I think two key concepts are the means of production and labor, and the means of production are the tools, machinery, land, and raw materials that are used in order to produce goods. For example, it could be for bakery, ovens mixers, and even flour, but labor on the other hand is the human effort and skill that is applied to those tools like a bigger needing dough and a baking bread and continuation.
Another important concept is value that can be determined by the socially necessary labor that\u2019s required to produce a good or service, for example the hours of skilled work that goes into making in handmade chair, has lots of value and time put into it that goes into saying labor and value are directly connected because laborers were create value, but the more labor that\u2019s put into a product the more valuable it is, and that is important to understand because the difference between labor and labor power is very different. Labor is actual work performed while labor power is a persons capacity or ability to work that can later be sell an employer finally surplus value refers to the difference between the value workers produce, and the wage they are paid, and that explains how capitalists make profit and highlighting the basis of exploitation in class systems because for example, if a worker produces $200 worth of goods in just one day but gets only paid $100 extra 100 is surplus value that the owner keeps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think two key concepts are the means of production and labor, and the means of production are the tools, machinery, land, and raw materials that are used in order to produce goods. For example, it could be for bakery, ovens mixers, and even flour, but labor on the other hand is the human effort…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11522,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-3-2","category-discussion-board-5-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11522"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12671,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12670\/revisions\/12671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0504-spring-2026-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}