Reform or revolution? Why the distinction still matters

By Raju J Das

Published 7 November, 2026

The contemporary struggle against capitalism is marked by two major contradictions. First, capitalism continues to inflict immense social and ecological suffering, while the ruling class is increasingly incapable of implementing reforms to meet the masses’ needs. Despite this, many influential academic Marxists consider revolutionary struggle against capitalism implausible, even as dissatisfaction with capitalism becomes increasingly widespread.

Second, while popular receptivity to socialism is growing, and confidence in capitalism and its institutions declines, organised revolutionary socialist politics remains remarkably weak. Moreover, much of the Communist movement remains committed to a two-stage revolutionary strategy, according to which a democratic revolution must precede socialist revolution as a separate historical stage. In practice, this strategy means postponing socialist revolution indefinitely. Yet, as I shall argue later, democratic, agrarian, national and anti-imperialist tasks must be integrated into the struggle for socialist revolution under proletarian leadership.

These two contradictions raise fundamental questions. Why do so many Marxist scholars downplay or reject revolutionary politics at a time when capitalism’s contradictions are increasingly evident? Why does growing dissatisfaction with capitalism not translate into organised revolutionary struggle? And how can struggles for immediate improvements in people’s lives become part of a movement for the revolutionary transformation of society?

This article addresses these questions from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism.1 Its central argument is that the necessity of socialist revolution arises from the structural contradictions of capitalism, while its possibility depends on the development of the objective and subjective conditions for revolutionary struggle. Neither capitalist crisis nor popular dissatisfaction automatically produces revolutionary consciousness or organisation. The decisive political task is to transform the potential for revolutionary struggle into an organised movement capable of challenging capitalist class power, nationally and internationally.

The marginalisation of revolutionary politics in academic Marxism

Academic Marxism is the Marxism that emerges primarily from educational institutions rather than the terrains of class struggle (socialist parties and non-party organisations). It has contributed to our understanding of society, even while its practitioners work under difficult conditions not of their own choosing.2 For many revolutionaries, academic Marxism has also served as a starting point in their intellectual and political development.

Yet a hallmark of academic Marxism is the separation of intellectual analysis of society from political practice: academic Marxist ideas generally focus on analysing the world in isolation from the question of what is to be done to transcend capitalism and establish socialism. To the extent that academic Marxists discuss political practice, they generally refrain from advocating revolutionary practice.

Let me provide some examples.3 John Holloway argues that “[t]he idea of changing society through the conquest of power … ends up achieving the opposite of what it sets out to achieve.”4 According to Erik Olin Wright, “a revolutionary rupture with capitalism to create a democratic egalitarian socialism isn’t plausible” and “system-wide ruptural strategies have no possibilities of success for the foreseeable future.”5 Vivek Chibber argues: “Our strategic perspective has to downplay the centrality of a revolutionary rupture and navigate a more gradualist approach.”6 

Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin write: “The worn-out concepts of the smashing of the state and the withering away of the state do not begin to capture this.”7 Similarly, David Harvey says: “A revolutionary overthrow of this capitalist economic system is not anything that's conceivable at the present time. It will not happen, and it cannot happen, and we have to make sure that it does not happen.”8

The anti-revolutionary positions of academic Marxists discussed here are rooted in several related theoretical limitations, although these vary among them: a relative underemphasis on capitalist production relations and value theory; an underestimation of the class character of the capitalist state and the revolutionary agency of the working class; and insufficient recognition of the structural limits of reform. These limitations contribute to excessive confidence in reformist strategies and scepticism about the need or possibility of revolutionary rupture.

Their positions are difficult to reconcile with Vladimir Lenin’s criterion for Marxism: 

Those who recognize only the class struggle are not yet Marxists… Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.9

Rising mass radicalisation

Many Marxist scholars downplay the need for socialist revolution precisely when significant sections of the population are becoming increasingly radicalised. Instead of helping people further radicalise their views, academic Marxists merely promote a reform-oriented view of anti-capitalism.

Support for socialism is high today and, in some cases, rising. In the United States, 43% of adults have a positive view of socialism, including 57% of those aged 18–34.10

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Figure 1. US: Positive views of socialism and capitalism, 2010–26. Source: Author's graph based on Gallup data reported in Saad (2026). Note: Figures represent the percentage of US adults reporting a positive image of socialism or capitalism. Surveys were conducted in the years shown; the connecting lines do not represent annual observations.

This is further supported by November 2026 US midterm election exit polls, which revealed a significant degree of sympathy for socialism. According to the NBC News exit poll, 33% of voters expressed a favourable opinion of socialism, including 9% who viewed it strongly favourably, while 54% expressed an unfavourable opinion (Figure 2). Among those favourable towards socialism, 93% voted Democratic. In the absence of a viable mass socialist party, these numbers indicate that socialist ideas have a substantial potential audience within the electorate.11 Together with the Gallup evidence, they also suggest a significant potential for the development of left-wing political consciousness.

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Figure 2. US Voters’ Opinions of Socialism and Their Voting Choices, November 2026. Source NBC Exit polls: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-elections/exit-polls

Capitalism is dominated by big business. In the US, public confidence in big business is remarkably low: in June 2025, only 15% expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it; among adults aged 18–34 the figure was 10% (Figure 3). This is consistent with the NBC exit poll results, which reveal that a large majority of US voters (69%) believe the economic system in the US favours the wealthy (Figure 4).12

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Figure 3. United States: Confidence in small and big business, 1973–2025 (percentage expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence). Source: Gallup, ‘How Do Americans Feel About Business?,’ June 27, 2022, updated April 24, 2026, https://news.gallup.com/poll/270296/americans-dislike-big-business.aspx. Note: Confidence series refers to a great deal/quite a lot of confidence, not positive or favourable views. June 2025: big business 15%; small business 70%. The separate August 2025 favourable-view measure is 95% for small business.

