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

Capitalism is a process - no a thing - by which essentially surplus-value is generated by labour and so part of this will constitute a profit for the Capitalist.

“Capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons which is mediated through things” (Karl Marx, page 932). This such a illuminating passage of this book.

I love the whole structure of the book resembles Capital itself. First of all, Capital is not a thing or a set of ideas but it is a metabolic and organic process related to the social relations of society. The structure by which Marx wrote Capital is the same as this activity: he does not state clearly the arguments but he constantly repeats and comes back to them so the reader can better understand these concepts.

It’s a fascinating account of the history and formation of Capital. It is a fundamental column of anthropologic analysis of the Capitalism society, it’s mode production and activity. The first two chapters are the most fascinating as they describe the two main components of Capital: the commodity and money. The book is a very complicated and so I’m reading it through the lectures of professor David Harvey.