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Essay Marx vijfde hoofdstuk Das Kapital
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Essay over Marx en zijn 5de hoofdstuk van Das Kapital, onderdeel van het vak
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Essay on Marx – word count: 1089Biographical note
Karl Marx is born in Trier in 1818. Later, he studied philosophy in Berlin, where he was influenced by the
work of Hegel. The work of Hegel consists of that history proceeds by way of an interaction between what
he called a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. These forces are ideological, an accepted idea exists but given
time is contradicted by an opposite idea, and out of this conflict emerges a new idea known as a higher
form of truth. (Haagsma, 2022)
After he got his degree, he went to work as an editor of Rheinische Zeitung in 1843. Soon after losing his
job as an editor, he married Jenny von Westphalen. They moved to Paris where Marx met Friedrich Engels
and the French socialists, which later influenced his work. Because of the revolution in 1848, he had to
leave Paris and go to Brussels where he published “The Communist Manifesto’’. (Haagsma, 2022)
He and his wife decided to return to London in 1849 and they remained there for the rest of their life,
these are the first years he and his family lived in extreme poverty which probably damaged his health.
Even though they lived in extreme poverty, Marx kept studying political economy in the library of the
British Museum which led to the release of Das Kapital (Volume 1) in 1867. In Das Kapital, he described
the dynamics of capitalism which doesn’t conclude the organization of a socialist or communistic state.
(Haagsma, 2022) In the next paragraph, there will be a summary of the fifth chapter of Das Kapital about
the labour process and the creation of added value.
Marx was primarily a philosopher who was not only an advocate of change but of a fundamental
revolution. In his books and studies, he focuses on the evolutionary development of capitalism, not its
statics, but also the evolution of institutions. Overall, he has a broad methodology which is a combination
of Hegelian philosophy, French utopian thought, and classical political economy. (Haagsma, 2022)
Marx on the labour process and the creation of added value
The labour process
Marx explains in the fifth chapter of Das Kapital (1867, pp. 140 -156) the labour process and how added
value is produced by labour. He defines the use of labour-power as labour itself. The buyer of the labour-
power consumes the labour force by making their salesman work. Labour is primarily a process that takes
place between people and nature; a process, in which people establish their relationship with nature
through their activity, regulation, and monitoring. (Marx, 1867, pp. 140-141)
He speaks of two parts that lead up to the product. These are the object of labour and the means of
labour. Every material is an object of labour but not every object of labour is material. To explain, the
object of labour is only a material when it has already undergone a change effected by labour. The means
of labour is a thing or a combination of things, which the worker puts between himself and the object of
labour, which serves as a conductor of his activity towards that object. When the labour process is even
somewhat developed, already processed means of labour are needed, like machines or weapons. To
conclude, Marx sees the labour process as the activity of people, with the aid of the means of labour,
bringing the desired change of the object of labour. The process ends with the product. This product is a
utility, a natural material adapted to human needs by changing its shape. Work has become one with its
object. The labour has become matter and the object is laboured. (Marx, 1867, pp. 141-143)
When capitalism is applied to this process, the capitalist will gather all the factors that are needed for the
labour process. The worker, whose labour belongs to the capitalist, works under the supervision of the
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