Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Marx shifts focus from the worker to capital and its owners. Capital is not merely the means of production that extracts value from the labor of others. It also represents a system of law and governance that is designed to grant political legitimacy to the owners of capital and to ensure that society caters to their interests. The one weakness in the capitalist position is that they are as beholden to capital as the workers are beholden to them. To examine the nature of capital, Marx turns to the work of Adam Smith, widely known to this day as the definitive philosopher of capitalism. Marx puts forth a series of quotations from Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, interspersed with his own commentary. Smith concedes the distinction between wages, which derive from labor, and capital, the total wealth which accrues to the owner even though the owner does little if any of the labor.

Owners demand profits because they have no interest in the production of a good or service if it only earns enough revenue to replenish supplies. Profits are highly variable and difficult to predict, but the most reliable asset is money, which can generate interest from investments.