Wow this is going great. The hard part is over, and now we have hit a stride. We have learned Karl Marx’s theory of money, and of trade. We have learned what capital is and how it differs from money.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve done the hardest part. Several people noticed it is getting easy and fun now. All the same, don’t let up til we reach our destination.

Please be chatty in the comments. Let us know you’re here.

The overall plan is to read Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. (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? It’ll take you about seven hours to catch up to where the group is.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3

Week 4, Jan 22-28, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8

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.

Resources

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

  • 666PeaceKeepaGirl [any, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    6·
    10 months ago

    Read chapter 6 today, feel like things really kinda clicked to me. Especially provocative to me was this:

    If the owner of labour-power works today, tomorrow he must again be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a working individual. His natural needs, such as food, clothing, fuel and housing vary according to the climatic and other physical peculiarities of his country. On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary requirements, as also the manner in which they are satisfied, are themselves products of history, and depend therefore to a great extent on the level of civilization attained by a country; in particular they depend on the conditions in which, and consequently on the habits and expectations with which, the class of free workers has been formed. In contrast, therefore with the case of other commodities, the determination of the value of labour-power contains a historical and moral element. [Penguin/Fowkes p. 275]

    As I see it, we really start to see here how the labour-capital relationship becomes a locus of social conflict when labour-power is commoditized and valued as Marx explains. For example, what, to the labourer, differentiates the “so-called necessary requirements” from the (pardon the internet-speak) “treats,” and how much treats must I get to live a happy and fulfilled life? And, to the capitalist, is my having a happy and fulfilled life really that important? Do the capitalists, as purchasers of labour-power, consider it socially necessary that those in their employ not constantly be fantasizing about killing themselves and everyone around them? Or are they content to preside over the most miserable workforce they can without losing stable reproduction? And on what timescales are the capitalists seeking to maintain the process of social reproduction? And if only a depressing and miserable life of the labourer should be deemed socially necessary, so that even those who accept the bargain to work in this society are desperately unhappy - what then is the recourse of the workers to express, in a socially impactful way, their dissatisfaction with the process?

    • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      “What counts as treats and what is necessary requirements” is a fun question. Two relevant Engels letter excerpts:

      The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is to a certain extent justifiable Engels to Marx, 7 October 1858

      Becoming more bourgeois ofc means that it consumes more, has more treats, etc. So to Engels (and Marx didnt disagree), but 1858 some portion of what the proletariat had was already treats in their eyes.

      Another letter is Engels to Kautsky, 12 September 1882:

      You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general: the same as what the bourgeois think. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.

      So by 1882, Engels re-asserts more strongly his 1858 beliefs. One wonders what he would have made of the post-1950s (i.e. post great acceleration and consumer society) workers in the global north. What does this mean in terms of political action? Marx’s letter to Engels from 1869, December 10 may shed some light:

      The way I shall express the matter next Tuesday is: that, quite apart from all ‘international’ and ‘humane’ phrases about Justice for Ireland — which are taken for granted on the International Council — it is in the direct and absolute interests of the English working class to get rid of their present connexion with Ireland. I am fully convinced of this, for reasons that, in part, I cannot tell the English workers themselves. For a long time I believed it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy. I always took this viewpoint in the New-York Tribune. Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. This is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general.

      So in summary: Marx and Engels would likely look at a lot of stuff we consider necessities as treats, but neither give any hard prescriptions. Marx by 1869 seems to have realised that treats from colonies/imperialism were perpetuating the system and so believed that the English working class needed to be rid of Ireland (I would assume india, etc too, but that wasnt the focus of the internqtionale meeting) before it could accomplish anything.

      Edit: regarding what the capitalist cares about, this will be revealed throughout the book (startijg especially in ch10)

    • Doubledee [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      Well fortunately for us the tendency of the rate of profit is to be fine, so there’s not any pressure to intensify the rate of exploitation by driving wages as close as as possible to the minimum requirements for a worker to stay alive.

      anakin-padme-2