So this is a work I started years ago, but found too boring to get through even a chapter of. Since I’ve been rereading what I’m calling the “Commie Classics”, and Capital is Marx’s most thorough work, I’m almost compelled to attempt it again. That said, the work is almost 3000 pages over 3 volumes. You’ll find little in it to tell you what Marx wanted to implement with Marxism. This work is an in-depth critique of capitalism as a system, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll even bother to wade into volumes 2 and 3 since it’s pretty clear by this point that Marx, for as much as he was convinced his theories couldn’t be wrong, was actually wrong. Nonetheless, anyone seeking to understand Marx ought to be familiar with this work, so… in we go!

I’m divvying this work up into sections, of which there are 8 in the first volume. I’m more or less posting my notes on the work. My methodology was to read, underline what I saw as the important points, and then watch some videos about the work to see if I was getting what others were getting. Here is section 1, often thought to be the most difficult, but I didn’t find it so. Perhaps because I’ve had enough of philosophy, and Marx, by now, to already have a base of understanding for the language. If this is your thing, well, hope you enjoy this.

Part One: Commodities and Money 

Chapter 1: The Commodity 

1. The Two Factors of the Commodity: Use Value and Value (Substance of Value, Magnitude of Value) 
2. The Dual Character of Labor Embodied in Commodities 
3. The Value-Form, or Exchange Value 
   (a) The Simple, Isolated, or Accidental Form of Value 
      (1) The two poles of the expression of value: the relative and equivalent forms 
      (2) The relative form of value 
         (i) the content of the relative form 
         (ii) the quantitative determinacy of the relative form of value 
         (iii) the equivalent form 
         (iv) the simple form of value considered as a whole 
   (b) The Total or Expanded Form of Value 
      (1) The expanded relative form of value 
      (2) The particular equivalent form 
      (3) Defects of the total or expanded form of value 
   © The General Form of Value 
      (1) The changed character of the form of value 
      (2) the development of relative and equivalent forms of value: their interdependence 
      (3) The transition from the general form of value to the money form 
   (d) The Money Form 
4. The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret 

Ch 1: The Commodity, version TL;DR 
A commodity is something that satisfies some human need. Commodities have two types of value. The first is value as a useful item, and the second is value as something you can trade for another commodity. The thing that makes commodities valuable is how much human labor goes into them. 

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In a barter society, individuals would trade commodities, but in a more advanced society, money is more useful. Money is a commodity, but it has little useful value in itself, it’s real value is as a medium of exchange. 

The wealth of capitalist societies consists in the collection of commodities. 

A commodity is an external object that satisfies human needs of whatever kind: corn, iron, phones, etc. 

The usefulness of a thing gives it a use-value. This value is only realized in use or consumption. 

Exchange value appears as a quantitative relation in which one can exchange one commodity for another. Exchange value is relative and variable. Exchange value is also not inherent in a commodity. A commodity can find itself having no exchange value at all. 

Use-values can differ in quality. Exchange values have only one measure: quantity. 

When you have two commodities of different use: like 20 ears of corn and a pound of iron, that can be considered roughly equivalent in value, so that the producer of 20 ears of corn might trade them for one pound of iron, then there is some other measure of value that completes the equation, and that is labor. 

Marx makes the observation that in our societies, even the labor has been reduced to an exchange value. But he wants us to remember use-value when we compute ‘value’ in general, because in that use-value is a fundamental connection to nature that is separate from exchange value. 

Marx introduces the idea of the amount of labor as the thing that can be measured to help define the value of a product. How much, and what kind of, human labor goes into making a thing useful? That quantity is called labor time.  

A thing can be of use value, without being a value, because its utility to man doesn’t require labor: air, virgin soil, natural meadows.  

A thing can also be useful, and a product of human labor, and not be a commodity: something created by someone for his own need, creates use value, but not a commodity. 

In order for a thing to be a commodity, it must have use-value, and be transferable. 

Use value is the combination of two elements- materials and labor. 

The value of commodities represents human labor. They have a dual nature: objects of utility and bearers of value. They have no objective value- their value is purely social, in relation to other things. 

Useful labor is productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with a definite aim. It is the difference in this qualitative labor that gives such disparate use values to various commodities. It’s why, in Marx’s example, a coat has more use-value than a roll of linen cloth. 

Marx then traces the development of money as an exchange medium as opposed to barter. 

The simple form of value is in the exchange value of the commodity. 

The relative form of value is how much linen would equal a coat, or any other commodity. It is the barter value of one commodity to another.  

But the equivalent form is, if I’m not mistaken, money- a medium that will be used for exchange. It could be any socially accepted norm, but money in Marx’s day was typically gold. This has direct exchangeability with all other commodities in a society. Money, has no intrinsic relative value. It has value as a medium of exchange, but unlike another commodity in a barter, no one needs coins or bills, for a use value apart from its value as an exchange medium. 

