# Reading Marx's 'Capital':  Tips, Questions, Theory, Support and Bookclub Bunfight...



## Riklet (Mar 21, 2012)

I've been following the 'urban sectarianism' thread and one of the ideas which came up (credit to Fozzie Bear due) was the idea of starting a thread about Capital, to act both as a 'reading group' and a place for advice and discussion. Feel free to rename the title if appropriate!

I guess primarily this is aimed at those those trying to read Capital (particularly vol. 1) for the first time, those who tried n gave up, those who are interested and of course those who have read it and can provide indispensable advice. In lots of ways this is there already in various other threads, but maybe bringing them together a bit would be no bad thing.

This is U75 so there is no point in trying to say "no buns" but also it'd be a shame for people trying/struggling reading Capital to be unable to make much use of this thread (it's stuck in my mind recently how many people apparently get 'put off' posting here and whatnot). Then again, this _is_ U75, and people do say Capital gets quite exciting at points


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## butchersapron (Mar 21, 2012)

Good luck, will help where i can - but getting to grips with it yourself is the best way to make it count. More people the better. So sign up folks.


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## Riklet (Mar 21, 2012)

As you might guess I am currently reading Capital Vol. 1 (on kindle so bit easier to cart about!), and it's going a bit better this time.  I gave it a go last year but Chapter 1 claimed yet another victim as I didn't get too far.  Perhaps it's my life/mindset currently, or maybe stuff sunk in a bit anyway, but David Harvey's video classes combined with a look at Wages, Price and Profit mean i'm pretty keen to stick the first three chapters out.

There was/is some great advice on the Factionalism/Sectarianism thread here about skipping forward to chapter 4 instead of giving up, so I have that at the back of my mind as an option, in terms of reading chapters 1-3 properly later on...

Things I have found useful:

Wages, Price and Profit
The ReadingCapital video classes with David Harvey on Youtube.


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## JimW (Mar 21, 2012)

Cheers for starting this. I got through the first three chapters late last year, watching the Harvey vids too. Put it down as took on a long book translation that was/is doing my head in a bit, but nearly done with that and will be back in the saddle. Found I was getting a lot of insights but would not claim to have grasped anything in full. From reading various advice, not letting that put me off.


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## starfish (Mar 21, 2012)

.


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## JimW (Mar 21, 2012)

Would have thought son of a peer, public school-boy and Cambridge grad Tristram MP would have understood all about having other people pay your way through life. Probably less about writing anything worthwhile or of political value as a result, though.

ETA: response to a deleted post, if anyone's wondering


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## danny la rouge (Mar 21, 2012)

Good stuff.


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## Fozzie Bear (Mar 21, 2012)

Thanks for starting this Riklet!

I got vol 1 at the weekend and have made a start on it. I think one of the mistakes I made last time was to try and read the huge introduction and the prefaces, after which my enthusiasm had dried up a bit. I just dived in to the meat of it this time.

I've enjoyed the stuff about exchange value vs use value so far. The book is at home and I have jotted down some questions that I'll try and post up when I get a minute.


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## Smokeandsteam (Mar 21, 2012)

Count me in. I've recently finished the book (along with the Harvey book and lectures). 

I'd really welcome engagement in discussion on the key themes, ideas, questions and rich sources he uses.

Thanks for starting this Riklet


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## Pickman's model (Mar 21, 2012)

Yeh well done riklet, it's something i've put off for years reading capital


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## magneze (Mar 21, 2012)

I've now read the first three chapters along with Harvey's companion to them. I've also watched his first lecture, but not two and three which deal with chapters 1-3 directly.

Chapter 1 is definitely the hardest so far. The style of writing is almost impenetrable on one reading in many places. However, much of it really seemed to be reiterating the ideas and connections around commodities and values. I don't think the concepts are as complex as the chapter makes them appear. Chapters 2 & 3 are much better covering why money exists and exchange.


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## danny la rouge (Mar 22, 2012)

magneze said:


> I've now read the first three chapters along with Harvey's companion to them. I've also watched his first lecture, but not two and three which deal with chapters 1-3 directly.
> 
> Chapter 1 is definitely the hardest so far. The style of writing is almost impenetrable on one reading in many places. However, much of it really seemed to be reiterating the ideas and connections around commodities and values. I don't think the concepts are as complex as the chapter makes them appear. Chapters 2 & 3 are much better covering why money exists and exchange.


You're right: the concepts aren't too complex.  There's a lot of boring material that does somewhat distract from the message in the first chapter, especially in the section on Exchange Value.


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## love detective (Mar 22, 2012)

while some of it is boring (and particularly in that section you mention of chapter 1), there's a lot of rich literary flourishes though in the chapter as a whole - this one below is a favorite of mine



> A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was.


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## magneze (Mar 22, 2012)

danny la rouge said:


> You're right: the concepts aren't too complex. There's a lot of boring material that does somewhat distract from the message in the first chapter, especially in the section on Exchange Value.


This is where the Harvey book really helps, because after reading the chapter I was thinking - hang on, it seems simple enough but why was it explained in such a complex way?


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## danny la rouge (Mar 22, 2012)

love detective said:


> while some of it is boring (and particularly in that section you mention of chapter 1), there's a lot of rich literary flourishes though in the chapter as a whole - this one below is a favorite of mine


Indeed.  Furthermore, the very thing that might put beginners off - its density and complexity - is actually often what rewards re-reading.  There is a lot of stuff that comes in from not just economics, but literature, history, art, and other cultural sources, references and analogies.  Most of which I probably still miss, not knowing many of the allusions.


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## danny la rouge (Mar 22, 2012)

magneze said:


> This is where the Harvey book really helps, because after reading the chapter I was thinking - hang on, it seems simple enough but why was it explained in such a complex way?


Yes, I have Harvey's book, but haven't read it all.  I do remember thinking that I wished there had been something like that when I first attempted Capital.  Similarly, I haven't watched all of the videos, but they also seem really good.  In my youth, I had to make do with various Marxist-Leninist relatives!


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## Fozzie Bear (Mar 22, 2012)

love detective said:


> while some of it is boring (and particularly in that section you mention of chapter 1), there's a lot of rich literary flourishes though in the chapter as a whole - this one below is a favorite of mine


 
Thanks for pointing this out (and your comments about chapters1-3 in the other thread) - it has helped me persevere. 

I keep thinking about linen and coats. 

Looks like Harvey has some of his lectures downloadable as mp3s now too. Good for the commute.


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## Athos (Mar 22, 2012)

There was one here, recently.  But, sadly, it fizzled out.

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/capital-v1-reading-group-chap-1-2.277427/


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 22, 2012)

Athos said:


> There was one here, recently. But, sadly, it fizzled out.
> 
> http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/capital-v1-reading-group-chap-1-2.277427/


 
Attempts at online reading groups tend to do that I think. It is difficult to synchronise people's reading so that conversation can take place in a structured way; all it takes is a busy week for one participant, and they are no longer on the same chapter as everyone else. This results in a high dropout rate, and the thread disappears into the ether.

An idea might be to set up a message board that has a sub-forum for each chapter/section of the book. That way, anyone can pop in at any time to talk with people about the particular bit of the book they happen to be at.

eta: I don't know if the mods would be interested in setting up a sub-forum as a capital reading group, but this idea seems to pop up quite regularly so maybe it's something we could request?


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## love detective (Mar 22, 2012)

yep - real life capital reading groups are much more fun


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 22, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> I don't know if the mods would be interested in setting up a sub-forum as a capital reading group, but this idea seems to pop up quite regularly so maybe it's something we could request?


 
Failing that, it takes less than 5 minutes to set something like that up ourselves.


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## Smokeandsteam (Mar 22, 2012)

danny la rouge said:


> Indeed.  Furthermore, the very thing that might put beginners off - its density and complexity - is actually often what rewards re-reading.  There is a lot of stuff that comes in from not just economics, but literature, history, art, and other cultural sources, references and analogies.  Most of which I probably still miss, not knowing many of the allusions.



Yes, reading the Harvey book switched me on to the richness of the text that Marx uses, alludes to and critiques. The more you read Capital the more you begin to work out where some off the stuff originates from. It's brilliant stuff.


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## Smokeandsteam (Mar 22, 2012)

Athos said:


> There was one here, recently.  But, sadly, it fizzled out.
> 
> http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/capital-v1-reading-group-chap-1-2.277427/



Died on its arse more like! Let's hope this one lasts a bit longer.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 22, 2012)

Smokeandsteam said:


> Died on its arse more like! Let's hope this one lasts a bit longer.


 
I hope so too. Here is my suggestion as to how to make it work. I'll put in a request to the powers-that-be for either a new sub-forum to be added here, or a sticky that links to our own board. At least then there is some degree of permanence so that the group has a better chance of this succeeding this time round.


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## Smokeandsteam (Mar 22, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> I hope so too. Here is my suggestion as to how to make it work. I'll put in a request to the powers-that-be for either a new sub-forum to be added here, or a sticky that links to our own board. At least then there is some degree of permanence so that the group has a better chance of this succeeding this time round.



I think that's a good idea. Then people can post when they've got time. I liked that message board thing you designed btw!


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 22, 2012)

Smokeandsteam said:


> I think that's a good idea. Then people can post when they've got time. I liked that message board thing you designed btw!


 
Thanks. Although I didn't so much design it as type 'free message boards' into google and sign up for the first thing that popped up.


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## Fozzie Bear (Mar 23, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> Thanks. Although I didn't so much design it as type 'free message boards' into google and sign up for the first thing that popped up.


 
Could we not just start a few new threads in this forum? One per chapter?

edit - or a sub-forum, yeah. I'd prefer to keep stuff here, as it will give me a kick up the arse to keep reading it when I'm on here talking bollocks about music instead.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 23, 2012)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Could we not just start a few new threads in this forum? One per chapter?
> 
> edit - or a sub-forum, yeah. I'd prefer to keep stuff here, as it will give me a kick up the arse to keep reading it when I'm on here talking bollocks about music instead.


 
Well that was kind of what was tried before, but even if it gets off its feet this time, the result will be lots of threads in separate places. A way round this could be to have a 'meta thread' that links to all other threads in an organised manner. That way, at least there is a common stop-off point for people wanting to get involved - new participants can then get immediate access to any conversations that have taken place previously.


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## danny la rouge (Mar 23, 2012)

How about people post comments and/or questions on what they've read and where they're up to, and people respond if they have anything to say on that point?  

I've read volume one several times, and I'm happy to chip in if I can add anything helpful.  Not that I'm claiming to be an authority.


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## Fozzie Bear (Mar 23, 2012)

I'm part way through Chapter One, having started reading it on Monday. So far I have found the explanations of exchange value and use value to be very clear but some of the detail is a bit bewildering. I have listened to most of Harvey's introduction and that helped as did the comments here.

I've not got the book and my notes here, so this will have to be from memory, but here goes:

Initially I kept thinking of exceptions to what he was saying (for example mp3s being commodities not being composed of natural materials or indeed "matter") but resolved not to do that and to keep things simple and ride it out. The consensus here seems to be that the time to critically engage with Chapter 1 is when you've finished the book?

I can almost see how commodities are composed only of labour (in terms of exchange value) but psychologically there's a nagging thought in my head about the raw materials? Surely they have a bearing on the exchange value as much as the labour does?

I also need to reread the stuff about the twofold nature of labour.

He seems to introduce "value" as a third category in addition to exchange value and use value?


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## magneze (Mar 23, 2012)

I see what you mean about physical materials, but how I've looked as it is that the overwhelming majority of raw materials are processed in some way.

Take a table. The raw material is wood which comes from a tree. Unless the tree is something that you already have then you already talking about someone else's labour to cut it down. So, unless you actually have the raw materials yourself the cost of the tree is still related to the labour time of the person who cuts it down and sells it to you.

For an MP3 the exchange value would be based upon the artists monetary needs which includes the instruments, software and hardware to create the MP3 and the music. All of those items can be brought back to very basic raw materials, but the relative cost of those raw materials is actually very small compared to the layers and layers of processing that happens at every level until you get to the musician playing a guitar into a computer.

I hope that makes sense! This is the first time I've tried to explain one of the concepts from chapter 1.


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## danny la rouge (Mar 23, 2012)

Fozzie Bear said:


> He seems to introduce "value" as a third category in addition to exchange value and use value?


Yes, as I understand it, the three things are separate concepts, although related.  Commodities have both a use-value and an exchange-value.  In order to realize the exchange value of a commodity, you usually have to hand it over to someone else who will then be able to realize its use-value.  You _can_ have access to the exchange-value while still having access to the use-value, but only through credit deals and part-ownership deals, for example.  What Marx is interested in is the relationship between the two concepts.  He wants to see what it is that commodities have in common, and says that this is the socially necessary labour time that went into production.  And this is where value comes in.  Value is, at first at least, another way of saying socially necessary labour time.


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## magneze (Mar 23, 2012)

I find the relations between the three confusing. On their own they pretty much make sense, but the relations between them are still somewhat fuzzy for me.


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## butchersapron (Mar 23, 2012)

Fozzie Bear said:


> I'm part way through Chapter One, having started reading it on Monday. So far I have found the explanations of exchange value and use value to be very clear but some of the detail is a bit bewildering. I have listened to most of Harvey's introduction and that helped as did the comments here.
> 
> I've not got the book and my notes here, so this will have to be from memory, but here goes:
> 
> ...


Interesting questions as they all sort of lead into or are connected with each other in fundamental ways - but this will all come together later...

On commodities as only being material things - if you look at them as temporary expressions of a series of social relations (some material, some affective services) then this doesn't need to hold. Marx often later uses commodity-_form_ to indicate that the commodity is only one moment in a cycle or process - at one point money, another as commodity and so on.

The raw materials have their own value which derives from the prior labour necessary to produce them which is then expended (wholly or partially over time) in the production of the new commodity. It passes into the new commodity.

Value is basically the material form of abstract labour - that is, the thing common to all commodities that then allows them to exchange, and exchange-value is the form of its expression. This is really important later on as this forms the basis of money, money is the only possible expression of value. Again, all this hooks up with each before too long. Treat it as exchange-value _for now_ is what i would suggest.


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## Fozzie Bear (Mar 23, 2012)

Magneze - yeah that makes sense and I think he does mention that the part of the reason of the exchange value of diamonds is that it is a right old pig to mine them, so more labour needed to produce a diamond ring than a non-diamond one.



danny la rouge said:


> Yes, as I understand it, the three things are separate concepts, although related. Commodities have both a use-value and an exchange-value. In order to realize the exchange value of a commodity, you usually have to hand it over to someone else who will then be able to realize its use-value. You _can_ have access to the exchange-value while still having access to the use-value, but only through credit deals and part-ownership deals, for example. What Marx is interested in is the relationship between the two concepts. He wants to see what it is that commodities have in common, and says that this is the socially necessary labour time that went into production. And this is where value comes in. Value is, at first at least, another way of saying socially necessary labour time.


 
Ok (and thank you!), but it seems that exchange value is wholly dependent on socially necessary labour time as well, so what's the difference between "value" and "exchange value"?

ETA - thanks Butchers, that's great.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 23, 2012)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Initially I kept thinking of exceptions to what he was saying (for example mp3s being commodities not being composed of natural materials or indeed "matter") but resolved not to do that and to keep things simple and ride it out. The consensus here seems to be that the time to critically engage with Chapter 1 is when you've finished the book?
> 
> I can almost see how commodities are composed only of labour (in terms of exchange value) but psychologically there's a nagging thought in my head about the raw materials? Surely they have a bearing on the exchange value as much as the labour does?


 
A relevant section addressing that issue I think is this;



> The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.[13] Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother.
> 
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S2


I notice that Marx is using the terms 'use-value' and 'useful labour', and I get the feeling this is important somehow because of the distinction he makes elsewhere between use-value/concrete-labour, and value/abstract-labour. Also, note that he associates 'wealth' as being specifically to do with use-values and not 'price' or 'cost'. In short, I get the impression that there is a lot in here that only makes sense when you pay attention to precise definitions of words.


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## love detective (Mar 23, 2012)

yep that's the thing about the first three chapters - there's a lot of heavily laden concepts that are packed into just a simple word or meaning of the word, and even then there's not much explanation as to why this is the case, they are just stated as fact a priori - these concepts all get unfolded and opened up throughout the rest of the book, which is why a reading of those chapters again once you've finished will be a totally different experience to a reading of them at the beginning

it's a good quote IWNW to think about the 'unpacking' of a commodity in relation to value - butchers has already mentioned it above, if you just think about regressing all the way back through all the things that go into a finished commodity, eventually all of it can be reduced to labour (and of course that which is provided by nature if you're looking at it from a use-value perspective)


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> if you just think about regressing all the way back through all the things that go into a finished commodity, eventually all of it can be reduced to labour


 
That's true, even if you take something 100% provided by nature such as a wild fruit, it takes labour to pick that fruit off the tree before you eat it. There is literally nothing useful that does not require labour to be expended.


