Many of the preceding chapters analyzed the relations of dominance and subjection that organize the process of production. A recognition of these provides an indispensible framework for understanding the operation of markets. For these same dominance-subjection relations can be shown to translate into simultaneous deprivation and waste, and this, in turn, implies that the neoclassical notion of Pareto optimality contradicts the very essence of production in a class society.

Yet, in Marx's words, these essential social relations characteristically do not “carry written on their forehead” what they are. In Asiatic production systems, in the slave states of antiquity or in feudal societies, the dominance-subjection relations at the core of the production process are readily apparent; under capitalism, they sink beneath the surface. Production turns into a social hieroglyph; only the exchange relations observed in the market seem to organize social interaction. Yet once the essence of production becomes unfathomable, Pareto optimality – the principle that opportunities for social improvement cease at the point where you cannot give more to Peter without taking from Paul – offers itself convincingly as a reasonable scientific idealization of a well-working economic system.

The social relations at the core of capitalist production are hidden from mainstream economic theory by a triple veil.