ABSTRACT
The financial crisis of 2008, followed by recession in the world economy, has put a question mark on the stability and working of capitalist economic system. The historical analysis of capitalism shows that there are various ways to realise the surplus. Marx was concerned neither with the history of capitalism nor with a specific historical phase of capitalism, but rather with the concrete foundations of capitalist system which remain the same regardless of all historical variations. The objective character of value is social—it can only appear in relations between commodities. Qualitatively different concrete labour produces qualitative different use value. In a pre-capitalist system of economic transactions, simple circulation dominates and money played only a role of medium of exchange. The capitalist ensures the value of labour power to be equal to the cost of its reproduction. The time spent by capital in the production process is the ‘time of production’.
