1. M-C-M’ is the cycle that shows how capitalists stay wealthy and keep growing their wealth. M is the money the capitalist starts with. They use that money to buy commodities — C — which includes the means of production like buildings, machines and raw materials, but most importantly labor power. Then at the end they have M’ which is more money than they started with. That extra amount is surplus value and that is where profit comes from. The key thing to understand is that M’ does not come from the capitalist doing any work themselves. It comes from workers. When a capitalist buys a worker’s labor power they are not paying them for everything they produce instead they are paying just enough to cover their basic means of subsistence. But workers produce way more value than what their labor power costs. The first few hours of a shift might cover the cost of their labor power but they keep working and everything produced after that point is surplus labor meaning unpaid work that becomes surplus value for the capitalist.

A good example is a Tesla factory worker. Tesla invests money into factories, equipment and labor power. Workers build the cars but the price Tesla sells them for is far greater than what it cost to produce them including wages. That gap is surplus value extracted directly from the workers’ labor. The cycle then just repeats. The capitalist reinvests the profit, buys more labor power and means of production, and extracts even more surplus value. That is how capitalists do not just stay wealthy but continuously expand their wealth while workers remain dependent on selling their labor power just to survive.