- The diagram M-C-M’ shows how capitalists remain and become wealthy, and to understand this better, we can work with C-M-C, which is a representation of small scale commodity production. In C-M-C, a person sells a commodity to acquire money to buy something they need. The target is use or consumption. The value at the end is basically the same as at the beginning. The difference with M-C-M’ is the target. A capitalist starts with money (M), buys commodities (C), including labor power, and sells the final product to end up with more money (M’), which is greater than M because it includes surplus value (profit). The difference between money and capital is that money is turned into capital when it is used to buy labor power (which can create new value), because the workers’ value is produced in a day which is enough to cover their wages (necessary labor) but they continue to work. The time that remains is surplus labor, and the value produced in that duration becomes surplus value, which the capitalist retains as profit. That is the definition of capitalism, and it is how this cycle can be repeated continuously. The capitalist M can become M’ through capital accumulation , and this explains how the capitalist class remains wealthy as a class.
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