Since its inception, capitalism and its main principles have been under scrutiny, criticism, and attack. Among the most serious attacks are those that came from socialist and communist philosophers such as Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Some Islamic thinkers provided criticism from a different perspective.

But it was Marx who provided one of the most thorough criticisms of the basic principles of capitalism. Marx, in his account of capitalism, focused on the definition of “value” and thought to have found a major and fundamental defect in the theory of capitalism. Marx redefined the “value” and used his own definition of “value” to attack the core ideas of capitalism. Marx defined value as “the amount of labor invested in the process of producing a product.” He claims that whatever benefit a product has is a direct result of the labor invested by a laborer. This applies to products of lands made by farmers as well as products of industry made by workers. Marx defined the “surplus value” to be the amount of labor (or its monetary equivalent) retained by the capitalist after the consumption of the product. This surplus value, Marx maintains, is a direct theft of the labor of workers by the ones who own the means of production (the land or factory). Marx predicted that the surplus value will result in a massive accumulation of wealth in the hands of the owners of the means of production at the expense of those who exert their labors to produce the value in the first place. Eventually, this process should lead to a clash between the class of laborers who produce the value and the class of capitalists who retain the value to themselves32.

The main contribution of Marx is the fact that he directed his criticism to the core principles of capitalism, namely, the value and the price of goods. Marx’s analysis is inherently flawed. His major error is that he based his discussion and analysis on his own definition of the value. The “surplus value” concept is at once the point of strength and the point of weakness in Marx’s theory of anti-capitalism; in this respect it resembles the Achilles’ heel. It is sufficient to point out that the farmer may cultivate and farm two pieces of adjacent lands with the same type of crops, using the same tools, and still receive two different results for his products. Obviously, the value of the products, which may be different in quantity and quality, cannot be equal to the labor of the farmer which is the same in both cases. Many examples of the like can be cited to show the inaccuracy and flaw of the surplus value concept.