#41
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Scrree posted:

relating this to other works: it’s interesting to note that while the concept of money is needed for generalized commodity exchange, its actual practice is not. david graeber,or the graeb, asserts in his book debt that historically it was very rare for communities to actually use hard currency in their day-to-day lives, and even for extra-communal trading it'd most likely be two types of good in kind valued in diocletian-era-coins that hadn't been minted for hundreds of years. debt is a social relationship of value between people, and money is that relationship objectified in a commodity, so it makes complete sense that the former would predate the later.



the fact that x amount of commodity A can be exchanged for (on average) y amount of quantity B implies a quantitative equivalency between two qualitatively different commodities. The thing they share in common is that they both represent abstract labor, or exchange value. The act of trading commodities implies this relationship and the money form is created to represent this relationship, as the abstract universal aspect between commodities. i guess that makes money the symbol for dead labor.

#42
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right, but i was just musing on how money can act as a measure of value even without being involved in the process of exchange. a good historical example would be the 9th century irish law codes, which list the fines and fees for various transgressions in the denominations of cumals, female slaves, despite the fact that slave trading had become outlawed after the island was christianized in the 6th century. all payments were made through goods valued in fractions of slaves, but trying to 'actualize the letter of the law' would have been grossly taboo.

this is getting outside the scope of this section of the book though, as marx is analyzing money through of lens of commodity production, and from that perspective it's primary function is to be the 'embodiment of value' for commodities and eventually lead to the price form.

#43
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chapter 3 p.1: Money, or the Circulation of Commodities p. 188-210

im going to immediately cheat my promise of one chapter per day and break up larger chapters. i mean, i could probably read the whole chapter in one day but i wouldn't have time to po-po-post about it and i think that's vital for this exercise. not joking, posting requires review requires some level of comprehension.

so: marx starts off with a few good observations about money. why it takes the form of gold/silver, and why it is so often named after standard units of weight (a pound £). he stresses again that money is itself a commodity, price is a crude 'exponent' of value, and that things can have a price without having a value - like uncultivated land.

really each page is so rich with information and bomb ass quotes like 'all things exchange for fire, and fire for all things', so its kind of impossible to summarize without just listing the contents of each page. another highlight is at the end of the chunk i read, where he does an absolutely brutal takedown of say's 'law' (a sale is also a purchase, so therefore the economy balances itself and crisis is impossible).

this segment is where he introduces the formula of C-M-C. and since i know what comes next (from the last time I read the first 400 pages) and know of M-C-M' i just realized Oh Fucking Shit, these two formulas are the thesis of the book! or at least the first volume. within the idealized world of commodity production there are only two kinds of exchanges - commodities for money for commodities and money for commodities for more money - and these two formulas dictate class composition within a capitalist society. those who use money to make more money do so through exploiting the labor they buy, and they undertake that exploitation through their ownership of the means of production.

this is what people mean when they say marx elucidates the instability of capitalism within it's own its own ideology - there are literally only two ways to undertake exchange within a system of generalized commodity production, and one of them involves the exploitation of the other. a harmonious, mutually beneficial society is explicitly impossible.

fuck! how the hell did i read this without understanding that eariler!! like, i knew the bourgeois exploited the proletariat because i had been told that by those wiser than me, but now i think i 'get' it.
#44
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chapter 3 part 2: Money, or the Circulation of Commodities p. 211-244

i can see why people complain about chapters 1 and 3 because the rest of this chapter is commodity-form part 2- money-form-boogaloo. no big revelations came to me while reading, and there is a dazzling array of facts on bullion and specie that i dont know what to do with or give a shit about. this chapter is where marx first analysis money as a means of payment, and the possibility of creditor/debtor relationships. like always there are great footnotes blasting idiot bourgeois economists and quoting greek literature.

importantly, i think, is the introduction of the concept of monetary crisis, where the 'metabolic flow' of general commodity exchange is halted and actors begin to attempt to sell without buying, leading to general stagnation and malaise within the economy.

i dont know if i have a full understanding of the concept, but it makes shit like the 'austerity triage theory' wielded like a cudgel in the EU extremely funny because their actual economic panacea is 'you will create sales by reducing purchases' as if it wasnt inherently contradictory.
#45
bb bourgeoisie
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the joke's on you, the last chapter reveals that g*d isn't real
#46
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by that point ill be on the last chapter soo

#47
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im watching david harvey's lectures as i go http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/
#48
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chapter 5:

i definitely read the chapter earlier today, but have since ascended to a state of alchohalism, more tomorrow
#49
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Hitler posted:

im watching david harvey's lectures as i go http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/



nice form

#50
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Hitler im glad u posted so I can put my die grippe ig back up

Rip jack balls mcdink
#51
Dont Mess With Sucess
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Jack Balls Macdink is in like, top 10 posters that succumbed to die
#52
Dont Mess With Sucess
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One of those spots is reserved for me someday..
#53
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i've been reading other shit all week but i'm gonna tackle Ch 6 today while i have some downtime at work
#54
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this is a sweet idea for a thread!

