Summary

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
What I have understood from the reading and to answer this question of how the wealthy remained Wealthy? by basing my answer, on what M-C-M means, (money-commodity-money) meaning that the wealthy invest money or have money to buy commodities to resell it for more money. The wealthy buy commodities, commodities are things that are useful to somebody and you pay money to get it. The wealthy make or sell a product that is useful to somebody else. The wealthy , Has a job for the people(working class).in which They exchange their labor power for something else, which is usually money. The labor power is the value that is put into the time and effort in making the product that the wealthy are going to sell. "M" equals money, the surplus value meaning that in the article and the best way I could explain it, is by surplus value gets its value by the surplus labor. Example: Even though the hours have been reduced over the years what the working class is given the labor power in making teh product for the wealthy. For example in the article it mentions an 8 hour shifts of a job, but the capitalist only paid for 4 hours, and the other 4 is the surplus value meaning it is unpaid labor and that is how the Capitalist make their profits, by the labor power of the laborer. The working class only gets paid for those 4 hours, which it is beneficial to the capitalist because that is were their profit is. That is what I understood from M-C-M the wealthy stay wealthy because of this formula that they know how too implemented in their daily life. The wealthy opem up business, they buy property, housing, and they resell it so they could make more money. Of course they use the labor power of others so they could benefit from it and exploied the working class i order to get their profits and they stay wealthy.