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## love detective (Mar 23, 2012)

some things are (air for example - well at the moment anyway)


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## love detective (Mar 23, 2012)

In Marx's words from chapter 1



> A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.


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## revol68 (Mar 23, 2012)

On the issue of commodities having to be material, Mandel in the intro to Vol 2 makes the claim that services such as prostitution, teaching etc are not commodities because they aren't material because whilst they transform society they don't transform nature. A proper WTF moment.

Am I missing something or is that the actual argument and if so how on earth is Mandel taken seriously as a reader of Marx. I mean the whole point of Marx's work is to break down the artificial division between the society as immaterial and nature as material.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> some things are (air for example - well at the moment anyway)


 


> A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange.)[12] Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.
> 
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1


 
So, use-value + labour + exchange = value ?


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## danny la rouge (Mar 23, 2012)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Magneze - yeah that makes sense and I think he does mention that the part of the reason of the exchange value of diamonds is that it is a right old pig to mine them, so more labour needed to produce a diamond ring than a non-diamond one.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


OK, if I have a guitar it has a use-value to me (I want to use it to make music), but it also has an exchange value - I could sell it (or barter it).  If I sell it, I no longer have the use of it. (Unless I were to pawn it to release some of its exchange value until I can redeem it, or rent it back from the new owner when I need it, or some arrangement of that sort).  The value, however, is the thing that all commodities have in common.  My guitar and your computer.  They both have use-value, but different uses, and so different use-values.  They also both have exchange-value, but what the guitar and computer have in common is that they embody the labour that went into them.  That's what value is.

Stick with it, it has practical applications later.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 23, 2012)

revol68 said:


> On the issue of commodities having to be material, Mandel in the intro to Vol 2 makes the claim that services such as prostitution, teaching etc are not commodities because they aren't material because whilst they transform society they don't transform nature. A proper WTF moment.
> 
> Am I missing something or is that the actual argument and if so how on earth is Mandel taken seriously as a reader of Marx. I mean the whole point of Marx's work is to break down the artificial division between the society as immaterial and nature as material.


 
That seems a bit strange. I would say that all those services contain material components - prostitutes sell access to their physical body, teachers sell access to the produce of their brain. At some point _everything_ has a link to the material sphere.


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## love detective (Mar 23, 2012)

revol68 said:


> On the issue of commodities having to be material, Mandel in the intro to Vol 2 makes the claim that services such as prostitution, teaching etc are not commodities because they aren't material because whilst they transform society they don't transform nature. A proper WTF moment.
> 
> Am I missing something or is that the actual argument and if so how on earth is Mandel taken seriously as a reader of Marx. I mean the whole point of Marx's work is to break down the artificial division between the society as immaterial and nature as material.


really dont' want to derail this thread, but quickly i don't think Mandel actually makes that claim - what he does is point out that marx (in theories of surplus value) classifies these things (prostitution, teaching et..) as commodities when they are produced through wage labour for capital (i.e. an exchange of labour for capital) - and in volume 2 he points out that while marx doesn't contradict this position, he does focus on a correlation between 'use values 'embodied' in commodities through a labour process which acts upon and transforms nature' and the 'production of value and surplus value' which goes someway to suggesting what you say above - but there is no contradiction - human beings are nature, services like teaching and prostitution have a transformatory impact on humans


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## revol68 (Mar 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> really dont' want to derail this thread, but quickly i don't think Mandel actually makes that claim - what he does is point out that marx (in theories of surplus value) classifies these things (prostitution, teaching et..) as commodities when they are produced through wage labour for capital (i.e. an exchange of labour for capital) - and in volume 2 he points out that while marx doesn't contradict this position, he does focus on a correlation between 'use values 'embodied' in commodities through a labour process which acts upon and transforms nature' and the 'production of value and surplus value' which goes someway to suggesting what you say above - but there is no contradiction - human beings are nature, services like teaching and prostitution have a transformatory impact on humans


 
yeah but Mandel makes the case that there is a distinction between transforming "nature" and transforming "society" because transforming the former produces commodities but not in the case of the latter. Mandel is arguing that immaterial goods aren't commodities and this rests on this arbitrary distinction. I find that properly baffling, as nothing in Marx's previous writings suggests such a distinction indeed it would stand in direct contradiction with everything he'd ever written on materialism.


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## danny la rouge (Mar 23, 2012)

It's probably best if that stuff goes in a different thread (not that it isn't diverting).  This thread is to help people who are trying to get to grips with Capital for the first time.


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## love detective (Mar 23, 2012)

yep danny's right (and this is a good example of the difficulty of making online reading groups for capital in a wider/public forum actually work - they need to be strictly moderated/chaired even, so you get the right balance between allowing input from others who have read the thing which can help those getting to grips with it and clamping down on discussion/input which although connected could initially be harmful/toxic to the process taking place - as it jumps too much ahead )

revol, can take this to PM if you want but it's just a false/incorrect distinction imo - remove that and everything falls back into place


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## phildwyer (Mar 24, 2012)

Fozzie Bear said:


> I'm part way through Chapter One, having started reading it on Monday. So far I have found the explanations of exchange value and use value to be very clear but some of the detail is a bit bewildering. I have listened to most of Harvey's introduction and that helped as did the comments here.
> 
> I've not got the book and my notes here, so this will have to be from memory, but here goes:
> 
> ...


 
Marx's labor theory of value doesn't claim that value comes from the individual acts of labor that go into manufacturing an individual commodity. As you suggest, such a theory (like the one espoused by Smith and Ricardo) cannot explain the value of commodities that are not produced by labor.

Rather, value represents human labor-power considered in the abstract, or as a whole.  The concept of 'labor-power' must be differentiated from 'labor,' in short.

Marx's 'labor-power' is the philosophical descendent of German idealist categories like Feuerbach's 'species-being' and Hegel's 'Geist.'  It basically refers to human life itself.  It is human life itself--not any individual acts of labor--that is alienated in the form of capital.


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## phildwyer (Mar 24, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Value is basically the material form of abstract labour


 
It's the _symbolic _form of labor-power.  It's not necessarily material.


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## phildwyer (Mar 24, 2012)

Fozzie Bear said:


> what's the difference between "value" and "exchange value"?


 
Exchange-value is an expression of value.


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## magneze (Mar 24, 2012)

Just finished Harvey's class 2 video on chapters 1 and 2. I do highly recommend it after reading them yourself. Particularly the last 10 minutes where he talks about Marx's acceptance of Adam Smith's "hidden hand of the market" theory in order to demonstrate that it fails on it's own terms.


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## danny la rouge (Mar 25, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Exchange-value is an expression of value.


Except that from the point of view of someone reading chapter one for the first time it's the other way round: what's important is that Marx leads us from exchange-value to value.  Use-values are of different qualities, but exchange-values are of different quantities and _as exchange-values_, commodities "do not contain an atom of use-value".  The commesurability  he has been looking for therefore is not to be found in use-value but in exchange-value.  This commesurability is value.


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## phildwyer (Mar 26, 2012)

danny la rouge said:


> Except that from the point of view of someone reading chapter one for the first time it's the other way round: what's important is that Marx leads us from exchange-value to value. Use-values are of different qualities, but exchange-values are of different quantities and _as exchange-values_, commodities "do not contain an atom of use-value". The commesurability he has been looking for therefore is not to be found in use-value but in exchange-value. This commesurability is value.


 
Exactly.

Also useful for grasping the distinction: exchange-value is symbolic, while use-value is real.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 27, 2012)

danny la rouge said:


> Except that from the point of view of someone reading chapter one for the first time it's the other way round: what's important is that Marx leads us from exchange-value to value. Use-values are of different qualities, but exchange-values are of different quantities and _as exchange-values_, commodities "do not contain an atom of use-value". The commesurability he has been looking for therefore is not to be found in use-value but in exchange-value. This commesurability is value.


 
In section Iv of part A, Marx writes the following:



> When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility, and a value. It manifests itself as this twofold thing, that it is, as soon as its value assumes an independent form – viz., the form of exchange value. It never assumes this form when isolated, but only when placed in a value or exchange relation with another commodity of a different kind. When once we know this, such a mode of expression does no harm; it simply serves as an abbreviation.


 
My first understanding of what Marx is saying here, was that the introduction of the category of exchange-value was a literary device used to shephard the reader down a particular line of thought. Once the line of thought is followed through to its conclusion - the further introduction of the category of value - exchange-value gets dropped as a category.

But what you write above makes it more clear. So the commodity in isolation is a use-value (an object of utility to its possessor, with _qualitative_ particularities) and a value (an object of abstract labour-time, with _quantitative_ particularities); exchange-value only emerges as a category when two commodities are compared - the second commodity serving as an equivalent use-value in which the first's value is expressed?


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## danny la rouge (Mar 27, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> My first understanding of what Marx is saying here, was that the introduction of the category of exchange-value was a literary device used to shephard the reader down a particular line of thought. Once the line of thought is followed through to its conclusion - the further introduction of the category of value - exchange-value gets dropped as a category.
> 
> But what you write above makes it more clear. So the commodity in isolation is a use-value (an object of utility to its possessor, with _qualitative_ particularities) and a value (an object of abstract labour-time, with _quantitative_ particularities); exchange-value only emerges as a category when two commodities are compared - the second commodity serving as an equivalent use-value in which the first's value is expressed?


First of all, yes we see the existence of value by the action of exchange.  

However, use-value isn't dropped.  It's only put to one side while we find out what it is that commodities have in common.  (Use value is, on the other hand, what makes them different to each other).  Use-value in fact is very important.  At the end of section one (p131 in my edition), he writes:

"In order to be come a commodity, the product must be transferred to [another] person, for whom it serves as a use-value, through the medium of exchange".

Further:

"[...] nothing can be a value without being an object of utility.  If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value".

So what do we have at this point in the chapter?  He's taken us from use-value to exchange-value to value.  Use-value was put aside while he extrapolated value.  Now that we have a handle on value, he's taking us back to use-value.  It serves an important function: in order to become valuable, a thing has to be useful.  Use-value in that sense is what drives exchange: I don't want to acquire your commodity unless I can find a use for it.  Use-value is therefore the carrier of value, and since value is the same as socially necessary labour time, use-value is going to have an important relationship with the social necessities of capitalist society.  

The three concepts are going to do that from now on: oscillate in and out of the argument.   A commodity can't be split up into the three components of use-value, exchange-value and value.  But the relationship between the three or between two out of the three is going to continue to feature.  

I seem to have warbled on a bit, but I hope that's helped rather than hindered.


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## Fozzie Bear (Mar 27, 2012)

This is good stuff folks, thank you. I've not had the chance to read any more but will try and get back into it in the next few days.


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## magneze (Mar 27, 2012)

That's really helpful danny. Very well put.


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## phildwyer (Mar 28, 2012)

"Value" almost seems too narrow a term for what Marx is getting at here. 

If two things can be exchanged, they must have value.  But even more fundamental to the act of exchange is the ability to symbolize: to conceive the exchange-value of Commodity B as symbolically present within the physical body (the use-value) of Commodity A.

This ability to create symbols is also the source of language and abstract, conceptual thought.  The capacity for exchange--and therefore for the creation of symbolic value or meaning--is arguably the definitive characteristic, the essence, of humanity.  It is what differentiates us from animals.

But Marx also says in this chapter that the capacity for _labor_ is the definitive characteristic, the essence, of humanity.  In his argument, in fact, the capacity for labor and the capacity for exchange turn out to be the same thing: the value that is created in exchange is the alienated form of labor.

In either its material or symbolic form, however, it seems clear that Marx is dealing with human life as a whole.  It is an argument that reaches far beyond the "economy."


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 28, 2012)

An idea for keeping these threads organised might be to have a naming convention. How about "Capital -Chapter _X_ - S_ubject_" ? That way searching for Capital reading group threads are made easier.


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## Riklet (Mar 31, 2012)

I'm towards the end third chapter now, I don't really have any interesting questions or ideas so far haha. I'm finding it really interesting even though it's hard going. I think I broadly understand a fair bit, but there's also a lot that's rather confusing, especially the first half of chapter 3, which seems less wordy/longwinded than chapter 1 but still a bit obscure and isn't that clear to me yet.

Looking forward to seeing where chapter 4 and the next part go, and hoping my understanding of the first 3 chapters solidifies a bit through the reading of the rest of the book, and watching the Harvey vids, however bloody long that will take!

This is the most reading i've done in ages (sadly); 200+ pages in a week and a half...

p.s. I think breaking the threads down into chapter/topic discussion is quite a good idea.  Thoughts so far?


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 31, 2012)

Riklet said:


> I'm towards the end third chapter now, I don't really have any interesting questions or ideas so far haha. I'm finding it really interesting even though it's hard going. I think I broadly understand a fair bit, but there's also a lot that's rather confusing, especially the first half of chapter 3, which seems less wordy/longwinded than chapter 1 but still a bit obscure and isn't that clear to me yet.
> 
> Looking forward to seeing where chapter 4 and the next part go, and hoping my understanding of the first 3 chapters solidifies a bit through the reading of the rest of the book, and watching the Harvey vids, however bloody long that will take!
> 
> ...


 
You should get hold of Harvey's companion book to Capital. It is based on the lectures but is much quicker and handier to use whilst reading the main book.

I haven't read through Chapter 3 yet, but have watched the vids and read the companion chapter in advance. It's good we are getting a bit further with this attempt at a reading group.


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## magneze (Mar 31, 2012)

I read chapter 4 yesterday. It's a relief to get a nice short chapter which really builds on the concepts in the first three, specifically expanding the M-C-M transactions and using that as a basis for explaining what capital actually is. (A process).


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

magneze said:


> I read chapter 4 yesterday. It's a relief to get a nice short chapter which really builds on the concepts in the first three, specifically expanding the M-C-M transactions and using that as a basis for explaining what capital actually is. (A process).


 
Why do you say that capital is a process?  Because it grows?  Because it expresses a relation between people?  Because it is not material? Some other reason?


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

Marx himself defines it as a process. Last line of chapter 4:



> M-C-M' is therefore in reality the general formula of capital as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circulation.


 
That 'prima facie' suggests that Marx is going to make qualifications, mind you - to show how the difference between M and M' can only come about through the capitalist taking some of the workers' labour value, not through the actual expansion of value - as he says, 'money that is worth more money, value that is greater than itself'.

That's my understanding at the moment, given that I've not read much further than that.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Marx himself defines it as a process.


 
Hang on a second, I don´t see how the quotation you cite supports this interpretation.

The formula M-C-M´ refers to a process of which capital forms a part, not to capital _per se.  _When Marx calls it ¨the general formula of capital¨ he means that this is the logical and historical conclusion of the processes of exchange (having grown out of C--C originally).  He doesn´t mean that it is the key or the definition of capital.


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

Ah well. Good luck fozzie and IWNW.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Hang on a second, I don´t see how the quotation you cite supports this interpretation.
> 
> The formula M-C-M´ refers to a process of which capital forms a part, not to capital _per se. _When Marx calls it ¨the general formula of capital¨ he means that this is the logical and historical conclusion of the processes of exchange (having grown out of C--C originally). He doesn´t mean that it is the key or the definition of capital.


Well, the way I would take that is that a merchant uses M-C-M' as the process by which to make a living. I may be oversimplifying here, but isn't he saying that the capitalist makes a living by this same process, but that the 'C' in that circuit is the labour of the workers? So the capitalist buys the labour at one price (the wage he pays) then sells it at another, higher price.

Capital_ism_ is perhaps a process by which an economy is controlled by those who are engaged in this process M-C-M', turning money into more money by buying and selling commodities. Those who do not have the capital to start off an M-C-M' exchange can only do C-M-C. Thus they can be exploited by those with money, who mediate their exchanges in such a way that they receive less for the commodity they sell - which ultimately is their labour - than it is really worth.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Well, the way I would take that is that a merchant uses M-C-M' as the process by which to make a living. I may be oversimplifying here, but isn't he saying that the capitalist makes a living by this same process, but that the 'C' in that circuit is the labour of the workers? So the capitalist buys the labour at one price (the wage he pays) then sells it at another, higher price.


 
No.  The C can be any commodity, so the formula just refers to the process of using money to buy a commodity and then sell it for a profit.

In advanced capitalism, the most powerful and common form of this process is M-M' ie when money generates more money through interest.


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

produce a commodity. *Why*


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## rorymac (Mar 31, 2012)

I see it like the simplest of uncomplicated and pure ideals
Like I buy one piece of cloth and cut it into two .. sell one and buy another bigger piece and cut it into three, sell two and buy three etc
Although it's gone awry as a concept and I must get round to reading Marx tbf


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

Hello rory.


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

rorymac said:


> I see it like the simplest of uncomplicated and pure ideals
> Like I buy one piece of cloth and cut it into two .. sell one and buy another bigger piece and cut it into three, sell two and buy three etc
> Although it's gone awry as a concept and I must get round to reading Marx tbf


Rors, good to see you.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> produce a commodity. *Why*


I don't get what this is getting at?


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

> The C can be any commodity, so the formula just refers to the process of using money to buy a commodity and then sell it for a profit.