Scrree posted:

i am somewhat struggling to apply this to modern times in the age of fiat money - the money form in it's 'pure' state. I understand that the world economy is anchored to the dollar as a ‘reserve currency’ what exactly determines the value of a dollar when it takes less than one dollars worth of labor to produce thousands of printed bills? these questions are outside the scope of what marx is talking about right now, but its a blank spot in my comprehension.


volume 3 is where marx really starts to deal with the intricacies of exchange as it actually existed in his time. volumes 1 & 2 are more about developing the fundamentals. the idea being that getting into the intricacies of bills of exchange getting discounted and debt bubbles building up doesn't really tell you that much about the origin of surplus value, exploitation of workers, etc, so much as obscure it. getting the fundamentals down clearly then helps with understanding the movements of the debts, credit transactions, securities and so on in terms of this much more solid foundation based a solid understanding of production and the origin of the social surplus

#55
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Chapter 4: The General Formula for Capital p. 247-257

after a hundred pages of laying the theoretical groundwork for commodity production, marx lays out the fundamental forumla for capital - M-C-M', or money for commodities for more money. capital is money in motion, money that accumulates value to itself. and unlike c-m-c, which has a definite end point in the use or consumption of the second commodity, capital is theoretically endless. it is a holy grail which, as long as one can hold it tipped, pours an infinite river of blood (this is how marx makes metaphors, right?)

david harvey's book which i have but havent read, The Limits to Capital, makes the argument that in the age of late capitalism humanity is reaching or has reached the apex of capital accumulation. infinite growth within a finite planet was always a fantasy, and after the failures to overcome space and reach gain access to the riches of the solar system we are fruitlessly entwining our roots in ever more complex knots. it's an interesting argument that i cant comment on because i havent read the book, hah!

one thing i find fascinating about capital is how its a descriptive work of a prescriptive system. human figures only appear as the bearers of economic relationships, and failure to comply to those relationships results in social dissolution (going of business for the capitalist, just fucking starving to death for the laborer). I can see how reading this text would lead to both the radical realization that all personal choice under capitalism is compromised, and thus to statements like 'all sex under capitalism is rape'. and to the infantile fantasy that because capitalism contains within the contradictions of its own demise communism is 'historically inevitable', and thus something that can be reached incrementally or through reform of capitalism. these views held by different people, of course.

& Chapter 5: Contradictions in the General Formula p. 258-269

i like how marx, after pages of painstakingly building the theory of commodity circulation block-by-block, just puts forward the formula for capital completely unsupported so that next chapter he can say 'and obviously this is completely illogical and you're an idiot if you think money can just become more money'. value cannot be created through exchange, or efficiency, or through any divergence of price or value. therefore the accumulation of value through the movement of capital (M-C-M') must have a source outside the realm of circulation.

also there is a cool quote by Aristotle where he calls usury cheating and an act against nature i love it when the ancients talk shit about aspects of our modern social structure. liberals never have an answer to how their favorite era's of history - the renaissance, age of exploration, and age of enlightenment - saw the return of slavery and usury to europe after hundreds of years of religious banishment, and social ridiculousness like the german witch trials. i really need to read caliban and the witch one day.
#56
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chapter 5 is one of my favorites because it situates the law of value within what amounts to a double-entry bookkeeping framework (and marx had indeed spent no small time studying "italian" bookkeeping while formulating the work). in other words, it basically lays out what will later become the first of his three aggregate equalities (total price == total value) in prose form, hinging on the point that value is not created in exchange, but production.

this is why marx would eventually say "even if there were no chapter on ‘value’ in my book, the analysis of the real relationships which I give would contain the proof and demonstration of the real value relation" -- it's because the law of value is little more than an accounting identity that yields a conservation principle and systemic constraint, and it stands or falls on the basis of the soundness of what it's accounting, which happens to be one of the transhistorical categories of human life

Edited by Constantignoble ()

#57
Dont Mess With Sucess
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CHRIS: What the fuck Karl, it's up to sixty Gs now all the sudden? What are you gonna take from me next, the Sudetenland?

KARL: You shoulda stopped in yesterday Moltisanti. Interest got tacked on overnight.