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Figure 4. US voters’ perceptions of the fairness of the economic system, November 2026. Source NBC Exit polls: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-elections/exit-polls

In Canada, anti-capitalist sentiments appear to be widely prevalent too. In an Innovative Research Group poll, 53% agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic showed a need to radically transform the economy and 35% supported government action to move away from capitalism (49% of women aged 18–34 supported this) (Figure 5).

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Figure 5. Canada: Support for radical economic transformation and moving away from capitalism, 2021. Source: Innovative Research Group, Canada This Month: Economic Transformation (August 2021), https://innovativeresearch.ca/non-partisan-consensus-across-many-economic-transition-initiatives/. Note: Percentage supporting each proposal; the questions concern government action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The subgroup comparisons are for respondents aged 18–34. The 53% transformation response and the 35% “move away from capitalism” response came from different questions in the August 2021 survey; neither is a direct measure of support for socialism.

Of course, survey evidence by itself tells us little about whether such attitudes reflect revolutionary Marxist class consciousness. The question, then, is: why does revolution remain necessary and possible?

Five reasons

The following five reasons all stem from one aspect of capitalism: the fundamental interests of capital and labour are ultimately incompatible.

First, because capitalism rests on private control over the means of production and the exploitation of labour, meaning there are structural limits to the concessions capital can grant. A rise in wages, whether resulting from increased investment, class struggle or both, can occur, but as Marx argues it “only means at best a quantitative diminution of the unpaid labour that the worker has to supply”, and “[t]his diminution can never reach the point at which it would threaten the system itself.”13 Consequently, struggles for concessions must ultimately be connected with a revolutionary political struggle for state power.

Second, to the extent that the struggles for significant and durable reforms matter, they become successful when they are integrated into a revolutionary upsurge. As Lenin said: “Reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle.”14

Third, the state protects the class relations that generate this suffering. The state possesses enormous coercive powers, yet it does not use them to expropriate the capitalist class and reorganise production in the interests of the majority. It does not do so because it is inherently the state of the capitalist class. Revolution is necessary because, as Marx says, “the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way.”15

Fourth, existing state institutions cannot simply be used by people to build a new post-capitalist society. Revolution is needed to transform the materiality of the state itself, including through the establishment of recallable representatives receiving workers’ wages. The existing capitalist state apparatus must be replaced by new institutions of democratic working-class power.

Finally, revolution is necessary for a subjective reason. Capitalism inculcates cultural habits that encourage people to accept capitalist relations as natural and inevitable. Marx explained: “The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature.”16

To create a society under their own control, people themselves must change. Revolutionary struggle is needed to produce new forms of consciousness, collective capacity and self-confidence. Marx and Frederick Engels argue in The German Ideology that “the revolution is necessary … because the class overthrowing [the ruling class] can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”17

Why and when is revolution possible?

An important objective condition for revolution is a crisis of capitalist accumulation. Driven by “the restless never-ending process of profit-making”18 on an increasingly global scale, capitalist accumulation develops the productive forces while simultaneously creating class relations that increasingly fetter their further development. This contradiction manifests itself in economic crises, stagnation, unemployment, declining living standards and other forms of deprivation.19 An economic crisis combined with a political or governmental crisis in which representatives of the ruling class are unable to manage capitalism creates conditions for revolution.

Revolution requires revolutionary agency. The proletariat is the leading agent of revolution. Because workers collectively produce value and surplus value, they possess the capacity to interrupt capitalist production. Numbers matter only when workers are united, organised and armed with scientific knowledge and class consciousness and engage in organised anti-capitalist action. Class consciousness does not automatically arise from poverty or suffering, nor does it arise spontaneously from economic-ecological struggles.

Trade unions and mass organisations are important. Socialists must work within them despite the fact that they are often reformist. The masses must fight for transitional demands. Such demands — for example, jobs for all, housing and healthcare for all, urgent and significant action to reduce global warming, and control over key industries by common people — provide a bridge between immediate needs and the struggle for power. They begin with present conditions and consciousness but increasingly challenge the basis of capitalist rule.

Above all, there is a need for a revolutionary socialist party, independent of all fractions of the ruling class and capable of coordinating struggles over immediate and transitional demands, transforming the proletariat’s structural potential into organised political power.20

Within capitalism, women and racialised people experience specific forms of oppression and exploitation. Fearful of the rising proletariat, the capitalist class in the Global South is unable to consistently fight against undemocratic political institutions and oppressive pre- or non-capitalist social relations. Consequently, the task falls on the proletariat, allied with the peasants and other oppressed groups. This is one reason why revolution must have a permanent or uninterrupted character, in the sense articulated by Marx and Engels:

it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until … at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.21

There is another reason why revolution must have an uninterrupted character: imperialism. Imperialist businesses, supported by militarily powerful states, appropriate surplus from workers and peasants in relatively less developed nations, including transitional societies such as China. In the Global South, workers and petty producers suffer because of the actions of imperialist institutions, such as the World Bank and IMF, which are major forces behind neoliberal austerity and other forms of economic devastation that impoverish the masses and facilitate their exploitation by imperialist capital.

Workers within imperialist countries also suffer from imperialism. Militarism diverts enormous resources from social and ecological improvements. Imperialism places workers in different countries in competition with one another. Wars kill ordinary people, contribute to ecological destruction and fuel attacks on democratic rights. Workers in imperialist countries do not just have a moral obligation to support people in the Global South but a material and political interest in opposing imperialism.

The struggle against imperialism and predatory wars is integral to the fight against capitalism and for socialism: “Imperialist war is the continuation and sharpening of the predatory politics of the bourgeoisie... The fundamental content of the politics of the international proletariat will consequently be a struggle against imperialism and its war.”22 The global character of capitalism provides an objective basis for an international alliance of workers and other exploited people in the North and South.

Democratic, agrarian and national tasks must therefore be integrated into the struggle for socialist revolution, rather than assigned to a separate historical stage to be completed before socialist transformation can begin. Revolution must be permanent, both geographically and socially. Without revolution extending into the imperialist heartland, socialist reconstruction cannot be completed in the Global South.

