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Das Kapital reading group – Week 40, Sept 30-Oct 6 – Chapter 24 and Chapter 25 of Volume III (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.

This week's reading is shorter than most.

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 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32 – Week 33 – Week 34 – Week 35 – Week 36 – Week 37 – Week 38 – Week 39

Week 40, Sept 30-Oct 6 – Chapter 24 and Chapter 25 of Volume III

Chapter 24 is called 'Externalisation of the Relations of Capital in the Form of Interest-Bearing Capital'

Chapter 25 is called 'Credit and Fictitious Capital'

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Reading's going fine, but I'm just going to talk about a tangential subject on interest, that I should dealt with understanding, chapters ago

spoilerI'm just trying sense of the principal sum, or 100%, when financial capitalists initially loan to industrial ones

When the loan is used by the industrial capitalist to buy his constant capital, and used to help produce commodities, along with the labor he bought of his own personal fund,

say the constant capital (holder of old variable labor) and labor (surplus value + variable capital) = 140% of the original

Now, when bankers returns to ask for their principle plus interest, let's say 5%,

140% = commodity value =

100% constant capital, the part needed to be paid to the lender

20% variable capital

15% surplus, due to 5% interest

5% interest, to be paid to the lender

And although their principal and interest is to be paid, the industrial capitalist apparently still owns capital of 120, that can be exchanged for cash and reinvested again, and actually has an increase in net capital by 15?

Am I understanding this right, just to clarify? Or am I wrong? I'm confused...

That's where I get confused

Doesn't the constant capital depreciate as it transfers its value to the commodities? And the commodities value of 140 would split up accordingly as above

*In this case, wouldn't *the industrial capitalist just be exchanging 120 (100 for constant, and 20 for variable) for 15 in value?

How would the factory capitalist preserve this 120 capital value, along with the new capital made?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Unclear pronoun antecedent here, who are you saying is exchanging 120 for 15? The industrial capitalist or the financier?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The industrial capitalist...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Okay so here's my layman understanding of it, hopefully someone corrects me if I'm way off the mark.

spoilerThe financier is dealing in capital as a commodity. The industrialist is buying the use value of the capital, which is its capacity in his hands to be turned into the necessaries for the labor process.

So the capital does get turned into raw materials and machinery and wages like usual, and that stuff does depreciate like usual. He buys the use of the money for a portion of the surplus. Otherwise he would have to wait for the market to turnover and unlock that capital he already has tied up in the process.

Or more succinctly, the loan is a commodity he is buying, the capital that belongs to the financier becomes a raw material that depreciates into the new commodity. The financier is paying 100 for 105, the industrialist is paying 105 for 140.

Edit: the industrialist is using 100 percent of the loan, in our example, to do the whole labor process. So the variable and constant capital are all part of the original sum, the surplus on 100 loaned to him would be 140%, if he owes 5% on the loan he pockets the other 35% himself. The variable capital isn't an additional sum on top, the loan can be used for constant and variable capital as money.

He is buying the ability to produce more surplus value now without waiting, using someone else's money. He doesn't keep the capital, he just wants the profit, he owes the capital he was loaned back, and it gets turned into commodities to pay for his loan.

I'm not sure if this helps, but I think the bold part answers your question most directly?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The rest of your points seem fine, though

The financier is paying 100 for 105, the industrialist is paying 105 for 120.

^Correction: 140 is the value of the commodties, 120 is merely the cost of constant and variable capital bought to make commodities

But just to reiterate my point, how does the industrial capitalist preserve his capital value of 120, while adding a surplus value of 20 onto it, despite the financial capitalist's taking of principal and sum?

Because it seems to me, that after the process of selling the commodities, the industrial capitalist has to deal with the following costs:

100 + 5 = principal + interest, taken by the money capitalist (note: the interest is derived from the surplus value created, due to 5% interest)

20 = variable capital paid

140 - 125 = 15

Leaving 15 to be the industrial capitalist's profit, of the original surplus value of 20.

However, a transformation from 120 capital --> 15 increase seems to me a decrease... to counter this, this would indicate some preservation of the initial capital used in production, to continue capitalist expansion.

TO make it so that 120 capital -> + 20 surplus value -> 140 capital

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I realized partway through editing my answer what I missed, I think I got it now though.

He owes the capital back. He doesn't keep it, he is buying its use temporarily. He started without it and pays it back at the end, everything has depreciated in the normal process in the interim.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Edit: the industrialist is using 100 percent of the loan, in our example, to do the whole labor process. So the variable and constant capital are all part of the original sum, the surplus on 100 loaned to him would be 140%, if he owes 5% on the loan he pockets the other 35% himself. The variable capital isn't an additional sum on top, the loan can be used for constant and variable capital as money.

Oooh... that explains the 5% interest

So, overall, he borrows a serviced loan, possibly for constant and variable capital,

whose net price is = 5 (100 - 105 -> borrowed money - {future principal + future interest} ), but that which can help form the 40% value/ surplus value of the full 140%/ commodities

40 - 5 = 35 in profit

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Right, what I hadn't accounted for was that you were having him throw in 20 of his own capital as well, but the math works out the same from the perspective of the lender. He gets his split of the profit, and our industrial capitalist walks away with 15 even if he has to pay 20 into the process as well. He's just using the loaned capital as a raw material in the process, capital has become a commodity through finance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think Doubledee explained it well but I'll add my own thoughts to. If I understand your example right.

Interest, therefore, becomes firmly established in a way that it no longer appears as a division of gross profit of indifference to production, which occurs occasionally when the industrial capitalist happens to operate with someone else's capital. His profit splits into interest and profit of enterprise even when he operates on his own capital. A merely quantitative division thus turns into a qualitative one. It occurs regardless of the fortuitous circumstance whether the industrial capitalist is, or is not, the owner of his capital. It is not only a matter of different quotas of profit assigned to different persons, but two different categories of profit which are differently related to the capital, hence related to different aspects of the capital.

Vol 3 Chapter 23

I cite that because as you said, 5% of that goes back to the lender and over time that will repay the original money capitalist. Or that portion for the money capitalist. It just a manner of proportions in regards to that surplus value or profit to who gets what of that total surplus value produced.

The industrial capitalist preserve his 120 capital like he would if the money capitalist never came along. Since Marx mentions in a few others chapters, one of the goals of labor power is not to just produce surplus value, but also to recreate/preserve the already existing value. So that 120 capital is recreated back into the new commodities made along with surplus value. And that is still the same even when the money capitalist comes along. And when the money capitalist does come along, it just a matter of proportion for the profits or the total surplus value that was produced, they each get. Nothing to do with the preservation of the already existing capital value. And the constant capital does depreciate.

To cite something way back from Vol 1, chapter 8

[...]He is unable to add new labour, to create new value, without at the same time preserving old values, and this, because the labour he adds must be of a specific useful kind; and he cannot do work of a useful kind, without employing products as the means of production of a new product, and thereby transferring their value to the new product. The property therefore which labour-power in action, living labour, possesses of preserving value, at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of Nature which costs the labourer nothing, but which is very advantageous to the capitalist inasmuch as it preserves the existing value of his capital. [4] So long as trade is good, the capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing to take notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively aware of it