These two essays are about two large aspects of the same thing, the emergence of modern, bourgeois society, based on the capitalist mode of production. I hope that writing them more or less simultaneously will help you work through each one. It is even possible that you could combine them in one, but I would be very sure that you understand what your letting yourself in for before doing that.
Essay 2:
Write an essay of three pages (double-spaced, normal font, margins, etc.) on the following:
For Marx, different forms of society are shaped by the specific social relations of production in each. In particular, the central social relation of capitalist society, based on the capitalist mode of production, is the relation of wage-labor. With wage-labor, human labor-power (the capacity to labor) itself has become a commodity (a useful object produced for exchange). The social relation of wage labor, therefore, is the relation of exchange between the seller of labor-power (the laborer) and the buyer of labor-power (the capitalist). This relation is contradictory in that on the one hand it is between juridically free and equal commodity owners, while on the other, it establishes a hierarchical class relation between capitalists and laborers because the former have a monopoly on the means of production. Moreover, for Marx, capital itself is not a thing, or an agglomeration of things, it too may be defined as a social relation derived from the relation of wage-labor. In the most simplified form, capital as a social relation is represented in this formula, showing the process of unlimited accumulation of capital through the production of surplus-value, which is the sole purpose of the capitalist mode of production:
Wage-laborers: Clp – Mw – Cms C – M – C → C´ > C, M´ > M, etc.
↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ M´ = M + ΔM, etc.
Capitalists: M – Clpmp . . . C´msmp – M´ – C´ . . . C´´ – M´´ → ΔM = surplus-value, etc.M: money; C: commodities; lp: labor-power; mp: means of production; w: wages; ms: means of subsistence; . . . : production process. (Capitalists’ consumption is ignored here.)
Use this understanding of social relations to consider what is unique to capitalist society. How does thinking of capitalist society in relation to earlier societies in this way require recognition of the radical qualitative distinctiveness of capitalist society from all previous societies, including those of early modern Europe (1500-1800)?
Sample Solution