Introduction to Political Economy

Chapter 4

Commodity Production. Commodities and Money

“Political economy belongs to the category of the social sciences. It studies the laws of the social production and distribution of material wealth at the various stages of development of human society.”

Commodity Production—the Point of Departure for the Rise of Capitalism and a General Feature of Capitalism

The capitalist mode of production, which arose as successor to the feudal mode of production, is based upon exploitation of the class of wage-workers by the class of capitalists. To understand the essence of the capitalist mode of production one must bear in mind, first and foremost, that the capitalist system has commodity production as its foundation: under capitalism everything takes the form of a commodity and the principle of buying and selling prevails everywhere.

Commodity production is older than capitalist production. It existed in slave-owning society and under feudalism. In the period when feudalism was breaking down, simple commodity production served as the basis for the rise of capitalist production.

Simple commodity production presupposes, first, the social division of labor, under which individual producers specialize in making particular products, and, second, the existence of private property in the means of production and in the products of labor.

The simple commodity production of craftsmen and peasants is distinguished from capitalist commodity production by the fact that it is based upon the personal labor of the commodity producer. Yet fundamentally it is similar in kind to capitalist production, insofar as its foundation is private property in the means of production. Private ownership inevitably gives rise to competition between the commodity producers, which leads to the enrichment of a minority and the ruin of the majority. Thus, petty commodity production serves as the point of departure for the rise and development of capitalist relations.

Under capitalism, commodity production becomes dominant and universal. The exchange of commodities appears as:

“The simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times.”¹

The Commodity and its Characteristics. Dual Nature of the Labor Embodied in a Commodity

A commodity is a thing which, first, satisfies some human demand and, second, is produced not for personal consumption but for exchange.

The utility of a thing, the characteristics thanks to which it is able to satisfy some human demand, makes the thing a use-value. A use-value can either directly satisfy an individual human demand or else serve as a means of production of material wealth. For instance, bread satisfies a demand as food and cloth as clothing, while the use-value of a loom consists in the fact that cloth is made with its help. In the course of historical development, man continually discovers fresh, useful characteristics in things and fresh ways of using them.

Use-value is possessed by many things which have not in any way been created by human labor, such as, spring-water or the fruits of wild trees. But not everything which has use-value is a commodity. For a thing to become a commodity it must be a product of labor produced for sale.

Use-value forms the material substance of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In a commodity economy, use-value is the depository of the exchange-value of a commodity. Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative relationship in which use-values of one kind are exchanged for use-values of another kind. For example, one axe is exchanged for 20 kilograms of grain. In this quantitative relationship between the commodities exchanged is expressed also their exchange-value. Commodities are treated as equivalent to each other in definite quantities, consequently they must have a common basis. This basis cannot be any of the natural properties of commodities—their weight, size, shape, etc. The natural properties of commodities determine their utility and their use-value, a necessary condition for exchange is difference between the use-values of the commodities to be exchanged. No one will exchange commodities which are identical, such as wheat for wheat, or sugar for sugar. The use-values of different commodities, being different qualitatively, are incommensurable quantitatively.

Commodities of different kinds have only one characteristic in common which makes it possible to compare them for purposes of exchange, and it is that they are all products of labor. Underlying the equivalence of two commodities which are exchanged against each other is the social labor expended in producing them. When a commodity producer brings an axe to market in order to exchange it, he finds that for his axe he can get 20 kilograms of grain. This means that the axe is worth the same amount of social labor as 20 kilograms of grain are worth. Value is the social labor of commodity producers embodied in a commodity.

That the value of commodities embodies the social labor expended in producing them is borne out by some generally known facts. Material wealth, which is useful in itself, but requires no expenditure of labor for its production, has no value—e.g., the air. Material wealth, which requires a large expenditure of labor has a high value—e.g., gold, diamonds. Many commodities which at one time were costly have become cheaper as the development of technique has reduced the amount of labor needed to produce them. Changes in the amount of labor expended in producing commodities are usually reflected in the quantitative relationship between these commodities when exchanged, i.e., in their exchange-value. It follows from all this that the exchange-value of a commodity is the form in which its value manifests itself.

Hidden behind the exchange of commodities is the social division of labor between the persons who are the owners of these commodities. When commodity producers compare different commodities, one with another, in doing so they are comparing their different kinds of labor. Thus, value expresses the production-relations between commodity producers. These relations manifest themselves in the exchange of commodities.

A commodity has a two-fold character: in one aspect it is a use-value and in another it is a value. The two-fold character of the commodity is caused by the two-fold nature of the labor embodied in the commodity. The kinds of labor are just as various as the use-values which are produced. The labor of a joiner is qualitatively different from that of a tailor, a shoemaker, etc. The different kinds of labor are distinguished from one another by their aims, methods, tools and, finally, their results. The joiner does his work with an axe, a saw and a plane and makes wooden articles: tables, chairs, cupboards; the tailor makes clothes, using a sewing machine, scissors and a needle. Thus, in each use-value a definite kind of labor is embodied: in a table—the joiner’s labor, in a suit—the tailor’s labor, in a pair of shoes—the shoemaker’s labor, etc. Labor expended in a definite form is concrete labor. Concrete labor creates the use-value of a commodity.

In the course of exchange, commodities of the most various kinds, created by different kinds of concrete labor, are compared together and measured on a common footing. Consequently, behind the different concrete forms of labor there is hidden something common, something inherent in every form of labor. Both the joiner’s labor and the tailor’s, despite the qualitative difference between these forms of labor, constitute a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, muscles, etc., and in this sense are homogeneous human labor, labor in general. The labor of commodity producers, considered as expenditure of human labor-power generally, without regard to its concrete form, is abstract labor. Abstract labor forms the value of a commodity.

Abstract and concrete labor are two aspects of the labor embodied in a commodity.

