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Das Kapital reading group, Week 28, July 8-14. From Volume 2, we are reading Parts 10-13 of Chapter 20, Simple Reproduction. (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Explain the bookclub: We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year and discussing it in weekly threads. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included in this particular reading club, but comrades are encouraged to do other solo and collaborative reading.) This bookclub will repeat yearly. The three volumes in a year works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46⅔ pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at [email protected] ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7 – Week 8 – Week 9 – Week 10 – Week 11 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27

Week 28, July 8-14. From Volume 2, we are reading Parts 10-13 of Chapter 20, Simple Reproduction.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

So under simple reproduction, I(v) and I(s) (variable capital and surplus value department I) are cycling with II(c) (fixed capital of department II).

In Chapter 11(a), if I read this right, Marx is setting up another crisis.

marx-guns-blazing

Because I(v) and I(s) remain stagnant while II(c) by the nature of wear-and-tear on equipment and buildings needs to regularly grow.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah it's been pretty neat to see the implications of the theory start rearing up from the fog like that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

yea, esp. this part that also interesting.

Once the capitalist form of reproduction is abolished, it is only a matter of the volume of the expiring portion — expiring and therefore to be reproduced in kind — of fixed capital (the capital which in our illustration functions in the production of articles of consumption) varying in various successive years. If it is very large in a certain year (in excess of the average mortality, as is the case with human beings), then it is certainly so much smaller in the next year. The quantity of raw materials, semi-finished products, and auxiliary materials required for the annual production of the articles of consumption — provided other things remain equal — does not decrease in consequence. Hence the aggregate production of means of production would have to increase in the one case and decrease in the other. This can be remedied only by a continuous relative over-production. There must be on the one hand a certain quantity of fixed capital produced in excess of that which is directly required; on the other hand, and particularly, there must be a supply of raw materials, etc., in excess of the direct annual requirements (this applies especially to means of subsistence). This sort of over-production is tantamount to control by society over the material means of its own reproduction. But within capitalist society it is an element of anarchy.