Fetishism of Money 
Marx here notes the “fetishism” of this commodity, money. Here fetishism means an object attributed with powers it doesn’t have.  

Wood can be transformed into a table by labor. As a table, it’s a commodity, but it’s still wood too, an object that can be touched. It has a value that is relative to other commodities. Marx sees its value as a commodity as labor giving it an enigmatic quality. This mainly consists of the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labor. Products of labor become commodities. The value isn’t realized until the buyers and sellers come together and the social characteristics of their labor manifest themselves. 

The price of commodities becomes set through a wider participation in a market where values are more or less set through a mass of transactions. 

Chapter 2: The Process of Exchange 

Ch 2: The Process of Exchange, version TL;DR 
Money is useful as a commodity because it is easily divisible into whatever denomination is needed. Gold, silver and copper were traditionally the metals used for money. Money is the symbol of the amount of labor that went into producing the commodity.  

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Commodities can’t exchange themselves, so they must be brought to market by their owners. The owners in turn relate to each other merely in terms of being owners of private property- their commodities. A commodity is distinct from its owner by the fact that all other commodities are nothing more than some measure of its own value. 

For the owner of course, his commodity has no use-value to himself, or he’d just use it. Instead it is merely a bearer of exchange value. Since the value of the commodity comes down to the labor put into it, only in the act of exchange can its use-value for others be proven. 

In a pure barter economy, every owner sees other commodities he is interested in measured by his own particular commodity. If he has corn, then anything he wants to buy will have to be considered in how many ears of corn it will take to procure the thing he wants. But every owner of every commodity thinks the same, so there is no actual universal equivalent. 

The natural answer that arose was money, some agreed upon material of exchange. Marx notes that one of the unique characteristics of money is that it has no use-value on its own. If society were to decide some useful commodity- like corn… or cows- would be the medium of exchange, then that commodity would itself have use-value. But one of the attributes that makes money attractive as an exchange medium is that, because it has none, it is neutral in use-value.   

Gold and silver have traditionally been used. These both have dual values, both use and exchange. But for exchange, the medium should be of a material that has uniform property, so that it can be divided at will, and also reassembled. Gold and silver possess these properties. 

One can’t divide a cow up if he wanted to buy something worth less than a full cow. And even granting that he could butcher the cow and exchange parts, some parts are going to be worth less than others, and cows certainly can’t be reassembled. So gold and silver it is. 

The fact that money became more of an exchange value than a use value led some to imagine that money had no innate value, but was merely a symbol. While this wasn’t true, at least with gold and silver, it did “contain the suspicion that the money-form of the thing is external to itself, being simply the form of appearance of human relations behind it”. For Marx, money becomes the direct incarnation of all human labor. Their relationships then form a material shape independent of their control and action. The products of men’s labors are no longer considered in terms of the exchange of use-values, but in the form of commodities. This is the money fetish. 

Chapter 3: Money, or the Circulation of Commodities 

1. The Measure of Values 
2. The Measure of Circulation 
   (a) The Metamorphosis of Commodities 
   (b) The Circulation of Money 
   © Coin. The Symbol of Value 
3. Money 
   (a) Hoarding 
   (b) Means of Payment 
   © World Money 

Ch 3: Money, or the Circulation of Commodities, version TL;DR 
Rather than barter with another individual, we now use money. First we sell our commodity: C, and get money, M, then we use money M to get the commodity, C, we want. This form of circulation is C-M-C. 

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But since money is a source of value in the market, the circulation can become inverted to M-C-M; where people have money, then use the money to buy a commodity, so they can sell it for more money. Marx calls this a ‘metamorphosis’ of the circulation. 

In the measuring of values, Marx assumes gold is the money commodity. Its main function is to supply commodities with an expression of their value, represented as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively and quantitatively comparable. It is in this way that it acts as a universal measure of value, and becomes money. Money is the necessary outcome of the need to express the measure of value of labor-time. 

While commodities have an actual use-value too, their price, or exchange value is separate and distinct from this in that it is a purely ideal, or notional form. In other words, the price-value exists only as a notion or idea. Marx goes on that since this relation to money is only as an idea, it is expressed on the tongue to those outside the owner of the commodity. As such, computations of value are done purely as mental exercises, and do not require any amount of actual gold or money. But while the money ‘that performs the function as a measure of value’ is imaginary, the price depends on the actual substance that is money.  

Marx notes that since copper, silver, and gold serve as money, commodities will have value expressions in all three. Changes in the values of these metals will affect the money values of the commodities. Each started off with a name denominating a certain weight.  

So money performs two different functions as a measure of value: the first is a measure of value of the social incarnation of labor; second it is a standard of price of a quantity of metal. But the value of gold can and does change, which will require adjustments as to the prices of the commodities, whose values it represents. A rise in the prices of commodities can occur when their values increase, OR when the value of money decreases.  

