Market System of Capitalism on Trial

Marx’s analysis of the capitalist class process reveals that the process of selfexpansion of value or capital occurs under the condition where the market is the sphere of equivalent exchange. There is no exploitation in the market. What it does is facilitate through exchange value (whose monetary form is price) the distribution of value in the circulation process, a condition that is necessary for the productive capitalists to appropriate in money form the surplus labour performed by productive workers in production. Different varieties of market structure can be and has been historically associated with capitalist organization of surplus value. However, with the later development of capitalism in which the state increasingly played an important role in structuring the capitalist system, Marxists have shown, among other things, the significance of the connection of the market with capitalism in the process of subjugating the working class (the composite of productive and unproductive labourers). This chapter focuses on control and subjugation of the working class, particularly through concerted state policies on market designed to achieve that outcome. Even the crisis of capitalism is dealt with in a manner that secures this outcome. The discussion is organized around Perelman’s (2011 ) work that explores this connection in great detail.