The possibility of beginning socialist transformation within national boundaries is one thing; the possibility of completing socialist reconstruction within those boundaries is another. The former does not imply the latter. As Marx and Engels said, the revolution needs to be permanent 

until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far — not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world — that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases.23

Although the revolutionary proletariat is the key agent of revolution, it cannot succeed alone. It needs three kinds of alliance: an alliance with non-Communist scientists to fight obscurantism and post-truth practices spread by a decaying capitalism; an alliance with reformist workers to fight fascist forces; and, a revolutionary alliance with non-exploiting petty producers, especially peasants, based on “an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.” The last alliance is particularly important in the Global South.24

Revolution requires a class movement, not a collection of self-isolating sects.25 Political and theoretical differences among revolutionary Marxists are real, and polemical struggle is needed, but ideological demarcation must not become a substitute for intervention in mass struggles. Revolutionary organisations must engage in united action against capitalism and social oppression, and work towards the development of a mass proletarian party.

Conclusion

Academic Marxism’s retreat from this revolutionary perspective does not diminish its necessity. Marx argued that the working masses “require not only a change of distribution, but a new organization of production,… and their harmonious national and international co-ordination.”26 Michael Roberts writes that this requires “the ending of imperialism and its replacement by an association of nations based on democratic planning and common ownership.”27 Anti-capitalism must be anti-imperialism, and vice versa.

Class struggle can result in socialism or the common ruin of the contending classes, expressed as social-ecological barbarism. These outcomes are not inevitable or equally desirable. People have compelling reasons to seek better social-ecological conditions than those capitalism can provide, but their desire for such conditions does not by itself guarantee barbarism will be avoided. Revolutionary reconstruction is necessary and possible, but its realisation depends on revolutionary consciousness informed by Marxist theory, organisation, leadership and political action.

To conclude, here are four clear propositions:

• Socialism is the only solution to capitalism’s social-ecological problems;
• Revolution is the only means of replacing capitalism;
• The proletariat is the only class capable of leading the socialist revolution; and
• Marxism is the only theory capable of guiding the socialist revolution.

Raju J Das is a professor at York University, Toronto, Canada. His teaching and research interests include political economy, class theory, the capitalist state, climate change and workers’ health, and international development. His recent books include Marxist Class Theory for a Skeptical World; Marx’s Capital, Capitalism, and Limits to the State; Contradictions of Capitalist Society and Culture; The Challenges of the New Social Democracy; Theories for Radical Change; and Marx, the State, and Primitive Accumulation. He serves on the editorial board and manuscript review committee of Science & Society, and co-edits the Theory and Class Struggle section of Race, Class and Corporate Power. Further information about his work is available at https://rajudas.info.yorku.ca/

• 1

  This article is based on the script of a talk prepared for the Anti-Imperialist Symposium in Toronto on November 8, 2026. It draws on an 8,000-word article.

• 2

  Raju J Das. The marginalization of Marxism in academia, LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. https://links.org.au/marginalization-marxism-academia (2020). Raju J Das. The Relevance of Marxist Academics. Class, Race and Corporate Power, 1(1). (2013)

• 3

  I discuss academic Marxist work in greater detail in: Raju J. Das, ‘Against the Retreat from Class: Marxist Class Theory in the Age of Capitalist Crises, Part I’ (2026, forthcoming); Raju J. Das, ‘Marxism and Revisionism in the World Today’, Capital & Class 47, no. 3 (2023): 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1177/03098168221139287; Raju J. Das, Marxist Class Theory for a Skeptical World (Brill, 2017), pp. 22–174.

• 4

  John Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (Pluto Press, 2002), https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/john-holloway-change-the-world-without-taking-power 

• 5

  Erik Olin Wright, ‘Interview with Erik Olin Wright for New Left Project’ (2010), https://www.sscc.wisc.edu/soc/faculty/pages/wright/Published%20writing/New%20Left%20Project%20interview.pdf. See also Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (Verso, 2010), chap. 8

• 6

  Vivek Chibber, ‘Our Road to Power,’ Jacobin (2017), https://jacobin.com/2017/12/our-road-to-power 

• 7

  Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, ‘Marxist Theory and Strategy: Getting Somewhere Better,’ Historical Materialism 23, no. 2 (2015): 3–22, at 19.

• 8

  David Harvey, ‘Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: Global Unrest,’ Democracy at Work (2019), https://www.democracyatwork.info/acc_global_unrest 

• 9

  Lenin, V. The State and Revolution (1917), https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/lenin/state-and-revolution.pdf 

• 10

  Lydia Saad, ‘Socialism’s Positive Rating Tops 40% for First Time,’ Gallup, September 23, 2026, https://news.gallup.com/poll/714653/socialism-positive-rating-tops-first-time.aspx 

• 11

  However, a favourable opinion of socialism does not necessarily imply support for socialist revolution, or even an understanding of socialism as a system based on collective ownership and control of the means of production. Nor should voting Democratic be confused with support for socialism.

• 12

  Note that the NBC figures describe voters, whereas the Gallup figures describe US adults. Note also that the Gallup survey measures confidence in big business, while the NBC exit poll measures perceptions of the economic system's fairness. They are related but not identical.

• 13

  Karl Marx. Capital vol. 1. (1887:435). https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

• 14

  V. Lenin. Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution (1921). https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/14.htm 

• 15

  Marx, K. and F. Engels. The German Ideology. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf 

• 16

  Karl Marx. Capital vol. 1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf (p. 520).

• 17

  Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (written 1845–46; Foreign Languages Press, 2022), 60. https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/C37-The-German-Ideology-Marx-1st-Printing-FINAL_compressed.pdf

• 18

  Karl Marx. Capital vol. 1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf, (1887), p. 107.

• 19

  Michael Roberts, The Long Depression (Haymarket, 2016).

• 20

  Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Programme (1938), https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/ 

• 21

  Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm (1850).