Marx notes various situations that could cause fluctuations in the prices of commodities. While price has to bear some relationship to the amount of labor, the fact is that conversion of value into money means that an incongruity between value and price can occur. Marx sees this not as a defect, but as adequate for a ‘mode of production whose laws can only assert themselves as blindly operating averages between constant irregularities’. 

He also notes that the price form can also harbor a contradiction: price can cease to express value altogether, even though it is nothing but the value form of commodities. Things that are not commodities at all: honor, conscience, etc, can be offered for sale by their holders and thus acquire the form of commodities through price. 

To establish a price, it is sufficient to equate the commodity with a measure of gold, or money. But to actually buy it, will require the actual amount of gold. The price-form implies both the exchangeability of commodities, and the necessity of exchanges. 

In the Measure of Circulation, Marx first looks at what he calls the metamorphosis of commodities. It’s essentially expressed in a very simple formula: C-M-C ; meaning first a thing is a commodity, then it is exchanged for money, and then back to a commodity. He uses the example of a linen weaver who takes his 20 yards of linen to the market. The 20 yards of linen is a commodity. He sells that for £2, which he then takes a purchases a family bible for the purposes of edification. Marx makes much of the fact that the product of the weaver’s labor, the linen, is not of use value to the weaver, and it acquires no ‘social validity’ until it is exchanged for the £2. If he can’t find a buyer for his product, then his labor effectively has no useful social value. If too many weavers are spending too much time weaving too much linen, then the market is glutted and sellers will start to sell for less in order to get what they can, and the price drops. There are myriad factors that affect the value of commodities and the sum of them will affect the first part of the conversion of a commodity to money. 

M-C, or money to purchase a commodity is the second part of the metamorphosis. Marx says money is the absolute alienation of commodities, because it has no use-value, just exchange value. In the metamorphosis, every commodity disappears when it is transformed into money. No trace remains of the reason for the labor originally done- to produce some socially useful object. 

Marx also notes the obvious, that C-M, a sale for the seller, and at the same time, a M-C, or a purchase for the buyer. This is where the ‘contradiction’ is resolved.  

The circulation of commodities is distinct from a direct exchange. The seller of linen, bought a bible. But the bible seller didn’t purchase linen. He preferred to purchase something else. In this way, the market becomes a whole network of social connections beyond the control of human agents. 

The circulation of money is the continuous, repetitive process of commodities being sold for money, and that money used to buy another commodity. Marx notes that the flow of money from buyer to seller is the hidden one-sided flow of the two-sided C-M-C metamorphosis mentioned earlier. Money removes commodities from circulation, by constantly stepping into their place. 

Marx notes that commodities come into the market, and then go out, to be replaced constantly by new commodities. But money continues circulating. The amount of money needed for this must equal the amount of commodities being exchanged. Changes in the size of the economy will then require more or less money in circulation. 

Money takes the shape of coin because of its function as the circulating medium. Gold, silver, and copper can be measured and minted according to specific sizes corresponding to the values set by the governments where issued. Paper money also came into existence as symbolic of the actual precious metal coins. In theory, the amount of paper money put into circulation needed to be backed by actual gold. If the amount of paper money exceeds that gold, then it is devalued accordingly. 

Marx then notes that the only reason paper money can be issued as a symbol of money, is because money itself had become only a symbol of value. That said, the money must have objective social validity. In other words, the people doing commerce with it have to believe it is a symbol of value. 

Money carries its own problems. For one, people may decide not to follow through with the second part of the CMC equation and just hold on to the money in order to stockpile it, rather than use it to purchase more commodities. This happens because the accumulation of wealth is seen as socially desirable. Having value stored in use-value commodities is one thing, but have value stored in money means it can be exchanged for anything. So money becomes the most valuable commodity to stockpile. 

Marx covers various means of payments that aren’t the usual immediate transactions, such as deferred payments, speculations, and credit and debts. He notes that in the Roman empire, there was an ongoing clash between creditors and debtors, with many debtors ending up as slaves. He discusses agreements where goods change hands with the promise to pay later. But circumstances can arise, in a fully developed economy of promises, that cause deficits between debtors and creditors, with the effect that money is sought after, even more than hard, use-value commodities.  

Marx also notes that credit notes themselves can be sold as measures of wealth. Meaning one collector can sell debts he is owed to another collector. By this point, money as a means of payment has spread beyond the sphere of circulation of commodities. Rent, taxes, and so on are all collected in money. 

As money leaves the domestic sphere and travels to other countries, it must be converted back to its precious metal form. World money serves as the universal means of payment, of purchase, and of absolute material wealth. Every country needs a reserve of gold for internal circulation, so it needs a reserve for circulation on the world market.