Letters from Tomis

An ongoing series of reflections on Marxist economics after reading What is Marxism: An Introduction into Marxist Theory by Rob Sewell and Alan Woods. The thoughts, opinions, and any errors are mine alone.

If there is one thing capitalism excels at—apart from its relentless capacity for turning every aspect of human existence into something that can be packaged, branded, and sold—it is its ability to manufacture ideological fog. To hear the champions of the system tell it, we are to believe that prices fluctuate due to natural laws, as though dictated by some benevolent cosmic force. The “invisible hand,” that celestial apparition so often invoked by economists, is said to operate with mathematical precision, balancing supply and demand in an eternal waltz of equilibrium. This is nonsense, of course—sentimental rubbish meant to dull the senses and tranquilize the critical faculties of the populace. The price of commodities, according to Karl Marx, is not determined by ethereal forces but by something far more tangible and—one might say—far more damning: human labor.

The Illusion of the Market: An Ideological Trick of the Light

It is an odd feature of bourgeois economics that it treats capitalism as a kind of natural phenomenon, rather than as the historically contingent system of exploitation that it is. We are assured that the market determines prices based on supply and demand, that commodities have value because people desire them, and that the accumulation of wealth at the top is merely the righteous reward for innovation and industriousness. One might as well say that the pharaohs of ancient Egypt deserved their pyramids because they had the foresight to be born into divinely ordained bloodlines.

Marx, on the other hand, stripped away this self-serving mysticism and asked a fundamental question: What actually creates value? The answer, glaringly obvious to anyone who has ever worked for a wage, is labor. It is labor that transforms raw materials into usable goods, labor that converts the abstract notion of “resources” into something tangible, something that can be bought and sold. Without labor, no commodity can exist. The value of that commodity, therefore, is governed by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce it.

The Labor Theory of Value: The Uncomfortable Truth

Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (a work not often found on the bookshelves of libertarian think tanks) explains that commodities exchange in proportion to the labor time necessary to produce them under average conditions. This means that the price of a coat, a loaf of bread, or—dare we say it—a luxury yacht, is not some arbitrary number plucked from the ether, but the crystallization of labor, frozen in time and stamped with a price tag.

Now, the more economically astute among the defenders of capital will interject here. But what about supply and demand? Surely, they argue, the price of a commodity can rise or fall based on how much of it is available and how many people want it. Quite so. Marx did not deny this any more than he denied the existence of gravity. But to focus solely on fluctuations in supply and demand is to mistake the weather for the climate. While short-term variations affect price, these oscillations occur around a central axis: the labor-imbued value of the commodity itself.

Surplus Value: The Heart of the Swindle

And here we reach the truly scandalous part of Marx’s theory—scandalous, at least, to those who profit from it. If labor determines value, then how does the capitalist make a profit? Why is it that the worker, who creates value, ends up with the bare minimum required to survive, while the owner, who does no labor at all, accumulates vast wealth?

The answer lies in surplus value—the unpaid labor time extracted from the worker. In simple terms, if a factory worker toils for eight hours, but produces in four hours the equivalent value of their wages, what happens in the remaining four? The answer: pure, unadulterated profit for the capitalist. The worker has no claim to it. They are paid only for a portion of their labor, while the rest—the surplus—is expropriated, funneled upward, and transformed into dividends, executive bonuses, and stock buybacks.

The great lie of capitalism is that the worker is compensated for their labor. They are, in reality, compensated only for the minimum amount necessary to keep them working. Everything else is siphoned away—a sleight of hand so fundamental to the system that it is rarely questioned.

The Economic Priesthood: A Case Study in Ideological Delusion

One must admire, in a grim sort of way, the sheer audacity of those who defend this arrangement. We are told, repeatedly and with great solemnity, that Marx was wrong, that the labor theory of value is outdated, that capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty. And yet, one cannot help but notice that these pronouncements tend to come from precisely those who benefit most from the current system. It is rather like listening to an aristocrat in 18th-century France lecture about the divine right of kings—entertaining, perhaps, but not something to be taken seriously.

The fact remains that capitalism, far from being the harmonious, self-regulating paradise depicted in economic textbooks, is a system built on coercion and exploitation. The market does not operate according to natural laws; it operates according to the interests of those who control it. The price of commodities, then, is not governed by benevolent forces of equilibrium, but by the fundamental reality of labor—its extraction, its commodification, and, ultimately, its theft.

Conclusion: Time to Stop Pretending

It is always instructive to ask: Who benefits from a particular narrative? The notion that prices are determined by impersonal market forces benefits precisely those who control capital. It absolves them of responsibility. It allows them to pretend that the system is fair, that wealth is earned, and that poverty is merely an unfortunate byproduct of individual failure rather than the inevitable consequence of a structure that depends on the immiseration of the many for the enrichment of the few.

Marx was not a prophet. He did not claim to foresee the future with divine certainty. But he did understand, with brutal clarity, how capitalism functions. The price of commodities is not some neutral number floating in the ether; it is the direct result of labor and its exploitation. To ignore this is not just to misunderstand economics—it is to deliberately misunderstand it, to embrace ignorance as ideology, and to defend a system that robs workers of their labor while convincing them that they are free.

It is time to stop pretending.