• 22

  Leon Trotsky (1938), ‘The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International’, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/transprogram.pdf, p. 25 

• 23

  As Trotsky argues: “One of the basic reasons for the crisis in bourgeois society is the fact that the productive forces created by it can no longer be reconciled with the framework of the national state. … The socialist revolution begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena, and is completed on the world arena.” Leon Trotsky. ‘What Is Permanent Revolution?’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm (1931).

• 24

  Leon Trotsky, ‘What Is Permanent Revolution?’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm (1931) 

• 25

  Raju J Das. ‘The weapon of criticism cannot replace the criticism of the weapon’, International Journal of Socialist Renewal, 2021. https://links.org.au/weapon-criticism-cannot-replace-criticism-weapon-what-knowledge-do-we-need-revolution-against

• 26

  Quoted in Roberts, Michael. “China as a Transitional Economy to Socialism?” Journal of Global Faultlines 9, no. 2 (2022): 180–97. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48713461, p. 181

• 27

  Roberts, Michael. “China as a Transitional Economy to Socialism?” Journal of Global Faultlines 9, no. 2 (2022): 180–97. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48713461 

 

Why Marx’s theory of value is of value to workers today: Commodities, fetishism and labour-power

By Raju J Das

Published 30 October, 2026

Karl Marx’s (1887: 6) discussion of the commodity can be difficult for many people.1 He begins by warning his readers that “Every beginning is difficult” and that “to understand … the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will … present the greatest difficulty”. Yet, if people read his discussion carefully, most will understand it, and their labour will be compensated in the form of a better understanding of capitalism. “There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits” (ibid: 9).

Marx’s analysis of commodities belongs to his wider critique of political economy, which develops interconnected concepts, including capital, circulation, labour-power, the labour process, surplus-value, exploitation, the working day, machinery, class struggle, accumulation, the reserve army of labour and primitive accumulation. Marx understood this critique not simply as an intellectual undertaking but as a weapon workers could use in their struggle against capitalists.2 

This paper, therefore, does not treat Marx’s value theory as an abstract economic doctrine. Instead, it connects the theory of commodities, abstract labour, commodity fetishism and labour-power to questions that matter directly to workers. It demonstrates that Marx’s theory of value is relevant not only to understanding commodity exchange and labour time but also to understanding why workers are subordinated to market forces, why formal freedom coexists with economic compulsion, and why production for profit conflicts with human needs.

Two fundamental aspects of commodities: use-value and value 

Wealth consists of use-values, the things that people need to satisfy their needs. “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’” (Marx, 1887: 27).

Use-value

The usefulness of a commodity makes it a use-value. This usefulness is conditioned by the physical properties of the object (matter and energy). It is the physical body of the commodity that makes it useful.

Commodities satisfy material wants and mental or cultural wants. Things that satisfy material needs (food, housing, etc) are relatively more important than those that meet cultural needs (painting, movies). Some use-values satisfy immediate needs, such as food and housing. Other things, such as tractors, serve as means of production. Some commodities — including seeds and certain applications of artificial intelligence — can serve both purposes.

Most use-values must be produced. They are produced through the interaction of human labour and nature. Both nature and labour contribute to material wealth.

Value (or labour/social value)

Assume the following commodities exchange as equivalents: one kilogram of corn = half a kilogram of iron = a massage or a piece of computer code = $10. This illustrates an exchange relation that abstracts from the use-values of commodities. A kilogram of corn has many exchange-values (half a kilogram of iron, a massage or a piece of computer code). This means that a common element exists in all these commodities: they are all equal to something that is neither corn, iron, computer code or any other particular commodity. This common element cannot be geometrical, physical, chemical or any other natural property of commodities, since such properties account for their usefulness. 

This common element is human labour, considered as homogeneous, or abstract labour. Commodities are congealed quantities of abstract labour. In this sense, they are values. Thus, abstract or homogeneous labour is the substance of value, while socially necessary labour time determines its magnitude; exchange-value is the form in which value is expressed and money-price is its monetary expression.

Value is created in production but is socially realised, validated and made observable through exchange relations. Price (the monetary expression of exchange-value) fluctuates around value at the level of abstraction adopted here under the influence of supply and demand, and other conjunctural circumstances (for example, a perception on the part of a person that an 18th-century painting is very useful). Value cannot be seen, touched or felt (it is a “phantom”). It is “immaterial”, but it is social and objective. 

Exchange relations — the proportion in which one commodity is exchanged for another — constitute a mode of expression of value. If a cup is exchanged for five pens, and both are worth $10, assuming that commodities exchange at their values, this means that the same amount of socially necessary abstract labour time is embodied in the cup and the five pens. The phrase “socially necessary” is significant: “The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time” (Marx, 1887: 29).

The magnitude of a commodity’s value is determined by socially necessary labour time. If a commodity normally takes six hours to produce, a worker who takes twelve hours — the twelve hours representing the individual labour time required to produce the commodity in that enterprise — does not thereby create twice its social value. Conversely, commodities produced in the same amount of socially necessary labour time have equal values, even if their use-values differ.

Socially necessary labour time changes with scientific and technological advances, skill, social organisation and environmental conditions. For example, favourable growing conditions may allow eight kilograms of corn to be produced with the labour previously needed for four, reducing the value per kilogram. Climate change can alter productivity and destroy use-values. If harvests are destroyed by unpredictable and unseasonal heavy rainfall associated with climate change, and if such conditions affect many producers, the socially necessary labour time required to produce rice may increase, raising its value, other things being equal.

The dual character of the labour embodied in commodities

Just as commodities have use-value and value, the labour producing them has two aspects. One is concrete labour, which produces use-values. The other is abstract labour, which constitutes value. Abstract labour refers to the “productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles” (Marx, 1887: 31). Tailoring and writing computer code are qualitatively different forms of concrete labour because they produce different use-values: clothes and software. Yet, as values, these commodities have the same substance: abstract human labour. They represent “two different modes of expending human labour power [in the abstract]” (ibid: 31).

