Value-Form

Reading Capital: The Form of Value and the Fetishism of Commodities

The second entry in a section-by-section reading of Marx’s Capital. Having found labor inside the commodity, Marx now asks how invisible value ever becomes visible — a chain of small logical steps that leads to money — and then pulls back the curtain on the whole arrangement in his famous account of commodity fetishism. Section 3 is the hardest stretch in the chapter and Section 4 the most beloved; together they finish Marx’s portrait of the commodity, with the central objections and replies set side by side.