“On the one hand, all labor is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labor-power, and in its character of identical abstract human labor, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labor is the expenditure of human labor-power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labor, it produces use-values.”²

In a society in which private property in the means of production prevails, the two-fold character of the labor embodied in a commodity reflects the contradiction between the private and social labor of the commodity producers. Private ownership of the means of production separates people, makes the labor of the individual commodity producer his own private affair. Each commodity producer conducts his enterprise separately from the rest. The labor of the separate workers is not concerted or coordinated on the scale of society as a whole. But, from another angle, the social division of labor means that all-round connections exist between the producers, who are working for each other. The more labor is divided in society and the more varied are the products manufactured by the separate producers, the more extensive is the mutual dependence of the latter. Consequently, the labor of each separate commodity producer is essentially social labor and forms a particle of the labor of society as a whole. Commodities, which are products of various kinds of particular, concrete labor, are at the same time also products of human labor in general, abstract labor.

It follows that the contradiction of commodity production consists in the labor of commodity producers, which is directly the private affair of each one of them, having at the same time a social character. Owing to the isolation of the commodity products one from another, the social character of their labor in the process of production remains hidden. It finds expression only in the process of exchange, when the commodity comes on to the market and is exchanged against another commodity. Only in the process of exchange is it revealed whether the labor of a particular commodity producer is needed by society and whether it will receive social recognition.

Abstract labor, which forms the value of a commodity, is a historical category, a specific form of social labor belonging to commodity economy only. In natural economy men produce their products not for exchange but for personal consumption, so that the social character of their labor appears directly in concrete form. For example, when a feudal lord extracted surplus product from serf-peasants in the form of labor-rent or rent in kind, he appropriated their labor directly in the form of labor services or definite products. In these circumstances social labor did not assume the form of abstract labor. In commodity production, products are produced not for personal consumption but for sale. The social character of labor is here expressed by means of the comparison of one commodity with another, and this comparison takes place through the reducing of concrete forms of labor to the abstract labor which forms the value of a commodity. This process takes place spontaneously, without any sort of common plan, behind the backs of the commodity producers.

Socially-Necessary Labor-Time. Simple and Complex Labor

The magnitude of the value of a commodity is determined by labor-time. The more labor-time needed to produce a given commodity, the higher its value. Of course, the individual commodity producers work in varying conditions and expend varying amounts of labor-time in the production of one and the same kind of commodity. Does this mean that the more idle the worker, or the less favorable the conditions in which he is working, the higher the value of the commodity produced by him? No, it does not mean that. The magnitude of the value of a commodity is determined not by the individual labor-time expended by a particular commodity producer in producing a commodity, but by the socially-necessary labor-time.

Socially-necessary labor-time is the time needed for the making of any commodity under average social conditions of production, i.e., with the average level of technique and average skill and intensity of labor. It corresponds to the conditions of production under which the greatest bulk of goods of a particular kind are produced. Socially-necessary labor-time changes as a result of the growth of the productivity of labor.

The productivity of labor is expressed in the amount of products created in a given unit of labor-time. The productivity of labor grows as a result of the improvement or fuller utilization of the instruments of production, the development of science, the increase in the worker’s skill, the rationalization of work, and other improvements in the production process. To a greater or less extent it is also dependent on natural conditions. The higher the productivity of labor, the less the time needed for the production of a unit of the given commodity and the lower the value of this commodity.

The intensity of labor must be distinguished from the productivity of labor. The intensity of labor is determined by the amount of labor expended in a unit of time. A growth in the intensity of labor means an increase in the expenditure of labor in one and the same interval of time. More intensive labor embodies itself in a greater quantity of products and creates a greater value in a given unit of time, as compared with less intensive labor.

Workers of varying skill take part in the production of commodities. The labor of a worker who has had no special training is simple labor. Labor which requires special training is complex or skilled labor.

Complex labor creates value of greater magnitude than is created by simple labor in the same unit of time. Into the value of a commodity created by complex labor there enters also part of the labor expended on the worker’s training, on raising his degree of skill. Complex labor is equivalent to multiplied simple labor; one hour of complex labor is equal to several hours of simple labor. The reduction of various forms of complex labor to simple labor takes place spontaneously under commodity production based on private property. The magnitude of the value of a commodity is determined by the socially-necessary amount of simple labor.

Development of the Forms of Value. Nature of Money

The value of a commodity is created by labor in the process of production, but it can manifest itself only through the comparison of one commodity with another in the process of exchange, i.e., through exchange-value.

The simplest form of value is the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of another commodity: e.g., one axe = 20 kilograms of grain. Let us examine this form.

In this case, the value of the axe is expressed in terms of grain. The grain serves as a means of expressing the value of the axe. It is possible to express the value of the axe in the use-value of grain only because labor is expended both in the production of the grain and in that of the axe. Behind the equality of these commodities is concealed the equal expenditure of labor in producing them. A commodity which expresses its value in another commodity (in our example, the axe), has a relative form of value. A commodity, the use-value of which serves as the means of expressing the value of another commodity (in our example, the grain), has an equivalent form. The grain is the equivalent to (is worth) the other commodity, viz., the axe.

The use-value of one commodity, grain, thus becomes the form in which the value of another commodity, the axe, is expressed.

In the beginning, exchange, which originated already in primitive society, was of a casual nature and took place in the form of direct exchange of one product for another. To this stage in the development of exchange corresponds the elementary or accidental form of value:

1 axe = 20 kilograms of grain

Under the elementary form of value, the value of an axe can be expressed only in the use-value of a single commodity; in the given example, grain.

With the rise of the first major social division of labor—the separation of pastoral tribes from the general mass of tribes—exchange becomes more regular. Certain tribes, e.g., the cattle-raising ones, begin to produce a surplus of cattle products, which they exchange for products of agriculture or handicraft which they lack. To this level of the development of exchange corresponds the total or expanded form of value. There now take part in exchange not two but a whole series of commodities:

... Under the money form of value, the value of every commodity is expressed in the use-value of a single commodity, which has become the universal equivalent.

Money thus arose as a result of a long process of development of exchange and of forms of value. With the rise of money, a polarization took place in the world of commodities; at one pole remained the ordinary commodities, while to the other pole went the commodity which played the role of money. Now all commodities begin to express their value in the money commodity. Consequently, money appears, in contradiction to all other commodities, as the general embodiment of value—the universal equivalent. Money possesses the property of being directly exchangeable for any commodity and so serves as the means of satisfying all the requirements of the commodity owners, whereas all other commodities can satisfy only one or other of their requirements—e.g., bread, clothing, etc.