 
The sort of point of the book.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

You mean that the commodity is produced in order to produce capital?


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

What is a commodity?
(one does not simply read 250 pages of capital - and then ask these questions)


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## rorymac (Mar 31, 2012)

Thanks you guys .. nice to see you too
I've been thinking lots about capitalism recently but I actually know tiny amounts re Marx/philosophy etc

Like I know it in the here and now but for sure a bit of history wouldn't go a miss !


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

Something in the world that we have some use for, that can satisfy some need.


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## JimW (Mar 31, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> What is a commodity?
> (one does no simply read 250 pages of capital - and then ask these questions)


I make no claim to have grasped much but that does seem to be the entire point of what Marx has been explaining in the parts I read so far, and he begins there for a reason.


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Something in the world that we have some use for, that can satisfy some need.


No, the exact opposite - something that a use for but whose value is only recognised in the market - through exchange value. You sure you read them 270 pages?


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

JimW said:


> I make no claim to have grasped much but that does seem to be the entire point of what Marx has been explaining in the parts I read so far, and he begins there for a reason.


Exactly, he goes to some length to explain it, insisted it be placed at the start of the book, so to get that wrong - as lbj has - is appalling.

*continues to break own rule*


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

rorymac said:


> Thanks you guys .. nice to see you too
> I've been thinking lots about capitalism recently but I actually know tiny amounts re Marx/philosophy etc
> 
> Like I know it in the here and now but for sure a bit of history wouldn't go a miss !


 
RORY!

Great to see ya back Dude, youve been sadly missed!


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> What is a commodity?
> (one does not simply read 250 pages of capital - and then ask these questions)


In terms of trying to grasp the role of the capitalist, why do you say that? To the capitalist, the commodity is produced to produce capital, isn't it? I thought that was the point.


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

How is the commodity produced? What is a commodity?


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> How is the commodity produced?


 
In the mind.  Nowhere else.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

Ok, I probably have got this wrong. I thought the point Marx was making about commodities was that their value inhered in the labour expended to produce them. The commodity is that value.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Ok, I probably have got this wrong. I thought the point Marx was making about commodities was that their value inhered in the labour expended to produce them.


 
It is.

Maybe I should clarify?  _Things _are manufactured by labor, but a thing turns into a commodity only in the mind.


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## JimW (Mar 31, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> It is.
> 
> Maybe I should clarify? _Things _are manufactured by labor, but a thing turns into a commodity only in the mind.


In a social process - if you say the mind it makes some individual act of consciousness the focus, even if you intend to say generally.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> It is.
> 
> Maybe I should clarify? _Things _are manufactured by labor, but a thing turns into a commodity only in the mind.


Yes, because of its perceived use value, which in turn gives it exchange value. Abstracting a commodity entirely from a material basis doesn't work, though. There is some material basis to a commodity - it is a commodity because of the value that is attached to it by us, but it is still something 'out there'. It has a material basis even if it is a process.

I have a feeling I'm going to continue to struggle with Marx. As soon as transcendence is introduced, I lose a feeling for it.


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

Two people who haven't read capital. Swimmingly.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Two people who haven't read capital. Swimmingly.


You're right that I still don't grasp what Marx means by 'commodity'. The end of chapter 1 is where I've stopped when trying to read Capital before for the same reason. I've pushed on a bit this time, but clearly I still don't get it.

Thanks for making me feel stupid, though.


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2012)

Come back tmw when you've done the whole thing.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Yes, because of its perceived use value, which in turn gives it exchange value. Abstracting a commodity entirely from a material basis doesn't work, though. There is some material basis to a commodity - it is a commodity because of the value that is attached to it by us, but it is still something 'out there'. It has a material basis even if it is a process.


 
Not all commodities are material.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> You're right that I still don't grasp what Marx means by 'commodity'.


 
Anything for sale.  You´re making it more difficult than it is.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

JimW said:


> In a social process - if you say the mind it makes some individual act of consciousness the focus, even if you intend to say generally.


 
It´s both individual and general.  

Personally though I think the individual act of consciousness has been unduly neglected in much Marxist analysis.  That is after all where commodities are made (as commodities), and they can exist (as commodities) nowhere else.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Anything for sale. You´re making it more difficult than it is.


Well here is my problem right here, I think. When I periodically come back to Marx, I'm always expecting some kind of Bertrand Russell-style straightforward analysis. But that isn't what I get. What I get is something I can't really grasp, expressed in a way that I don't see to be necessary, following in a philosophical tradition whose value I've always struggled to fathom. I'll duck out of this thread for now.


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## JimW (Mar 31, 2012)

If there is a lack of that, it strikes me as right. We might live imagining ourselves as individual consciousnesses but seems clear that we're first and foremost the product of material and social processes and subjectivity follows after. Looking forward to getting on to the bits about species-being to see what Marx has to say about that.


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## Blagsta (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Well here is my problem right here, I think. When I periodically come back to Marx, I'm always expecting some kind of Bertrand Russell-style straightforward analysis. But that isn't what I get. What I get is something I can't really grasp, expressed in a way that I don't see to be necessary, following in a philosophical tradition whose value I've always struggled to fathom. I'll duck out of this thread for now.


Now while I haven't read Capital, I have read Harvey's companion book. He makes the point that Marx analyses capitalism _in motion_. That it only makes sense in motion, as a dynamic system, with each part influencing the other, with opposing concepts (use value Vs exchange value for example) which come together (into a commodity, for example). It's not a linear analysis, cos causality doesn't really work like that.


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## littlebabyjesus (Mar 31, 2012)

Blagsta said:


> Now while I haven't read Capital, I have read Harvey's companion book. He makes the point that Marx analyses capitalism _in motion_. That it only makes sense in motion, as a dynamic system, with each part influencing the other, with opposing concepts (use value Vs exchange value for example) which come together (into a commodity, for example). It's not a linear analysis, cos causality doesn't really work like that.


Right. I understand that! Thanks.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

JimW said:


> Looking forward to getting on to the bits about species-being to see what Marx has to say about that.


 
You wont find them in _Capital, _they´re in the earlier work, especially _Theses on Feuerbach._


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Well here is my problem right here, I think. When I periodically come back to Marx, I'm always expecting some kind of Bertrand Russell-style straightforward analysis. But that isn't what I get. What I get is something I can't really grasp, expressed in a way that I don't see to be necessary, following in a philosophical tradition whose value I've always struggled to fathom.


 
The problem is that Marx is drawing from three different traditions: German idealist philosophy, French political theory and English political economy.

One really needs to be familiar with all three of these traditions if one is to understand Marx properly, and very few people are.

However Marx is far easier and much more in line with common sense than any bourgeois economist. If you are ever forced to read what passes for economic theory in today´s disciplne of Economics, you´ll find Marx a walk in the park.

And I hope you don´t drop out of the thread. Your questions have been a lot more valuable than some people´s answers-


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## JimW (Mar 31, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> You wont find them in _Capital, _they´re in the earlier work, especially _Theses on Feuerbach._


Ah, right. Will have to add them to the list then.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

JimW said:


> We might live imagining ourselves as individual consciousnesses but seems clear that we're first and foremost the product of material and social processes and subjectivity follows after.


 
I think (and I think that Marx thought) that the process is dialectical.  

Subjectivity is the result of wider social processes, but these wider social processes are also produced by subjective agency.

The categories ´subject´ and ´object´ are mutually definitive and form a single whole, so it makes no sense to speak of one pole of the dichotomy producing the other.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

JimW said:


> Ah, right. Will have to add them to the list then.


 
No need really. Number 6 is the relevant one:

"Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations." 

This "essence" is what Feuerbach calls "species-being." He defines it as the collective capacities of the human race, and claims that "God" is just a projection of "species-being." But Marx says that Feuerbach´s concept remains idealist, and that "species-being" is actually humanity´s collective _material _practice. So we can see that (a) Marx´s conception of the human essence is the direct philosophical descendent of God, and (b) that Marx does not depart from the formal logic of Hegel or Feuerbach but simply inverts it.


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## JimW (Mar 31, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> I think (and I think that Marx thought) that the process is dialectical.
> 
> Subjectivity is the result of wider social processes, but these wider social processes are also produced by subjective agency.
> 
> The categories ´subject´ and ´object´ are mutually definitive and form a single whole, so it makes no sense to speak of one pole of the dichotomy producing the other.


But there'd be no place for too much on the individual part of that in the sort of analysis Marx was attempting, or you'd end up with something not far from a great men view of history. Place for individual consciousness is lit, art and all the rest.


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## phildwyer (Mar 31, 2012)

JimW said:


> But there'd be no place for too much on the individual part of that in the sort of analysis Marx was attempting, or you'd end up with something not far from a great men view of history. Place for individual consciousness is lit, art and all the rest.


 
Aye. Though I don´t think Marx had a problem with individualism as such. In the early work, such as the _1844 Manuscripts, _his criticism of capitalism is that it destroys the individual.

The anti-humanist interpretation of Marx (Althusser et al) was an unmitigated disaster imo.


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## magneze (Apr 1, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Why do you say that capital is a process? Because it grows? Because it expresses a relation between people? Because it is not material? Some other reason?


That's what Marx defines it as in Chapter 4. It's pretty explicit.


> Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital. It comes out of circulation, enters into it again, preserves and multiplies itself within circulation, emerges from it with an increases size, and starts the same cycle again and again.


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## love detective (Apr 1, 2012)

i'm sure by this stage even the less astute following the thread will have worked out a number of things about Phil:-

1) He has not read the book he claims to know so much about

2) He makes up his own theories about something that is covered in the book and attributes these to being accurate representations  of Marx's

3) When caught out doing (2), which happens very often due to (1), he claims that his is still the correct interpretation because even though Marx's words & ideas directly contradict his, apparently none of us have access to what Marx really meant. Not content with this excuse however, we are even told that it is a mistake to try to recapture Marx´s original meaning. Obviously oblivious to the fact that these two excuse are in direct contradiction to what he so laughably tries to do in (2) above

4) When caught out and exposed, noise & bluster and personal abuse are thrown around in an attempt to take the heat away from the web of contradictions that have become apparent in his posts

5) He's been on the radio


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## ItWillNeverWork (Apr 1, 2012)

love detective said:


> i'm sure by this stage even the less astute following the thread will have worked out a number of things about Phil:-
> 
> 1) He has not read the book he claims to know so much about
> 
> ...


 
To be fair, Phil has said a number of times that what he is writing is his own interpretation of Marx rather than what Marx originally meant to say. Then again, he does infer the opposite in a few places too. For example here:



> It's not surprising at all that most people misinterpret Marx, especially in view of the iron grip that Leninist materialism exerted over the world of institutional Communism for 50 years.


 
and here:



> Marx's 'labor-power' is the philosophical descendent of German idealist categories like Feuerbach's 'species-being' and Hegel's 'Geist.' It basically refers to human life itself. It is human life itself--not any individual acts of labor--that is alienated in the form of capital


 
Now, I wouldn't know a good interpretation of Marx from a bad, but as far as I'm concerned this is a thread for beginners and as such should be about the _mainstream_ interpretation of Capital. When us newbies are familiarised with the ideas, then maybe interpretation has a place, and a diversity of opinions only makes the world more interesting. Until then though....

Anyway, that's just my two pennies worth.


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## love detective (Apr 1, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> To be fair, Phil has said a number of times that what he is writing is his own interpretation of Marx


 
Yes, as I said above, he does this as a rearguard action when he's been caught out being wrong - and what use is an interpretation of marx, to people in a reading group on Capital, that literally states the opposite of marx's

I agree with the rest of what you say, which is why I warned people to treat his 'contributions' to threads like this with caution - he doesn't really understand what he's talking about yet his style is one which often exudes the impression that he does - which is not really what reading groups on capital at their early stages need, things are confusing enough as it is at those stages.


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## phildwyer (Apr 1, 2012)

love detective said:


> i'm sure by this stage even the less astute following the thread will have worked out a number of things about Phil


 
This is getting ridiculous now.  Why won´t you stick to the issues?

Your claims that I haven´t read anything, don´t know what I´m talking about, and so on are not just false--they are _demonstrably _false (if anyone wants me to demonstrate their falsity just PM me).  Furthermore you know perfectly well that they are false.

You are obviously being eaten alive by jealousy and bitterness.  You should learn to disguise such ignoble emotions.  It's getting slightly disturbing now, to be frank.


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## phildwyer (Apr 1, 2012)

magneze said:


> That's what Marx defines it as in Chapter 4. It's pretty explicit.


 
Oh aye.

I suppose that it is in the nature of capital to grow, or to shrink.  If it remained static it would not be capital.


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## love detective (Apr 1, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Your claims that I haven´t read anything, don´t know what I´m talking about, and so on are not just false--they are _demonstrably _false (if anyone wants me to demonstrate their falsity just PM me). Furthermore you know perfectly well that they are false.


 
why do you keep getting so much of it so badly wrong then?

you're now even being pulled up for taking crap by people who have only started to read it in the last week or so - see post above as an example


----------



## phildwyer (Apr 1, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> To be fair, Phil has said a number of times that what he is writing is his own interpretation of Marx rather than what Marx originally meant to say. Then again, he does infer the opposite in a few places too.


 
I don´t think we have access to what Marx "originally meant to say."  Our interpretation is inevitably influenced by our own historical context.  It is futile to search for the author´s meaning: we can only discuss what the text means to us.

But you´re right, I should be clearer about when I´m discussing Marx´s text and when I´m discussing my own ideas.



ItWillNeverWork said:


> Now, I wouldn't know a good interpretation of Marx from a bad, but as far as I'm concerned this is a thread for beginners and as such should be about the _mainstream_ interpretation of Capital.


 
There is no "mainstream interpretation of _Capital."  _A work of such complexity will inevitably be subject to widely divergent readings.  Inded, wars have been fought over differing interpretations of _Capital, _which puts our disputes here into context a bit.

Personally I think this is a brilliant and unique forum for the discussion of Marx, precisely because there is such a range of knowledge and experience here.  Nowhere else could people who have been studying Marx for 20 years debate with people who´ve just picked him up for the first time.  It´s a very instructive experience for all involved.


----------



## phildwyer (Apr 1, 2012)

love detective said:


> why do you keep getting so much of it so badly wrong then?


 
Look dude, if I´m being honest then yes, you have been right on a couple of occasions here when I´ve been wrong. The distinction between simple and abstract labor for example--I´ll put my hand up and admit that I learned something from you then.

BUT the problem is that your attitude makes it completely impossible for me to make such concessions in debate because, at least to judge from past form, you will just pounce on any tiny mistake, gloat endlessly and at every available future opportunity, and use it as incontrovertible proof that I have never read even a single word of Marx, or in all probability anything else either. Most probably you feel the same way about acknowledging the errors that you may make. It´s not a productive method of discussion, is it?

So I suggest that you cease engaging in this daft game of who has read most, and that instead we both acknowledge that the other potentially has something interesting and useful to say, and that from this point on we play the ball and not the man.

Howzat?


----------



## love detective (Apr 1, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Look dude, if I´m being honest then yes, you have been right on a couple of occasions here when I´ve been wrong. The distinction between simple and abstract labor for example--I´ll put my hand up and admit that I learned something from you then.
> 
> BUT the problem is that your attitude makes it completely impossible for me to make such concessions in debate because, at least to judge from past form, you will just pounce on any tiny mistake, gloat endlessly and at every available future opportunity, and use it as incontrovertible proof that I have never read even a single word of Marx, or in all probability anything else either. Most probably you feel the same way about acknowledging the errors that you may make. It´s not a productive method of discussion, is it?
> 
> ...


 
That's a very admirable and brave post phil and not one I ever expected to come from you. So of course, in light of that, i'm more than happy to do as you suggest

And in my defence i do not gloat at all at people I argue with who admit to being wrong, far from it, but I apologise if the thought of me doing so made it difficult for you to hold your hands up on those areas where you've been wrong.

I do go on endlessly however at people who insist that they are correct about something despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary (or people who insist they are correct about something that they clearly don't know that much about) - especially when it is a topic I think is important and also a topic that others reading the thread may be trying to learn from. This may come across as it being a personal attack at times, and indeed towards the end it does take on shades of a personal attack purely out of frustration and loss of patience at playing the ball and getting nowhere

So yes, well played, you're a better man than I had thought


----------



## phildwyer (Apr 1, 2012)

love detective said:


> So yes, well played, you're a better man than I had thought


 
Entirely mutual.  I was 99% sure that your response would consist of a crowing declaration of victory.  You have restored my faith in human nature, and at some point in the future I will be delighted to accept the drink that iirc you owe me from four years ago...


----------



## JimW (Apr 1, 2012)

And thus we see the power of communist theory to unite the people.


----------



## danny la rouge (Apr 10, 2012)

rorymac said:


> I see it like the simplest of uncomplicated and pure ideals
> Like I buy one piece of cloth and cut it into two .. sell one and buy another bigger piece and cut it into three, sell two and buy three etc
> Although it's gone awry as a concept and I must get round to reading Marx tbf


Hi Rory.