Concrete, or useful, labour, an eternal necessity, mediates the metabolism between people and nature. If clothes-making labour were the same as software-making labour, then clothes would not be different from software. They would not confront each other as different commodities in the market. As values, a coat and software have the same substance: they are objective expressions of abstract human labour. But tailoring and writing computer code are different kinds of useful labour. In a nutshell, here is the distinction between the two aspects of labour:

On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expenditure of human labour power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use values (Marx, 1887: 33).

There is also a distinction between simple average labour and more complex labour. Simple average labour refers to the expenditure of labour-power possessed, on average, by ordinary individuals without specialised development.3 This simple average labour serves as the basic unit for expressing the magnitude of value. However, the character of simple average labour varies between countries and across historical periods, even though it is socially given within a particular society at a particular time. 

More complex labour counts as multiplied simple labour: a commodity produced through highly complex labour is therefore treated as equivalent, in value terms, to a definite quantity of simple labour. This reduction of complex labour to simple labour takes place through social processes operating behind the backs of producers, rather than through their conscious decisions.

Thus, concrete labour — such as making toys or writing computer code — produces use-values, while abstract labour constitutes value, whose magnitude is determined by socially necessary labour time. Under generalised commodity production, this socially necessary labour time regulates exchange relations and prices through processes operating independently of the conscious decisions of individual producers. This brings us to Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism.

Commodity fetishism

Fetishism involves attributing supernatural powers to things and treating the powers of things in isolation from historically specific social relations. Commodity fetishism refers to a social condition in which social relations between producers take the form of relations between things. If one computer = ten calculators = $10, this exchange relation appears to be an inherent property of useful things themselves. 

But in reality, value is not a natural property of things in the way that weight or colour is. In a commodity-producing society, it seems as if things that people need automatically possess value, which is expressed through exchange-value, and follow objective laws to which people must submit. Commodities are products of human labour, yet they appear to possess value independently of their producers. The movement of commodity prices — including those of everyday necessities — can profoundly affect people’s lives. Marx challenges this naturalistic view of commodities.

Commodity fetishism does not arise merely from a mistaken belief. It does not arise simply because producers in different parts of the world are unaware of one another’s conditions of production owing to geographical distance. Rather, commodity fetishism expresses an objective social relation. It arises because private producers work independently and establish the social connections among their labour activities indirectly, through the exchange of their products. This is the case even if all the producers work in the Greater Toronto Area or in Sydney. The social character of their labour becomes apparent only through this exchange.

In a consciously coordinated division of labour, producers could directly decide what to produce, how to produce, how much labour to devote to different needs, and how to distribute the results. Under commodity production, however, these relationships are mediated by things: social relations between producers appear as relations between commodities, and production confronts people as a process beyond their collective control.

Consider an eggplant producer and a pen producer. If one kilogram of eggplants or five pens sells for $10, each producer tries to obtain as much as possible in exchange. Their connection is mediated by prices rather than by a conscious assessment of each other’s working conditions or social needs. The absence of direct collective regulation of production is central to commodity fetishism, which has two aspects: commodity production and exchange mystify the social relations between producers, and the products of their labour, together with the market forces governing their exchange, come to dominate their lives.

Labour power as a peculiar commodity

Under capitalism, not only the means of subsistence and production but also labour-power — the human capacity to work — become a commodity. Understanding this peculiar commodity is essential to explaining the dependence of wage workers on capital.

Labour vs labour-power

Labour-power is the capacity for labour. It is “the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description” (Marx 1887: 117). It is the power to produce useful things. Labour-power has become a commodity under capitalism, just as salt and sugar are commodities. Wage labour is the dominant form of labour outside the sphere of reproduction in the family.4 Labour-power was not always a commodity. It became a commodity when workers were separated from the means of production and subsistence by proto-capitalists and capitalists, with the help of the state.

Labour is the actual exercise of the capacity for labour. Wage workers own their labour-power. They sell not the corn or computers that they produce, but the power to produce corn or computers. Because they do not own the means of production, once they have sold the use of their labour-power for a specified period, they lose control over its exercise during that period and lack control over the things they produce. These things are owned by the buyer of labour-power and sold by that buyer.

Double freedom of labour

Workers possess a contradictory “double freedom”. They are legally free to dispose of their labour-power, unlike slaves or serfs. But they are also “free” from ownership of sufficient means of production and subsistence, and so must sell their labour-power to survive. This dependence on the sale of labour-power generally operates through what Marx calls the dull compulsion of economic relations, without direct extra-economic coercion. Employers do not ordinarily force a person to sell their labour-power to them through direct coercion.

Because workers own their labour-power, they can, in principle, choose to whom they sell it and for what limited period. Selling themselves permanently would negate their status as owners of the commodity. This formal equality between buyers and sellers of labour-power is a historical achievement compared with slavery and serfdom, but it coexists with economic dependence on the buyer of labour power. The freedom to move and seek employment, including across borders, is therefore a fundamental working-class concern.

Value of labour-power

Like all commodities, labour-power has a use-value: its capacity to produce useful things. It has an exchange-value, expressed in money as wages. It also has value, like salt and sugar. The value of labour-power is determined by the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the reproduction of labour-power at a given time and in a given geographical area. It has physical, generational, environmental and historical-moral dimensions.

Workers must obtain the means of subsistence required to maintain their physical and mental capacities and to reproduce the working class across generations. These needs vary with climate, historically established living standards, social expectations and class struggle between buyers and sellers of labour power; they are not reducible to a bare biological minimum. If the socially necessary labour embodied in a worker’s daily means of subsistence is three hours, the daily value of labour-power is represented by three hours of social labour.

To live a normal life (in which their labour-power is not reproduced in its crippled state), people need to consume things on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. The daily cost of reproducing labour-power can be represented as (365D + 52W + 12M + A)/365, where D = daily needs; W = weekly needs; M = monthly needs, and A = annual needs. In other words, when these requirements are expressed in money, the total annual cost of daily, weekly, monthly and annual necessities, divided by 365, represents the daily monetary cost of reproducing labour-power.

