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Capitalist crisis and the class struggle In Capital Volume Three, chapter thirteen, Karl Marx distilled the essence of a commodity to its fundamental components. He found that a commodity was made up of three parts; Capital (c). This includes everything used in the means of production, plant, machinery, raw materials, intellectual property. Everything a worker requires to produce a product. Wages (v). This is to pay for the ability to work but not work put in as we’ll see. Surplus Value (s). This is the profit or value obtained from utilising labour power (v) to work the means of production (c). From this we can see that Commodity = c+v+s. There are two formulae we can draw on to show the rate of exploitation of labour and also the rate of profit. Rate of Surplus Value (s/v) = % | Rate of Profit (s/c+v) = % This was one of the elements that Marx would draw together to expose the laws that underpin modern capitalism and makes it unique as an economic system. Zentralbiblio...

Oil - 'Black gold'. Economies have been made and broken by it and wars fought over it. It is essential in many products ranging from energy, transport, plastics to fertilisers. This black gold is so fundamental to a modern economy that it can also play a crucial role in geopolitical rivalries. Oil: The Commodity Petrol, diesel and other fuels take up the bulk of the end product of oil but with better energy efficiency they are in relative decline. Petrochemical products such as plastics account for a growing part of the end use for oil. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has reported : "Petrochemicals are set to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030, and nearly half the growth to 2050, adding nearly 7 million barrels of oil a day by then. They are also poised to consume an additional 56 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas by 2030, and 83 bcm by 2050." Oil: The Economics of 'black gold' Supply and demand...