----------



## Riklet (Apr 18, 2012)

I'm reading chapter 5 now, not been rushing it really, takes a while to sink in... that said, I am gripped haha.

I've been using David Harvey's accompanying book, and finding it more useful than the video lecturers actually. The 'second' lecture and the third one i'm currently reading about chapter 3 have been really useful, he certainly has a way with words. maybe it's just me... written words are a bit easier to process/remember and I get distracted when i'm faffing about on a computer.

There are links on his website to downloading the lectures in .mp3 audio format too. Will find a link if peeps can't find it. Found the Harvey book combined with capital part 1 (penguin newer translation) as a torrent, both in .mobi format for kindle and both relatively glitch free. brilliant. 

was having a ponder over the idea of an .mp3 as a commodity and tbh I couldn't see how one could _not_ consider it as one, just in a slightly more abstract form.


----------



## Red Storm (Apr 21, 2012)

I'm having to read Capital for an exam soon. Should have already read it but haven't. 

I could up load the lecture power points, does anyone know the best way to do this? 

They are largely critical of Capital.


----------



## magneze (Apr 21, 2012)

http://www.slideshare.net/ ?


----------



## ItWillNeverWork (Apr 21, 2012)

Red Storm said:


> I'm having to read Capital for an exam soon. Should have already read it but haven't.
> 
> I could up load the lecture power points, does anyone know the best way to do this?
> 
> They are largely critical of Capital.


 
You're doing an exam on Capital?


----------



## love detective (Apr 21, 2012)

he's applied to join the ICC


----------



## Red Storm (Apr 21, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> You're doing an exam on Capital?


 
I've done a History of Economic Thought module this year at uni. Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Jevons. 

Have had to read all their texts.


----------



## love detective (Apr 21, 2012)

I don't know anything about how this stuff is taught in universities - but i'd be willing to bet a huge amount of money on it not being a requirement to actually read, in total, the main primary texts for such a class - are you seriously saying that for that module you have to read all of wealth of nations (all five books), principles of political economy, capital (all three volumes) etc.. and all this for just one module?

If so i've seriously underestimated universities


----------



## Red Storm (Apr 21, 2012)

love detective said:


> I don't know anything about how this stuff is taught in universities - but i'd be willing to bet a huge amount of money on it not being a requirement to actually read, in total, the main primary texts for such a class - are you seriously saying that for that module you have to read all of wealth of nations (all five books), principles of political economy, capital (all three volumes) etc.. and all this for just one module?
> 
> If so i've seriously underestimated universities


 
You'd be mostly correct. It's a really old school course. Read the primary texts for a year then have a 100% exam at the end. Shitting myself...

We don't have to read them in their entirety but I'd say the vast majority. Here is the reading list:




> Primary Reading (essential reading –also see the file headed Additional Course Material)
> 
> Value and Distribution (excluding the ‘real measure of exchangeable value’)
> 
> ...


 



> Rent, Wages, Profits and Growth
> 
> David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Principles), ed. 3.
> Preface. Chapter 1 Sections I-III, Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7, 19, 21.
> ...


 




> See, especially, the entry on Mill in DNB by Jose Harris.
> 
> J.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of their Applications to Social Philosophy (hereafter Principles). Preface to the first edition (1848).
> 
> ...


 



> Value/Surplus Value
> 
> Capital vol I Chapters 1 (possibly omitting sub-sections 3a-3c), 2, 4-9, 12, 16, 19.
> Capital vol III Chapter 48.
> ...


 



> The Theory of Political Economy
> 
> Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy (second or later edition). Preface to eds. 1 and 2. Chapter 1, 3 (sections i-vi), 4 (sections i-iv, ix-x, xxv), 5 (sections I, iii, v-vii, x), 6, 7 (sections xi), 8.


----------



## love detective (Apr 21, 2012)

looks alright - the history of economic thought modules seem to be the only time this stuff gets a look in in universities - to make sure its studied as a historical artefact rather than something that provides a useful framework for looking at the world around us, then and now

(although for capital i'd say the reading represents around 20% of the total thing, and Smith & Ricardo roughly around 30% - although it's still a lot more than I expected)

edit: it's good though that they make you engage with the primary text, but got to say given the nature of how Capital unfolds itself (dialectical mode of exposition etc.. zzz...), it's a potentially misleading approach to just read selected chapters - as you do miss out on the unique nature of the way each thing dealt with is presupposed by what went before it, so that nothing just drops into the analysis out of the air from nowhere - that's what makes reading it so gripping once you eventually get into it because it has such a good flow - can imagine you'd miss out quite a bit on that by selectively reading certain chapters (and for example not a thing from vol 2) - not to say you won't get anything from it like


----------



## Red Storm (Apr 21, 2012)

love detective said:


> looks alright - the history of economic thought modules seem to be the only time this stuff gets a look in in universities - to make sure its studied as a historical artefact rather than something that provides a useful framework for looking at the world around us, then and now
> 
> (although for capital i'd say the reading represents around 20% of the total thing, and Smith & Ricardo roughly around 30% - although it's still a lot more than I expected)
> 
> edit: it's good though that they make you engage with the primary text, but got to say given the nature of how Capital unfolds itself (dialectical mode of exposition etc.. zzz...), it's a potentially misleading approach to just read selected chapters - as you do miss out on the unique nature of the way each thing dealt with is presupposed by what went before it, so that nothing just drops into the analysis out of the air from nowhere - that's what makes reading it so gripping once you eventually get into it because it has such a good flow - can imagine you'd miss out quite a bit on that by selectively reading certain chapters (and for example not a thing from vol 2) - not to say you won't get anything from it like


 
Fair enough. To be honest it is one of the best courses I've ever done. The Smith part was fantastic. 

The lecturer was highly critical of Marx though. Particularly over the Transformation Problem.


----------



## love detective (Apr 21, 2012)

yeah it does sound interesting

there's no transformation problem (and even if there was it wouldn't be a problem)


----------



## ItWillNeverWork (Apr 21, 2012)

Red Storm said:


> Fair enough. To be honest it is one of the best courses I've ever done. The Smith part was fantastic.
> 
> The lecturer was highly critical of Marx though. Particularly over the Transformation Problem.


 
What's the course exactly?


----------



## Red Storm (Apr 21, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> What's the course exactly?


 
History of Economic Thought


----------



## ItWillNeverWork (Apr 21, 2012)

Red Storm said:


> History of Economic Thought


 
As a module within an economics course, or as a stand-alone thing? It sounds really interesting whatever it is.


----------



## Red Storm (Apr 21, 2012)

ItWillNeverWork said:


> As a module within an economics course, or as a stand-alone thing? It sounds really interesting whatever it is.


 
It was an economics module. I study History and Economics. 

We dont really have pathways here. You just pick from a selection of modules each year. Most don't relate to any of the previous years modules.

It was very interesting. The lecturer was really good too which is important.


----------



## love detective (Apr 21, 2012)

most of the economics degrees & MA's that i've looked at the syllabus for, always seem to have a standard history of economic thought module - always thought it would be treated somewhat contemptuously by those teaching them - and always as a dead historical artefact in a kind of quaint patronising look at how they used to do it way


----------



## Red Storm (Apr 21, 2012)

love detective said:


> most of the economics degrees & MA's that i've looked at the syllabus for, always seem to have a standard history of economic thought module - always thought it would be treated somewhat contemptuously by those teaching them - and always as a dead historical artefact in a kind of quaint patronising look at how they used to do it way


 
I've never looked into it personally. However it depends what institution you look at. History of economic thought was the speciality of the lecturer who taught mine. His enjoyment at teaching it was obvious which in turn made it enjoyable for me. All my lectures are like that to be honest, the modules are based on the lecturer and what their speciality is. I suppose I'm lucky to go to a Uni like that, but to be honest I thought they were all like that.

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/terry.peach/ -- thats my lecturer.

If you're super interested love detective, send me your email address and I'll send you all the materials of the course or just for the economist you're interested in. Peach has wrote some good articles on Smith. He's critical of the perception of Smith being some sort of right wing monster (Invisible Hand etc). I think Smith is his favourite. I can send you the journal articles.

I've got a couple of lecture recordings too, I'd send them too.


----------



## love detective (Apr 21, 2012)

yeah i've had a fair few discussions where i've argued similar about smith - it's only when you actually read him you find out how much of a social democrat he actually was (and most of the left's disparaging of smith comes from blindly accepting the picture painted of him by the narrowly selective quoting of free marketers. You should check out his moral philosophy - theory of moral sentiments - if you liked what you saw of smith in relation to political economy)

cheers for the offer of the stuff but i've plenty on all that as it is


----------



## Riklet (May 18, 2012)

I've not been reading it so much the past month or so, but i'm on chapter 7 of Capital now and read about a quarter of harvey's guide to it.

i wish i had some vaguely interesting questions, but tbh i'm still pondering it all over, and nothing massive springs to mind.  we'll see.


----------



## danny la rouge (May 18, 2012)

<vaguely supportive comment>


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## love detective (May 18, 2012)

i'm sure there's loads of interesting and thought provoking stuff going on in your own head as you make your way through it though - that's more important than keeping us entertained with interesting questions


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## danny la rouge (May 19, 2012)

That's a better supportive comment.  ^


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## eoin_k (May 30, 2012)

I've managed to get through Chapter 3 and the change in pace in the following 2 chapters is a relief.  Even though both Marx and Harvey spell out that this is to be expected and why, I did have a nagging doubt that the whole book was going to be as dense as Part 1.

I'm still not as convinced as I would like to be by the rigid distinction between quantitative and qualitative aspects which seems to underpin his analysis.  I think I see why he is doing this, but sometimes it seems to be a means of avoiding obvious but undesirable conclusions rather than a methodological tool, if that makes sense.

When the book was written, the labour theory of value was part of the canon of political economy.  Marx's critique must have seemed much more powerful at that time than it does now, when mainstream, neo-classical economics has reconstructed itself without the concept of value.  Even if you recognise that this move was provoked in part, or even largely, by Marx, I am left wondering how this impacts on the relevance of his argument today.

Value seems to become a bit of a slippery and occluded concept in Marx's hand.  It hides behind fluctuating or distorted prices and it is  equal to socially necessary labour time, but also capable of including a surplus element at the same time.  I'm no fan of Popper and I realise that there are problems with falsificationism, but I have to admit that I am left wondering if he may have had a point.

To some extent I am playing devil's advocate here in the hope of getting a robust defense of Marx's method, or at least some interesting responses.


----------



## Riklet (Aug 31, 2012)

on chapter 9 now (looking forward to chapter 10 more) but was a hiatus for over 2 months as my bastarding kindle broke.  amazon have since replaced it for free, boom.

to lurkers n readers n whoever: PM me if you'd like .mobi ebooks of fawkes translation of Capital vol 1 and also Harvey's companion book.


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## magneze (Sep 1, 2012)

10 is good. Lots of historical details. 11 and 12 are also very good. The 12 covers some interesting stuff about competition, the labour movements and regulation. All through these three there are parallels with today - Sunday trading for example.


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## butchersapron (Feb 17, 2014)

RMF Capital Reading Group 

(RMF is Research on Money and Finance - does what it says on the tin, people like Costas Lapavitsas involved - btw read this book: Profiting Without Producing - info here).



> The group is aimed at those with an interest in Marx but who have not necessarily read Capital, as well as being open to those more experienced with the text. Members need not be economists, as multidisciplinary membership enriches the content of our discussions.
> 
> We are following the Penguin Classics edition of Capital, so prospective members should make sure in advance that they will have access to this edition of the text. It can be purchased relatively cheaply from Amazon. We are starting with volume 1, but then intend to go on to tackle volumes 2 and 3.
> Members of the group read the portion of the text scheduled for each session in advance. The group organisers introduce the sessions through short presentations, which are then followed by open discussion.


----------



## Fozzie Bear (Feb 17, 2014)

I would totally go to that but I have to pick up the offspring on Monday evenings.


----------



## butchersapron (Feb 17, 2014)

Fozzie Bear said:


> I would totally go to that but I have to pick up the offspring on Monday evenings.


They're soundclouding them at least.


----------



## frogwoman (Feb 17, 2014)

Live a bit far, otherwise I'd love to go.


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## Fozzie Bear (Jun 18, 2014)

Finished Volume 1 last night.

It took me 2 years, but I had a massive hiatus in the middle when various tedious domestic issues took priority. (reproduction of labour blah blah blah).

Alternating chapters with David Harvey audio was a good way of doing it for me because it meant I could have a think about it all on the way to work or doing the washing up or whatever.

I really enjoyed it and I think got a lot out of it too. I mean, I wouldn't want to sit an exam or anything, but it has given me a lot to think about.

Now re-reading chapter one, as per David Harvey's instructions in the penulitmate lecture. 

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement earlier in the thread.

Might start on volume 2 next year...


----------



## Ptolemy (Jul 18, 2017)

Thought I'd resurrect this thread in conjunction with the other one, as there are some really helpful posts in here - thanks to all who have helped to clear my head (and a relief too to see that people struggled with the same concepts that I have!).


----------



## Riklet (Aug 10, 2017)

I went back to Capital a few weeks ago. By the swimming pool innit. Glad ive persevered - im going to read all 3 volumes! Im on Chapter 15 now! It's long and interesting.

Might watch the David Harvey vids and read the guide a bit I think. In all honesty I havent found 11-14 that hard going or difficult to understand. Very enlightening and interesting though.

They've inspired me to take the piss with break times at work, try and do my driving test during work time, not hand in doctor's sick notes and paperwork I should have (until Im forced to) and not sign myself in and out on the stupid tick box system. Oh and try and get more of my co-workers behind a bit of industrial action in the near future! *thumbs*

Suck on that reduced (?) Surplus value, Capital!


----------



## Gramsci (Aug 18, 2017)

I have read volume one. Some time ago.

Told an acquaintance of mine, who has read all of Marx, told me I would not have understood much of it, and advised me to read Grundrisee next. His notebooks for Capital. The first book on Capital is the only one be finished completely. The other two were put together by Engels.

I had to stick with it. After the chapter on the working day it got easier.

What did I get out of it in first reading?

What stayed with me is that labour under Capitalism is a special kind of commodity. In theory we ( the worker) sells our labour in the market. But in reality it's alienated labour. It's not an equal exchange. The worker sells his labour from which the Mill owner for example gets surplus value. Which when the commodity is sold he can build his Capital. Does nothing for me.

Selling ones labour as a commodity means one loses control over one's capacity to "work" just for the sake of it. Like I've been working voluntarily to help get an adventure playground up an running. Something I'm doing as I believe in it. It benefits society as a whole. Makes me feel good. But it doesn't fit into Capitalist framework. It doesn't help me keep myself fed and housed.

Marx contrasts "wage slavery" with slavery. Wage slavery , I think it's Marx being sarcastic here, is an "improvement" on slavery. Under slavery the hard pressed slave owner had to minimally feed etc his slaves. Under Capitalism the Capitalist can hire and fire people as the economy went up and down. They can then fend for themselves. A much more "efficient" system.

In volume one Marx imo points out that Capitalism has made possible a truly free society. The massive growth in productivity could mean that the necessities of life are met. That potentially people could be freed to work as they choose.

This is the difference between scientific socialism and utopian schemes. I don't think Marx was opposed to Owenites etc. But he saw Capitalism has preparing practical material base for human liberation.

Nor do I think that Marx thought the idea of human freedom was new. It was that only now that this could be realised.

The commodity. I am going to go back and read first chapters. As posters have I implied.

Marx does make references to literature. I read Balzac. ( Cousin Bette) One of Marx favourite writers. What Balzac showed was that in post Revolutionary and Napoleonic France everything was for sale. A commodity becomes equilivant to any other commodity. This seeps into all aspects of life. It's "alienating".

I think what I got out of volume one was that Capitalism has produced massive increase in fulfilling genuine human needs but in a way that's not under the control of the greater mass of the population.


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## Riklet (Oct 23, 2017)

Im still finishing chapter 15 

Loooong. Been dipping into the Harvey guide and vids at the same time too. Interesting addition but I dont know if they make it much clearer or easier reading, in some ways I think they'll be more useful once I've finally finished the whole thing. This will be this year and not in 5 more years I hope!!


----------



## Smokeandsteam (Oct 25, 2017)

Riklet said:


> Im still finishing chapter 15
> 
> Loooong. Been dipping into the Harvey guide and vids at the same time too. Interesting addition but I dont know if they make it much clearer or easier reading, in some ways I think they'll be more useful once I've finally finished the whole thing. This will be this year and not in 5 more years I hope!!



I did it the opposite way to you. I tried to read Capital loads of times and failed and gave up. I couldn’t get my head round it. The Harvey videos (which I think Butchers or someone posted here) got me interested again. 

I read his book chapter by chapter. Harvey first, then Marx, then back to Harvey. It was invaluable. I really think Harvey is brilliant - the way he explains it and allows you to grasp the concepts.

