The capitalist mode of production

This chapter examines Marx’s concept of the capitalist mode of production, identifying wage labour (and therefore class private property), commodity production (generalised whenever the capitalist mode of production is dominant), production of surplus-value, and competition between capitals (and the drive to accumulate capital) as its main characteristics. Capital is understood not as a thing but as a relation. The chapter draws heavily on Marx’s Capital , Theories of Surplus-Value , and Grundrisse . It is shown that Marx and Engels’ understanding of socialism as a worldwide society without classes, state, wage labour, commodity production, value and surplus-value, money, or competition of capitals is directly in contrast to the Stalinist view.