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y'all actually want Das Kapital in a nutshell? it's a big book. let's do it according to its eight Parts. THREAD 1/10
Part I. Commodities are valuable in terms of what you can do with them, but each is also a determinate amount of social value separate from its utility. We tend to confuse these. We get a glimpse of value, not utility, when we consider money as a means of exchange. 2/10
Part II. But money isn't just for exchange. Sometimes it's used to make more money. Maybe that seems impossible. It's not, really; you can use money to do this by buying labor power and putting it to work making more commodities. Now you've got, not just money, but capital. 3/10
Part III. Buy labor power and put it to work. Your employees are making commodities, but also, they're producing surplus value. This is what you're really after. The more they work for your money, the more surplus value produced, the better. Make em work as long as you can. 4/10
Part IV. Also, make them work more productively. Make them cooperate. Break down the production process by the division of labor, making each step of the process simpler and easier. Introduce more and better machinery. 5/10
Part V. Do these together: maximize productivity and worktime. What you're after is minimizing the part of the day where the labor produces what's needed to pay the wages, thereby maximizing the part of the day that's in excess of this. The surplus always falls to you. 6/10
Part VI. Don't be fooled by abstractions like 'labor' without qualification. Wages are the form taken by value when it measures labor power utilized during a determinate period of time. You'll get yours whether you pay your workers per the hour or per piece produced. 7/10
Part VII. Everything points in the direction of greater and greater accumulation. Capital tends to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, on an always expanding scale. Members of the working class themselves become surplus population. 8/10
Part VIII. All this could only happen because what we once held in common -land, resources- was violently expropriated, and laws were established to protect this new private property. It has nothing to do with some people being hardworking and thrifty while others are lazy. 9/10
I hope this helps! hey, I get it; reading is pretty hard, and there's not much reason to bother, really, when you're the dipshit billionaire heir to a racist apartheid emerald fortune. for the rest: love and solidarity. 10/10