Whatever works for you stick at it though. If you get stuck someone here will be able to help.


----------



## Happy Larry (Oct 30, 2017)

Gramsci said:


> In volume one Marx imo points out that Capitalism has made possible a truly free society.



Marx had it spot on.

Communism is an economic and social system that looks great in theory, but ignores the human factor. People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.


----------



## Pickman's model (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Marx had it spot on.
> 
> Communism is an economic and social system that looks great in theory, but ignores the human factor. People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.


have you found any of those articles disproving socialism you were on about?


----------



## krtek a houby (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Marx had it spot on.
> 
> Communism is an economic and social system that looks great in theory, but ignores the human factor. People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.



Like working for Lord Leverhulme, eh, Larry?


----------



## danny la rouge (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Marx had it spot on.
> 
> Communism is an economic and social system that looks great in theory, but ignores the human factor. People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.


You don't sound like you've actually read any Marx.


----------



## Pickman's model (Oct 30, 2017)

danny la rouge said:


> You don't sound like you've actually read any Marx.


he doesn't sound like he's read anything beyond the likes of rand and the collected speeches of margaret thatcher


----------



## mojo pixy (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.



This is utter balls. People work hard for tons of reasons. I was reading an article yesterday about burnout in care management, service managers working 80-100 hour weeks. Are they doing that for their families?


----------



## Pickman's model (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Marx had it spot on.
> 
> Communism is an economic and social system that looks great in theory, but ignores the human factor. People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.


so what work do you do, chuck?


----------



## Happy Larry (Oct 30, 2017)

mojo pixy said:


> People work hard for tons of reasons.



Of course they do, dear. Did I say there aren't other reasons? Some people don't even have families. However, most of us do and, as I said, they will work harder if they feel that doing so will benefit their families. Do you feel that being rewarded for their hard work with extra pay/benefits will de-motivate them?

Do try and keep up.


----------



## mojo pixy (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.





mojo pixy said:


> This is utter balls. People work hard for tons of reasons. I was reading an article yesterday about burnout in care management, service managers working 80-100 hour weeks. Are they doing that for their families?



Not to mention writers, musicians and artists who work for years on their creations for neither fame nor fortune. If anything this can be harmful to their family life.


----------



## mojo pixy (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Of course they do, dear. Did I say there aren't other reasons? Some people don't even have families. However, most of us do and, as I said, they will work harder if they feel that doing so will benefit their families. Do you feel that being rewarded for their hard work with extra pay/benefits will de-motivate them?
> 
> Do try and keep up.



Keep up with what? You joker


----------



## mojo pixy (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Of course they do, dear. Did I say there aren't other reasons? Some people don't even have families. However, most of us do and, as I said, they will work harder if they feel that doing so will benefit their families. Do you feel that being rewarded for their hard work with extra pay/benefits will de-motivate them?
> 
> Do try and keep up.



Extra pay and benefits? In social care? 

Do try and keep up.


----------



## Pickman's model (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Of course they do, dear. Did I say there aren't other reasons? Some people don't even have families. However, most of us do and, as I said, they will work harder if they feel that doing so will benefit their families. Do you feel that being rewarded for their hard work with extra pay/benefits will de-motivate them?
> 
> Do try and keep up.


yeh. what work do you do, chuck?


----------



## Ptolemy (Oct 30, 2017)

Pickman's model said:


> yeh. what work do you do, chuck?



Looking for canal diggers on certain islands in the South Atlantic?


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## Pickman's model (Oct 30, 2017)

Ptolemy said:


> Looking for canal diggers on certain islands in the South Atlantic?


prior experience not required


----------



## Ptolemy (Oct 30, 2017)

Pickman's model said:


> prior experience not required



An unpaid internship with the possibility of promotion if he works had enough? The capitalist ethos may be suitable after all.

Happy Larry should read about alienation, particularly with regard to the worker's alienation from the productive act. I know people who work themselves half to death, can barely keep up with the bills (through rising cost of living but no increase in wage) and are in despair.


----------



## Pickman's model (Oct 30, 2017)

Ptolemy said:


> An unpaid internship with the possibility of promotion if he works had enough? The capitalist ethos may suit it after all.
> 
> Happy Larry should read about alienation, particularly with regard to the worker's alienation from the productive act. I know people who work themselves half to death, can barely keep up with the bills (through rising cost of living but no increase in wage) and are in despair.


no time for reading while you're working on the south georgia canals.


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## CNT36 (Oct 30, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Marx had it spot on.
> 
> Communism is an economic and social system that looks great in theory, but ignores the human factor. People will always work harder or more productively if given the motivating factor that this will bring about a better life for themselves and their family.


I'd slack off and work less productively to get some time off the family.


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## Happy Larry (Oct 31, 2017)

CNT36 said:


> I'd slack off and work less productively



Great idea.  That should take care of the kids Uni fees!

Er wait....


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## Happy Larry (Oct 31, 2017)

Gramsci said:


> I think what I got out of volume one was that Capitalism has produced massive increase in fulfilling genuine human needs but in a way that's not under the control of the greater mass of the population.



Capitalism has indeed been a massive success

Regarding the control issue, Marx wrote in a time (the nineteenth century) when individual freedom was often not entrenched in law. Today, in Western nations especially, we have more control over our own lives than ever before.


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## mojo pixy (Oct 31, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Capitalism has indeed been a massive success



u know u make me wanna meme (come on yeah)


----------



## krtek a houby (Oct 31, 2017)




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## Ptolemy (Oct 31, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Capitalism has indeed been a massive success
> 
> Regarding the control issue, Marx wrote in a time (the nineteenth century) when individual freedom was often not entrenched in law. Today, in Western nations especially, we have more control over our own lives than ever before.



There may be _theoretical_ "control", but when people's economic prospects in a materialistic society are grim _actual_ control is much harder to achieve.

You talk about freedom, but which freedom do you think makes people happier and more productive - freedom _to_ change from one inadequate paying job to another - or freedom _from_ hunger, poverty, disease, want, etc?

I think I know the answer, but do tell.


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## Happy Larry (Oct 31, 2017)

Ptolemy said:


> freedom _from_ hunger, poverty, disease, want, etc?



Do you really believe that the population of the UK suffers from the above?


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## shifting gears (Oct 31, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Do you really believe that the population of the UK suffers from the above?



I heard people are going to food banks "for a laugh" and a bit of a social


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## krtek a houby (Oct 31, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Do you really believe that the population of the UK suffers from the above?



You're shitting me now.

Why Victoria-era diseases are on the rise in England


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## shifting gears (Oct 31, 2017)

What are the current child poverty figures (I'm on my phone so can't really check right now) - it's around 3.5million kids who are living in poverty isn't it?


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## Happy Larry (Oct 31, 2017)

*Britons better off than ever as disposable incomes jump to record high*

"But now, even after taking into account price rises and changes to family composition, disposable incomes are at a record high, according to the Office for National Statistics."

Maybe we should count our blessings a little more and whinge a little less. There are, of course, people who are struggling and they need help, but it's not all doom and gloom.


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## krtek a houby (Oct 31, 2017)

shifting gears said:


> What are the current child poverty figures (I'm on my phone so can't really check right now) - it's around 3.5million kids who are living in poverty isn't it?



Levels of child hunger and deprivation in UK among highest of rich nations

_Nearly one in five UK children under the age of 15 suffers from food insecurity – meaning their family lacks secure access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food – putting it above the rich country average of 13%.

 One in three UK children are in what Unicef calls “multi-dimensional poverty” – which measures deprivation in a number of areas linked to children’s rights including housing, clothing, nutrition and access to social and leisure activities.
_
Globally, according to World Bank/UNICEF, is 385 million.

Nearly 385 million children living in extreme poverty, says joint World Bank Group – UNICEF study


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## Happy Larry (Oct 31, 2017)

krtek a houby said:


> Levels of child hunger and deprivation in UK among highest of rich nations



You appear to be suggesting that poverty is solely to blame for children not receiving adequate care.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There are several other reasons. According to the NHS :

"There were 15,074 hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of poisoning by illicit drugs. This is 6 per cent more than 2014/15 and 51 per cent more than 2005/06

2015/16 there were 8,621 hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of drug-related mental health and behavioural disorders. This is 6 per cent more than 2014/15 and 11 per cent higher than 2005/06.

Deaths related to drug misuse (England and Wales)In 2015 there were 2,479 registered deaths related to drug misuse. This is an increase of 10 per cent on 2014 and 48 per cent higher than 2005.

Deaths related to drug misuse are at their highest level since comparable records began in 1993.2015/16 there were 8,621 hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of drug-related mental health and behavioural disorders. This is 6 per cent more than 2014/15 and 11 per cent higher than 2005/06."

Parents with drug abuse problems are a major factor in many dysfunctional households where parents are neglecting their children.


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## krtek a houby (Oct 31, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> You appear to be suggesting that poverty is solely to blame for children not receiving adequate care.
> 
> Nothing could be further from the truth. There are several other reasons. According to the NHS :
> 
> ...



Ever wondered why some people resort to drug taking, Larry?


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## Happy Larry (Oct 31, 2017)

Their reasons are not helpful to the kids that suffer as a result of their doing so.


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## butchersapron (Oct 31, 2017)

Just stop talking to this prick - unless the plan is to help him ruin thread after thread.


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## krtek a houby (Oct 31, 2017)

Happy Larry said:


> Their reasons are not helpful to the kids that suffer as a result of their doing so.



So, all in all, that whole capitalism/poverty isn't such a wonderful thing, is it, Larry?


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## Riklet (Oct 31, 2017)

This wasnt quite my idea of a Capital bunfight. 

Can we please ignore. This isn't the right thread for giving some right-wing tool attention.


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 31, 2017)

I'm currently reading Harvey's "Limits of Capital". Answers a lot of questions about how well Marx's ideas work given the developments of capitalism since Capital was written (spoiler: quite well). 

There are some good summaries of disputes between Marxists (which, let's be honest, I will never read in the original). It's quite heavy going (much more so than his lectures or "Seventeen Contradictions" which I also read). But I'm not doing myself any favours by reading it in 15 minute bursts while standing up on a train in the morning either.


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## butchersapron (Oct 31, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> I'm currently reading Harvey's "Limits of Capital". Answers a lot of questions about how well Marx's ideas work given the developments of capitalism since Capital was written (spoiler: quite well).
> 
> There are some good summaries of disputes between Marxists (which, let's be honest, I will never read in the original). It's quite heavy going (much more so than his lectures or "Seventeen Contradictions" which I also read). But I'm not doing myself any favours by reading it in 15 minute bursts while standing up on a train in the morning either.


I still think it's his best book - his most luxemburgist. I've been meaning for ages to collect a group of criticisms of his lectures on capital and post them up. I'll try and do this later in the week.


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## Idaho (Oct 31, 2017)

I was reading the first few chapters of capital - the bit about all value being derived from labour value - and was trying to think of counter examples and came up with these:

- streaming of a music file of an old hit song
- patents filed across a number of similar technologies
- search engine optimization to drive traffic to a particular site 

These are all modern technologies where the vast bulk of the work is done mechanically and the small amount of human input can be scaled massively (and disproportionately) by machines to create very high exchange value. 

I am guessing that this isn't covered by later chapters as it wasn't really a thing back then? I suppose in the examples it is electricity and computers being exploited rather than people?


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 31, 2017)

Idaho - it's hard to think of music which isn't produced by human labour. Without human labour there would be no music to stream. The hardware and the software for the streaming service is also a result of human labour, no?

Elsewhere in Capital, Marx does talk quite a bit about the relationship between distribution and value.


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## DotCommunist (Oct 31, 2017)

and surely who mines the rare earth minerals, who solders the circuit boards, who fashions the cases, who maintains and installs the machinery- then who does all the things that get the electricity into the computer?


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 31, 2017)

Also I think a search engine is a bit more akin to infrastructure (roads, railways, sewers etc) than a commodity.


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## butchersapron (Oct 31, 2017)

It's shifting/redirecting value produced elsewhere. It's not producing value unless you take profit as value. And not to do that is sort of the point of the book.


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## Idaho (Oct 31, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Idaho - it's hard to think of music which isn't produced by human labour. Without human labour there would be no music to stream. The hardware and the software for the streaming service is also a result of human labour, no?
> 
> Elsewhere in Capital, Marx does talk quite a bit about the relationship between distribution and value.


Yes, once upon a time the rolling stones went into a studio and wrote and recorded some songs. But they have long since been massively paid, repaid and overpaid again for that relatively small amount of labour. What labour now goes into each of the million streams a week of "satisfaction"?

Likewise with the machines that stream. They would cost the same to stream even if "satisfaction" had never been written and the rolling stones never existed.


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 31, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Yes, once upon a time the rolling stones went into a studio and wrote and recorded some songs. But they have long since been massively paid, repaid and overpaid again for that relatively small amount of labour. What labour now goes into each of the million streams a week of "satisfaction"?
> 
> Likewise with the machines that stream. They would cost the same to stream even if "satisfaction" had never been written and the rolling stones never existed.



The Rolling Stones have produced a commodity in the form of the song "Satisfaction". They were paid for this at the time and subsequently. Let's say at the time that 7" single which was used to distribute it sold for £1. Of this a certain amount of money went to the band, and other amounts went to the record company, shops, distribution company etc.

These days the song can be downloaded or streamed or whatever. 

If it is downloaded from Itunes, a certain amount of the 79p goes to the band, a certain amount to the record company and a certain amount to apple etc.

It's the same as if it was streamed too, although the model is harder to understand. For every play of Satisfaction on Spotify - a certain amount of money (fractions of a pence) goes to the band, record company etc. 

So the answer to your question is that unusually it is the same quantity of labour which is creating value over and over again.


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## Idaho (Oct 31, 2017)

Which is why I don't understand the labour theory of value when it comes to scalable tasks/commodities!


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 31, 2017)

Now it might be that a discussion of U75 favourite Ruddy Yurts would be a good counterpoint to this.

Yurts' classic "Honky Tonk Mailman" was famously recorded in one take and sold to unscrupulous music man One-Eyed Bob Fischer for 3 shotgun cartridges and a bottle of whiskey.

The track features on one of the radio stations in Grand Theft Auto for which a small licensing fee was paid to Rainbow Life PLC - a music conglomerate which has hoovered up the rights to a bunch of music when various other publishing companies went bust (who had in turn done deals with other people, including One-Eyed Bob Fischer).

I think we can agree that most of the value created in Grand Theft Auto is by programmers, designers, etc. But some of the value is created by the soundtrack. And some of that by the original human labour undertaken by Ruddy Yurts on that cold Mississippi morning. But all that Ruddy has had to show for it is the shotgun cartridges and whisky, all of which were used up that self same day.

Arguably there might be additional human labour involved in preserving the recording, contracts and also marketing the song - but none of that would create value without the song existing.


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 31, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Which is why I don't understand the labour theory of value when it comes to scalable tasks/commodities!



I have to say that I also went through quite a few _hmmm but..._ moments when I was reading Capital. I don't think that it really helps with your understanding of the book though. It's far better to go with it and stick to the basics of commodities produced on a production line. 

Marx himself comes up with all sorts of caveats (the assumption that commodities exchange at their value for example) - because he is trying to paint a general picture of the system as a whole, not an all encompassing framework that everything will fit completely comfortably in.


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## Happy Larry (Oct 31, 2017)

krtek a houby said:


> Ever wondered why some people resort to drug taking, Larry?



With those that I know, their economic situation was certainly a contributory factor.

They had far more money than sense.


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## Idaho (Oct 31, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> I have to say that I also went through quite a few _hmmm but..._ moments when I was reading Capital. I don't think that it really helps with your understanding of the book though. It's far better to go with it and stick to the basics of commodities produced on a production line.
> 
> Marx himself comes up with all sorts of caveats (the assumption that commodities exchange at their value for example) - because he is trying to paint a general picture of the system as a whole, not an all encompassing framework that everything will fit completely comfortably in.


Isn't it incumbent on any system-of-the-world explanation to readily incorporate and explain new and odd phenomenon? In science, things that don't fit the model usually are the same things that show the model to be defective.


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## Fozzie Bear (Oct 31, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Isn't it incumbent on any system-of-the-world explanation to readily incorporate and explain new and odd phenomenon? In science, things that don't fit the model usually are the same things that show the model to be defective.



Yes, absolutely. But you will get to a lot of this stuff if you persevere with Marx. (And then Limits of Capital which I mentioned above). The first few chapters are the foundation but not the entire thing...


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## danny la rouge (Oct 31, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Which is why I don't understand the labour theory of value when it comes to scalable tasks/commodities!


