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Das Kapital reading group, Week 14, April 1-7. From Vol. 1, we are reading parts 4 and 5 of Chapter 24, and parts 1,2,3 of Chapter 25 (hexbear.net)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Sorry I didn't post this on Sunday or Monday I just forgot.

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, April 1-7. We are reading Vol.1.Ch.24 parts 4 and 5, and Vol.1.Ch.25 parts 1,2, and 3

In other words, aim to get up to the heading 'Section 4 - Different Forms of the Relative surplus population. The General Law of Capitalistic Accumulation' by Sunday.

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.

Audiobook of Ben Fowkes translation, American accent, male, links are to alternative invidious instances: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9

Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)

Harvey's guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf
A University of Warwick guide to reading it: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/worldlitworldsystems/hotr.marxs_capital.untilp72.pdf
Engels' Synopsis of Capital or PDF
Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

dril

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

screm2 We're getting close to finishing volume 1! and part 8 of das kapital has very short chapters

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm trying to decide what version of volume 2 to get. I'm worried that if I have to try to read it on a screen it won't work out, and I'm not confident that I could listen to the audio format and understand it.

I wish there were 3 volume sets that weren't like $1000.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I feel the same with like with reading it on a screen, or listening to an audio format. I been using a copy of Das Kapital from 'Fingerprint! Publishing'. It has all three volumes. Except like, the text is tiny and a lot of pages are dense. Sometimes the pages are transparent that you can see the text on the other side kind of sort of. Not entirely. It's hard to describe but its still legible. But its a little difficult to read, esp. in not good lighting. Thankfully those pages that get like that aren't much.

But it does have all three volumes and it was pretty cheap and it's been good enough so far. It also seems to use the version that the marxists org website uses. But it was like 20-30$ around there

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I found section 4 and 5 of ch. 24 interesting. Especially in terms of like trying to think about imperialism a bit? Like the end of section 5 feels like it lays down foundations again for the development of imperialism later on? With this part

An uncommonly knowing dodge this. It did not prevent Mr. Fawcett saying in the same breath:

“The aggregate wealth which is annually saved in England, is divided into two portions; one portion is employed as capital to maintain our industry, and the other portion is exported to foreign countries... Only a portion, and perhaps, not a large portion of the wealth which is annually saved in this country, is invested in our own industry. 55]

The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product, embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional capital thus exported, a part of the “labour fund” invented by God and Bentham is also exported.

and like going to section 4. The part talking about food and like adulteration and stuff. Reminded me of like today with the IMF. Where they dont want countries to be self sufficient and make their own food.

also I found this really interesting

This gratuitous service of past labour, when seized and filled with a soul by living labour, increases with the advancing stages of accumulation.

and

The powerful and ever-increasing assistance given by past labour to the living labour process under the form of means of production is, therefore, attributed to that form of past labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid labour, from the worker himself, i.e., to its capitalistic form. The practical agents of capitalistic production and their pettifogging ideologists are as unable to think of the means of production as separate from the antagonistic social mask they wear today, as a slave-owner to think of the worker himself as distinct from his character as a slave.

makes me think about just like. how massive all that past labor must be today, all over the world. like more then gigantic than like Marx's time, it's hard to even imagine? that it feels a little incomprehensible to even think about all that past labor that helps make up this world today.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Chapter 25 and its first three sections are also really good. Can't say I heard anyone talk about like value composition or like technical and organic composition of capital before? So that's really new. I found these really interesting

. As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital relation itself, i.e., the relation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage workers on the other, so reproduction on a progressive scale, i.e., accumulation, reproduces the capital relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wage workers at that. The reproduction of a mass of labour power, which must incessantly re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital’s self-expansion; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslavement to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat.

Also I really like Marx going into centralization and along with clarifying differences between centralization and like concentration. Since I had some like misunderstandings over that? But Marx cleared it up. Thinking like, centralization was tied to concentration. But Marx made it cleared it's not. Also this sounded like financial capitalism?