Consequently, money is the commodity which is the universal equivalent of all commodities; it embodies social labor and expresses the production relations between the commodity producers....

The Law of Value—an Economic Law of Commodity Production

In commodity production based on private property, the production of commodities is carried out by separate private commodity producers. A competitive struggle goes on between these commodity producers. Each one tries to push the others aside and to maintain and extend his own position in the market. Production proceeds without any sort of general plan. Each one produces on his own account, regardless of the others; nobody knows what the demand is for the commodity which he is producing or how many other commodity producers are engaged in producing the same commodity, whether he will be able to find a market for his commodity or whether he will be reimbursed for the labor he has expended. With the development of commodity production the power exercised by the market over the commodity producers becomes ever greater.

This means that in commodity production based on private ownership of the means of production there operates the economic law of competition and anarchy of production. This law expresses the spontaneous nature of production and exchange, the struggle between private commodity producers for more advantageous conditions of production and sale of goods.

Under the conditions of anarchy of production, which reign in commodity production based on private property, the law of value appears as the spontaneous regulator of production, acting through market-competition.

The law of value is an economic law of commodity production, by which the exchange of commodities is effected in accordance with the amount of socially-necessary labor expended on their production.

The law of value regulates the distribution of social labor and means of production among different branches of commodity economy spontaneously, through the price mechanism. Under the influence of fluctuations in the relationship of supply and demand the prices of commodities continually diverge either above or below their value. Divergences of prices from values are not a result of some defect in the operation of the law of value, but, on the contrary, are the only possible way in which it can become effective. In a society in which production is in the hands of private owners, working blindly, only the spontaneous fluctuations of prices on the market inform the commodity producers whether they have produced goods in excess of the effective demand by the population or have not produced sufficient to meet it. Only the spontaneous fluctuations of prices around values oblige commodity producers to extend or restrict the production of particular commodities. Under the influence of price-fluctuations, commodity producers rush into those branches which appear most profitable at the given moment because the prices of commodities are higher than their values, and quit those branches where the prices of commodities are lower than their values.

The operation of the law of value conditions the development of the productive forces of commodity economy. As we have seen, the magnitude of the value of a commodity is determined by socially-necessary labor-time. The commodity producers who are the first to introduce a higher technique produce their commodities at reduced cost, in comparison with that which is socially-necessary, but sell these commodities at the prices which correspond to the socially-necessary labor. When they sell their commodities, they receive a surplus of money and grow rich. This impels the remaining commodity producers to make technical improvements in their own enterprises. Thus, as a result of the separate actions of separate commodity producers, each striving for his own private advantages, progress takes place in technique and the productive forces of society are developed.

As a result of competition and anarchy of production, the distribution of labor and means of production between the various branches of economy and the development of the forces of production are accomplished in a commodity economy at the price of great waste of social labor, and lead to the contradictions of this economy becoming more and more acute.

In conditions of commodity production based on private property, the operation of the law of value leads to the rise and development of capitalist relations. Spontaneous fluctuations of market prices around values, and divergences of individual labor costs from the socially-necessary labor which determines the magnitude of the value of a commodity, intensify the economic inequality of the commodity producers and the struggle among them. This competitive struggle leads to some commodity producers being ruined and transformed into proletarians while others are enriched and become capitalists. The operation of the law of value thus brings about a differentiation among the commodity producers.

“Small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale.”³

Commodity Fetishism

In conditions of commodity production based on private ownership of the means of production, the social link between people which exists in the production process makes its appearance only through the medium of exchange of commodities. The fate of the commodity producers is found to be closely connected with the fate of the commodities which they create. The prices of commodities continually change, independently of people’s will or consciousness, and yet the level of prices is often a matter of life and death for the commodity producers.

Relations between things conceal the social relations between people. Thus, though the value of a commodity expresses the social relationship between commodity producers, it appears as a kind of natural property of the commodity, like, say, its color or its weight.

Marx wrote:

“It is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.”⁴

In this way, in a commodity economy based on private property, the production-relations between people inevitably appear as relations between things (commodities). In this transmutation of production-relations between persons into relations between things is inherent also the commodity fetishism which is characteristic of commodity production.^*

Commodity fetishism is displayed with special clarity in money. In commodity economy, money is a tremendous force, giving power over men. Everything can be bought for money. It comes to seem that this capacity to buy anything and everything is a natural property of gold, whereas in reality it is a result of definite social relations.

Commodity fetishism has deep roots in commodity production, in which the labor of a commodity producer appears directly as private labor, and its social character is revealed only in the exchange of commodities. Only when private property in the means of production is abolished does commodity fetishism disappear.

Brief Conclusions

1) The point of departure for the rise of capitalism was the simple commodity production of craftsmen and peasants. Simple commodity production differs from capitalism in that it is based upon the individual labor of the commodity producer. At the same time it belongs fundamentally to the same type as capitalist production, in as much as its foundation is private ownership of the means of production. Under capitalism, when not only the products of labor, but labor-power too becomes a commodity, commodity production acquires a dominant, universal character.

2) A commodity is a product which is made for exchange, it appears from one angle as a use-value and from the other as a value. The labor which creates a commodity possesses a dual character. Concrete labor is labor expended in a definite form—it creates the use-value of a commodity. Abstract labor is the expenditure of human labor-power in general—it creates the value of a commodity.

3) Value is the social labor of the commodity producers embodied in a commodity. Value is a historical category which belongs only to commodity economy. The magnitude of the value of a commodity is determined by the labor which is socially-necessary for its production. The contradiction in simple commodity economy consists in the fact that the commodity producers’ labor, which is directly their own private affair, bears at the same time a social character....

6) In a commodity economy based on private property in the means of production, the law of value is the spontaneous regulator of the distribution of social labor between branches of production. The operation of the law of value causes a differentiation among the petty commodity producers and the development of capitalist relations.

Chapter 7

Capital and Surplus-Value. The Basic Economic Law of Capitalism

...

Transformation of Money into Capital

Each unit of capital begins its career in the form of a certain sum of money. Money does not in itself constitute capital. When, for instance, independent petty commodity producers exchange their commodities, money plays its part as a circulation medium, but does not serve as capital. The formula of commodity circulation is: C (commodity)-M (money)-C (commodity), i.e., the selling of one commodity in order to buy another. Money becomes capital when it is used to exploit the labor of others. The general formula of capital is M-C-M, i.e., buying in order to sell so as to make money.

