Quiz: Capital, Volume I

15 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. What enters into the value of labour-power, unlike that of other commodities?

   The worker’s skill alone The rate of profit The price of gold A historical and moral element
2. 2. Which ancient thinker does Marx credit with first analysing the form of value?

   Aristotle Plato Xenophon Heraclitus
3. 3. How does Marx describe capital at the opening of “The Working Day”?

   Accumulated savings, set aside by the capitalist through his own abstinence Dead labour that, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour The reward for the risk the capitalist runs in advancing his money A neutral instrument of production that serves whoever happens to own it
4. 4. Whom does Marx quote at the start of the chapter on machinery as doubting that inventions have lightened anyone’s toil?

   Thomas Robert Malthus John Stuart Mill Jean-Baptiste Say Charles Babbage
5. 5. With which phrase does Marx end chapter 5, setting the problem of how surplus-value can arise from exchange of equivalents?

   “Eureka, I have found it!” “Hic Rhodus, hic salta!” “Caveat emptor, caveat venditor” “Quod erat demonstrandum”
6. 6. What does accumulation of wealth at one pole mean at the opposite pole, according to Marx?

   A gradual rise in the living standards of all classes as the new wealth slowly spreads downward Accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality and mental degradation Accumulation of idleness, vice and luxury among the servants of the rich Accumulation of savings, comfort and education among the better-paid workers of the great towns
7. 7. Into how many volumes did Marx plan to divide Capital at the time of the first German edition of 1867?

   Two Six Three One
8. 8. What happened to Mary Anne Walkley, as reported in the London papers in June 1863?

   She founded a trade union She led a strike of the West End dressmakers for shorter hours The 20-year-old milliner died “from simple over-work” She was appointed the first woman factory inspector in London
9. 9. Which equation does Marx use to analyse the elementary form of value?

   1 hour = 1 shilling 20 yards of linen = 1 coat 1 quarter of corn = 1 ounce of gold 10 lb. of tea = 1 ton of iron
10. 10. Who translated Capital, Volume I, into English, according to Engels’s 1886 preface?

    Ernest Untermann (with Eleanor Marx) Eleanor Marx alone Daniel De Leon (with Lucien Sanial) Samuel Moore (with Edward Aveling)
11. 11. What did the old Statutes of Labourers (such as those of 1496 and 1562) try to do?

    Abolish the labour of young children in the towns Shorten the working day for women and children Fix a minimum wage for all artificers Prolong the working day by law
12. 12. What sounds in the chapter on the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation?

    The alarm of a general crisis, after which capital revives stronger The trumpet of a new war between the industrial nations for markets The bell of a new church, calling the workers to a new religion of labour and thrift The knell of capitalist private property: the expropriators are expropriated
13. 13. What does Marx call force in the history of primitive accumulation?

    A purely political matter, foreign to the economic sphere proper The foundation of all value and the source of property “The midwife of every old society” The enemy of progress, which only peaceful trade advances
14. 14. What must be done to Hegel’s dialectic, according to the 1873 afterword?

    It must be purged of its materialism and brought back to Kant’s critical idealism It must be turned right side up to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell It must be kept in its Hegelian form and applied directly to political economy It must be discarded altogether, since its mystical form makes it worthless to empirical science
15. 15. What does Marx call “Moses and the prophets” for the capitalist?

    “Honesty is the best policy” “Accumulate, accumulate!” “Buy cheap and sell dear!” “Laissez faire”