Like other commodities, labour-power is assumed to be sold at its value, although actual wages may fall below it. As with other commodities, the price of labour-power (wages) tends to fluctuate around its value.

The value of labour-power must permit its normal reproduction: a worker employed today must be capable of returning to work tomorrow in adequate health and strength, allowing for normal wear and tear. Education and training may also raise the value of particular kinds of labour-power, while supply and demand affect their wages.

Wages — the price of labour-power — can be understood as nominal wages and real wages (nominal wages adjusted for inflation). Wages are also relative: the wages workers receive can be compared with the income received by capitalists (profits) or with the remuneration of corporate executives (CEO salaries).5 Wages may be paid by time (hour or day) or by output (piece wages). Even when piece wages are paid, workers still do not sell their labour, but their labour-power.

Theoretical and political implications of the theory of the commodity

Definition of capitalism

Capitalism is a society in which an enormous range of useful things is produced for sale. What is produced depends primarily on expected sales and profitability rather than on whether production directly meets human needs. Useful things become means of making money — but people cannot live on money itself. As Marx emphasises, bourgeois production is not consciously regulated in advance by associated producers (people working together).

This definition of capitalism is refined once we consider labour-power as a commodity. Capitalism is more than a system of buying and selling commodities: it is a system in which most people, lacking sufficient independent means of production and subsistence, must sell their labour-power to the capitalist class.

Such views on capitalism implicitly point to what a communist society will be. In a communist society, production will be democratically controlled by the associated producers. People will not be selling their labour-power.

Equality and inequality

Equivalents are (assumed to be) exchanged: 10 kilos of potatoes and 100 pens are both worth $10, so their owners are equal as commodity owners in this exchange. Commodity exchange assumes a degree of equality. “Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent” (Marx, 1887: 123). Capitalists and workers are both buyers and sellers of commodities.

Yet the formal equality of commodity owners coexists with profound inequalities in property ownership, income, social power and control over production. In particular, the capitalist owns the means of production, while the worker owns only labour-power, which must be sold to obtain the means of subsistence. Those performing certain kinds of concrete labour (for example scavenging) are looked down upon in some countries. Their labour may be socially “devalued”, and such devaluation may be used to justify payment of wages below the value of their labour-power. Not all people, countries or regions have equal quantities of useful commodities or equal quantities of money, the universal equivalent. People performing the same kind of work may also have different living standards because their hourly wages and working hours differ.

Impersonal market forces and freedom/unfreedom

Commodity exchange can be a condition for a degree of freedom. “Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will” (Marx, 1887: 123). Exchange of equivalents can exclude some forms of direct coercion in economic transactions.

Yet the logic of the commodity expressed in commodity fetishism — the fact that it appears as if the things we need must necessarily be bought and sold — has contradictory consequences. Commodity fetishism, both as a veil and as a constraint on human activity, exists under capitalism, where associated producers do not consciously control production and its products.

Urgent needs may remain unmet when meeting them is unprofitable, while commodities that damage health or the environment may be produced because they can be sold. If more resources are spent on environmental protection in a city or country, other things being equal, production costs may rise, making its producers less competitive in national and global markets. Impersonal competitive pressure to reduce costs — including pressure to reduce individual labour time below socially necessary abstract labour time — to capture a larger share of the market can undermine workers’ living standards, safety and environmental conditions. 

The production of material wealth depends on both labour and nature. The magnitude of value, however, is determined by socially necessary labour time, which can itself be affected by environmental conditions. Since exchange abstracts from use-value, profitability rather than human need can govern the allocation of social labour. Thus, capital may flow toward weapons instead of urgently needed food.

The domination of commodities over our lives — commodity fetishism — is connected to the power of money, the universal equivalent for which other commodities can be exchanged. Marx’s discussion of money in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts emphasises how possession of money can appear to transform a person’s capacities and social power.6 “I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things…” and “one … can buy clever people.” Or, “I ... am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame.” “The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power…” and money can “transform all my incapacities into their contrary” (Marx: 1844).

Money has immense powers and can help one enjoy considerable freedom. But we live in a society where the majority (the “poor”) are less than what they can be, while a small minority (the “rich”) can be more than what they are. It is not just that not everyone has an equal amount of particular commodities and therefore not everyone has an equal amount of the universal commodity (money). It is also true that human freedom itself is often equated with the freedom to buy and sell particular commodities.7 The market — including commodities and money — is seen only as an opportunity, not as a constraint.

The power of money and commodities, however, does not remain uncontested. Many people object to education being a commodity. “Free education for all children in public schools,” as proposed by Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto, goes against the neoliberal principle of commodifying education. The same goes for healthcare. The fact that healthcare and education are not universally commodified, and that the extent of their commodification varies — including where the state subsidises or directly provides them — demonstrates that commodification is contested through ongoing struggles for decommodification.8 But such struggles face severe limits as long as the social relations that produce commodity fetishism persist.9

Most workers have the legal freedom to sell their labour-power as a commodity. But even then, they can sell it only when they are needed, so whether they succeed in selling it is not under their control. Millions do not even have the freedom to sell their labour-power on terms of their choosing. They include those who have taken a loan and are tied to their employers, child workers, people subjected to forced or slave labour, and many immigrant workers with precarious legal status. They also include those who have signed non-compete agreements, as in the United States.10 

To discipline workers and extract more labour from them, capital, often acting through the state, imposes additional restrictions on their freedom.11 People are formally free to sell their labour-power to whomever they choose, but they are not free, as a class, to refuse to sell it: lacking sufficient independent means of subsistence, they must generally work under the control of an employer to survive.

In the market, the products of different forms of labour are socially equated through commodity exchange. We sell our labour-power for money, which we exchange for the commodities we need. Our daily lives are governed by commodity exchange largely beyond our control. At the supermarket, we want as many eggplants as possible for the money earned from each hour of labour. Such a process of commodity exchange tends to obscure the conditions under which the eggplants are produced.