The formula C-M-C means that one use-value is exchanged for another: a commodity producer hands over a commodity which he does not need and receives in exchange another commodity which he needs for use. The purpose of the circulation process is a use-value. In the formula M-C-M, on the contrary, the starting and finishing points of the movement coincide: at the beginning of the process the capitalist had money and at the end of it he has money. The movement of capital would be pointless if at the end of the process the capitalist had the same amount of money as at the beginning. The whole sense of the capitalist’s activity is that as the result of the operation he has more money than he had at the beginning. The purpose of the circulation process is an increase in value. Therefore the general formula of capital in its full form is: M-C-M’, with M’ standing for an increased amount of money.

Capital advanced by a capitalist, i.e., put into circulation by him, returns to its owner with a certain increment.

What is the source of this growth of capital? Bourgeois economists, in their endeavor to hide the true source of money-making by the capitalists, often assert that this increment comes about in the process of commodity circulation. This assertion is unsound. Consider the facts. If commodities and money of equal value, i.e., equivalents, are exchanged, none of the commodity owners can derive from circulation any value greater than that which is embodied in his own commodity. If sellers succeed in selling their commodities above their value, by 10 percent, say, when they become buyers, they have to pay back this 10 percent to the sellers. Thus, what the commodity owners gain as sellers they lose as buyers. Yet in actual fact increments to capital are secured by the whole class of capitalists. Evidently, the owner of money, in order to become a capitalist, must find on the market a commodity which when consumed creates its own value and something over besides, more than it possesses itself. In other words, the owner of money must find on the market a commodity the use-value of which possesses the property of being a source of value. This commodity is labor-power.

Labor-Power as a Commodity Value and Use-Value of the Commodity Labor-Power

Labor-power, as the aggregate of physical and mental qualities of which a person disposes and which he puts into action whenever he produces material wealth, is a necessary element of production in any form of society. Only under capitalism, however, does labor-power become a commodity.

Capitalism is commodity production at the highest stage of its development, when labor-power too becomes a commodity. With the transformation of labor-power into a commodity, commodity production takes on a universal character. Capitalist production is based on wage-labor, and the hiring of a worker by a capitalist is nothing else than the buying and selling of the commodity labor-power: the worker sells his labor-power and the capitalist buys it.

When he has hired a worker, a capitalist has the worker’s labor-power at his free disposal. The capitalist uses this labor-power in the process of production; and that is where the increment to capital takes place.

Like every other commodity, labor-power is sold at a definite price, which is based upon its value. What is this value?

For the worker to retain his ability to work he must satisfy his need for food, clothing, footwear and housing. Satisfaction of these necessary vital requirements means restoring the vital energy—of muscles, nerves and brains—which the worker has expended and putting him once more in a fit state to work. Furthermore, capital needs a constant flow of labor-power; for this reason, the worker must be able to maintain not only himself but also his family. In this way the reproduction, i.e., the continuous renewal, of labor-power is ensured. Finally, capital needs not only unskilled but also skilled workers, able to handle complex machinery, while the acquisition of skill involves a certain outlay of labor on training. For this reason, the expenses of producing and reproducing labor-power also include a definite minimum of expenditure on the training of the rising generations of the working class.

It follows from the above that the value of labor-power as a commodity is equal to the value of the means of existence which are necessary for the maintenance of the worker and his family.

“The value of labor-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labor-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article.”⁵

In the course of the historical development of society both the level of worker’s customary requirements and also the means needed to satisfy these requirements have undergone changes. The level of a worker’s customary requirements varies from country to country. The special features of the historical path followed by a given country and the conditions in which the class of wage-workers was formed have much to do with determining the nature of these requirements. Climatic and other natural conditions also have a certain bearing on the workers’ requirements in respect of food, clothing and shelter. The value of labor-power includes not only the value of the consumer goods needed to restore the physical strength of the worker but also the cost of satisfying certain cultural requirements of himself and his family, engendered by the very conditions of society in which the workers live and are brought up (education of children, purchase of newspapers and books, visits to the cinema and the theatre, etc.). The capitalists try, all the time and everywhere, to reduce the material and cultural conditions of the working class to the lowest possible level.

When he begins in business, a capitalist buys everything that he needs for production: buildings, machinery, equipment, raw materials, fuel. Then he engages workers, and the production-process commences in the enterprise which he owns. When the commodity is ready, the capitalist sells it. The value of the finished commodity comprises: first, the value of the means of production expended (the raw material worked up, the fuel used, a certain part of the value of the buildings, machinery and tools); second, the new value created by the workers in the enterprise itself.

What does this new value consist of?

The capitalist mode of production presupposes a comparatively high level of productivity of labor, under which the worker needs only part of the working day to create value equal to the value of his labor-power. Let us suppose that one hour of simple average labor creates value equivalent to one dollar and the daily value of labor-power is equivalent to 6 dollars. In this case the worker, so as to pay for the daily value of his labor-power, would have to work 6 hours. But the capitalist has bought his labor-power for the whole day, and he compels the worker to work not 6 hours but for an entire working day, lasting, say, 12 hours. During these 12 hours the worker creates value equivalent to 12 dollars, even though the value of his labor-power is equivalent only to 6 dollars.

We now see what the specific use-value of the commodity labor-power consists of for the person who buys it—the capitalist. The use-value of the commodity labor-power is its capacity to be the source of value, and withal, of more than it possesses itself.

The Production of Surplus-Value—Basic Economic Law of Capitalism

The value of labor-power and the value which is created in the process of using it are, in fact, two quite distinct magnitudes. The difference which exists between these magnitudes is the necessary prerequisite for capitalist exploitation.

In our example, the capitalist, who has spent 6 dollars on hiring workers, obtains value created by their labor which is equivalent to 12 dollars. The capitalist recovers the capital which he originally advanced plus an increment or surplus equivalent to 6 dollars. It is this increment that constitutes surplus-value.

Surplus-value is the value created by the labor of a wage-worker over and above the value of his labor-power and appropriated by the capitalist without payment. Thus, surplus labor is the result of the worker’s unpaid labor.

