Abstract
Because Marx has been mistaken for a radical economist, his depth as a social theorist has been missed. Capital examines the commodity, value, money, and capital as potent social forms, whereas economics overlooks them. Capital identifies the commodity as the social form of wealth in capitalist societies. Commodities are useful things and values. Value is the social character of the commodity. Value is “purely social” and “supra-sensible.” Value cannot be detected in the commodity. What strange sociality cannot be manifested by the body of the commodity? That value is “purely social” means (1) value is strictly a consequence of the social form of labor, and (2) value’s sociality is atomistic, an asocial sociality. Because of its bare sociality, value must be expressed as money in the polarized value form. Marx demonstrates further that commodity circulation presupposes capital’s circulation, so the sociality of value involves class antagonism and subjection to capital’s aims.