Read the passage and answer the following question.

One of the founders of modern sociology, Karl Marx, was also a critic of modern capitalism. Marx understood capitalism as a system of commodity production, or production for the market, through the use of wage labour. As you have already learned, Marx wrote that all economic systems are also social systems. Each mode of production consists of particular relations of production, which in turn give rise to a specific class structure. He emphasised that the economy does not consist of things (goods circulating in the market), but is made up of relations between people who are connected to one another through the process of production. Under the capitalist mode of production, labour itself becomes a commodity, because workers must sell their labour power in the market to earn a wage. This gives rise to two basic classes - capitalists, who own the means of production (such as the factories), and workers, who sell their labour to the capitalists. The capitalist class is able to profit from this system by paying the workers less than the value of what they actually produce, and so extracting surplus value from their labour. Marx's theory of capitalist economy and society provided the inspiration for numerous theories and debates about the nature of capitalism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Who owns the profit in capitalism?

Capitalist class

The correct answer is ☀ Capitalist class.

In a capitalist economy, the profit is owned by the capitalist class. This is because the capitalists are the ones who own the means of production, such as the factories and machines. They are also the ones who hire the workers and pay them wages. The workers produce the goods and services that are sold in the market, and the capitalists keep the profits from these sales.

The working class does not own the profit, because they do not own the means of production. They only own their own labor power, which they sell to the capitalists in exchange for wages. The managerial class does not own the profit either, because they are simply hired by the capitalists to manage the production process. The consumers also do not own the profit, because they are simply the ones who buy the goods and services that are produced.