The working day in a capitalist enterprise is divided into two parts: necessary labor-time and surplus labor-time, and the labor of the wage-worker into necessary and surplus labor. During the necessary labor-time the worker reproduces the value of his labor-power, and during the surplus labor-time he creates surplus-value.

A worker’s labor, under capitalism, is a process of use by the capitalist of the commodity labor-power, or a process of extraction of surplus-value from the worker by the capitalist. The labor-process is characterized, under capitalism, by two fundamental peculiarities. First, the worker works under the control of the capitalist to whom the worker’s labor belongs. Second, not only does the worker’s labor belong to the capitalist but also the product of this labor. These peculiarities of the labor-process transform the wage-worker’s labor into a heavy and hateful burden.

The immediate aim of capitalist production is the production of surplus-value. In accordance with this, productive labor means under capitalism only such labor as creates surplus-value. If the worker does not create surplus-value, his work is unproductive work, useless for capital.

In contrast to the previous forms of exploitation—slave-owning and feudal—capitalist exploitation is masked. When the wage-worker sells his labor-power to the capitalist, this transaction appears at first sight to be an ordinary transaction between commodity owners, the usual exchange of a commodity against money, carried out in accord with the law of value. The transaction of buying and selling labor-power, however, is merely the outward form, behind which is hidden the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, the appropriation by the capitalist, without any equivalent, of the worker’s unpaid labor.

In order to clarify the essential nature of capitalist exploitation we will suppose that the capitalist, when he engages the worker, pays him the full value of his labor-power, determined by the law of value. It will be shown later when we examine wages that, unlike the prices of other commodities, the price of labor-power, as a rule, diverges below its value. This circumstance still further increases the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class.

Capitalism enables the wage-worker to work, and consequently to live, only insofar as for a certain amount of his time he works gratis for the capitalist. If he leaves one capitalist enterprise, the most favorable thing that can happen to the worker will be to find himself in another capitalist enterprise, where he will be subjected to the same exploitation. When he exposed the system of wage-labor as a system of wage-slavery, Marx pointed out that whereas the Roman slave was bound by chains, the wage-worker was bound by invisible threads to his owner. This owner is the capitalist class as a whole.

Surplus-value, created by the unpaid labor of wage-workers, constitutes the common source of the unearned incomes of the various groups of the bourgeois class: industrialists, traders and bankers, and also the class of landowners.

Production of surplus-value is the basic economic law of capitalism. Analyzing capitalism, Marx wrote: “Production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode of production.”⁶

The essential features of this law consist in the production of surplus-value on an ever-increasing scale and the appropriation of it by the capitalists on the basis of bourgeois ownership of the means of production by means of increasing exploitation of wage-labor and the extension of production.

Capital did not invent surplus labor. Wherever society consists of exploiters and exploited, the ruling class pumps surplus labor out of the exploited classes. But unlike the slave-owner and the feudalist, who in conditions where natural economy prevailed, used the greater part of the product of the surplus labor of the slaves and serf-peasants for the direct satisfaction of their needs and whims, the capitalist transforms the whole of what his wage-workers produce into money. Part of this money the capitalist spends on buying consumer goods and luxury articles, the rest he invests again, as additional capital, to bring him in further surplus-value. This is why capital displays, in Marx’s words, truly wolf-like greed for surplus labor.

The pursuit of surplus-value is the principal driving-force of the development of the productive forces under capitalism. None of the previous forms of society based on exploitation, neither slavery nor feudalism, possessed such a force, hastening forward the growth of technique.

Lenin called the doctrine of surplus-value the corner-stone of Marx’s economic theory. By disclosing in his doctrine of surplus-value the essence of capitalist exploitation, Marx dealt a mortal blow to bourgeois political economy and its talk about the harmony of interests under capitalism, and gave the working class a spiritual weapon for overthrowing capitalism....

Chapter 8

Wages

The Price of Labor-Power. Essential Nature of Wages

... “Wages are not what they appear to be, namely the value, or price, of labor, but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labor-power.”⁷

Wages are the monetary expression of the value of labor-power, its price, outwardly appearing as the price of labor.

Under slavery no buying and selling of labor-power takes place between slave-owner and slave. The slave is the property of the slave-owner. It therefore seems as though the whole of the slave’s labor is given for nothing, that even that part of his labor which replaces what has been spent on his upkeep is unpaid labor, labor for the slave-owner. In feudal society the necessary labor of the peasant on his own holding and his surplus labor on the landlord’s demesne are distinctly separated in time and space. Under the capitalist system even the unpaid labor of the wage-worker appears to be paid for.

Wages conceal all traces of the division of the working day into necessary and surplus labor-time, into paid and unpaid labor, and so cover up the relation of capitalist exploitation....

Nominal and Real Wages

In the early stage of capitalism’s development, payment of wages to the workers in kind was widespread: the worker received shelter, some meagre food and a little money.

Wages in kind survive to some extent even into the machine period of capitalism. They existed, for instance in the extractive and textile industries of pre-revolutionary Russia. Wages in kind are widespread in capitalist agriculture where the labor of poor peasants is used, in certain branches of industry in the capitalist countries, and in the colonial and dependent countries. The forms in which the worker is paid in kind vary. The capitalists place the workers in a position where they are forced to take food on credit from the factory shop, to lease a dwelling near the mine or on the plantation on oppressive terms fixed by their employer, etc. Under methods of wage-payment in kind the capitalist exploits the wage-worker not only as a seller of labor-power but also as a consumer.

Money wages are characteristic of the capitalist mode of production in its developed form.

Nominal wages must be distinguished from real wages.

Nominal wages are wages expressed in money; the sum of money which the worker receives from the sale of his labor-power to the capitalist.

Nominal wages do not in themselves give any idea of the actual level of payment received by the worker. For example, nominal wages may remain unchanged, but if at the same time taxes and the prices of consumer goods rise, the worker’s actual wages fall. Nominal wages may even increase, but if the cost of living rises to a greater extent in the same period of time, then in fact wages have fallen.