PAULY: That's what we call "Italian" bookkeeping, kid. You wanna be a captain, you gotta step up.

KARL: Another thing. We can't be fuckin meeting like this no more. From now on, you got a problem, you get ahold of Gramsci. Capice?

CHRIS: Yeah Karl. I'm gonna get ahold of Gramsci... let's hear that motherfucker call me a naive gradualist after I stick him in fuckin solitary confinement for 20 years!

KARL: Ho!

PAULY: Oh!!
#58
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chapter 6: The Sale and Purchase of Labour(sic)-Power p. 270-280

short but interesting chapter with too many points to cover without just summarizing the whole thing. stand-outs to me were when marx points out that the pre-conditions for capitalism involve the laborer being legally equal in rights and ability to enter contract, yet so materially disadvantaged that the only commodity they can sell is their own labor.

the 'adulterated bread' footnote has stuck with me since i read it years ago. just horrifying

im a chapter behind so expect a catch up post tonight
#59
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chapter 7: The Labor Process and the Valorization Process p. 281-306

i can the see the point of critics of marx who say he romanticizes labor because he is very effusing in his descriptions. i mean, i get it, thinking of primordial man and woman standing upon the precipice of untouched land, turning wolves into dogs and aurochs into cattles, creating wonders from the earth and ruins out those wonders! its something to get excited about. i dont think hes wrong either, since his main point about that aspect of labor is that people find more enjoyment in their work if their attention isn't forced which is :true:

the whole chapter is like that. we're introduced to our old friends: a 10lb. bag of cotton and math! but also this comic generic capitalist character who squawks 'where is my profit? i paid for $12 worth of cotton and $3 labor for spinning, yet i only received $15 worth of yarn! does not my own labor in bringing these together create value, where has my profit gone?' i want to take quotes from marx writing the voice of capitalists and put them in front of pictures of donald trump

but yeah, the process of valorization is the labor process of value creation past the time the laborer is compensated for.
#60
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#61
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A Song of Coats and Linen by karl r.r.
#62
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#63
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this is still happening i just got lazy over the holiday.

Chapter 8: Constant Capital and Variable Capital p. 307-319 & Chapter 9: The Rate of Surplus Value p. 320-339

i dont really have any interesting thoughts on these chapters, they're both fundamental to the book and math-heavy definitions of necessary terms. there are a couple of good take downs on economists of the times, and its cool that marx thanks the factory inspectors for both the information they recorded and struggles they fought for the working class.

actually two things come to mind: the first is that I really want to read a marxist analysis of the modern US economy. I remember andrew kilman was discussed around here quite a bit awhile ago, and there was that economist mention in the 'hat is a labor aristocrat thread' whose name ive forgotten. adding that to my 'to read list' that ill get to after i finish capital sometime in 202020.

the second came to mind due to marx using yarn mills as an example industry that there is no better example of the eternal immorality of the british upper class then them outlawing slavery in their own territory, and then proceed to purchase without a peep of guilt all of the cotton needed to fuel their mills from the planter slave-lords of the american south.
#64
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id be really curious what a marxist take on the value of modern currency would be. in volume 3 marx describes a currency not based on precious metal as an absurdity, making me even more interested! i feel like the "modern monetary theory" people might have some idea of how to think about it, in terms of the value (as SNLT) performed by the US government in its own reproduction but im not sure.
#65
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yeah the law of value & process of accumulation prevents the relationship between the dollar and a money commodity (i.e., gold) from ever fully being severed. the only difference pre- and post-gold standard is a fixed vs. a floating $/gold exchange rate, which obscures the relationship. but then, sniffing out the real beyond the apparent is what marxists do best

that said, using the MELT is probably still the most straightforward way to work out the value represented in money, and fits pretty seamlessly with MMTers basic descriptive points. in this book kliman spells out how he calculates a MELT on the basis of available BEA/NIPA data, so that's probably a good starting point (see, e.g., "data and computations" at the end of chapter 5)

#66
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I'm having a discussion about someone who is arguing that ussr, Cuba are state capitalist.

Any thing I can read on this debate (and it's significance; I haven't fully grasped why this is important) and info on why su was more than state capitalist?
#67
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#68
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Great, what chapter of your book is it?
#69
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#70
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xipe posted:

I'm having a discussion about someone who is arguing that ussr, Cuba are state capitalist.

Any thing I can read on this debate (and it's significance; I haven't fully grasped why this is important) and info on why su was more than state capitalist?



