Hate it. Absolutely zero character development.

I'm catching up! Finished chapter 6 this weekend. I've been leaving thoughts in the Chap 6 thread, but Marx is turning the key on this engine he's been building and we're off to the race now.

reporting in for posting duty

week 8!

Capital drives increases labor exploitation by encouraging hyperspecialization let’s fucking go.

Bruh I suck I haven’t read a bit of this even though I asked to be on this list 💀

two-fold character of the control of the capitalist within the workplace.

Basically the owner & the manager.

which things are specifically capitalist and which might be inherent to production in general.

It took very close reading of the last passage to figure out was Marx saying is detail work specifically capitalist or inherent to large-scale production

The way bourgeois economists talk about efficiency is annoyingly vague. It reminds me of how religious folks repeat empty phrases like "God is love" — it means whatever one wants it to think. It is a blank canvas for one's own preconceptions.

Efficiency is a relative term, it is a comparison of the size of an output to the size of an input. But depending on which input/output one is talking about, it can be a different kind of efficiency. A Rube Goldberg machine is efficient in terms of human actions: simply pressing a button to start the machine is all the human must do in order to get the intended result. But it is obviously inefficient in terms of the complexity, materials, volume, noise, etc. Likewise, a car may be efficient in terms of CO2 per passenger, but inefficient in terms of volume per passenger.

When the bourgeois speak of efficiency, I think they most often mean efficiency in terms of capital. If the same absolute profit can be gained from a reduced capital advance, then that is an "efficiency gain."

This talk of efficiency obfuscates the entire process of value production and reduces it to capital magnitudes alone. But it is the natural way for a bourgeois to think.

This kind of efficiency may be derived variously from reduction in waste (e.g. less sawdust, more saleable wood), a reduction in constant capital (e.g. cheaper machinery), or a reduction in living labor costs (e.g. layoffs + increased intensity of labor). Obviously this last point has a social element which is important to Marx.

Generalizing this idea of efficiency to the whole economy, the bourgeois would say: That economy is efficient which maximizes surplus value while minimizing the necessary capital advanced. The logical extreme of this would be an economy which can produce surplus value out of nothing, without even producing. The ideal economy is one which directly enriches the bourgeoisie and maintains their privilege to live off the labor of others.

Technically, globalization can solve this problem. People living in Chicago can go to the grocery store and buy oranges from Florida or coconuts from Indonesia. That's why food deserts are so devastating: they deprive a portion of the population, almost always poor members of the working class, from access to proper nutrition - because there is no profit in maintaining their health.

Yes, but Marx feels much more ambivalent on manufacture and division of labour and factories general than this.

Marx is not saying "factory organisation good" here; he is saying "the bourgeois admit factory organization is shit when it applies to them but pretend its great when it applies to the workers."

Socialism will ofc have to seize onto existing(machine) manufacture just as capitalism originally seized onto handicraft, but eventually socialism will need to move beyond this factory-like division of labour and it is hence not something to be idealised or uncritically praised.

This is not a passage where Marx is outlining what crude communism will look like; this is a passage where he is calling out bourgeoisie ideologue hypocrisy.

That's interesting. If it's not too hard to find, do you have a book or article on that?

I do think this point is relevant to the increasing specialization in the sciences. Look no further than the separation of politics, economics, history, and sociology as independent areas of study.

Yeah, I've seen many complain about the repetitiveness of Capital, but all my pedagogical training and research (and personal experience) suggests repetition is just the best way to learn stuff. Marx seems very intentional with his repetitions, so I think he's aware.

How many people can coöperate economically?

It's no good having people just exist if they're cut off by valleys or impassable jungle. They have to A) exist and B) interact (economically)

glassmaking

Yeah such situations where even one worker missing causes the operation to stop is very related to the reserve army of labour, especially in "so-called unskilled" jobs (using marx's definition of "jobs which don't require lengthy apprenticeship), where if labour is lacking it is (sometimes literally) snatched up from the street. In more skilled jobs (which still have 'apprenticeships' but less lengthy; the trainee period is the modern apprenticeship) such as convenience-store clerk, capital has to pay and maintain labourers in excess of what is needed on average daily in case of firings, noshows, illnesses, etc. Capital of course vehemently resents needing to pay such "idlers" and aims to render them "redundant" by increasing penalties on noshows, forcing the ill to come to work, etc.

theory and practice

Thinking of Mao is apt and interesting, though this is more in the realm of practical Maoism (abolishing distinction between physical and mental labour) than theoretical, as science makes extensive use of practice. The big thing here however is the separation of theory from practice. The businessman theorizing about how to organize labour more efficiently doesn't have to contort his body, speed his motions. He may not even see the results of his theories other than in spreadsheets showing "efficiency up, costs down"

Similarly, the scientist developing a new machine doesn't have to worry about his fingers being cut off, about inhaling toxic fumes or mindnumbingly repeating the same task every thirty seconds. The more complicated, large, powerful the machine becomes (i.e., the greater the portion of capital that is constant capital), the more the working process (its character, its speed, its danger, its product, etcetc) of the worker is dictated to them by the machine designed by and for the "middle class".

There's more of a complete separation of theory from practice in whitecollar jobs from what I've heard though, hence all the "team-building" excercises, lengthy meetings and repeated silver bullets that "will totally fix education forever frfr" (all of which are ofc creators of makework jobs for the degree-holding class).

schools

This is a neat topic for Marx. I am not 100% sure, but next week or the week after we should see some mentions of the conditions of schooling in the factory schools. I imagine as the global north reproletarianizes more fully, the conditions in our schools will more closely resemble the ideal (i.e. Victorian) capitalist school systems. On a only slightly related note, standard/'equal' universal education is probably one of the two things Marx would tear the USSR, China, etc, apart on (he comes out strongly against universal education in critique of the gotha program).

robotic arms

Yeah this is a perfect example of the thinking that gave us the steam horse locamotive @[email protected] posted the picture of. Such arms are the starting point for creating more and more specific machines ofc

Marx is saying to develop celestialised forms of social relations, to create (simplified!reductive!abstract!) models to understand the process of production, of politics, etcetc. And he is saying these models need to be developed by looking at the "actual relations of life" rather than by analysing "the misty creations of religion" to find it's "earthly core".

The system described in Das Kapital is such a celestialised (in Fowkes TL, "apotheosized") form of the capitalist mode of production. Marx's issue with Christianity (or any other organized religion in class society) is that it reflects and sanctifies a topsy-turvy world. His issue with Christianity isn't that it believes in Man in the Sky; it is that the priests often say "don't revolt; give tithes; you'll get back tenfold in heaven".

If we use an example, the history of the land of Palestine can be studied starting from the "misty creations of religion", i.e. from the various books of the Bible, or it can be studied starting from the "actual relations of life", i.e. from archaeological evidence. Similarly, the Roman empire can be studied starting from the misty creations of its histories, written by and for the ruling class (and often including fantastic or unbelievable elements), or it can be studied starting from the archaeological and material evidence.

Good scholars of either generally make use of both sorts of sources ofc (as Marx says, there is an earthly core).

The quote also makes more sense when read with the preceding sentence "Even a history of religion...is uncritical". Religion isn't the focus here; it's just one example of a misty creation.

And then the sentence before that is where Marx's key point is; we should be looking at the technology (not just material, but also in terms of organization) societies use for production as the basis for examining their histories instead of looking at e.g. their luxury goods and spiritual / academic stuff (as we do for the celts and romans/greeks respectively) or what their tools were made of (as we do for prehistory).