There are several things going on when a record is sold and resold.  You’re not just selling the song the Rolling Stones wrote, or even just the performance of it.  You’re selling the various commodities which are the single on 45, the first UK vinyl album it was on, “_Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)”,_ subsequent compilations, CD releases, the MP3, the streamed broadcast of the song.  Each of these is in itself a commodity, and each involves a mechanical process to oversee – transferring the song in the pressing process, manufacturing the physical product, or the equipment needed to transmit the product.  Capital at each advance in technology needs to recuperate the value locked into the machinery.  Each new iteration of Satisfaction is a new commodity.  If it were not, it would have no exchange value.  I have bought two copies of Satisfaction myself – on pre-recorded cassette and on CD.  Each was a separate commodity.  If I listen to it on Spotify, that too is a commodity (although a far more ephemeral commodity than a 45” single. So, my subscription, or the advertising revenue in the “free” version, is in part paying for a service, which is itself a commodity, like a haircut, but also for the machine-minding production process involved).  Which brings us to intensification.

In addition to each new commodity, we also have new forms of intensification.  We can see each new technology – vinyl, CDs, streaming – as new ways of organising the intensification of labour: new iterations of the machine technology used by capitalists to change and regulate the intensity of the labour process.  Workers at each stage are the machine minders, in some senses an appendage to the labour _process_. 

You’ll find discussion of this in this section: Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I — Chapter Fifteen

“In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.

‘The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour of Sisyphus’.” (p548).


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## Gramsci (Nov 1, 2017)

Idaho said:


> I was reading the first few chapters of capital - the bit about all value being derived from labour value - and was trying to think of counter examples and came up with these:
> 
> - streaming of a music file of an old hit song
> - patents filed across a number of similar technologies
> ...



In later chapters of Capital volume one Marx does talk about the increase in productivity brought about by factories / new mechanisation of industry.

So it needed less workers to produce more wealth/ profit. I remember in one part of the Capital Marx pointing out that there was an increase in the servant class in his time. Increased wealth was not evenly distributed. Less workers were needed to produce it. But the profits were appropriated by the bourgeois. The workers no longer needed in productive labour producing surplus value could enlarge the servant class.

So there is a difference between labour input and value. It's not about the number of workers involved in productive work.

I think Marx made distinction between workers in a factory and those not directly producing a commodity. A servant would not be putting labour into a commodity which is then exchanged.

In Marx time the population rendered surplus due to mechanisation and increased productivity could be sent out of the country as emigrants.


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## Jeff Robinson (Nov 16, 2017)

I have a question about the labour theory of value. The theory, as I understand it, says that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time that is required to produce that commodity. My question is: what is 'value' in this context? At the beginning of capital, Marx draws a distinction between use value and exchange value, and I had assumed that in the context of the labour theory of value he is talking about the later. However, he goes on to give an example of an uncultivated piece of land that can be sold at a price even though no labour went in to it because of its location etc. And he also says

 “things which in and for themselves are not commodities, things such as conscience, honour, etc., can be offered for sale by their holders, and thus acquire the form of commodities through their price. Hence a thing can, formally speaking, have a price without having a value. The expression of price is in this case imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics.”

I am not clear what is meant by value in the context of the LTV and how it differs from price and how, or if, price differs from exchange value.

(Am I correct in understanding LTV as saying that only labour can *increase* value rather than only labour can *create* value? That various raw materials etc. have value independently of the labour that goes in to their transformation into commodities)


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 16, 2017)

Jeff Robinson 

I'm still quite new to all this myself so might not be that great at explaining it. Hopefully others can chip in.

In terms of the Labour Theory of Value you are better off thinking about value as exchange value, yes.

Later on in Capital there are explanations of other ways that value forms. For example in volume 3 there is a section on ground rent - why some pieces of land are more valuable than others. And interest, speculation and so on.

Price _can _be different from exchange value, but for the purposes of Volume 1 it is assumed that commodities exchange at their values. So in vol 1 price = exchange value. (And then in the other volumes different assumptions are used).


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## danny la rouge (Nov 17, 2017)

Jeff Robinson said:


> My question is: what is 'value' in this context?


For Marx, as I understand him, _value_ and_ socially necessary labour time_ are the same thing.  He is using _use-value_ and _exchange-value_ to define _value_, and _value_, he says, is _socially necessary labour time_.  These can't be separated out in the commodity.  They're all there.  But _use-value_ is what he describes in order to arrive at _exchange-value, _which is the_ bearer_ of _socially necessary labour time_.

I have a table.  In order to benefit from its _exchange-value_ I sell it to you.  I no longer have its _use-value_, you do.  But the _value_ that facilitated that exchange is the _socially necessary labour time_ embedded in the table.  The _value _as it is understood in everyday parlance.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

What does the "socially" bit refer to in "socially necessary"?


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> What does the "socially" bit refer to in "socially necessary"?



It's basically "across society". I.e. what is the average amount of a labour required to produce _x _commodity in _y _society.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

So, sticking with the table, if I own a machine that I use to produce tables with only 10% of the labour time of a normal table - but has a similar exchange value as a normal table - what is the gap in value between exchange value and labour value (compared to the normal table)? Has my labour value increased, or is the exchange value wrong in some way?


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## shifting gears (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So, sticking with the table, if I own a machine that I use to produce tables with only 10% of the labour time of a normal table - but has a similar exchange value as a normal table - what is the gap in value between exchange value and labour value (compared to the normal table)? Has my labour value increased, or is the exchange value wrong in some way?



Never mind that, I'm ringing the Luddites


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So, sticking with the table, if I own a machine that I use to produce tables with only 10% of the labour time of a normal table - but has a similar exchange value as a normal table - what is the gap in value between exchange value and labour value (compared to the normal table)?



Well this is the whole point of owning a machine, of course. Marx is quite into machines. There are several points to say about this:

1. There is value contained in the machine, from the workers who made it.

2. This value is then also transferred into the value of the commodity.

3. As the machine wears out, its value leaks into the commodities it produces. Then it will need replacing.

4. Capitalists are in a race to drive down wages and socially necessary labour time and they use machines to do that.

5. Initially your machine will put you at the front of the race, but this will not last.

6. Every other capitalist who can afford to buy the machine will do so, meaning that you will lose your advantage as the new socially necessary labour time becomes normal.

7. Other capitalists will develop machines that can reduce the socially necessary labour time even more. Then you will be at the back of the race because your competitors will buy the new machine whilst yours is still chugging along trying to reproduce its purchase cost in value.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Ok, I understand that, but this step:



> 3. As the machine wears out, its value leaks into the commodities it produces. Then it will need replacing.



Seems a very odd way of looking at it. Entropy is degrading the machine - its use value is evaporating, not moving into something else surely?

So how does this all work in industries where labour cost constitutes a tiny fraction of the cost, and machine cost is the most significant element? Perhaps in the future, the only element?


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## redsquirrel (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Seems a very odd way of looking at it. Entropy is degrading the machine - its use value is evaporating, not moving into something else surely?


What about repairs, maintainance, new parts, updates etc.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Yes, those are activities to resist/counteract entropy.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Seems a very odd way of looking at it. Entropy is degrading the machine - its use value is evaporating, not moving into something else surely?



It can seem odd, I get that. Marx is keen on the idea that the inner workings of capitalism are hidden and have to be unpicked and so the more usual ways of looking at things do get discarded sometimes.

If I buy a record and play it so many times that it wear out, then its use value has been destroyed. But that's not quite the same as machinery which is used as part of the means of production. Clearly the cost of the machine has to be factored in to the price of the commodity it is producing - that is standard accountancy I would think. And "depreciation" is also an standard accountancy term.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So how does this all work in industries where labour cost constitutes a tiny fraction of the cost, and machine cost is the most significant element? Perhaps in the future, the only element?



Marx talks about the "rising organic composition of capital" and means exactly this (less labour, more machinery and means of production).

When this happens you get less surplus value (because that can only be produced by workers), so the rate of profit declines. This can lead to crisis.

There is an anecdote where Henry Ford junior shows the union rep a new automated production line for cars and asks how he is going to get the robots to pay union dues. The union rep replies by asking how Ford is going to get the robots to buy his cars...


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## mojo pixy (Nov 17, 2017)

I'm thinking of an axe whose head blunts and needs to be replaced and whose handle breaks and needs to be replaced.

You can even use the axe itself to make a new handle for the same tool, transferring some value from the head to the haft. But if someone with a special axe-making machine which they can afford and you can't produces many axes and you buy one, each of those axes has the same use value as yours but altogether that person is creating far more exchange-value than you with your one axe can do, and they certainly produce more surplus value with each extra axe they make with their axe machine (edit: axes they won't _use_, but will only sell)

I dunno, just woken up. I need to drink more tea before returning to this thread.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Yes I agree that the cost of capital depreciation *should be factored into the price of goods produced. But to see labour value as an immutable force that flows from one thing to another seems a bit, er.. pre modern? 

*(I'm sure it isn't always, and then we also have a potential difference between exchange value and price - but that is another bag of wasps).


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

The idea of making the customer pay is one that's now obsolete? Interesting.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Marx talks about the "rising organic composition of capital" and means exactly this (less labour, more machinery and means of production).
> 
> When this happens you get less surplus value (because that can only be produced by workers), so the rate of profit declines. This can lead to crisis.
> 
> There is an anecdote where Henry Ford junior shows the union rep a new automated production line for cars and asks how he is going to get the robots to pay union dues. The union rep replies by asking how Ford is going to get the robots to buy his cars...


Yes this part I very much understand and agree with. It's the more primal level "particle physics" of Marxism that seems wrong to me.


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## redsquirrel (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Yes, those are activities to resist/counteract entropy.


So such activities just appear out of thin air? Repair maintainance workers don't need to be employed. Repair parts don't need to be produced.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Yes this part I very much understand and agree with. It's the more primal level "particle physics" of Marxism that seems wrong to me.



It's a model and you can subscribe to it or not. 

In terms of physics I don't think it's sensible to say that machines decay just because of "entropy" though - there are clearly specific processes happening which are making them decay. Like, they will end up being useless twice as fast if the factory runs a night shift, for example.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

redsquirrel said:


> So such activities just appear out of thin air? Repair maintainance workers don't need to be employed. Repair parts don't need to be produced.


Of course. But I don't see why it's useful to see that as labour value flowing into the goods themselves.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Value is a social relation. There are no strong  readings of capital as arguing that value is physical, substantive. The whole point is that its social.


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## mojo pixy (Nov 17, 2017)

I think bringing entropy in doesn't help, because we're not talking about using things till the end of their natural lifespan. we're talking (and so was Marx) about producing things to appropriate their value. The _natural lifespan_ of a product vis-a-vis entropy has little to do with its value. Planned obsolescence as a way of controlling the availability of surplus value is far more important IMO. Capitalism isn't about using things till they break, it's about using things till someone can persuade you to by a new one.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Of course. But I don't see why it's useful to see that as labour value flowing into the goods themselves.


Use value of prior labour is quite clearly embodied in machinery or there is no point in them.


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## DotCommunist (Nov 17, 2017)

yeah if you take a machine apart for storage, mothball it, put it in petroleum jelly or however these preservatives work entropy is not going to affect it in a human lifetime meaningful way. It might be obsolete in 30 yrs time but it'd still work. Its the using of the machine that wears it down then surely


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> It's a model and you can subscribe to it or not.
> 
> In terms of physics I don't think it's sensible to say that machines decay just because of "entropy" though - there are clearly specific processes happening which are making them decay. Like, they will end up being useless twice as fast if the factory runs a night shift, for example.


Now that starts to become a whole new dimension of calculations. Machines may not deteriorate twice as fast by being run twice as much. Some machines would deteriorate faster by being stopped and started. Some may have specific parts that wear out, but constitute a fraction of the total machine cost. The possibilities here are endless.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

I must say, it's quite odd to see that a part of capital that was most far seeing and clear  - modern really existing capital being obsessed with it - is pre-modern. The suggestion that machinery can develop to such an extent that value-producing labour-power has to 'step aside' is utterly central to today in any manner you which to examine it - economically, politically, socially.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

DotCommunist said:


> yeah if you take a machine apart for storage, mothball it, put it in petroleum jelly or however these preservatives work entropy is not going to affect it in a human lifetime meaningful way. It might be obsolete in 30 yrs time but it'd still work. Its the using of the machine that wears it down then surely


And what does it do in its operation? Bearing in mind it cannot impart it's own use value into other commodities it produces - that would be outrageously pre-modern.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

mojo pixy said:


> I think bringing entropy in doesn't help, because we're not talking about using things till the end of their natural lifespan. we're talking (and so was Marx) about producing things to appropriate their value. The _natural lifespan_ of a product vis-a-vis entropy has little to do with its value. Planned obsolescence as a way of controlling the availability of surplus value is far more important IMO.


Planned obsolescence is largely unplanned I would suggest. It's a result of the need to recoup capital costs at a pace that the market will pay for. I think Renault would love to be able to make cars that lasted 3 times longer than the other manufacturers, but how much is Joe public willing to spend on a car? How much manufacturing time, cost etc, not to mention marketing cost, etc would Renault be willing to gamble on producing a bomb proof super car that the public might not like, or liking, might not be willing to pay for?

The scale of large businesses are such that they only know years after the event whether they are profitable or bankrupt. They wouldn't even dare dream of the level of market control you suggest.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> I must say, it's quite odd to see that a part of capital that was most far seeing and clear  - modern really existing capital being obsessed with it - is pre-modern. The suggestion that machinery can develop to such an extent that value-producing labour-power has to 'step aside' is utterly central to today in any manner you which to examine it - economically, politically, socially.


If you could just put your contempt for me aside for a moment (we can both just accept that it's there and not mention it). Could you explain your point a little bit more? I think it's an important one, but I don't understand it.


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## mojo pixy (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Planned obsolescence is largely unplanned I would suggest. It's a result of the need to recoup capital costs at a pace that the market will pay for. I think Renault would love to be able to make cars that lasted 3 times longer than the other manufacturers, but how much is Joe public willing to spend on a car? How much manufacturing time, cost etc, not to mention marketing cost, etc would Renault be willing to gamble on producing a bomb proof super car that the public might not like, or liking, might not be willing to pay for?
> 
> The scale of large businesses are such that they only know years after the event whether they are profitable or bankrupt. They wouldn't even dare dream of the level of market control you suggest.



FWIW I think you're wrong about this. Planned Obsolescence has been a conscious decision of manufacturers for decades. Plus if you want a car that lasts longer than a Renault, buy a Mercedes, or a Land Rover. People will pay extra for a longer lifespan.

Wayback Machine

Eta: it's quite blatant, even now
Diesel Car Scrappage Scheme 2017 | UK Government Scrappage Scheme <- just to be clear, this has fuck all to do with pollution and everything to do with propping up the motor industry.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> If you could just put your contempt for me aside for a moment (we can both just accept that it's there and not mention it). Could you explain your point a little bit more? I think it's an important one, but I don't understand it.


What do you want explaining?


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

mojo pixy said:


> FWIW I think you're wrong about this. Planned Obsolescence has been a conscious decision of manufacturers for decades. Plus if you want a car that lasts longer than a Renault, buy a Mercedes, or a Land Rover. People will pay extra for a longer lifespan.
> 
> Wayback Machine
> 
> ...


What do you mean by "controlling the availability of surplus value"? 

I don't think we are disagreeing - in that we both agree that obsolescence is inbuilt. I think it's in the mechanism of how that happens that is in question. I need to understand what you mean better.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> What do you want explaining?


This bit :



> The suggestion that machinery can develop to such an extent that value-producing labour-power has to 'step aside' is utterly central to today in any manner you which to examine it - economically, politically, socially.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

Automation. It's a thing.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> This bit :


What do you need explaining about it?


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## mojo pixy (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> What do you mean by "controlling the availability of surplus value"?



Anyone who produces value can control how much surplus value is available for how long, by changing models and making products that are un-repairable (eg iPods) or become ''uneconomical'' to maintain and must be replaced entirely after a certain point. It limits the potential not only for continued use / obliges re-purchase, but also for resale.

EtA, I think it's important for me to say I struggle with these concepts (does it show? lol) but I do try to relate the theoretical to my observations of daily reality. I have to, for it to make sense, and it's not easy.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> Automation. It's a thing.


It's the new (old) thing!


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## Pickman's model (Nov 17, 2017)

mojo pixy said:


> Anyone who produces value can control how much surplus value is available for how long, by changing models and making products that are un-repairable (eg iPods) or become ''uneconomical'' to maintain and must be replaced entirely after a certain point. It limits the potential not only for continued use / obliges re-purchase, but also for resale.
> 
> EtA, I think it's important for me to say I struggle with these concepts (does it show? lol) but I do try to relate the theoretical to my observations of daily reality. I have to, for it to make sense, and it's not easy.


inbuilt obsolescence


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Yes, automation. But how is it germane to a discussion of value being derived from labour in this context? How does it not undermine this principle?


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

mojo pixy said:


> Anyone who produces value can control how much surplus value is available.. .


I am stuck at this point. Can we go back to our (entropy worn) table analogy to explain?


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

from the notebooks for capital

No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [_Naturgegenstand_] as middle link between the object [_Objekt_] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth. The _theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based,_ appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The _surplus labour of the mass _has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the _non-labour of the few, _for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them. Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high. ‘Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. _Wealth _is not command over surplus labour time’ (real wealth), ‘but rather, _disposable time _outside that needed in direct production, for _every individual _and the whole society.’ (_The Source and Remedy _etc. 1821, p. 6.)