Apart from this, with capitalist production an altogether new force comes into play — the credit system, which in its first stages furtively creeps in as the humble assistant of accumulation, drawing into the hands of individual or associated capitalists, by invisible threads, the money resources which lie scattered, over the surface of society, in larger or smaller amounts; but it soon becomes a new and terrible weapon in the battle of competition and is finally transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the centralization of capital.

Marx also like had a really big footnote in this chapter with Malthus. Also like going to the periods and cycles of capitalism along with like the industrial reserve army. Really reminded me of how important dialectical materialism is for this. And speaking of misunderstandings, I think I had a misunderstanding from like the last few chapters with population where Marx also cleared it up when talking about the reserve army. Not entirely just the seeking of more people, but more like, the composition of like active and reserve army. Along with how like, that technical composition of capital, where like. Constant capital grows more while variable capital is less as capital wants to employ lesser people, or use overwork.

Along with this, it reminded me how much of like, how machinery is a form of class warfare like Marx mentioned before? I also really like the ending to section 3. that ill just quote here in a spoiler tag, since it's big. But like it just really good. And it's a nice thing to end the week off on.

spoiler

Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply of labourers by the “setting free” of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to furnish more labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent, independent of the supply of labourers. The action of the law of supply and demand of labour on this basis completes the despotism of capital. As soon, therefore, as the labourers learn the secret, how it comes to pass that in the same measure as they work more, as they produce more wealth for others, and as the productive power of their labour increases, so in the same measure even their function as a means of the self-expansion of capital becomes more and more precarious for them; as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades’ Unions, &c., they try to organise a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic production on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political Economy, cry out at the infringement of the “eternal” and so to say “sacred” law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the “harmonious” action of this law. But, on the other hand, as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.) adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it, the absolute dependence of the working class upon the capitalist class, capital, along with its commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels against the “sacred” law of supply and demand, and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I was kind of thinking about like the end of section three. Mainly with this part

as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades’ Unions, &c., they try to organise a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic production on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political Economy, cry out at the infringement of the “eternal” and so to say “sacred” law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the “harmonious” action of this law.

but why isn't like organization of the unemployed not talk about much compared to like organization of the employed in today's time? since both each play a role with like the accumulation of capital. and what would organization of the unemployed mean or look like? or like that regular co-operation between employed and unemployed

the only closet idea I have of like that and to what Marx said. Is like, when it comes to strikes, organized workers not wanting anyone to be scabs?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

why isn't like organization of the unemployed not talk about much compared to like organization of the employed in today's time?

I think there are multiple reasons: 1) in most developed western nations, the unemployment rate is usually between 2% and 8%, which is a small part of the population. In fact, the entire purpose of Federal Reserve Banks is to keep unemployment low, or more specifically to keep unemployment at around 5% while also keeping inflation at a low rate. 2) because of neoliberal ideology (and maybe even Calvinist ideology) unemployed people are usually looked down upon. They are seen as a burden on those who work, who support them through taxes. Ronald Reagan basically got elected by running advertisements against "welfare queens," who were always depicted as lazy, greedy people (even though in real life many people on unemployment have physical disabilities, are old, have to take care of dying family members, etc.). 3) in a lot of countries, unemployed people already do get benefits, which was largely the result of socialist organizing in the early 1900s. In the USA, unemployment benefits last for a few months, and Obama even extended that to around 2 years during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. 4) There actually is a movement for "unemployed rights," and it's called "universal basic income," which is based on the idea that people should not have to work anymore. It's a very fringe movement and even most leftists have some sort of problem with it. Moreover, these are people who WANT to be unemployed, as opposed to what Marx had in mind - people who want to have a job but are unemployed because the economy sucks.

In my experience, unemployment is not really a big problem for most people. What is a huge problem is UNDER-employment. For example, there are people who graduate from college and still have to resort to driving for Uber because there are no jobs available in their field. In America, a lot of teachers have to work second jobs to pay the bills because they can't pay rent and groceries on a teacher's salary. So, unemployment numbers can be deceptive. Yeah, maybe 97% of working-age Americans have a job, but is it a good job that pays a decent wage? Has the wage kept pace with increasing productivity? Those are more of the questions that Marx's successors are thinking about today.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

That makes a lot of sense, esp. with the part on under employment. Since like you said, that is a really big problem.