Real wages are wages expressed in terms of the worker’s means of subsistence; they show how many and what kinds of consumer goods and services a worker can buy with his money wages. To determine a worker’s real wage, one must start with the size of his nominal wages, the prices of goods, the price of rents, the burden of taxes borne by the workers, the circumstances that some days he may receive no wages owing to short-time working, and the number of unemployed and semi-unemployed who are supported by the working class. One must also take into account the length the working day and the degree of intensity of labor.

In determining the average level of wages, bourgeois statistics distort reality: they include in wages the incomes of the upper administrative groups of the industrial and financial bureaucracy (managers of enterprises, bank directors, etc.); include only the wages of skilled workers in the category of wages while excluding from it the numerous stratum of poorly-paid, unskilled workers and the agricultural proletariat; ignore the huge army of unemployed and semi-unemployed, the rise in the prices of mass consumer goods and in taxation; and resort to other methods of falsification so as to embellish the situation of the working class under capitalism.

Even falsified bourgeois statistics cannot, however, hide the fact that wages under capitalism, owing to their low level, the raising of the cost of living and the growth of unemployment fail to guarantee a living wage to the majority of the workers.

In 1938 some bourgeois economists in the U.S.A. worked out, using extremely modest standards, a living wage for a worker’s family consisting of four persons: 2,177 dollars a year. Yet in 1938 the average wage per head of an industrial worker in the U.S.A. amounted to 1,176 dollars, i.e., considerably less than half of his living wage; if the unemployed were brought into the calculation, the figure came to 740 dollars, i.e., only a third of this subsistence minimum. In 1937 a quite humble living wage for an average worker’s family in Britain was defined by some bourgeois economists at 55s a week. Official figures showed that 80 percent of the workers in the coal industry, 75 percent of the workers in the extractive industries other than coal mining, and 57 percent of municipal workers in Britain were being paid less than this subsistence minimum.

Decline of Real Wages Under Capitalism

On the basis of his analysis of the capitalist mode of production, Marx established the following fundamental law relating to wages. “The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise but to sink the average standard of wages.”⁸

Wages as the price of labor-power, like the price of any other commodity, are determined by the law of value. The prices of commodities vary in capitalist economy both above and below their value, under the influence of supply and demand. But unlike the prices of other commodities the price of labor-power, as a rule, tends to fall below its value.

This tendency of wages to fall below the value of labor-power is due above all to the existence of unemployment. The capitalist tries to buy labor-power as cheap as he can. When there is unemployment the supply of labor-power exceeds the demand for it. The commodity labor-power differs from others in that the proletarian cannot put off selling it. So as not to die of hunger, he is compelled to sell his labor-power on whatever terms the capitalist offers him. In periods of complete, or partial unemployment the worker is either entirely without wages or else their level falls sharply. When there is unemployment, this intensifies competition among the workers. Taking advantage of this, the capitalist pays the worker wages which are less than the value of his labor-power. In this way the wretched situation of the unemployed; who form part of the working class, has an effect on the material position of the workers in employment, reducing the level of their wages.

Furthermore, the use of machinery provides the capitalist with extensive opportunities of substituting female and child labor for men’s labor. The value of labor-power is determined by the value of the means of subsistence which are needed by a worker and his family. When, therefore, the worker’s wife and children are drawn into production, the worker’s wages fall and the entire family now receives approximately the same amount as previously was received by the head of the family only. This by itself means that the working class as a whole is being exploited still more intensely. In capitalist countries women workers doing the same work as men are paid considerably less wages....

The Struggle of the Working Class to Raise Wages

In each country a certain level of wages is established on the basis of the law of the value of labor-power, as a result of a fierce class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The extent to which wages can diverge from the value of labor-power has its limits.

The minimum limit of wages under capitalism is fixed by purely physical conditions: the worker must have that quantity of means of subsistence which he needs absolutely in order to live and reproduce his labor-power. “If the price of labor-power falls to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such circumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a crippled state.”⁹ When wages fall below this limit, there occurs an accelerated process of direct physical destruction of labor-power and dying-off of the working population. This finds expression in a shortening of the average expectation of life, a fall in the birth rate and an increase in the mortality rate among the working population, both in the developed countries and also and especially, in the colonial countries.

The maximum limit of wages under capitalism is the value of labor-power. The degree to which the average level of wages approximates to this limit is determined by the relation of class forces as between proletariat and bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie endeavors, in its striving for greater profits, to reduce wages below the physical minimum limit. The working class fights against cuts in wages and for increased wages, for the establishment of a guaranteed minimum wage, for the introduction of social insurance, and for a shorter working day. In this struggle the working class is opposed by the capitalist class as a whole and by the bourgeois State.

The stubborn struggle waged by the working class to raise wages had its beginning along with the rise of industrial capitalism. It developed first in Britain, and later spread to the other capitalist countries and to the colonies.

As the proletariat takes shape as a class the workers come together in trade unions for the purpose of successfully conducting their economic struggle. The result of this is that the employer finds himself opposed no longer by individual proletarians but by an entire organization. With the development of the class struggle, besides local and national trade unions there came into being international associations of trade Unions. The trade unions provide a school of class struggle for the broad masses of the workers.

On their part, the capitalists come together in employers’ associations. They bribe venal and reactionary trade union officials, organize strike-breaking, split the workers’ organizations, and use the police, troops, courts and prisons to suppress the labor movement.

One of the effective methods of struggle used by the workers under capitalism to secure increased wages, shorter working hours and improved conditions of work is the strike. As class contradictions become more acute and the working-class movement becomes better organized in the capitalist and colonial countries, many millions of workers are drawn into strike struggles. When workers struggling against capital show determination and stubbornness, economic strikes force the capitalists to accept the strikers’ terms.

It is only as a result of the unremitting struggle of the working class for its vital interests that the bourgeois States are compelled to promulgate laws on minimum wages, on reduction of working hours and on restriction of child labor.

The economic struggle of the proletariat is of great importance: as a rule, trade unions under steadfast class leadership put up a successful resistance to the employers. The struggle of the working class is a factor which to a certain extent restricts the fall in wages. But the economic struggle of the working class cannot abolish the system of capitalist enslavement of the working people and deliver the workers from exploitation and want.

While recognizing the great importance of the economic struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie, Marxism-Leninism teaches that this struggle is directed merely against the consequences of capitalism and not against the root cause of the oppression and poverty of the proletariat. This root cause is the capitalist mode of production itself.

