Marx's Critique of Capitalism

Capitalism is all about accumulating capital and increasing the productive forces. Let us say that there is a capitalist and the capitalist owns a factory. The capitalist then hires workers to work in the factory and make profit for the capitalist. The profit is then turned into wealth and the capitalist uses the wealth to buy another factory (or capital). The capitalist hires more workers to work in the new factory (or capital) that the capitalist had just bought and the cycle continues. When the capitalist buys a new factory (or capital), the capitalist is accumulating capital and when the capitalist hires more workers to work in the new factory (or capital), the productive forces increases. As the productive forces increases, the capitalist’s profit also increases. Accumulating capital increases the productive forces, which increases profit.

I agree with Marx that labor power is the source of all wealth. According to Mark Ruppert’s lecture notes, surplus value is the source of profit. In other words, the extra labor power that workers produce creates surplus value, which gets turned into profit. What is labor power? If a worker works for eight hours a day and gets paid for four hours of his labor, the extra four hours is the extra labor power that turns into surplus value. Profit then becomes accumulated wealth. The accumulated wealth is invested as capital and with more labor power, value is then created again and the cycle starts over. Accumulated wealth is created by surplus value which comes from labor power. In my opinion, I think capital is just as important as labor power. Without capital and even without land, labor power is useless. On the other hand without labor power, the capital and the land are useless, which also means “dead labor”. I think this connects to the question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Without the chicken, the egg would not have been laid in the first place. But without the egg, the chicken would not have been hatched. In the previous lectures in class, we established that land, labor, and capital are the dominant frameworks of capitalism.