Commodity production increasingly operates through the world market. International competition limits the effectiveness of purely provincial or national regulation and connects workers and producers across borders. The law of value at a higher spatial scale sets limits on human activities at a lower scale: operating through the world market as a powerful force beyond the control of individual producers, it constrains what enterprises and individuals can do at national and subnational scales. If the value of pens at the global scale is represented by five minutes of socially necessary labour time, enterprises producing pens in seven minutes are subject to competitive pressure and possible losses.

It is utopian to imagine that capitalism can simply be managed so that resources and labour are used to produce things that directly meet human needs. For the same reason (international competitive pressure, or the law of value operating at the international scale), it is untenable to assume that socialism can exist within the borders of a single nation, without becoming an international phenomenon. The capitalist law of value, and not just capitalist military power, would threaten any experiment in “socialism in one country”, as Vladimir Lenin’s and Leon Trotsky’s arguments suggest. 

This does not mean that socialist revolution cannot begin in one country and establish workers’ power there. Rather, socialism cannot be consolidated and reproduced indefinitely within one country, independently of international revolutionary developments.

Workers’ living conditions and the reproduction of labour-power

There are further implications of the commodification of labour-power. Workers typically perform labour before receiving the price of their commodity (labour-power). In this sense, they extend credit to capital. Delayed payment may force workers to borrow to meet immediate needs, sometimes at high cost.

For related reasons, many people experience unpaid wages and other forms of economic insecurity. Delayed wages and economic insecurity can also force workers to compromise on the quality of food and other necessities. Moreover, workers with illnesses or disabilities, whether arising from genetic or other causes, may find that employers do not regard their labour-power as meeting prevailing requirements, making it difficult or impossible for them to sell it.

Furthermore, consider the peculiarity of the commodity labour-power. It is not like lassi: the commodity is inseparable from its owner. It cannot be put in the fridge to prevent it from spoiling. One may not get hired for two days, that is, one may not sell one’s commodity for two days, but one cannot skip meals for two days. When workers go on a strike and do not get paid by their employers; employers often know that they can outlast the workers. This is why workers must set up strike funds to increase their bargaining power. For the same reason, community kitchens and such other forms of working-class institutions of social reproduction are necessary.

The commodity labour-power is reproduced partly outside the direct control of capital. A lot of labour is spent on the reproduction of labour-power in the family or similar social contexts, and capitalists make use of the resulting capacity to labour in the sphere of production. The reproduction of labour-power has a public component (the purchase of commodities using wages received from capitalists) and a private component (all the work done in the family and similar social contexts).

Conclusion

Under generalised commodity production, private producers carry out their labour independently of one another, and their labour becomes socially connected through the exchange of their products. Consequently, social relations between producers appear as relations between commodities — a phenomenon Marx calls commodity fetishism. The products of human labour therefore appear to possess value independently of the social relations that produce them. This appearance expresses a real social relation: the products of human labour, along with the market forces governing their exchange, confront producers as independent powers beyond their conscious control.

Instead of people consciously regulating the production and distribution of useful things according to human needs, their economic activities are governed by seemingly impersonal market forces. Overcoming commodity fetishism therefore requires overcoming the social conditions that produce it and establishing communism: the associated producers must collectively control the means of production and consciously regulate their social labour and its products in accordance with collectively determined needs and priorities. We must ask: why must food, healthcare, transit, housing, and other necessities of life be produced as commodities for sale at a profit?

Under capitalism, labour-power — the aggregate of the mental and physical capacities that human beings exercise in producing use-values — becomes a commodity. Workers do not sell labour itself or the products they make, but their capacity to labour for a definite period. They are doubly free: legally free to sell their labour-power to an employer of their choice, unlike slaves or serfs; but also free from ownership of sufficient means of production and subsistence, which economically compels them to work for wages.

The value of labour-power, like that of other commodities, is determined by the socially necessary labour time required for its production and reproduction, as represented by the value of the means of subsistence necessary to maintain workers and reproduce the working class across generations. These requirements have physical, historical, cultural and geographical dimensions, and may include the costs of education and training. Wages express the price of labour-power, which may fall below its value.

Labour-power is nevertheless a peculiar commodity: it is inseparable from the living human being who possesses it, cannot be stored indefinitely, and must be continuously reproduced, partly through unpaid household labour outside capital’s direct control. Moreover, workers generally provide their labour-power before receiving wages, effectively extending credit to capitalists.

Although workers are formally free and legally equal to employers as commodity owners, economic compulsion and various forms of coercion restrict their actual freedom. The commodification of labour-power exposes the contradiction between formal market freedom and workers’ economic dependence, while also revealing how the domination of social life by market forces is rooted in capitalist relations of production.

The commodification of labour-power raises two fundamental political questions concerning human freedom. Why must workers sell their labour-power and work under the control of capitalists to obtain food, clothing, and other necessities? And why should capitalists’ profitability determine what society produces when urgent human needs remain unmet?

The most important question is not simply whether people get paid less than the cost of the things they need to maintain a normal life, although that is important. The more fundamental question is: what if they receive wages sufficient to purchase the food and other necessities required to reproduce their labour-power? Let us assume that this is the case. Could there still be a difference between the value of the things workers produce in a day or a month on the one hand and the value of the goods and services they need to live a normal life over the same period on the other? The answer to this question takes us from the theory of commodities and labour-power to Marx’s theory of surplus-value, which will be examined in the next article.

Raju J Das is a professor at York University, Toronto, Canada. His research interests include political economy, class theory, the capitalist state, climate change and workers’ health, and international development. He is currently working on Capitalist Production in Marx's Capital: Reconstructing Marx's Theory, the third volume of a trilogy published by Taylor & Francis (London), which also includes Marx’s Capital, Capitalism, and Limits to the State (2022) and Marx, the State, and Primitive Accumulation (2026). He serves on the editorial board and manuscript review committee of Science & Society and co-edits the Theory and Class Struggle section of Race, Class and Corporate Power. Further information about his work is available at https://rajudas.info.yorku.ca/.

