I had forgotten that Chapter 1 Section 3 is the worst thing ever written

"Use values cannot confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them."

Is there any use in thinking about commodities with overlapping use values, (like gold and silver) as in the same category but with different qualities? Or should I just think about them as different commodities all together? Does it even matter either way?

Section 1 exercise suggestion: Draw a diagram of some kind (Venn, mind map, chaos dragon, etc.) that contains at least the information in the last paragraph of the section. For example, the circles of a Venn diagram could be labeled "use value", "has value", and "commodity".

hi! If I'm anticipating being strapped for time, is this version still sufficient?

https://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/capital.htm

As much as I love theory, my eyes 100% glaze over when it comes to dead people arguing minutae with other dead people, and examples based on 150 year old economies and statistics. If the Moore and Aveling translation is definitively better than that's the one I'll read but I know I'll fall off at 50 pages a week cuz I have other book clubs too

When I state that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because it is the universal incarnation of abstract human labor, the absurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the same thing with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the relation between their own private labor and the collective labor of society in the same absurd form.

<.<

Am I right in thinking he's describing what "producers" are doing to society and how they're implicitly framing commodity relationships in liberal society? I know LVT was more popular amongst lib economists back then

This a channel I found last year while going through Capital, www.youtube.com/@DissidentTheory/. I think it might be useful for some people.

Alright, finished the reading on Saturday afternoon. I read some Prefaces as well, so had extra to

I think this is a good pace. We just keep plodding til the end of the year.

If you've made it this far you are 2.18% of the way through the 3-volume work, and 5.5% of the way through Volume 1.

Marx repeats himself a lot to drive home the point. The chapter is really simple enough, the ideas in it are simple but my word he does go on. The idea is that

                             LABOUR                            COMMODITY
 Abstract & quantitative:  'Socially-necessary labour time'    Value 
 Specific & qualitative:    Weaving, roofing, whatever         Use-value

Commodities can be exchanged for each other at equivalent values. Same socially-necessary labour time: same value. That's simple.