This is book review on Karl Marx's book on political economy

1. A contribution to the critique of political
economy
A review paper on Karl Marx book of
A contribution to the critique of political economy
By:Efa Tadesse Debele
Department of Sociology, Addis Ababa University
February 15, 2019

2. KARL MARX1818 - 1883
Enlightenment ideals of humans being able to alter their environment to allow for fuller human
capacity.
Ideals of Romanticism where Marx developed a concern for individuals and collective struggles.
Marx used some of Hegel’s notions to construct ideas that society is a construct of human’s and can
therefore be shaped and reshaped by humans.
As Marx put it, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however,
is to change it.”

3. Book I, A contribution to the critique
of political economy
Part I:The commodity
 commodity is base of bourgeois society
 It has use value and exchange value
 commodity is a means of existence
 Use value has only value in use
 exchange value-quantitative form- a proportion in which use values are
exchanged for one another
 Both use value and exchange value are products of human energy,
labour
 Exchange value-labour time relations
 materialization of individual labour time
 reification of universal labour time
 money-exchanging commodity
 circulation or metabolism-commodities

4. A. Historical notes on the analysis of
commodities
Franklin’trade in general being nothing else but the
exchange of labour for labour , the value of all things
is as I have said before Most justly measured by
labour
industry, alienated equivalent labour
Part II. Money or Simple circulation
commodity is a measure of money
A.Measure of value
materialised universal labour time
e.g Gold-measure of value, money

5. continued
Labour time is measure of value like gold
Commodities are commensurable
Gold as measure of values
Gold as standard of price or invariable weight
Money as account

6. Book I:Part II B. Theories of the
standard of money
Tokens ;the abstract concept of value
Money is an ideal scale of equal parts
Pound is ideal value
Labour is a parent cost and gives a relative value to
gold or iron
Whatever denominations of worlds are used to
express the daily or weekly labour of a man such
words express the cost of the commodity produced
Labour time is the direct measure of money in a
systematic way

7. Medium of exchange
Social metabolic process of circulation
A. The metamorphosis of commodities
circuit –c-m-c=commodity circulatiom
-m-c-m=money circulation
c-m=universal alienation
vicious circle of transaction or circuit
two types of money-actual/real and nominal
money either to measure or to buy
money is medium and agency
money can always buy other commodities

8. B.The circulation of money
Money initiate entire circuit
C. Coins and Tokens of value
gold as medium of circulation become gold
coins are pieces of gold
name of the money of account; pound, shilling, etc
coined assumes a local and political character
gradually coin change into pseudo gold
tokens are money that symbolically represent face
value of notes or coins but not

9. Money
Medium of exchange –gold-paper
Hoarding-keeping or storing in stock
A sign of wealth
Withdraw from circulation is burying it
Accumulation
Hiding from society
reserving

10. Means of payment
 Money functioning as universal means of payment
 Money used also as means of circulation
World money
 gold as money universal or world money
 precious metal
 gold and silver as world money
 they are universal means of exchange
 means of purchase and payment
 international money owner-cosmopolitan
 cosmopolitanism-Impede traditional
Theories of the medium of circulation and of money
 price depend on volume of money

11. Commentary
 Land as commodity/labour time or how it is
valuable
 What cost services like prostitution and labour time
 Universal labour time and disparity of exchange
rate
 Why gold is universal?
 Wealth as accumulation not investment?
 Money and precious metal
 Secrecy of monetary issue
 Correlate labour and money