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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15Week 16Week 17Week 18Week 19Week 20Week 21Week 22Week 23Week 24Week 25Week 26Week 27Week 28 – Week 29Week 30


Week 31, July 29-Aug 4. We started Volume III last week. From Part One (called The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit), we are reading Chapter 4 (The Effect of the Turnover on the Rate of Profit), and Chapter 5 (Economy in the Employment of Constant 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] 7 points 10 months ago
[-] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Unheard of pressures of 70 psi!!

[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I think the "here's a timeline of innovations in milling machinery" parts are almost always my favorite. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

It's really fun when Marx gets into historical stuff like that

[-] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

In the same report, Horner relates how in many factories the machines are switched on without the workers being given advance warning. Since there is always something to be done on the machines when they are standing still, some hands and fingers are always busy with this, and accidents constantly arise simply from failing to give a signal.

ohnoes

Not even the zero effort of just shouting out "hey, we're going to turn the machine back on". It's worth remembering that your boss would casually sacrifice your limbs for profit too if not for those pesky laws.

I did a stint designing guarding for material handling equipment (stuff that pushes boxes and product around conveyor belts). Pretty much every single customer was like "put as little guarding on it as possible, we don't want that shit getting in the way of stuff". They would get insanely pissy with us when we followed osha guidelines to the letter, and would send us emails with all sorts of creative interpretations of regs. Capitalists love machines that munch their worker's fingers.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I really liked Marx talking more about alienation in chapter 5. Expanding on that more from vol 1, along with natural science and that.

it was kind of funny to see Marx suddenly bring up poop and stuff.

[...] Excretions of consumption are of the greatest importance for agriculture. So far as their utilisation is concerned, there is an enormous waste of them in the capitalist economy. In London, for instance, they find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense.

But anyways, it was really interesting when Marx talked about ventilation? I know there a different context way back then, but some of it reminded me of Covid. Also this part reminded me a lot of fast fashion

By the end of 1862 the rejuvenated shoddy made up as much as one-third of the entire consumption of wool in English industry. (Reports of Insp. of Fact., October 1862, p. 81.) The "big benefit" for the "consumer" is that his shoddy clothes wear out in just one-third of the previous time and turn threadbare in one-sixth of this time.

also the part about communications like in the previous chapter, sort of gave me the thought that like, if the u.s military didn't develop the internet, would it of arisen anyways? considering like, how helpful digital computers are and the internet? since like money can instantly be put into someone account, no need to wait by boat or something. and internet helps sell a wide variety of things to a larger market? but it helps with reducing that turnover time or time of circulation a lot faster?

And this is also was interesting to

The far greater cost of operating an establishment based on a new invention as compared to later establishments arising ex suis ossibus. This is so very true that the trail-blazers generally go bankrupt, and only those who later buy the buildings, machinery, etc., at a cheaper price, make money out of it. It is, therefore, generally the most worthless and miserable sort of money-capitalists who draw the greatest profit out of all new developments of the universal labour of the human spirit and their social application through combined labour.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

I read a book called “The Devils Element” about phosphorous which goes into great detail about the importance of the poop stuff

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