1. As we learned thus far, the capitalist class consists of people who own wealth, as well as the means of production in American society. An important question in understanding how this class works is to ask: how does a capitalist remain wealthy? The answer to this question depends largely on understanding the diagram M-C-M’. So, let’s practice by explaining what happens in this diagram in our own words (but basing our ideas on Reading 5.1). Respond to the following question: Explain M-C-M’ to show how capitalists maintain and increase their wealth. (hint: your answer should weave a summary that includes what you reviewed in the self-assessment exercise question 1-7). M-C-M’ stands for Money-Commodity-Money (The third money, which is denoted by M’, specifically refers to the money at the end of this transaction). What this means is that capitalists end up using the money that they have accumulated in order to buy commodities that they will then resell at a higher price in order to gain a profit. This explains how capitalists end up making and maintaining their wealth, since they end up using their money in order buy both the labor power of workers and the means of production to enable their labor power to function (which in turn transforms their money into productive capital since they ended up starting a business for-profit) and through this they end up making new commodities which they can sell back at a higher value than the materials that they used to make that commodity. On top of this, since they ended up only buying the labor power of their workers, anything that is earned through selling the commodities all goes to the capitalist. Further more, capitalists typically end up earning a surplus value from the labor power that they have to maintain, since there’s more money earned from amount of commodities that are being created from the labor of their workers than there is money being lost from having to maintain the worker’s labor power (through paying their wages).