Marx’s Three Tales: Things, Society, and System of Capitalism

Marx organizes his analysis of capitalism into three interrelated “tales”: the tale of things, which examines commodities, value, money, surplus value, capital and machinery; the tale of society, which looks at human interdependence turned into class relations; and the tale of the system, which describes how these elements are dynamically linked in the birth and operation of capitalism as a coordinated whole.

The “Things” of Capitalism

Under capitalism, old concepts are renamed and repurposed to serve systemic needs. The “day” becomes the unit for extracting absolute surplus value, while machinery is deployed as a technique for generating relative surplus value. Commodities acquire a “gelatinous blob” or “ghostly objecthood” as value forms, and money emerges as the highest development of the value form. All of these “things” are mobilized to increase surplus value and sustain the capitalist mode of production.

The “Society” of Capitalism

Human interdependence, which precedes independence, is perverted into a class structure of a tiny dominant capitalist group and an enormous dominated working class. This domination operates through technical necessity and control rather than sheer force. The social fabric is reshaped so that cooperation, once a natural collaborative activity, becomes a mechanism for extracting surplus value.

The “System” of Capitalism

Capitalism is presented as a new historical phenomenon: an interlinked, coordinated set of processes in which individuals function as functions of the system. The system’s core needs are the production of absolute and relative surplus value, which act as the “servos” that drive the entire process. These needs dictate the behavior of both capitalists and workers, irrespective of personal ethics.

Absolute Surplus Value

Absolute surplus value is produced by extending the working day. This extension turns class relations into a direct struggle and teaches the system how to overcome its own limits by extracting more labor time from workers.

Relative Surplus Value

Relative surplus value is generated by increasing labor productivity, especially in the production of the means of subsistence. By compressing the time required to reproduce labor power, capitalists reduce the cost of labor power without lengthening the workday. This process triggers a constant revolution in production conditions and technology, transforms class relations into a relation of control, and creates the “satanic ratio”: the more productive workers become, the less they earn individually.

Mechanisms of Relative Surplus Value Production

Two main routes lower the cost of labor power: (1) reducing the cost of the means of subsistence (e.g., finding fertile land, favorable weather) and (2) increasing the productivity of those means through technical means such as mechanized agriculture. Industrial production serves as the prime mover, with agriculture subordinated to it. Technological leaps yield temporary output gains, but market equalization soon drives prices down, prompting a perpetual race among capitalists to innovate. Socially necessary average labor time arises from cooperation, making commodity value inversely proportional to labor’s productive power and relative surplus value directly proportional to labor‑power productivity.

Costs and Trade‑offs in Capitalism

Continuous technological revolutions raise investment in constant capital (machinery) while potentially reducing investment in variable capital (wages). This dynamic relates to the “law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall,” forcing capitalists to balance the two forms of capital. Universities may emerge to train capitalists in navigating this balance. Workers, meanwhile, race to maintain livable wages as the quality and quantity of their work evolve.

Marx’s Method and Perspective

Marx prioritizes an analytical account of the system—identifying its parts, how they fit, and how they differ—over a strictly historical narrative. Technological history is subordinated to the history of capital, and intellectual production is captured by capitalist logic. Exploitation and extortion are described as systemic compulsions rather than moral judgments; the only non‑complicit stance is to work toward the abolition of the system.

Cooperation and the Development of Machinery

Cooperation is portrayed as an inevitable, system‑driven necessity that prepares the ground for machinery. Machines concretize human social relations on the factory floor, bringing dispersed labor into a shared space to increase efficiency and surplus value. This concentration of labor creates a need for supervision, concentrates capital, and gives rise to a large, malleable proletariat. Cooperation expands the spatial sphere of work, compresses time, reduces costs (heating, rent, transport), and makes labor continuous, thereby establishing socially necessary labor time. Larger capitalists are required to fund cooperative labor forces and the means of production.

Consumer Technology

Consumer technology, a phenomenon Marx could not have imagined, may serve to train people in new technologies, but Marx’s focus remains on productive technology. Innovations such as those at Foxconn illustrate that technological advancement in production continues independently of consumer release strategies.