We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. This will repeat yearly until communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.
I’ll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested.
Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 ‘The Commodity’
Discuss the week’s reading in the comments.
Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D
AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn’t have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added, or if you’re a bit paranoid (can’t blame ya) and don’t mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself.
Resources
(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)
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Harvey’s guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf
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A University of Warwick guide to reading it: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/worldlitworldsystems/hotr.marxs_capital.untilp72.pdf
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Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/
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Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different cultural epochs, but in a particular society it is given. More complex labour counts only as intensified, or rather multiplied simple labour, so that a smaller quantity of complex labour is considered equal to a larger quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the outcome of the most complicated labour, but through its value it is posited as equal to the product of simple labour, hence it represents only a specific quantity of simple labour.15 The various proportions in which different kinds of labour are reduced to simple labour as their unit of measurement are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers; these proportions therefore appear to the producers to have been handed down by tradition. In the interests of simplification, we shall henceforth view every form of labour-power directly as simple labour-power; by this we shall simply be saving ourselves the trouble of making the reduction. p. 135
Is intensified/multiplied labor referring to the use of fixed capital in production? I.e. the machinery as dead-labor whose value is then transferred to the product through living labor, intensifying the value transferred into a commodity per unit of labor-time? Or to forms of labor which are more difficult/intensive/complex?
If the latter, is Marx always considering that 1 hour = 1 hour? I understand how this works in the abstract, but I guess I am just curious how this has implications for the later imagined association of “free men” (though perhaps I am subjecting his “parallel” to too much scrutiny):
We shall assume, but only for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour-time. Labour-time would in that case play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the correct proportion between the different functions of labour and the various needs of the associations. On the other hand, labour-time also serves as a measure of the part taken by each individual in the common labour, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. p 172
Both quotes from the Fowkes translation.
Is intensified/multiplied labor referring to the use of fixed capital in production? I.e. the machinery as dead-labor whose value is then transferred to the product through living labor, intensifying the value transferred into a commodity per unit of labor-time? Or to forms of labor which are more difficult/intensive/complex?
So the way I understand it is that more complicated work requires training and/or special talent to be done. An hour of brain surgery is not qual to a hour of ditch digging in terms of the value of the labor but it is still essentially the same thing. A brain surgeon has expended a significant amount of time to be capable of doing brain surgery so the value of the labor is multiplied and is worth more.
So the way I understand it is that more complicated work requires training and/or special talent to be done. An hour of brain surgery is not qual to a hour of ditch digging in terms of the value of the labor but it is still essentially the same thing. A brain surgeon has expended a significant amount of time to be capable of doing brain surgery so the value of the labor is multiplied and is worth more.
This is how I read it the first time, but thought maybe I was misreading.
I wonder how this can be accounted for though. It doesn’t figure into the chapter or his example he gives. On the scale of the entirety of social labor, these situations are outliers, so I’m fine with the blunt way he is using labor time, but once he invoked his example of a non-capitalist association I wanted more specificity.
“Use values cannot confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them.”
Is there any use in thinking about commodities with overlapping use values, (like gold and silver) as in the same category but with different qualities? Or should I just think about them as different commodities all together? Does it even matter either way?
Gold and silver are qualitatively different and that’s that. They require different amounts of labor to produce (and perhaps method, idk) and they have different uses. For example, the James Webb space telescope has gold-plated mirrors — silver has different chemical properties and would not satisfy the same function.
Whether something is a use value, or is not, is determined by whether it is consumed and therefore reproduced with regularity by an established industry.
The way I understand the way Marx is using “qualitatively different” is both in its obvious form, gold and silver (as simple commodities) are different from one another, but importantly that it is about qualitatively different forms of private labor confronting each other in exchange. If I am spinning, weaving and tailoring my own coat, neither the wool, thread, linen, or coat confront each other as commodities in exchange even if they each have a use-value, but once you have a division of labour, those use-values can confront each other as commodities in exchange.
(I’m struggling to word a more specific example when considering gold and silver as commodity-money, so may be someone can jump in with that.)
The rest of the quote you posted seems to get into this.
In a society whose products generally assume the form of commodities, i.e. in a society of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour which are carried on independently and privately by individual producers develops into a complex system, a social division of labour.
and another in the paragraph before:
“The totality of heterogeneous use-values or physical commodities reflects a totality of similarly heterogeneous forms of useful labour, which differ in order, genus, species and variety: in short, a social division of labour. This division of labour is a necessary condition for commodity production, although the converse does not hold; commodity production is not a necessary condition for the social division of labour. […] to take an example nearer home, labour is systematically divided in every factory, but the workers do not bring about this division by exchanging their individual products. Only the products of mutually independent acts of labour, performed in isolation, can confront each other as commodities.” p 132 (Fowkes)
This last part is interesting to me when you think about how large firms operate even today. If a single firm produces multiple of its own inputs and outputs, they do not actually confront eachother as commodities (in a market). As an aside, one of the more compelling arguments against the ECP has been its own critics inability to determine exactly where it becomes impossible to calculate production as one firm gobbles up another firm which produces its own input.
The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. Note. This oft-quoted aphorism was included in the first English translation prepared by Engels and published in 1887. Readers should note that this observation is consistent with Marx’s explanation above. There are numerous divergences between this English edition and the first German edition. [MIA]
Putting this here for the Fowkes folks who won’t see it otherwise.
As this first week draws to a close, I wanted to give a big thanks to @Vampire@hexbear.net for organizing and for their occasional inputs and clarifications! It’s been great learning with other Hexbears reading it, perhaps for the first time, and seeing the epiphanies happen.
Sorry if anyone felt like I was over explaining or being overzealous in my replies. It is sometimes hard to share content you enjoy without being extremely intense lol
I just want to swing in to say I’ve read the chapter. Honestly, I thought I’d have picked up most of this stuff through cultural osmosis, but the first chapter here has already got me thinking about my employment in a more profound way than I was anticipating. Especially the part about productive power.
Especially the part about productive power.
What are you thinking about regarding this?
I once took an unpaid internship in machine learning and automation (before I turned left). I never bought into the techbro hype that the machines would completely replace people’s jobs, but I still felt some trepidation about what I was doing, but I couldn’t articulate why. Of course, the problem I was having was that, since wages have been mostly stagnant since the 80s, I was increasing the productive power of the company, and therefore the value of the employee’s work, without a commensurate increase in wage. I kind of knew that from the aforementioned cultural osmosis, but thinking critically about it while reading theory really drew it into sharper relief. Not helping my discontent was that I was helping automate a job I had no idea how it worked. I was just given data, told to make it do something, and tried my best to do it. So the commodity fetishism part of the text was also impactful, especially now that I’ve gotten the context about use values and exchange values and how the two are only tangentially related.