Only through revolutionary political struggle can the working class abolish the system of wage slavery, the source of its economic and political oppression....

Chapter 10

Rotation of Capital. Three Forms of Industrial Capital

Rotation of Capital. Three Forms of Industrial Capital

One of the conditions of existence of the capitalist mode of production is developed commodity circulation, i.e., exchange of commodities through the medium of money. Capitalist production is inseparably connected with circulation.

Every individual capital begins its career as a certain sum of money—it appears as money capital. The capitalist uses money to buy commodities of certain kinds: 1) means of production, 2) labor-power. This act of circulation can be expressed like this:

In this diagram M stands for money, C for the commodity, Lp for labor-power, and Mp for means of production. As a result of this change of form which his capital has undergone, its owner has at his disposal everything he needs for production. Whereas previously he owned capital in the form of money, he now owns capital to the same amount but in the form of productive capital.

So the first phase in the movement of capital is the transformation of money capital into productive capital.

Following this begins the process of production, in which there takes place the productive consumption of the commodities which the capitalist has bought. It is expressed in the fact of the workers expending their labor, the raw material being worked up, fuel being burnt and machinery wearing out. Capital changes its form once again: as a result of the production-process the capital invested appears embodied in a certain mass of commodities, it assumes the form of commodity capital. However, in the first: place, these are not the same commodities which the capitalist bought when he started up in business, and secondly, the value of this mass of commodities is greater than the original value of his capital, for in it is contained the surplus-value produced by the workers.

This stage in the movement of capital can be shown like this:

Here the letter P stands for production, representing that the process of circulation has been interrupted and the process of production is taking place, while C’ stands for capital in the form of commodities, the value of which has grown as a result of the workers surplus labor.

Thus the second phase in the movement of capital consists of the transformation of productive capital into commodity capital.

Capital does not stop short with this movement. The commodities which have been produced have to be realized. In exchange for the commodities which he sells the capitalist receives a certain sum of money.

This act of circulation may be depicted like this:

Capital changes its shape a third time: it once more assumes the form of money capital. At the end of this process its owner has a larger sum of money than he had at the beginning. The aim of capitalist production, which is to extract surplus-value, has been attained.

Thus the third stage in the movement of capital consists in the transformation of commodity capital into money capital.

Having received money for the commodities he has sold, the capitalist spends it once again on buying the means of production and labor-power needed for further production, and the entire process starts anew.

These are the three phases through which capital passes successively in the course of its movement. In each of these phases, capital fulfills a corresponding function. The transformation of money capital into the elements of productive capital ensures the union of the means of production which belong to the capitalists with the labor-power of the wage-workers: unless such a union is effected the process of production cannot take place. The function of productive capital is to create, with the labor of the wage-workers, masses of commodities, new value, and consequently, surplus-value. The function of commodity capital is, through the sale of the mass of commodities which has been produced, first, to return to the capitalist in money form the capital which he invested in production and, second, to realize in money form the surplus-value created in the process of production.

Industrial capital passes through these three phases in the course of its movement. By industrial capital we mean, in this instance, all capital which is used for the production of commodities, regardless of whether industry or agriculture is meant.

“Industrial capital is the only mode of existence of capital in which not only the appropriation of surplus-value, or surplus product, but simultaneously its creation is a function of capital. Therefore with it the capitalist character of production is a necessity. Its existence implies the class antagonism between capitalists and wage-laborers.”¹⁰

Consequently, all industrial capital performs a rotatory movement.

By the rotation of capital is meant the successive transformation of capital from one form into another, its movement, which includes three phases. Of these phases, the first and third take place in the sphere of circulation, while the second belongs to that of production. Without circulation, that is, without transformation of commodities into money and then of money back into commodities, capitalist reproduction, i.e., the constant renewal of the production-process, would be unthinkable.

The rotation of capital as a whole can be shown in the following form:

All three stages of the rotation of capital are very closely interconnected and mutually dependent. The rotation of capital proceeds normally only so long as its various phases flow uninterruptedly one into the other.

If capital stops short in its first phase, this means it drops into a barren existence as money capital. If the hold-up occurs in the second phase, this means that the means of production remain lifeless and labor-power remains unemployed. If capital stops short in its last phase, unsold commodities accumulate in the warehouses and clog the channels of circulation.

It is the second phase, when it is in the form of productive capital, that is of decisive importance in the rotation of industrial capital; in this phase takes place the production of commodities, value and surplus-value. In the other two phases value and surplus-value are not created; in them only a change in the form of capital takes place.

To the three phases of the rotation of capital correspond three forms of industrial capital: 1) money capital, 2) productive capital and 3) commodity capital.

Every capital exists simultaneously in all of these forms: at the same time as one part of it appears as money capital being transformed into productive capital, another part appears as productive capital being transformed into commodity capital, and a third part appears as commodity capital being transformed into money capital. Each part of it in turn assumes and discards, one after another, all three of these forms. This is true not only of each capital taken separately but also of all capitals taken together or, in other words, of the aggregate social capital. Therefore, Marx declares, capital can be understood only as a movement and not as a thing lying at rest.

This includes the possibility of distinct existence of the three forms of capital. Later on it will be shown how merchant capital and loan capital are separated off from capital employed in production. It is this distinction that provides the basis for the existence of the different groups of the bourgeoisie—manufacturers, merchants, bankers—who share out the surplus-value among themselves....

Chapter 17

Economic Crises

…

Crises and the Sharpening of the Contradictions of Capitalism

... Economic crises vividly reveal the predatory character of capitalism. During every crisis, while millions of people are in extreme want, doomed to poverty and hunger, vast quantities of commodities are destroyed because they cannot find a market—wheat, potatoes, milk, cattle, cotton. Whole factories, shipyards, blast-furnaces are closed down or sold for scrap, grain crops and technical crops are destroyed and plantations of fruit trees are cut down.

During three years of the 1929-33 crisis 92 blast-furnaces were pulled down in the U.S.A., 72 in Britain, 28 in Germany and 10 in France. The tonnage of sea-going vessels destroyed in those years amounted to more than 6.5 million registered tons.