Which period of the history of the USSR are they refering to? Because there's obviously a lot of difference between the various "eras", in the times of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Breznev etc

#71
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Chapter 10: The Working Day (part 1) p. 345-375

its really interesting/telling how the first time Marx speaks from the perspective of the laborer; he doesn't complain about the exploitation of labor in general but the exploitation of labor 'beyond it's means of reproduction'. that is, capital exploiting the worker so severely that it affects his ability to produce labor, and thus his ability to bring it to market as commodity. it is 'unfair' even within the realm of commodity trading and 'pure economics'

the concept that a certain class of workers could be exploited, but not exploited to the point of their degradation, and that this class could achieve 'harmonious growth' alongside capital should not be unfamiliar to posters here.

that's basically all my of thoughts on the first half of this chapter. the rest of it so far is spent on chronicling the absolutely horrendous conditions the english working class lived in during the mid 19th century, and marx making fun of bourgeois critics for comparing those conditions to the american south and being like 'the slaves live a simple and pleasant life but we keep our own children in such a condition, how hypocritical, Buy Confederate Cotton'
#72
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c_man posted:

id be really curious what a marxist take on the value of modern currency would be. in volume 3 marx describes a currency not based on precious metal as an absurdity, making me even more interested! i feel like the "modern monetary theory" people might have some idea of how to think about it, in terms of the value (as SNLT) performed by the US government in its own reproduction but im not sure.



ah yes, ronpaul

#73
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this is probably as good a thread as any to talk about this in, but a while ago i was reading the section on balance of trade and exchange rates in capital volume 3 and there was a very interesting bit about whether or not arms shipments to turkey in crimea during the crimean war had any effect on the balance of trade or the exchange rate with turkey. marx claims that they do not, in as much as arms aren't capable of being consumed productively. i thought this was interesting because i dont think i've ever seen any analysis of the economics of the US arms export business in these terms. does anyone know of any writings that develop or use this concept?
#74
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is the red flag flying is good, but it's more of a response to maoist criticisms of post-stalin ussr than a defense of the socialist character of the ussr on its own.

I know it bills itself as being the latter, but its evidence is mostly comparisons between the class compositions and policies of the US and USSR. This comparison makes sense in context since he's responding to claims of 'Social Imperialism' and such being leveled against the ussr, but can fall flat as a defense if one is not already aware of the contours of those debates.

He is though, (perhaps obviously) quite convincing in portraying the USSR as progressive to the US, both domestically and internationally. While I think that that alone is enough to justify a robust defense of the soviet union i know it doesn't tend to satisfy the Cliffites.

To be clear, I do understand the soviet union to be socialist, and I think that Syzmanski's book is a good contribution to that understanding. But on it's own it's better for showing people "the USSR was actually good" than "the USSR was socialist" given the way trots like to shift the goalposts on the latter.
#75
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Chapter 10 (part 2): The Working Day p. 376-416

the chapter continues with a fairly in-depth view of english labor law circa 1830-1865, which can be summed up as workers being furiously exploited and angry, factory inspectors saying 'oh jeez can we please not work children to death?' and capitalists saying 'nice strawman, but, how about we Don't Deprive Children Their Right To Free And Unhindered Contract?'

women show up in this chapter a lot more than i expected, which again shows i need to read caliban and the witch. the mainstream view of the industrial revolution portrays the factory as an almost exclusively male domain, with exception for times of war or disorder when large bodies of men where displaced from employment. the fact that laws regulating the work of 'women and young persons' from 15 to 12 hours was so strongly opposed shows that they were not considered extraneous to the capitalist mode of production, even as early as 1830.

one thing that this chapter puts in sharp relief is that the proletariat of the england during that time was in no way 'first world'. the accounts of people undergoing multiple day-long streches of work without rest, of successive generations each growing smaller and more physically compromised due to malnutrition, of simple mass death due to overwork, are all issues the west has 'put behind us', or more accurately moved to the sweatshops of asia.

i was about to fully commit to the 'this chapter on proletarian issues shows that the first world is full of labor aristocrats', but when i worked retail i knew several people who put in full time and also worked other jobs. i still think the 'amerikkan labor aristrokkkrat' is a thing, but the eight hour work day becomes a bit of a joke when simply by simply shifting locations and the face of the boss a new work day has miraculously dawned.
#76
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Scrree posted:

the fact that laws regulating the work of 'women and young persons' from 15 to 12 hours was so strongly opposed shows that they were not considered extraneous to the capitalist mode of production, even as early as 1830.

one thing that this chapter puts in sharp relief is that the proletariat of the england during that time was in no way 'first world'.


these are very closely related

#77
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#78
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marx's treatment of money isnt really developed until volume 3, but ive found it pretty interesting even though he doesn't consider the case of money without the possibility of exchange with some kind of precious metal
#79
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#80
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i wish