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Das Kapital reading group, Week 15, April 8-14. From Vol. 1, we are reading Chapter 25 parts 4 and 5 (hexbear.net)

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

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Sorry for the late posting: there's a lot of work this time of the year and I'm not often near computers. Next week I might be late again; if so simply continue from where we were. Week 17 I should be able to pay more attention.

I may have also messed up (I'm a real disaster) by overestimating the progress-bar last week: the progress bars above are right.

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

Week 15, April 8-14. We are reading Vol.1, Chapter 25, parts 4 and 5

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] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

very-smart me showing up for my scheduled class like a good boy.

Thanks as always, comrade.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I am catching up with y'all after discovering one simple trick: the Internet Archive is not blocked at work, so while standing idle at the desk I can tab over and read old photocopies of Capital.

Halfway through Ch4 in a few weeks, I'm rather pleased with myself.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

soviet-chad Using your labor power to read Capital on your boss's dime. Great work comrade!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Boss Steals my surplus, I’ll do just fine. That’s’ why I read old photocopies of Capital on company time.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

I've been thinking a lot over the last couple chapters about how some of the ideas we've learned could help explain just how things got so out of hand with the neoliberal turn of the backend of the last century. Here's a couple thoughts I had as maybe contributing factors:

World War II put a serious dent in the world population - google seems to be saying about 3% of the population was killed. In addition, it caused huge infrastructural destruction that needed to be addressed. And finally, the Allied victory represented a major peak of liberal world order - but this means a geographical limitation on areas you can turn to for cheap labor and raw materials, and indeed much of the history of the immediate postwar era is defined by struggles with decolonization movements (India, Algeria, the Suez...) and with the Red menace - in short, barriers to any further expansion of the hegemony of Western capital. So you then have a situation where right after the war, capital has to do a lot of reinvestment just to rebuild itself, and at the same time, there’s not a lot of able-bodied dudes around to do that work (especially Europe, where the Trente Glorieuses particularly strongly felt), nor are there many good opportunities to send capital outside the imperial core. So now capital has to address the labour market imbalance by raising wages, and this is maybe even a bit of a virtuous cycle because raising wages in real terms means also investing in industries to provide the goods those wages get spent on. But these labor market dynamics are a special period rather than a new norm, because eventually the boomers start entering the workforce, China opens up to capital investment, and the Eastern bloc liberalizes after the Soviet Union collapses.

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

@[email protected] I hope it's okay to ping you? I just wanted to say like, this part in section 4 really reminded me a lot of what you said last week about like, underemployment

The third category of the relative surplus population, the stagnant, forms a part of the active labour army, but with extremely irregular employment. Hence it furnishes to capital an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour power. Its conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working class; this makes it at once the broad basis of special branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterised by maximum of working-time, and minimum of wages. We have learnt to know its chief form under the rubric of “domestic industry.” It recruits itself constantly from the supernumerary forces of modern industry and agriculture, and specially from those decaying branches of industry where handicraft is yielding to manufacture, manufacture to machinery.

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

Yeah, I don't mind being pinged, especially for interesting topics like this.

I think for the section you quoted, when Marx is talking about "domestic industry," he is talking about pre-capitalist manufacturing, or maybe very early capitalist manufacturing. What I mean is that, before capitalism, people had to make everything themselves. Moms and sisters would usually sew all the clothes for the family, and fathers and brothers would make/repair tools and equipment they needed. The first industry that really jump-started capitatim in England was clothing, as home-made clothing was replaced by factory-made clothing. Of course, this involved a huge world-wide network with cotton coming in from the American south, India, and Egypt, where raw materials were turned into finished goods, and exported for profit.

Before factories existed, capitalists would actually just contract out what were basically "gig workers" to make clothes in their own home. This was often "piece work," where people would be paid per unit of clothing sewed, instead of hourly work. Centralizing everything in factories then led to the rise of "Taylorism" and then eventually "Fordism," as clothing factories were joined by all sorts of other factories (cars, glass, chemicals, etc.).

It recruits itself constantly from the supernumerary forces of modern industry and agriculture, and specially from those decaying branches of industry where handicraft is yielding to manufacture, manufacture to machinery.

Marx is talking about the death of this home-made industry (handicraft) and the rise of factories with machines. Because these small, individual producers are being replaced by factories, they basically become jobless. Factories are just more efficient and thus more cost-effective, lowering prices, so handicraft workers can't make a living anymore. It's the 1800s version of Wal-Mart putting mom-and-pop stores out of business. Marx is emphasizing that these people, now unemployed, are forced to join the ranks of the proletariat, alongside rural workers who lost their farms when they were bought up during the enclosure period. We can see the same thing happening today -- AI replaces software engineers, so those unemployed programmers have to find another job. We don't have "elevator operators" or "switchboard operators" because a microchip can do their job now. Bowling allyes used to have "pin boys" who reset the pins, also replaced by machines. It's interesting to think about what will happen when automation replaces almost all the jobs. That could result in "luxury socialism" (good ending) or neo-feudalism (bad ending).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm assuming section 4 also included? Also this sounds extremely familiar to today time. Mainly with employers talking about how "no one wants to work anymore"

The contradiction is not more glaring than that other one that there is a complaint of the want of hands, while at the same time many thousands are out of work, because the division of labour chains them to a particular branch of industry

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Fixed

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Section 5 was extremely depressing and I just kept thinking how all those landlords should've been killed. Also it was really depressing searching up about the mines of Potosi. Also like, it was really weird I guess like nutrients? and or calories? was measured in nitrogen and carbon?

Despite how depressing it is, it is nice Marx like, does his analysis like that and illustrates this stuff? Along with looking into conditions of the proletariat.

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

I just kept thinking how all those landlords should've been killed

sicko-wistful

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I keep thinking of Ebebezer Scrooge whenever “Surplus Population” comes up. Are there no prisons? Are the Workhouses full? bah! humbug!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Yeah it's funny that Dickens was also making fun of Malthus from a lib angle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

So how far did everyone else go this week? I couldn't decide if I should go past 30, it's a bit shorter than normal (I think?) but there's not much of volume 1 left.