CHAPTER 4

1. What is Marx’s definition of capital?

2. What is Marx’s definition of surplus-value?

3. How does Marx’s definition of capital differ from the concept of capital in micro and macro? (Consult your textbooks.)

CHAPTER 5

1. What are the “contradictions in the general formula for capital”?

2. In what sense do merchants’ capital and usurers’ (i.e. bankers’) capital appear to be an
impossibility?

3. Summarize the “double result” at the end of the chapter.

CHAPTER 6

1. What is Marx’s definition of labor-power?

2. How does the availability of labor-power on the market provide a solution to the key
contradiction identified in Chapter 5?

3. What are the two historical conditions for the availability of labor-power on the market?

4. How is the price of labor-power determined?

5. In what sense do workers extend credit to capitalists?

6. Note the famous passage at the end of the chapter on the transition from the “sphere of
circulation” (i.e. the market) to the “sphere of production” (the “hidden abode”).