The destructive effect of agrarian crises is clear from the following figures. In the U.S.A. between 1926 and 1937 more than two million farms were compulsorily sold for debt. The revenue from agriculture shrank from 6.8 billion dollars in 1929 to 2.4 billion dollars in 1932. During the same period sales of agricultural machinery and equipment were reduced from 458 million dollars a year to 65 million (one-seventh), and the demand for artificial fertilizers fell by nearly a half. The U.S. Government took all kinds of steps to reduce agricultural production. In 1933 10.4 million acres of cotton crop were destroyed by plowing over, 6.4 million pigs were bought and destroyed by the State, and wheat was burned in the fire-boxes of locomotives. In Brazil about 22 million sacks of coffee were destroyed, and in Denmark 117 thousand head of cattle.

Crises cause incalculable sufferings to the working class, the bulk of the peasantry and the working people as a whole. They bring about mass unemployment, which condemns hundreds of thousands and millions of people to enforced idleness, poverty and hunger. The capitalists make use of unemployment to intensify in every way the exploitation of the working class, and sharply to reduce the standard of living of all the working people.

The number of workers employed in manufacturing industry in the U.S.A. fell by 11.8 percent at the time of the 1907 crisis. During the 1929-33 crisis the number of workers in America’s manufacturing industry decreased by 38.8 percent, and the total wages bill fell by 57.7 percent. According to American statisticians, 43 million man-years were lost between 1929 and 1938 as a result of unemployment.

Crises enormously increase the insecurity of the working people’s lives, their fear of the morrow. Through spending years out of work, workers lose their skill, and after the crisis has ended many of them cannot return to industry any more. The housing conditions of the working people are greatly worsened; the number of homeless people wandering about the country in search of work increases. During crises the number of suicides caused by desperation rises markedly, and destitution and crime increase....

Chapter 18

Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The Basic Economic Law of Monopoly Capitalism

The Transition to Imperialism

Pre-monopoly capitalism, with free competition predominating, attained the apex of its development in the 1860’s and 1870’s. During the last third of the nineteenth century there took place the transition from pre-monopoly to monopoly capitalism. Monopoly capitalism finally took shape towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

Monopoly capitalism, or imperialism, is the highest and last stage of capitalism, with the replacement of free competition by the dominance of monopolies as its fundamental distinguishing feature.

The transition from pre-monopoly capitalism to monopoly capitalism (imperialism) was prepared by the entire process of development of the productive forces and relations of production in bourgeois society....

As the transition to imperialism took place the contradictions between the productive forces and the production relations of capitalism came to assume ever more acute forms. The subjection of production to the capitalists’ hunt for the highest possible profit created very many barriers to the development of the productive forces. Economic crises of overproduction began to recur more frequently, their destructive force increased, and the army of unemployed became more numerous. Alongside the growth of poverty and misery among the working masses of town and country there took place an unprecedented increase in the wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of exploiters. The sharpening of the irreconcilable class contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat led to intensification of the economic and political struggle of the working class.

During the period of transition to imperialism the largest capitalist Powers of Europe and America made themselves masters of huge colonial possessions by force and fraud. The ruling circles of the capitalistically developed countries transformed the majority of the inhabitants of the globe into colonial slaves who hated their oppressors and struggled against them. Colonial conquests enormously extended the field for capitalist exploitation; at the same time the degree of exploitation of the working masses steadily grew. The extreme sharpening of the contradictions of capitalism found expression in devastating imperialist wars, which carried off a host of human lives and destroyed a vast quantity of material wealth....

In Lenin’s classic definition, the fundamental economic features of imperialism are the following:

“1. The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;

2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital,’ of a financial oligarchy;

3. The export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;

4. The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves; and,

5. The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.”¹¹ ...

The Basic Economic Law of Monopoly Capitalism

... The main features and requirements of the basic economic law of monopoly capitalism are the following:

“The securing of the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of the given country, through the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and, lastly, through wars and militarization of the national economy, which are utilized for the obtaining of the highest profits.”¹²

Thus, the basic economic law of capitalism, the law of surplus-value, is further developed and made concrete in the period of imperialism. In pre-monopoly capitalism free competition led to a leveling of the rate of profit of the individual capitalists, and the law of the average rate of profit prevailed. In the conditions of imperialism the monopolies secure for themselves high, monopolistic, maximum profits. It is precisely maximum profit that furnishes the driving force of monopoly capitalism. Outflow of capital from one branch to others also occurs in the monopoly stage of capitalism and the tendency to equalization of profits exists. This tendency clashes, however, with the operation of the basic economic law of monopoly capitalism, the law of maximum capitalist profit. In the epoch of imperialism commodities produced by monopolized branches of production are sold for the most part at monopoly prices, exceeding the price of production and ensuring high monopoly profits, but commodities produced by non-monopolized branches are often sold at prices below the price of production, so that the entrepreneurs concerned do not receive even the average profit.

Notes

1. 1. V. I. Lenin, “On the Question of Dialectics,” in Lenin Collected Works, vol. 38, p. 358.

2. 2. Karl Marx, “Capital Volume I,” in Marx & Engels Collected Works (Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), vol. 35, p. 56.

3. 3. V. I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Communism—an Infantile Disorder,” in Marxist-Leninist Reading Hub Curriculum: Stage 4, 3rd ed. (Red Prints Publishing, 2026), p. 60.

4. 4. Marx, “Capital Volume I,” p. 83.

5. 5. Marx, “Capital Volume I,” pp. 180-181.

6. 6. Marx, “Capital Volume I,” p. 614.

7. 7. Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program,” in Marx & Engels Collected Works (Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), vol. 24, p. 92.

8. 8. Karl Marx, “Value, Price, and Profit,” in Marxist-Leninist Reading Hub Curriculum: Stage 2, 3rd ed. (Red Prints Publishing, 2026), p. 312.

9. 9. Marx, “Capital Volume I,” p. 183.

10. 10. Karl Marx, “Capital Volume II,” in Marx & Engels Collected Works (Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), vol. 36, p. 62.

11. 11. V. I. Lenin, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” in Marxist-Leninist Reading Hub Curriculum: Stage 3, 3rd ed. (Red Prints Publishing, 2026), pp. 93-94.

12. 12. J. V. Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., 2nd ed. (Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), p. 44.