ABSTRACT
Capitalism is the organization of production around the systematic extraction of value from labor. Unlike other economic systems it does so through market exchange rather than overt coercion and it relies upon the illusion of free and equal exchange. In the exchange between labor and capital, labor power becomes a property form that is exchanged for a wage. As a Marxian legal theorist Pashukanis notes, social relations of production “assume a reified form in that the products of labor are related to each other as values” (Pashukanis [1929] 1987: 111). In the exchange of values—wage for labor—labor power is not fully compensated and the uncompensated part is captured by capital as profit.
