fundamental exchange between employer and worker. This is why we have been able to say that Book I occupies, not only in Capital, but in the entire subsequent work of several generations of Marxists, the place that Newton’s ‘Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’ (1687) occupies in the development of modern physics and astronomy.

From the limited standpoint of the history of political economy, Book I of Capital indeed appears to be the culmination of the scientific endeavour of Ricardo, the leading theorist of classical political economy, and at the same time the pinnacle of science; but while the progress achieved by Marx on Ricardo may be of interest to some objective historian of science, it is not of primary interest to the Class Party, however attached it may be and must be to the scientific results contained in Capital, since without revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary party: it is the total change in the standpoint at which Marx places himself and which leads him to pursue science not for the love of science but for the needs of the struggle. For while Ricardo takes the standpoint of industrial capitalism, and it is to this that he owes both his scientific successes and his failures ⁽¹⁾, Marx takes the standpoint of the proletariat and Communism, and it is to this that he owes the overwhelming superiority of his results, which simply illustrates the fact that the proletariat is the first class in history capable of arriving at a total understanding of the historical movement, as the Marxist theory of knowledge proclaims. In ‘Elements of Marxist Economics’, we have already said the following on this subject:

‘But where Ricardo’s work ended, [Marx’s] was just beginning. Ricardo, as a consistent bourgeois thinker, believed he had discovered the laws of a stable society that would achieve definitive harmony with nature, provided that these laws were respected. The entire work of Marx, on the contrary, was to show how these very laws generated new contradictions that would go on intensifying with the geographical and social spread of capitalism – up to the paroxysm of a revolution that would put an end to these contradictions by razing the very foundations of capitalist society. Whereas Ricardo saw in the spread of capitalism, then in its definitive supremacy over pre-bourgeois economies, the elimination of all social antagonism, harmony finally attained, Marx showed that these were only the starting point for a new social revolution, that of the proletarian class. By writing the history of the birth and life of capitalism, he demonstrated the scientific necessity of its death and was able to confidently outline the essential features of the society that would succeed it. Moreover, in order to demonstrate the inevitability of the proletarian revolution, he accepted an ideal schema of capitalist society, without wasting time discussing the various deviations of reality vis à vis this “model”. By basing his prediction of socialism on an “ideal model” of bourgeois society, he produced not only a scientific work (...) but also a political polemical work, mercilessly castigating all those who would merely propose to improve capitalism or denounce its “excesses”’.

That said, we will examine in turn how, in Part I of Book I: Commodities and Money, Marx penetrates the mystery of Value and the magic of Money; how, in Parts II, III, IV, V and VI, all four of which deal, in essence, with The Transformation of Money into Capital or genesis of surplus value, he unlocks the secret of surplus value and demystifies the category of Wages; finally, how in Parts VII and VIII, he brings out the general law of capitalist accumulation.

The exchange of commodities, which, in its simple form, is barter, poses a difficult question for science. As soon as it ceases to be purely occasional, it is indeed carried out according to a system of regular equivalences of the following type, which we will denote by the sign ≡ used in mathematics and meaning ‘of equal value’:

Exchange therefore establishes practically an equality between completely different commodities. For there to be equality, however, they must possess a common measurable hidden quality. Could it be their use value? Insofar as it is subjective, i.e. as a need, use value is not measurable. Insofar as it is objective, it is measured in physical units (litres, metres, kilograms, etc.) that cannot be compared. Therefore, while use value indeed explains the fact of exchange (one gives up wool because they need copper, mats because they need honey), it does not at all explain the proportions in which this exchange takes place (why exactly 5 kg of wool for 1 kg of copper?). The property that commodities have of being exchanged for others in a given proportion, and which we can call their exchange value, thus appears to be a property clearly distinct from their use value and irreducible to it.

Regarding this exchange value, the question arises exactly as above: it must correspond to a hidden quality common to all commodities that is not only measurable – which presupposes that it is not subjective like utility, but social, recognised by all – but also measurable in the same unit whatever the physical aspect of the commodity.

This social quality common to all commodities lies in the fact that they are products of human labour. Stripped of its concrete characteristics, that is, considered as general expenditure of human labour power, as abstract labour, all human labour becomes comparable to any other as labour time: the unit of time is therefore the unit sought. As a measure of labour, this unit will at the same time be a measure of exchange value, but on two conditions: the first is that the time spent on the production of the commodity is not accidental, specific to an individual, but that it is recognised by society as the time necessary for this production; the second is that the labour expended during this time is simple, average labour. If it is complex labour, the labour time actually expended must be multiplied by a given coefficient to measure the value of the commodity, as happens empirically in society according to a law that escapes producers and seems to them to be the result of convention. The measure of the value of commodities will therefore be the socially necessary simple labour time to produce them. This was the secret that since the highest Antiquity man had vainly tried to discover ⁽²⁾.

As the productivity of labour increases, i.e. as it becomes possible to produce a larger quantity of the same commodity in the same amount of time, the value of each unit will fall. Marx notes:

‘The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value’.

