Karl Marx's critique of political economy often rests on turning the “naturalness” of capitalism into absurdity. He does this best while tackling what is central to our economic system: capital. Through the beginning parts of his magnum opus, (aptly called) Capital, Marx addresses capital by developing layers of compounding strangeness in the logic of capitalism. Marx starts from labor-power and use-value—what he views as the basis of a reasonable society—then shows how exchange-value and its fetishization diverges from this basis, and then how money diverges ever further, all to reach the ultimate diversion—the ultimate absurdity—of trading money for money.

To understand how capital is disconnected from labor-power and use-value, one has to understand how these concepts are distinguished in the first place. Marx defines use-value very simply as its utility. Use-value has a quantitative aspect (e.g. one coat can have half the utility, or use-value, as two coats) but is unique in its qualitative aspect (e.g. a coat keeps a person warm while a watch tells time). When a product is exchanged—therefore becoming a commodity—exchange-value is at work. Exchange-value is flatter than use-value in that it has no qualitative element; it is merely quantitative. One is tempted to think that exchange-value is simply equivalent to use-value, but this introduces a contradiction: there exist things that are very useful but are cheap or even free. For example, both food and air are indisputably necessary to living, but the former is relatively valuable in exchange while the latter is (generally) not—why? The difference between the two is that food requires a certain amount of labor to acquire, while air (generally) requires very little labor. Thus, the exchange-value of a commodity is derived from the amount of labor put into it. Though because workers have varying levels of skill or industriousness, it is more apt to use the average time of production, or as Marx puts it, “the labour time socially necessary for its production” (Marx, Chapter 1, Section 1). But conversely, one could imagine a good that requires a lot of labor to produce but is not useful. Marx addresses this contradiction too, recognizing that use-value actually does come into play to a certain extent: “If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value” (Marx, Chapter 1, Section 1). However, since exchange-value is only quantitative, the commodity's use-value must be flattened, abstracting the qualitative aspect into the quantitative. In total, Marx argues that the exchange-value of a commodity is the result of the amount of useful labor-time socially necessary for its production.

Marx identifies exchange-value as the aspect of commodities that begins to become absurd. He specifies that when society emphasizes the exchange-value of commodities, it actually abstracts the labor-time that went into those commodities and the use-values that those commodities possess, despite those aspects being the determinants of exchange-value in the first place. Marx conceptualizes how commodities are thought of as inherently valuable due to their exchange-values, rather than due to being useful products of labor-power; he classifies this phenomenon as part of “the Fetishism of commodities” (Marx, Chapter 1, Section 4). Marx mocks the mysticism attached to commodities; in one instance, he describes how, according to the masses, the commodified product changes “into something transcendent” (Marx, Chapter 1, Section 4).

It isn't fair to say that Marx dismisses exchange altogether. In a society with division of labor, exchange allows for individuals to have access to many qualities of commodities—the products of many qualities of labor. But this merit is complicated by the acquisition of money, which interrupts this process by failing to transform use-value in the hands of an individual, but instead, eliminating it (at least temporarily). The emphasis on exchange-value is epitomized by money, an object with zero use-value—thus zero useful labor in its production—only exchange-value. In this way, money is the ultimate abstraction of useful labor-power, and it is for this reason that Marx calls money an “absurd form” of comparing commodities (Marx, Chapter 1, Section 4).

In contemporary times, money's absurdity compounds. Marx mentions how coins of precious metals do have labor-power, if not useful labor-power, that substantiates their exchange-value: “The value, or in other words, the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iron” (Marx, Chapter 3, Section 1). This brings him to call such a coin a “money-commodity” (Marx, Chapter 3, Section 2). This is important to keep in mind, since this is now only true in a limited sense. If he were alive today, Marx would likely think much more critically about money. We are departing from coins made of precious metals and we have even ditched abstract systems like the gold standard; the predominant form of currency today is fiat money—money that is backed by nothing. Money is no longer like a commodity; it has exchange value only for its own sake.

The absurdity of money yet again compounds into the absurdity of capital. Marx explains, “If we abstract from the material substance of the circulation of commodities, that is, from the exchange of the various use-values, and consider only the economic forms produced by this process of circulation, we find its final result to be money: this final product of the circulation of commodities is the first form in which capital appears” (Marx, Chapter 4). What Marx is discussing is what he calls the “M-C-M′” loop: the exchange of money for commodities and then the exchange of those commodities for more money—in other words, “buying in order to sell” (Marx, Chapter 4). According to Marx, it isn't useful to view capital as a tangible thing, but rather, it's more useful to view capital as part of a social process. Part of the aforementioned process is the M-C-M′ loop, what he calls “the formula of capital” (Marx, Chapter 4). The M-C-M′ loop's counterpart, the “C-M-C′” loop, is the exchange of commodities for money and then the exchange of that money for other commodities—in other words, “selling in order to buy” (Marx, Chapter 4). Rather than using money as an intermediary for the purpose of obtaining different commodities and use-values, as C-M-C′ does, M-C-M′ uses commodities as an intermediary for the purpose of obtaining more money and exchange-value. In this way, the accumulation of money for money's sake is completely disconnected from use-value.

Not only does Marx present the accumulation of money being the aim of this process as nonsensical but also the process itself. The strangeness doesn't just lie in the fact that money begets more money, it also lies in the observation that, through reselling, the capitalist isn't producing any use-value. The money, the exchange-value, comes seemingly out of nowhere. Marx uses mythical language to create a gap between the material world and the abstract accumulation that the capitalist makes: “For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs” (Marx, Chapter 4). It is simply movement, not labor-power, that creates surplus-value. Marx identifies that the real value that the capitalist possesses is not money or commodities, but in having control of “the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude” (Marx, Chapter 4). Marx extends this logic to its limits to explain the otherwise mystical motivations of the capitalist. He proclaims, “Use-values must therefore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims at” (Marx, Chapter 4).

The absurdity of the capitalist mode of production is exacerbated by emphasizing the rationality of the capitalists. One might think that the nonsense of capital is also the nonsense of the capitalist, a role that Marx defines as “only capital personified” (Marx, Chapter 10, Section 1). And without a doubt, he presents the actions of the capitalist as absurd, as shown previously, but ultimately, he still describes the capitalist themself as a rational actor. Though Marx repeatedly spears them with smears of immorality, he also understands capitalists are still living under the same economic system as everyone else. Marx writes,

This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value, is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending augmentation of exchange-value, which the miser strives after, by seeking to save his money from circulation, is attained by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into circulation. (Marx, Chapter 4)

This is not to say that he is putting capitalists in a positive light (any reader can sense the antipathy that he felt towards this class). Rather, by highlighting what the purely self-interested do, Marx is able to illuminate the incentives of capitalism.

The apparent nonsense of exchanging money for money does make sense to the capitalist, and that is what is most absurd. The existence of a process completely removed from use-value, one that rewards the capitalist without the expenditure of labor-power, is terribly shocking; it makes sense why, in Capital, Marx put this phenomenon before—perhaps a more foundational concept—the exploitation of labor and the appropriation of surplus value. The absurdity of buying in order to sell exposes and epitomizes the irrationality of the capitalist mode of production.