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Yes, automation. But how is it germane to a discussion of value being derived from labour in this context? How does it not undermine this principle?


This is a thread on capital so this is important - expending the use-value of labour-power is what can produce surplus-value. Not just labour. The production of surplus-value is specific to the capitalist mode of production - otherwise any old labour at any old time can and did produce value.


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## mojo pixy (Nov 17, 2017)

Pickman's model said:


> inbuilt obsolescence



Yep.



mojo pixy said:


> FWIW I think you're wrong about this. Planned Obsolescence has been a conscious decision of manufacturers for decades. Plus if you want a car that lasts longer than a Renault, buy a Mercedes, or a Land Rover. People will pay extra for a longer lifespan.
> 
> Wayback Machine
> 
> ...


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

The planned obsolescence thing isn't really relevant to capital - the competitive obsolescence in the quest to reduce the amount of socially necessary labour going into a single capitals commodities via developing productivity increasing technologies is (edit: as well as technologies increasing capital control/enclosing labour-powers technical knowledge) over the labour process in order to do the same)  - and how this then effects total capital and its action. Namely, an inbuilt technological rush that has no option but to reduce the amount of value-producing labour power in the overall total production process resulting in over-production/under-consumption and fall in the average rate of profit - which itself necessitates a whole raft of political measures to counteract - which the single capitals cannot carry though on their own and so requires the building/reproduction/extension of a political state and political powers. Cor blimey. or as marx said in capital:



> "It would be possible to write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working-class".


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## mojo pixy (Nov 17, 2017)

True. Planned obsolescence as such is to do with _consumerism _- but the more consumption can be made to take place, the more value capitalists can expect to be able to appropriate. Consumerism as a motor of capitalism, perhaps.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Yes, automation. But how is it germane to a discussion of value being derived from labour in this context? How does it not undermine this principle?


We covered this when we recently discussed the music industry.  Remember we discussed intensification?  This is a feature of capitalism (the industrial revolution, the changing nature of the social relations that surround labour).

The relevant passage is here:

"Labour-time continues to transmit as before the same value to the total product, but this unchanged amount of exchange-value is spread over more use-value; hence the value of each single commodity sinks."

The _total_ value remains the same, but the value (socially useful labour time) in each item (let's stick to tables) is less.  So instead of expending his or her shift on one table, the worker using the machine might expend the shift on ten tables.  The _socially useful labour time_ is still one shift.  But now it is distributed across ten tables instead of one.  But remember the production line is now regulating the _way_ the _socially useful labour time_ is expended.  Wandering off to fetch another chisel or stare out of the window is now not possible because the parts will be piling up while you do so.  That's intensification.

Remember, this is a _social_ phenomenon.


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## Jeff Robinson (Nov 17, 2017)

danny la rouge said:


> For Marx, as I understand him, _value_ and_ socially necessary labour time_ are the same thing.  He is using _use-value_ and _exchange-value_ to define _value_, and _value_, he says, is _socially necessary labour time_.  These can't be separated out in the commodity.  They're all there.  But _use-value_ is what he describes in order to arrive at _exchange-value, _which is the_ bearer_ of _socially necessary labour time_.
> 
> I have a table.  In order to benefit from its _exchange-value_ I sell it to you.  I no longer have its _use-value_, you do.  But the _value_ that facilitated that exchange is the _socially necessary labour time_ embedded in the table.  The _value _as it is understood in everyday parlance.



In other words, the use value of a commodity to a _capitalist_ precisely is its exchange value. That makes sense, but the same is plainly not true of _the consumer_. No matter how much socially necessary labour time goes in to the production of a chocolate tea pot, its use value to an non chocolate teapot fan is unaffected.

I don't think its plausible to claim that "_value_ and_ socially necessary labour time_ are the same thing". After all, socially necessary labour could be used to make a product that isn't turned in to a commodity. I'm sure you were talking about commodities in particular when you made that point but I think the non-commodity example illustrates that whilst socially necessary labour supervenes on exchange value, that doesn't mean that exchange value is reducible to socially necessary labour (just as hydrogen is necessary for water but that doesn't make water reducible to hydrogen). 

It seems to me that most plausible things we can say about socially necessary labour are that (1) it sets a floor on the exchange value of any commodity sold for profit (everything above that floor being surplus value) and (2) that it is the only thing that can *increase* exchange value of any given commodity. It seems that demand and other variable also affects exchange value, independently of SNL. Marx seems to acknowledge that there are other relevant variables, as in his discussion of uncultivated land, sentimental items etc that affect price. I’m trying to piece together these various observations Marx makes, I feel I am clearly not interpreting correctly how they all join up.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

danny la rouge said:


> We covered this when we recently discussed the music industry.  Remember we discussed intensification?  This is a feature of capitalism (the industrial revolution, the changing nature of the social relations that surround labour).
> 
> The relevant passage is here:
> 
> ...


OK, so our man/woman is now cranking out 10 tables a day, but the exchange value of those tables is not a tenth of the previous value as there is still raw material cost, transport and capital costs, etc. Why is the labour value considered to be the principal factor? Is it because the raw material cost is in itself a measure of the amount of labour needed to cut and move it to our workshop? 

Are you saying that it's only the labour that gives it any value, and only the cost of labour that is under pressure through market competition?


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Also, on intensification, where I work, it seems to be well stocked with people doing large amounts of pointless, unproductive circular and activity just to look busy. There is pressure to justify your existence, but the measures are so abstract and circular (and in themselves justification for others more senior) that they are farcical.

Are pointless office jobs a kind of proletarian counter strategy to intensification? 

(I really don't know if I joking)


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## Jeff Robinson (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> OK, so our man/woman is now cranking out 10 tables a day, but the exchange value of those tables is not a tenth of the previous value as there is still raw material cost, transport and capital costs, etc. Why is the labour value considered to be the principal factor? Is it because the raw material cost is in itself a measure of the amount of labour needed to cut and move it to our workshop?
> 
> Are you saying that it's only the labour that gives it any value, and only the cost of labour that is under pressure through market competition?



The exchange value of the raw material derives from the SNL that went in to extracting them from the ground, the labour of transportation itself as well as all the labour that went in to the making the transportation vehicles. The 'capital costs' are just the purchase of living labour power (i.e. the wage labourer) and dead labour (commodities that have already been transformed by the labour of earlier workers).


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## danny la rouge (Nov 17, 2017)

Jeff Robinson said:


> In other words, the use value of a commodity to a _capitalist_ precisely is its exchange value. That makes sense, but the same is plainly not true of _the consumer_. No matter how much socially necessary labour time goes in to the production of a chocolate tea pot, its use value to an non chocolate teapot fan is unaffected.
> 
> I don't think its plausible to claim that "_value_ and_ socially necessary labour time_ are the same thing". After all, socially necessary labour could be used to make a product that isn't turned in to a commodity. I'm sure you were talking about commodities in particular when you made that point but I think the non-commodity example illustrates that whilst socially necessary labour supervenes on exchange value, that doesn't mean that exchange value is reducible to socially necessary labour (just as hydrogen is necessary for water but that doesn't make water reducible to hydrogen).
> 
> It seems to me that most plausible things we can say about socially necessary labour are that (1) it sets a floor on the exchange value of any commodity sold for profit (everything above that floor being surplus value) and (2) that it is the only thing that can *increase* exchange value of any given commodity. It seems that demand and other variable also affects exchange value, independently of SNL. Marx seems to acknowledge that there are other relevant variables, as in his discussion of uncultivated land, sentimental items etc that affect price. I’m trying to piece together these various observations Marx makes, I feel I am clearly not interpreting correctly how they all join up.


“In other words, the use value of a commodity to a _capitalist_ precisely is its exchange value”.

No. A crofter in the Scottish Highlands before the onset of the Capitalist mode of production, might say “I need a table, I shall make one”.  He or she is determining that he or she wants the use-value of a table.  This is not a commodity.  It’s a table.  You, now, right here in the Epoch of the Capitalist mode of production might head down to the woodyard and buy a load of wood and make yourself a table as a hobby.  That’s not a commodity either.  It’s not intended as one, anyway. A serf might be asked to make a table for the lord of the manor.   That is a use-value, but as it’s not going on the market, it isn’t a commodity.  The capitalist, however, manufactures tables to sell.  This is the production of use-values; use-values for others.  If they did not possess use-value, who would buy them?  Commodities are use-values.

Commodities are also exchange-values.  Because they’re made for the market.  They are desired because they are use-values, but they are commodities because they are also exchange-values.  But what is that exchange-value a representation of?  It’s a representation of socially necessary labour time.

Supply and demand plays a role in determining exchange-value, because the use-value decreases if I have several tables already and there’s nothing but tables on the market.  I certainly desire tables a bit less at this point.  But Marx points out in the section of fetishism of commodities ( Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter One ) that “in the midst of all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange relations between the products, the labour time socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of Nature”.

“As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things. It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful thing and a value becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired such an extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being exchanged, and their character as values has therefore to be taken into account, beforehand, during production. From this moment the labour of the individual producer acquires socially a two-fold character. On the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour, satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as part and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a social division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously. On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so far as the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalisation of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz. expenditure of human labour power or human labour in the abstract. The two-fold social character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when reflected in his brain, only under those forms which are impressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the exchange of products. In this way, the character that his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condition, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and the social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of all other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the physically different articles that are the products of labour, have one common quality, viz., that of having value.”​
The process I think you are getting at of what a capitalist sees in a commodity, why they want to produce commodities, is discussed in this section.  _Commodity fetishism_ is way that markets and money provide a disguise for what are actually social relations. 


“Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values. Now listen how those commodities speak through the mouth of the economist.

_“Value” – (i.e., exchange value) “is a property of things, riches” – (i.e., use value) “of man. Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges, riches do not.” “Riches” (use value) “are the attribute of men, value is the attribute of commodities. A man or a community is rich, a pearl or a diamond is valuable...” A pearl or a diamond is valuable as a pearl or a diamond._​
So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond. The economic discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay special claim to critical acumen, find however that the use value of objects belongs to them independently of their material properties, while their value, on the other hand, forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in this view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use value of objects is realised without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the objects and man, while, on the other hand, their value is realised only by exchange, that is, by means of a social process.”​ It's now become clear that I'm practically re-writing Capital in order to discuss just one sentence of yours.  So at this point I'm going to wind up.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> OK, so our man/woman is now cranking out 10 tables a day, but the exchange value of those tables is not a tenth of the previous value as there is still raw material cost, transport and capital costs, etc. Why is the labour value considered to be the principal factor? Is it because the raw material cost is in itself a measure of the amount of labour needed to cut and move it to our workshop?


Sticking with tables, lets say its raw material is trees.  Clearly the trees have to be felled, logged, turned into planks.  Or if it's a marble table, quarried, cut, polished, whatever.



> Are you saying that it's only the labour that gives it any value, and only the cost of labour that is under pressure through market competition?


Marx is saying that _socially necessary labour time_ is one of the aspects of the tripartite nature of value.  See the post above ^.


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## Jeff Robinson (Nov 17, 2017)

Danny La Rouge, thanks for writing such a long response, but I'm not entirely sure what it has to do with the sentence you have quoted from me. I am aware of the distinction between UV and EV, I was trying to interpret you when wrote that UV and EV 'can't be separated out in the commodity'. I thought you meant that they were in someways interconnected conceptually, but I suppose what you meant was that they are merely both present in the commodity form.

My point simply was that the reason a capitalist hires labour power to produce commodities is so that the commodities can be exchanged on market for profit (i.e. surplus value). In that sense the use value of the commodity to the capitalist (who has hired labour to produce it) is its exchange value. If the commodity has no exchange value (i.e. it can't be exchanged on the market) then for the capitalist it has no use value. Surely that is correct?


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Very interesting stuff danny la rouge, I think I am starting to understand a bit better.

So it is commodities that are central to the critique?


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## danny la rouge (Nov 17, 2017)

Jeff Robinson said:


> Danny La Rouge, thanks for writing such a long response, but I'm not entirely sure what it has to do with the sentence you have quoted from me. I am aware of the distinction between UV and EV, I was trying to interpret you when wrote that UV and EV 'can't be separated out in the commodity'. I thought you meant that they were in someways interconnected conceptually, but I suppose what you meant was that they are merely both present in the commodity form.
> 
> My point simply was that the reason a capitalist hires labour power to produce commodities is so that the commodities can be exchanged on market for profit (i.e. surplus value). In that sense the use value of the commodity to the capitalist (who has hired labour to produce it) is its exchange value.


That's what I was trying to answer. A capitalist produces a commodity for its exchange-value. But it doesn't make sense to say that's its use-value to the capitalist; it's its exchange-value.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So it is commodities that are central to the critique?


Yes. The title of the book is Capital. So he's dissecting capitalism.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Very interesting stuff danny la rouge, I think I am starting to understand a bit better.
> 
> So it is commodities that are central to the critique?



What is the opening lines of the book ffs?


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

danny la rouge said:


> Yes. The title of the book is Capital. So he's dissecting capitalism.


So by extension, commodities only recently took centre stage in human life?


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

*****


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## danny la rouge (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So by extension, commodities only recently took centre stage in human life?


Precisely.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So by extension, commodities only recently took centre stage in human life?


Oh my fucking god. It's sort of the point of the book that this thread is about that you've been talking talking talking on.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> Oh my fucking god. It's sort of the point of the book that this thread is about that you've been talking talking talking on.


You are a man who makes a commodity of his knowledge. To spend as a token of his prestige and social power. Danny is more of teaching and sharing person - to which I am grateful.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

danny la rouge said:


> Precisely.


I suppose this could be a weakness in the proposition. Marx was fairly poor in terms of cultural understanding. I'll keep reading.


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So by extension, commodities only recently took centre stage in human life?



If you're asking whether or not Marx says commodities pre-existed capitalism; he did. But, he describes capitalist society as "a society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of labour, hence the dominant social relation is the relation between men as possessors of commodities".


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Very interesting stuff danny la rouge, I think I am starting to understand a bit better.
> 
> So it is commodities that are central to the critique?






			
				marx said:
			
		

> Part I
> THE COMMODITY
> 
> The wealth of bourgeois society, at first sight, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities, its unit being a single commodity. Every commodity, however, has a twofold aspect – use-value and exchange-value. [1]



On a thread discussing the book capital.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Athos said:


> If you're asking whether or not Marx says commodities pre-existed capitalism; he did.


No he didn't!


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> No he didn't!



I've added to the post you quoted. But I thought he did. Else, what was he talking about with the simple exchange economy?


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Athos said:


> I've added to the post you quoted. But I thought he did. Else, what was he talking about with the simple exchange economy?


The whole point of the book is that the commodity relation (that is, products  produced for their exchange-value) has replaced the simple exchange relation (which is use-value as a whole and maybe symbolic stuff) and that this is something specific to capitalism. That, literally, is what the book spends 500 pages establishing.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> On a thread discussing the book capital.


I have bits of the work on free audiobook. Unfortunately it's in a scruffy chapter format with lots of introduction and summary stuff (all uploaded separately as individual files - piss poor really) so I went to the first main chapter about use value and exchange value.


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> The whole point of the book is that the commodity relation (that is, products  produced for their exchange-value) has replaced the simple exchange relation (which is use-value as a whole and maybe symbolic stuff) and that this is something specific to capitalism. That, literally is what the book spends 500 pages establishing.



Yes, I realise what the whole point of the book is. But, as I explained, I understood Idaho to be asking whether Marx said that commodities are a product of capitalism.  Which he didn't. He clearly talks about commodities pre-capitalism.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> The whole point of the book is that the commodity relation (that is, products  produced for their exchange-value) has replaced the simple exchange relation (which is use-value as a whole and maybe symbolic stuff) and that this is something specific to capitalism. That, literally, is what the book spends 500 pages establishing.


He is suggesting that production of commodities at scale specifically for market exchange is a recent phenomenon?


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> I have bits of the work on free audiobook. Unfortunately it's in a scruffy chapter format with lots of introduction and summary stuff (all uploaded separately as individual files - piss poor really) so I went to the first main chapter about use value and exchange value.


Great prep. A book that is very clear about it's internal  logic and exposition  - it starts with a specific example  then moves dialectically through a series of modes relating to the original example. That's why we ended up with a beadle GOTCHA.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Athos said:


> Yes, I realise what the whole point of the book is. But, as I explained, I understood Idaho to be asking whether Marx said that commodities are a product of capitalism.  Which he didn't. He clearly talks about commodities pre-capitalism.


Commodities are the specific product of capitalism. That's the argument of the book. What on earth is going on here?


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> He is suggesting that production of commodities at scale specifically for market exchange is a recent phenomenon?



Who is, the pre-modern marx?


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> Commodities are the specific product of capitalism. That's the argument of the book. What on earth is going on here?



I genuinely don't understand what's so controversial. Simple commodity production was the historical forerunner of capitalist production, wasn't it?


