The work reviewed is being published at a time that is characterized by the growing dominion of capitalist relationships of production, the multiplication of paid work, the widespread application of science in the production process, the centralization of the property of production means, the huge expansion of services, the imposing expansion of the global market, and the strength with which economic crises occur. In his compendium, Moro attempts three things in function of the context described: identifying and clarifying some fundamental categories to interpret the social economic scenario; confronting with reality the categories contained in Das Kapital; and divulging central aspects of the fundamental work of Karl Marx.

The materialist conception of history identified the economic laws present in society, which allow explaining the joint functioning of the economy on which social evolution is based. The development of contradictions in the operation of the system generates the possibilities of social transformation, which demand the active intervention of the social subject, class and class party to make it effective.

Men have reproduced materially, taking advantage and socially transforming materials from nature, and establishing relationships between dominating and dominated classes. The first are the proprietors of the production means, they exercise economic exploitation and public dominion. The production relationships make up the structure of society, key element to understand the causes of historical-social phenomena.

The superstructure is integrated by legal relationships, political relationships and representations of conscience (ideologies, and artistic and cultural representations). The most important element of the superstructure is the State. The operation areas of the superstructure are determined by the production relationships, where the dominating class exerts great influence. Structure and superstructure have a dialectic relationship; they both interact one over the other, but the dominating element is given by the social relationships of production. The concourse of the State is not neutral, but rather is oriented at conserving the dominating production relationships through coercive and non-coercive means; in capitalism, its participation in the development of capital has been notorious, establishing laws, granting subsidies, controlling salaries, saving companies in need, and performing social support activities, etc.

The immense majority of the fruits of work in the current society take the shape of goods; that is, they are destined to sales. Goods have a value of use, given by their profit and value, determined by the work time socially needed for their production. In capitalism there is a tendency to reduce the value of goods, which has allowed access to appliances and cars by workers in the cities of the system. The contraction of the value of goods obeys to the development of the production means and methods.

Money is a very specific good, resulting from the social relationships of production and exchange; it is a means to measure the value of goods and for the exchange of goods. Money is the general equivalent in the world of goods. With the development of production and the multiplication of the purchase and sales operations of goods, money tends to be dematerialized from any physical representation.

Prices tend to coincide with the value; it is a trend because the capitalist seller always attempts to transfer the goods at high prices, taking advantage of situations of monopoly or exclusivity (brands, patents, marketing strategies, communication techniques, control of essential services such as water, electricity, gas, housing) in order to obtain over-profit, face the tendency towards a decrease in the value of goods, a drop in profit rates and crises. Given the value produced, the variations in prices only imply a redistribution of the value among social classes or capitalists. The prices of the monopoly have affected the purchasing power of wage earners and of non-monopolistic industrial sectors.

The value of goods in capitalism is equal to constant capital, variable capital and capital gain, indicate that the workday is divided into two parts: necessary work (where the worker generates a value equivalent to his means for subsistence) and exceeding work (where the worker generates capital gain). The rate of capital gain signals the existing relationship between capital gain produced and variable capital, and the mass of capital gain is equal to the product of the capital gain rate and the capital variable. The process of capital accumulation has its source of financing in capital gain. Capitalists obtain higher amounts of it through an increase in the workday, with the reduction of the work necessary, and establishing the wage below the value of the workforce.

The capital recognizes its scope of existence in the sphere of production and in the sphere of circulation; in the first the value is generated, while in the second, it is fulfilled. Between both there is a contradiction which generates the cyclic crises of capitalism. The tendency to increase the productive workforce, which generates an enormous mass of goods, is fractioned with the limited demand in the market, primarily of wage earners. The limit does not indicate that the consumption needs of the population are satisfied, but rather that the ability to consume is restricted by the level of salaries and the contraction of the wage mass generated by the introduction of technical innovations. The excess in investment is manifested as a super-production of goods that cannot be subdued by any means, including marketing and electronic commerce. The introduction of technical innovations to the production process and the increase in work intensity reduce the number of workers employed and the capital gain mass remains unaltered in the case that the decrease in variable capital is compensated by the increase in the capital gain rate; nevertheless, in the contrary case, the capital gain mass and the profit rate decrease (the relationship between capital gain and total capital invested).

The value of the workforce is reduced with the contraction in work time that is required to produce the goods relevant to worker consumption. Capitalism develops productive workforce to reduce the necessary and increase the excess. The productive workforce rises through cooperation (employment of many men in the work process linked by a plan); the same improves the economy in the use of production means and drives workers to imitation. Cooperation demands the development of activities of control, direction and coordination of the work process. The productive workforce also prospers from the assembly line (the division of artisanal trades into the different partial operations that compose it), since it reduces dead times and imposes to each of the workers the use of only the worktime necessary, since the one each carries out begins when someone else’s concludes. The development of the assembly line increases the social division of labor, subdividing the branch of production into new assemblies. The productive workforce also progresses with the use of machines. These are not used to decrease the work time, the effort and tiredness of workers, but rather to increase the capital gain and market quota with the reduction in the value of goods. The use of machines in the work process allows large-scale production, the development of large industry, liberating the production from the limitations of human muscles, and increasing the intensity of the workday. In turn, large industry generates the development of communication media and transport, promotes the global market, the progress of the application of natural sciences in production processes, and the inevitable unfolding of cooperative work. Moro states, following the author of Das Kapital, that the effects generated by the introduction of machines into the working class, the incorporation of children and women workforce into the labor process, the wage decrease, the increase of child mortality, the lengthening of the workday, the violent consumption of the workforce, the subordination of the worker to the machine, unemployment, and wage decrease. The development of a system of machines implies the development of vigilance work and the division of workers into helpers and guards. Taking up again Marx and Lenin, Moro specifies other social sequels generated by the introduction of machines, the location of workers in sectors that do not produce capital gain, the saturation of the internal market, the need for external markets, the crises, the division of the world into dominating and subordinate countries (with the latter being used to export goods and capitals, and to offer prime materials and inexpensive workforce for the first), the dispute over the international economic scope, the increase in international commerce, the incorporation of new sectors, and geographical scopes to capitalism, migration and proletarization. The productive capacity of work has also been broadened with the use of an assembly line and the Ford method for work, and with the use of automatic machines and the Toyota work method. The conditions of production are those of reproduction. Economic reproduction implies those of the capitalist relationships of production, a divorce between the production means and the workforce; the generation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage earners on the other, as well as wealth generation by one part and poverty by the other.