ABSTRACT
Karl Marx unveiled his theory of the enterprise or firm over the entire three volumes of Capital. Marx addressed a variety of different types of enterprises but mostly focused on three types of capitalist enterprises, those is being industrial or productive, merchant, and money lending enterprises. The first volume of Capital focuses on productive capitalist enterprises. Marx's attention to commodity production and the capitalist firm was in response to previous theories in political economy. The first few chapters of Capital concerned commodities, exchange and money, which enabled Marx to differentiate simple exchange from something very different in production. Instead of beginning with individuals and trade, Marx begins his theory of the enterprise with class and production. In the case of productive enterprises, what constitutes the optimal distributions of surplus will vary greatly from firm to firm, even in the same industry, as the social relations within each firm vary.