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Athos said:


> I genuinely don't understand what's so controversial. Simple commodity production was the historical forerunner of capitalist production, wasn't it?


Butchersapron isn't well adjusted for the job of teaching. It requires a bit more empathy and human connection than he is comfortable with.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Athos said:


> I genuinely don't understand what's so controversial. Simple commodity production was the historical forerunner of capitalist production, wasn't it?


And did marx argue that the limited examples were irrelevant/non-central to the mode of production?


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> And did marx argue that the limited examples were irrelevant/non-central to the mode of production?



I don't follow. Can you rephrase the question, please?

And, perhaps answer mine? Whether or not Marx conceived of commodities pre-existing capitalism, in what Engels called 'simple commodity production' (usually understood to take place under conditions Marx called 'simple exchange')? Because that was the whole of the point I made, and to which you seem to have taken objection.


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Athos said:


> I don't follow. Can you rephrase the question, please?
> 
> And, perhaps answer mine? Whether or not Marx conceived of commodities pre-existing capitalism, in what Engels called 'simple commodity production' (usually understood to take place under conditions Marx called 'simple exchange')? Because that was the whole of the point I made, and to which you seem to have taken objection.


I'll do both in one: Did marx and engels and (wiki) then argue that minor commodity production in any way help to charactrise that period. When they talked of it they talked of it irrelevant archaic and non-central. Which means, to answer yes to the monkey-man when he asks  _didn't commodity production always exist_ is to say _yes, capital (the book) is wrong and there's always been capitalism - it's just our nature._


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron - you principally see politics as something to defend. Both an armour and a weapon. It's not something to be discussed but a shibboleth of who you are, which side you are on. Perhaps you are ill-suited to this thread, which is a shame as you clearly have detailed knowledge of this topic.


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> Which means, to answer yes to the monkey-man when he asks  didn't commodity production always exist is to say yes, capital (the book) is wrong and there's always been capitalism - it's just our nature.



Come off it; that's a ridiculous leap!

An acknowledgement of the fact that Marx recognised that commodities pre-existed capitalism doesn't undermine _Capital_ one bit.   We both know it can't be reduced to the bare existence of commodities!

Of course, I wouldn't claim that capitalism is in our nature,  or that it's there's always been capitalism.  In fact, the post you took issue with explicitly talked about a time before capitalism!


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## butchersapron (Nov 17, 2017)

Athos said:


> Come off it; that's a ridiculous leap!
> 
> An acknowledgement of the fact that Marx recognised that commodities pre-existed capitalism doesn't undermine _Capital_ one bit.   We both know it can't be reduced to the bare existence of commodities!
> 
> Of course, I wouldn't claim that capitalism is in our nature,  or that it's there's always been capitalism.  In fact, the post you took issue with explicitly talked about a time before capitalism!


The whole point of idaho's  - not marx's post - was that_ yeah so what commodities always existed, marx said nothing new. O_n a thread dedicated to a book that argued that a society organised around large scale commodity production is historically different from one where it basically  was irrelevant.


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## beesonthewhatnow (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> The whole point of the book is that the commodity relation (that is, products  produced for their exchange-value) has replaced the simple exchange relation (which is use-value as a whole and maybe symbolic stuff) and that this is something specific to capitalism. That, literally, is what the book spends 500 pages establishing.


If the book takes 500 pages to establish what you’ve said in a single sentence it kinda suggests it could have done with a bettor editor


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> The whole point of idaho's  - not marx's post - was that_ yeah so what commodities always existed, marx said nothing new. O_n a thread dedicated to a book that argued that a society organised around large scale commodity production is historically different from one where it basically  was irrelevant.



Well, I didn't interpret what he said that way.  If that is what he meant, he was completely wrong.  I'm surprised that you thought I was agreeing with that, though. 

And think it could have been cleared up quicker  if you'd been more straightforward from the start (albeit I accept that you replied in the seconds before I edited in the second sentence: 'But, he describes capitalist society as "a society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of labour, hence the dominant social relation is the relation between men as possessors of commodities"'.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

beesonthewhatnow said:


> If the book takes 500 pages to establish what you’ve said in a single sentence it kinda suggests it could have done with a bettor editor



There's more to it than that. 

Fucking hell this thread started as a really useful discussion for people who were actually reading or going to read the book.


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## bimble (Nov 17, 2017)

I just bought the (abridged) book. Won’t be venturing on here to ask anything though unless feeling extremely brave.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 17, 2017)

bimble said:


> I just bought the (abridged) book. Won’t be venturing on here to ask anything though unless feeling extremely brave.



I think if people are giving it a good go, this thread has been very helpful. It was for me. 

If you do want to give it a go, I would also really recommend the David Harvey lectures as video or podcasts here:
Reading Capital

Everyone should definitely read the first few chapters of volume 1.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> The whole point of idaho's  - not marx's post - was that_ yeah so what commodities always existed, marx said nothing new. O_n a thread dedicated to a book that argued that a society organised around large scale commodity production is historically different from one where it basically  was irrelevant.


Actually I was just trying to clarify that point. Whether marx suggested that previous societies didn't prioritise commodity production.


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> I think if people are giving it a good go, this thread has been very helpful. It was for me.
> 
> If you do want to give it a go, I would also really recommend the David Harvey lectures as video or podcasts here:
> Reading Capital
> ...



This. And his book. I read the chapter in Marx, then Harvey's corresponding chapter, then watched the video, then sometimes read the chapter in Capital again, before understanding much of it.


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## bimble (Nov 17, 2017)

What about Easter Island? 
(Will shut up now till I’ve made a start).


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Whether marx suggested that previous societies didn't prioritise commodity production.



 No doubt butchersapron will correct me if I'm wrong (),  but... Whilst commodity production existed to a limited extent before capitalism (most labour only producing use-values, back then), it was only only with the buying and selling of labour power that social relations became dominated by the logic of production for the purpose of exchange.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

Is that not just a matter of scale? 

I need to read the bits he writes about "primitive" society. I think I would have lots of questions about that bit.


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> Is that not just a matter of scale?
> 
> I need to read the bits he writes about "primitive" society. I think I would have lots of questions about that bit.



No. It's nature, not extent.


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## Idaho (Nov 17, 2017)

So the hypothesis is that the nature of commodities and how they are made and exchanged is different after a certain point?


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## JimW (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So the hypothesis is that the nature of commodities and how they are made and exchanged is different after a certain point?


No, it's the nature of the social relations that change when the commodity form dominates.


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## Athos (Nov 17, 2017)

Idaho said:


> So the hypothesis is that the nature of commodities and how they are made and exchanged is different after a certain point?



That the nature of society changes.


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## JimW (Nov 17, 2017)

And if I understand correctly it's one of those dialectical processes - social changes lead to the domination of the commodity form and that in turn accelerates the change in social relations and cements a new mode of the relations of production, alluded to here I think:


> In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
> 
> The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
> 
> At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.


Economic Manuscripts: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Preface Abstract)


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## Jeff Robinson (Nov 19, 2017)

danny la rouge said:


> That's what I was trying to answer. A capitalist produces a commodity for its exchange-value. But it doesn't make sense to say that's its use-value to the capitalist; it's its exchange-value.



I don't see why as a conceptual matter use value cannot sometimes coincide with a commodity's exchange value. Think about this example: say I have an old chair that I never use: i don't like how it looks, it's not comfortable and it takes up much needed space in my apartment. Someone says to me 'why haven't you chucked it in the skip?' and I reply 'I am hoping to sell it'. In other words, I am keeping the chair because I want to exchange it for money. That's its *use value* to me: that later on it might earn me some money. It's useful to have something that I can earn money from in the future, and the more money I can make from it, the more useful it is to me.

The same applies to the production of a commodity. The commodity has a use value to the capitalist and that use value is that it can be sold for profit. Hence use value is reducible to exchange value.


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## bimble (Nov 19, 2017)

I really enjoyed the very beginning (of chapter 1) last night but its a book that needs to be read with a pencil at the ready isn't it.
One question that popped up immediately when he's explaining how a thing's exchange value is based on the amount of undifferentiated human labour-time needed to produce it was branded goods eg) gucci sunglasses produced in the very same factory as the ones that sell for £5. But maybe that's a separate issue as they have, to the people who buy them, a different use value.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 19, 2017)

Jeff Robinson said:


> I don't see why as a conceptual matter use value cannot sometimes coincide with a commodity's exchange value. Think about this example: say I have an old chair that I never use: i don't like how it looks, it's not comfortable and it takes up much needed space in my apartment. Someone says to me 'why haven't you chucked it in the skip?' and I reply 'I am hoping to sell it'. In other words, I am keeping the chair because I want to exchange it for money. That's its *use value* to me: that later on it might earn me some money. It's useful to have something that I can earn money from in the future, and the more money I can make from it, the more useful it is to me.
> 
> The same applies to the production of a commodity. The commodity has a use value to the capitalist and that use value is that it can be sold for profit. Hence use value is reducible to exchange value.


I understand your extrapolation, but it's a misuse of the term. Marx explains in chapter one that use-value is to be thought of as realised only in the process of consumption.  He takes some time to establish the distinction between use-value and exchange-value. So, if you want to understand Marx, you're going to have to accept that he sees them as distinct.


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## Athos (Nov 19, 2017)

Jeff Robinson said:


> I don't see why as a conceptual matter use value cannot sometimes coincide with a commodity's exchange value. Think about this example: say I have an old chair that I never use: i don't like how it looks, it's not comfortable and it takes up much needed space in my apartment. Someone says to me 'why haven't you chucked it in the skip?' and I reply 'I am hoping to sell it'. In other words, I am keeping the chair because I want to exchange it for money. That's its *use value* to me: that later on it might earn me some money. It's useful to have something that I can earn money from in the future, and the more money I can make from it, the more useful it is to me.
> 
> The same applies to the production of a commodity. The commodity has a use value to the capitalist and that use value is that it can be sold for profit. Hence use value is reducible to exchange value.



Use value is social, such that the chair has a use value regardless of its utility you you. And Marx was clear about use value being an aspect of its physical existence, realised in consumption.


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## Fozzie Bear (Nov 19, 2017)

bimble said:


> I really enjoyed the very beginning (of chapter 1) last night but its a book that needs to be read with a pencil at the ready isn't it.
> One question that popped up immediately when he's explaining how a thing's exchange value is based on the amount of undifferentiated human labour-time needed to produce it was branded goods eg) gucci sunglasses produced in the very same factory as the ones that sell for £5. But maybe that's a separate issue as they have, to the people who buy them, a different use value.



A good question!

I’d say that the Gucci sunglasses probably include more expensive materials than the £5 one’s. So more Labour has gone into producing the means of production before they get to the sunglasses factory. 

And the Gucci logo. Which a lot of labour has gone into making an important thing. That’s a bit of a weird one though.


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## bimble (Nov 19, 2017)

Fozzie Bear said:


> A good question!
> 
> I’d say that the Gucci sunglasses probably include more expensive materials than the £5 one’s. So more Labour has gone into producing the means of production before they get to the sunglasses factory.
> 
> And the Gucci logo. Which a lot of labour has gone into making an important thing. That’s a bit of a weird one though.



They don't (they are made of the same materials). But the labour of advertising to create the brand is a big thing, and then they do have a different use value - separate from keeping sun out of your eyes (?)


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## Athos (Nov 19, 2017)

You're confusing value with price.


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## bimble (Nov 19, 2017)

Athos said:


> You're confusing value with price.


Can you expand a bit - What's the difference between exchange value and price? Or maybe I should save questions till i've read a bit more.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 19, 2017)

bimble said:


> Can you expand a bit - What's the difference between exchange value and price? Or maybe I should save questions till i've read a bit more.


I'd save that until he gets onto discussing what money is.


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## danny la rouge (Nov 19, 2017)

The thing is he takes the reader through this step by step. He wants you to get what he means by each concept before showing how he derives the next. It's a process of building up the argument.

In this thread, as in previous threads, the first three chapters are where all the questions (and misunderstandings) occur.


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## Athos (Nov 19, 2017)

bimble said:


> Can you expand a bit - What's the difference between exchange value and price? Or maybe I should save questions till i've read a bit more.



That's something known as the transformation problem. He comes on to price in more detail in volume 3. Maybe park it until then, and work through it bit-by-bit


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## Riklet (May 14, 2018)

Did you stick with it then bimble? I found the first few chapters the most hard-going, I think.

I haven't given up yet! It'll all be over by Christmas, I told myself last year.  Turns out i'm still going.  But finally got back to it, and pacing through wages about to start Part Seven, accumulation of capital. Tbf I read all the Marx and Engels prefaces and introductions recently which took a while and was very interesting. Only taken me 6!! years to get this far though!

Will have to watch some of the David Harvey videos and check his book out again as there were some bits of Part Six I found quite dense and hard to understand.

I can see what people mean about different bits flowing into each other and it being a gripping read, though.  As long as you persevere!


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## Riklet (Sep 18, 2019)

Ha ha ha so apparently it took me a year and a half (!) to read Part Seven... just finished earlier.  Tbf it is bloody long and I stopped for a while (obvs). What a grim but amazing chapter! Now just starting Part 8... I aim to _finally_ finish Capital Vol 1 this week! Over 7 years at it! Then will obvs need to read the "Results" missing chapter 6... just saw how bloody long that too 

I can honestly say to those tempted or those who have given up but want to try again... It's a really amazing and engaging book once you get into it.  And honestly I think you can read it without a guide or anyone explaining it (although that may help and I like Harvey's videos).

One of the gems in all of the numerous interesting prefaces to the penguin edition is this letter and contains this warning (regarding "rushing" to get to the conclusion, I guess) 



> There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.


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## Riklet (Nov 24, 2019)

So I finished Vol 1, including all the footnotes prefaces etc (which id really recommend). Only took 7 years but def worth it! Doesnt exactly end with a bang though haha.

Reading the resultate section now and wondering what to go onto next!


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## redsquirrel (Nov 24, 2019)

Riklet said:


> So I finished Vol 1, including all the footnotes prefaces etc (which id really recommend). Only took 7 years but def worth it! Doesnt exactly end with a bang though haha.
> 
> Reading the resultate section now and wondering what to go onto next!


Surely Vol 2?


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## LDC (Nov 25, 2019)

A few of us are just about to start a small reading group for this. Two hours fortnightly. We're starting on Chapter 26 as has been recommended by quite a few people. Between meetings the idea is to read the relevant chapter and watch the Harvey video, then have a meeting with notes from them for discussion. Just re-reading Cleaver before we start as a refresher.

I want it all to be over by autumn 2021 at the latest please!


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## Pickman's model (Nov 25, 2019)

it is the everest of books


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## chilango (Nov 25, 2019)

Pickman's model said:


> it is the everest of books



Is the Grundrisse K2 then?

...and the Manifesto, Snowdon?


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## Pickman's model (Nov 25, 2019)

chilango said:


> Is the Grundrisse K2 then?
> 
> ...and the Manifesto, Snowdon?


the manifesto is parliament hill and grundrisse is klyuchevskaya sopka


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## Riklet (Nov 25, 2019)

Reading group and peer support sounds like a good idea but does rely on discipline. 

Has anyone else used Fine and Saad-Filho's guide to help them? Updated in 2016 and some really interesting insights in the bits I've read. Tbf its not a chapter to chapter guide like Harveys one though.

Honestly I think starting anywhere with Capital is fine. I can see the argument for skipping the first few chapters then going back to them. Can also see the logic in starting from the beginning but reading fairly quickly and then going back for clarification.


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## sunnysidedown (Nov 25, 2019)

I just picked up Cleavers 33 lessons. I’m aiming to read it alongside Capital vol1 start of next year and aiming to finish it by the end of the year.

I knocked the drink on the head last New Year’s Day, so Im going to make reading this my New Year’s resolution.


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## redsquirrel (Dec 22, 2019)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> A few of us are just about to start a small reading group for this. Two hours fortnightly. We're starting on Chapter 26 as has been recommended by quite a few people. Between meetings the idea is to read the relevant chapter and watch the Harvey video, then have a meeting with notes from them for discussion. Just re-reading Cleaver before we start as a refresher.
> 
> I want it all to be over by autumn 2021 at the latest please!


How you getting on with this LDC?


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## Fozzie Bear (Jan 19, 2020)

Whoop whoop!



🧨🧨🧨


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## LDC (Jan 19, 2020)

redsquirrel said:


> How you getting on with this LDC?



Sorry, missed this redsquirrel Yeah, it was good thanks. We did the thing of starting with Chapters 26 and 27 and had our first discussion on them this week.

Meeting fortnightly for 2 hours in a quiet local pub. Doing Chapters 28, 29, and 30 for the next one. I'm reading _The Origin of Capitalism _by EMW alongside these chapters and watching the related Harvey lecture and the odd Youtube cartoon clip on things like feudalism etc.


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## gawkrodger (Jan 19, 2020)

That EMW books is amazing


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## redsquirrel (Jan 20, 2020)

I'm just about to start a bit of an EMW (re)binge


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