We cannot therefore say that value is ‘crystallised labour’ ⁽³⁾. Marx’s law of value should therefore be formulated as follows: The exchange value of commodities is equal to the average socially necessary labour time required to produce them and produce them systematically. When this time decreases, i.e. when labour productivity increases, the exchange value of commodities thus decreases too. The increase in labour productivity therefore means that a growing mass of material wealth (use value) can correspond to a decreasing mass of exchange value.

If the formulation of this law was a genuine scientific achievement, it is because the value of the products of human labour in a society where they are exchanged never manifests itself directly, on the surface. On the surface, since commodity production becomes generalised, value has only ever manifested itself indirectly in the money price that must be paid to acquire a commodity. In the same way, humans weighed all kinds of things and used units of weight for centuries and centuries before discovering the scientific notion of mass, not to mention that they considered weight to be an immutable property of terrestrial bodies before discovering... weightlessness. Denying the law of value on the pretext that the value of labour is not an empirical reality is just as intelligent as denying the laws of mechanics on the pretext that mass is not self-evident ⁽⁴⁾. As for claiming that exchange value is an inherent property of things and not of the conditions in which they are produced... that should no longer be allowed in our era of space travel, where television has shown even the most ignorant human bodies floating limply in space!

Like any scientific law, the law of value is verified insofar as it accounts for empirical phenomena. Between the simple barter we have considered and monetary exchange, centuries and centuries have passed, and the distance seems enormous. The validity of the law of value will therefore be proven by showing that successive forms of exchange throughout history correspond to forms of value that follow on from one another in a logical way.

Barter involving a limited number of commodities corresponds to the simple or accidental form of value:

The whole mystery of exchange value already lies there.

This formula does not allow us to express the absolute value of wool, this value being related to an equivalent, which in this case is copper. If we reverse the formula, the value of wool will become the equivalent, but we will not have any more an absolute measure of value. The equivalent form will have to undergo many metamorphoses before becoming the price form, but it already contains this price in germ. In the simple form, which links only two commodities, it may seem that these exchange in this precise proportion by pure chance. In the developed form, this appearance itself disappears.

The developed form shows a certain extension of exchanges compared to the previous situation; here we have:

and so on up to the total form that would reproduce the developed form for each of the commodities present on the market and which, and which by n (n-1) equalities, would give a complete picture of it if these commodities were in number n.

In this form, it is clear that the equivalences are not accidental, but we still only have an equivalent form and not an absolute measure of value.

As exchanges multiply further compared to the previous situation, the need for a general equivalent will be felt, not only to avoid retaining n (n-1) equalities, but also so that holders of commodities can dispose of them in exchange for an equivalent without having to wait to meet the hypothetical holder of the commodity they wish to acquire. In ancient times, the role of general equivalent was filled among different peoples either by commodities of vital utility (livestock, agricultural products, tools) or by those that have been the object of early human exchange everywhere (ornaments such as cowries, trivets, etc...). This stage corresponds to the general form of value as it appears in the following table actually in force in ancient Egypt:

The general equivalent is not yet money, but it already contains money in germ. It already fulfils its functions as a measure of value and a medium of circulation. However, this role is no mystery: the general equivalent is a measure of value because it is a commodity, as was the case with any other commodity in the developed form of value. It is a medium of circulation because of its particular use value, variable according to peoples, which led to its selection as an official equivalent.

There is only one step left to take to arrive at the money-form or coin-form of value:

Between the general form of value and its money-form or coin-form, the only thing that has changed is the use value of the general equivalent: bulky, perishable, indivisible, etc., commodities initially chosen, society ended up preferring metals that did not have all these disadvantages (gold, copper, iron, silver), then exclusively the metals called ‘precious’ (gold, silver), which have the natural advantage over others of not being oxidisable. In other words, it is not because they were ‘precious’ (?) that gold and silver became a general equivalent, but because they became a general equivalent for practical reasons that they were considered precious. It is therefore clear that gold and silver are money only because they were already commodities ⁽⁶⁾. A certain weight of precious metal, soon endowed with a monetary name (in the table above the shekel, in England the pound sterling, etc...), measures the value of a given quantity of commodities because the same average socially necessary labour time was needed to produce both. The monetary unit expresses the price of the commodity, but the price itself is only the relation between the value of the commodity in question and the value of the gold unit. Having reached the end of the evolution of exchange, at the monetary form, we must therefore formulate the law of value as follows:

The number measuring the exchange value of a commodity in a given monetary unit is always proportional to the average socially necessary labour time required to produce it.

To discover this, it was necessary to decipher the simple form of the commodity. For the common consciousness, on the contrary,

‘a commodity does not appear to become money because other commodities reciprocally express their values in it; on the contrary, the latter appear to express their value in it because it is money. The movement that served as an intermediary vanishes into its own result and leaves no trace (...) These simple things, silver and gold, as they emerge from the bowels of the earth, immediately appear as the immediate embodiment of all human labour. Hence the magic of money’ (Le Capital, Book I, Ch. 2; translated from French).