this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

"Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson [Crusoe]’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely 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 proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution."

This is a suuuuuper interesting paragraph and actually totally different from all the others. Here Marx is "imagining" a better world, dabbling dareisay in utopianism, whereas in the rest of it he is analysing the real world. He even mentions a "definite social plan", i.e. planned economy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

that was really fun to read when I saw it in the book. It also seemed a lot of like Marx's one saying, this one "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" in a different form in that paragraph, near the end.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

One thought I had in this chapter was how effectively David Graeber illustrated the social relation of production/distribution in Debt. I don't remember him getting into a similar discussion of value, but having read that I feel like it was helpful context here.

I didn't realize at the time that he was echoing Marx but I feel like Debt is a great side dish to this chapter (to the extent that a 500 page book assists with understanding 40 pages of a 900 page book che-laugh )