Abstract
Fundamental concepts disclose—or fail to disclose—the world. Poor fundamental concepts disguise the world. Two disclosive concepts of Marx’s critique of political economy are value and capital. Value and capital are social forms constitutive of capitalist societies. Since capital is value that increases its value, we must first understand value. Five misconceptions that circulate widely and divert thinking from the Marxian concepts of value and capital are: (1) Value is utility. Utility is a pseudo-concept, unlike usefulness. (2) Value is use-value. (3) Value is exchange-value. Neither use-value nor exchange-value is value, the supersensible “third thing” that makes commodities quantitatively comparable and that necessarily appears as money. (4) Capital is any resource. Equating capital with resources eliminates everything specific to capitalist production. (5) Capitalist society is governed by instrumental action—by McDonaldization. Both utility and instrumental reason presuppose an impossible economy-in-general. Both are pseudo-concepts; neither plays any role in Marx’s Capital.