This is Marx's first published work, where the capitalist mode of production was scientifically researched and attention was mainly focused on the analysis of the fundamental productive relationship of bourgeois society between wage labor and capital.

Marx criticizes bourgeois political economy, which considered capital not as a social relation, but as the sum of things used as means of production, and which itself elevates this economic category to eternity. Capital is a productive relation of bourgeois society and constitutes a historical category inherent to the capitalist formation.

In this work, Marx provided an analysis of wage labor and the laws that determine its level, examined the process of capital accumulation, demonstrated the diametrical opposition of the interests of wage labor and capital, and proved that the rapid increase of capital creates the conditions for the revolutionary transformation of society.

Still using the terminology of bourgeois political economy, Marx considers the basic attribute of the commodity to be labor power, the capacity contained within it to create value greater than the value of itself. Thus, Marx approached the solution to the problem of surplus value.