Selected Bibliography on Marx’s Political Economy

Athreya, V. (2013). Marxian political economy: An introduction to Capital I. Tulika Books.

Basu, D. (2021). The logic of capital: An introduction to Marxist economic theory. Cambridge University Press.

Bidet, J. (2006). Exploring Marx’s Capital: Philosophical, economic and political dimensions. Brill.

Brewer, A. (1984). A guide to Marx’s Capital. Cambridge University Press.

Callinicos, A. (2014). Deciphering Capital: Marx’s Capital and its destiny. Bookmarks Publications.

Cleaver, H. (2000). Reading Capital politically (2nd ed.). AK Press. (Original work published 1979)

Engels, F. (1868). Synopsis of Capital, Volume I. Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/index.htm

Fine, B., & Saad-Filho, A. (2026). Marx’s Capital (7th ed., forthcoming). Pluto Press.

Foley, D. K. (1986). Understanding Capital: Marx’s economic theory. Harvard University Press.

Harvey, D. (1982). The limits to capital. Basil Blackwell.

Harvey, D. (2010). A companion to Marx’s Capital. Verso.

Heinrich, M. (2012). An introduction to the three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital. Monthly Review Press. (Original German edition published 2004)

Lebowitz, M. (2003). Beyond Capital: Marx’s political economy of the working class (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. (Original work published 1992)

Lenin, V. (1914). Marx’s economic doctrine. In Karl Marx: A brief biographical sketch with an exposition of Marxism. Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/ch03.htm

Lenin, V. (1964). The development of capitalism in Russia: The process of the formation of a home market for large-scale industry. In Collected works (4th ed., Vol. 3). Progress Publishers. (Original work published 1899).

Mandel, E. (1968). Marxist economic theory (B. Pearce, Trans.; 2 vols.). Merlin Press.

Moseley, F. (2023). Marx’s theory of value in Chapter 1 of Capital: A critique of Heinrich’s value-form interpretation. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13210-0

Musto, M. (Ed.). (2023). Marx and Le Capital: Evaluation, history, reception. Routledge.

Prashad, V. (Ed.). (2011). Marx’s Capital: An introductory reader. LeftWord Books.

Roberts, M. (2018). Marx 200: A review of Marx’s economics 200 years after his birth. Lulu Press.

Rubin, I. (1972). Essays on Marx’s theory of value (M. Samardzija & F. Perlman, Trans.). Black & Red. (Original Russian edition published 1928)

Saad-Filho, A. (2002). The Value of Marx: Political Economy for Contemporary Capitalism. Routledge.

Shaikh, A. (2016). Capitalism: Competition, conflict, crises. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199390632.001.0001

Smith, M. (2018). Invisible Leviathan: Marx’s law of value in the twilight of capitalism (2nd, revised and expanded ed.). Brill.

Smith, T. (1990). The logic of Marx’s Capital: Replies to Hegelian criticisms. State University of New York Press.

van der Linden, M., & Hubmann, G. (Eds.). (2018). Marx’s Capital: An unfinishable project? Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004367159

Weeks, J. (1981). Capital and exploitation. Princeton University Press.

• 1

  This article is based on part of a three-hour online lecture delivered to members and supporters of the Alliance of Workers and Students (AWAS). I am grateful to Sabine Fernandes and Mahyar Mohaghegh for inviting me to deliver the lecture on October 25, 2026. In this article, I draw primarily on Volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital, without engaging with the extensive secondary literature on value theory. The bibliography includes a selected list of works on Marx’s political economy.

• 2

  Marx (1867) described Volume I of Capital as “the most terrible missile that has yet been hurled at the heads of the bourgeoisie (landowners included).” Marx, K. (1867). Letter to Johann Philipp Becker In Geneva, April 17, 1867. https://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Marx/www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/letters/67_04_17.htm

• 3

  So, one hour of the labour of an engineer may be equivalent, in value terms, to several hours of the labour of a person mowing lawns.

• 4

  In pre-capitalist societies, labour power was a commodity sporadically.

• 5

  In Canada, the 100 highest-paid CEOs received, on average, 248 times the annual pay of the average worker in 2024 (MacDonald, 2026). In the United States, CEOs of S&P 500 companies received, on average, 312 times the pay of the median worker in 2025 (AFL-CIO, 2026). These enormous disparities illustrate the unequal distribution of income between workers and those occupying the highest positions in capitalist enterprises. Macdonald, M. (2026). Living the High Life: A Record-Breaking Year for CEO Pay in Canada, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (2025/2026). https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/living-the-high-life-a-record-breaking-year-for-ceo-pay-in-canada/. AFL-CIO Staff. (2026). Executive Paywatch 2026. https://aflcio.org/2026/8/13/12-things-you-need-know-afl-cios-2026-executive-paywatch-report?utm

• 6

  Das, R. J. (2020, July 7). “The social power of money and the neoliberal capitalist model of development.” LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. https://links.org.au/social-power-money-and-neoliberal-capitalist-model-development

• 7

  A few years ago, I met someone in Toronto who said he loved New York City because one could buy cigarettes and such stuff at any point in the night.

• 8

  Marx generally does not talk about this as he assumes that wealth takes the form of commodities.

• 9

  On the relation between value theory and the role of the state, see Das, R. (2022). Marx’s Capital, Capitalism and Limits to the State: Theoretical Considerations. Routledge, chapter 5.

• 10

  Krugman, P. 2017. The unfreezing of American workers. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/american-workers-noncompete-agreements.html

• 11

  Brass, Tom (2011) Labour Regime Change in the Twenty-First Century: Unfreedom, Capitalism and Primitive Accumulation, Leiden: Brill. Das, R. (2013). Capitalism and Regime Change in the (Globalising) World of Labour. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43(4), 709–723. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2013.801163