Parts I through VII (Chapters 1 - 25) constitute Marx's presentation of his theory of the antagonistic class relationships of capitalism. His organization of that presentation involves going from the most fundamental but also most abstract moments of his theory to more and more concrete ones (more concrete in the sense of having more determinations).
When we examined the structure of Part VIII we saw that the material is organized in such a manner as to highlight the creation of the classes as the central issue in primitive accumulation. The material is historical, illustrated with graphic descriptions of real moments and processes in history. When we examine the structure of Part I we find no such concreteness. We find instead an analysis of value and money mostly stripped of any such historical detail. The organization of the material is due to Marx deciding to take Hegel's Science of Logic as a model for his own presentation. In that work Hegel-the-philosopher begins with the most abstract thing he can think of (being) and works his way towards a theory of the very concrete cosmos. Marx-the-social analyst begins with the "commodity," that he calls the most elementary form of wealth in capitalism, analyses it, and argues that its most essential ingredient is abstract human labor that he calls the "substance of value." This becomes the real point of departure for his presentation of his theory. The rest of Chapter One elaborates an analysis not only of the "substance" of value, but also of its "measure" and its "form," ending with the "money form" of value.
Whereas in Chapter 1 Marx's analysis abstracts from the human actors
involved in exchange, and is thus subject to his critique of fetishism
enunciated at the end of that chapter, in this second chapter he points
out that commodities do not
"bring themselves to market" but are but objects subject to the will of their
owners. This is the first step into resituating commodities as moments of
human social relationships.
In Chapter 3, therefore, Marx analyses money within the context of human
exchange; how it is used to facilitate buying and selling, as a
measure of value and standard of price, and so on. The material in this chapter
deals with the usual aspects of money touched on in mainstream economics
textbooks, but does so through the use of Marx's theory of value and
money as embodying the substance and the form of value, i.e., the
substance and form of the antagonistic class relations of capital.