Eventually creating the school of thought that is now known as Marxism, many theories and ideas espoused by Marx still have a firm influence in sociology (Marx and McLellan, 2000). .
Review of Literature.
Published in 1867, Capital, Volume I serves as the beginning of a trilogy of works that attempts to analyze capitalism through an economic, political, and social lens (Marx and McLellan, 2000). In the first volume, Marx explains capitalism from a sociological perspective. Since capitalism was coming into play during Marx's lifetime, he made it his mission to analyze how this particular economic outlook effects society. Capitalism is "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market" (Hall, 2001, pg. 13) In this work, Marx focuses on the structure of capitalism and how it effects labor, and in turn, class systems. .
In this first volume, Marx breaks down how a capitalist society focuses on commodities. According to Marx, a commodity is "an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfied human needs of whatever kind" (Marx, 1965, pg. 125). A commodity the way Marx sees it can be both a physical object, and something that is not tangible, such as physical labor. Commodities are things that, whether or not people need them, they want them, and they are willing to pay money in exchange for these commodities. Essentially, capitalism as a whole revolves around the exchange of money for commodities.
Marx further expounds in this work that, although commodities themselves vary wildly, the only way to put a price on them is to calculate the labor used during the production of said commodity (Marx, 1965). This is known as Marx's labor theory of value, and it is the basis for which most, but not all, commodities are priced.