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Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 'The Commodity' (hexbear.net)

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

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We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. This will repeat yearly until communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested.

Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 'The Commodity'

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)

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] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Parts of this chapter are easier to understand if you imagine yourself in a commodity-money society. For example –

"a relation between two commodities such that the one commodity, whose own value is supposed to be expressed, counts directly only as a use-value, whereas the other commodity, in which that value is to be expressed, counts directly only as an exchange-value."

Imagine you live in a commodity-money society where everything is bought in beans. Presumably it's called Beanland or Beantopia. If I want to buy a television, I am only interested in its use-value; I hand over a certain amount of beans for the tv, and I'm only interested in beans for their exchange-value, not their usefulness as beans in generating farts.

"Since a commodity cannot be related to itself as equivalent, and therefore cannot make its own physical shape into the expression of its own value, it must be related to another commodity as equivalent, and therefore must make the physical shape of another commodity into its own value-form."

Beans are the physical form value takes. A television has its own value. Say its value is 5kg of beans. Then the beans are the "physical shape" that are the "expression" of the value of the tv.

'Relative form' and 'equivalent form'

The discussion of 'relative form' and 'equivalent form' is just saying that when you say 'x units of commodity A is as valuable as z units of commodity B', you conceptualise commodity A in a certain way (which he calls the relative form) and commodity B in the equivalent form. In Beantopia, beans are usually in the equivalent form. The equivalent form is when we use a commodity as a measuring-stick.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

bean

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I just realized this emoji is supposed to be “cool bean”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

:cool-bean: also has a beanie

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I get the feeling Marx is repeating himself over and over in this opening stretch and it confuses me as to whether I'm missing something, if he's just being repetitive to drive the point home, or if he's trying to put the censors to sleep. That said, I think the eighth or ninth time he explains this point, it lands:

From the Ben Fowkes translation (Penguin Classics, page 148-149):

Let us make this clear with the example of a measure which is applied to commodities as material objects, i.e. as use-values. A sugar-loaf, because it is a body, is heavy and therefore possesses weight; but we can neither take a look at this weight nor touch it. We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined beforehand. The bodily form of the iron, considered for itself, is no more the form of appearance of weight than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as a weight, we put it into a relation of weight with the iron. In this relation, the iron counts as a body representing nothing but weight. Quantities of iron therefore serve to measure the weight of the sugar, and represent, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight in its pure form, the form of manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this relation, i.e. within the relation into which the sugar, or any other body whose. weight is to be found, enters with the iron. If both objects lacked weight, they could not enter into this relation, hence the one could not serve to express the weight of the other. When we throw both of them into the scales, we see in reality that considered as weight they are the same, and therefore that, taken in the appropriate proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the body of the iron, as a measure of weight, represents weight alone, in relation to the sugar-loaf, so, in our expression of value, the body of the coat represents value alone.

He immediately goes on to say this analogy has limitations though.

Here, however, the analogy ceases. In the expression of the weight of the sugar-loaf, the iron represents a natural property common to both bodies, their weight; but in the expression of value of the linen the coat represents a supra-natural property: their value, which is something purely social.

Anyway, I just dusted off my copy yesterday and am trying to catch up. Thanks for kicking this thing off. o7

I've had a print copy for a while, and for those of you out there who also have print copies, I recommend finding a digital copy of the same translation you're reading somewhere like libgen (if it is still protected by copyright) or the archives if it isn't. It is a lot more convenient than transcribing passages like this for discussion.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The repetition in Capital is very much intentional. As best I can tell (this is my fourth time reading it) the repetition is very much Marx hammering a point in, or describing it in several different ways to try and make sure at least one method of describing it gets accross. I think its intentional because 1. this is how good teaching is done, 2. bc some of Marx's main literary inspirations (Shakespeare, Ancient Greeks, the Bible) do similarly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I find the amount of references to both the Bible and works of Shakespeare interesting. Both are mostly lost on me as I have read neither, but it is interesting to see these cultural references tied in (and here, the footnotes are quite helpful). Between that, and Marx sarcastically referring to works of his contemporary predecessors as things like 'tricks of learned finery' brings a mild sense of levity to the text.

I found the reading became much smoother after getting past the four forms of value. Marx explains the simple form (A), the expanded form (B), the commodity form (C), and finally the money form (D). The amount of pages spent on the simple form and the expanded form give the impression that they are much more complex than what he's getting at. The summary he gives after reaching the money form describes the progression much more concisely.

This is the first time I have actually finished chapter 1.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Agreed with all of this; and also: the repetition is partly due to the methodology. If Marx talks about the same thing multiple times, it is often from different perspectives, like taking a photo of the same object from different angles, to get a complete view of it. So it's not so much a verbatim repetition, but instead a second look from another angle, to eliminate "one-sidedness".

This is basically how dialectical thinking works. A contradictory thing is understood in its totality only by understanding it from all sides, each side being limited. The classic example in Hegel is the contradiction between Being and Nothing, and their unity in Becoming, which is evident only after viewing things from the perspective of each Being and Nothing and realizing that they each move into their opposite. E.g. Being something is to not be anything else, which taken to the extreme looks like nothing at all; and Nothing itself appears as a state of Being with no content.

This dialectical approach, examining the same forms and content from different sides — e.g. from production, from exchange, from different roles in the productive process — this occurs both within each volume, and between all the volumes, with volume 3 being a sort of unity of volumes 1 and 2.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah this point about different angles is very much how I understand Marx's thought and presentation. Bertell Olmen's book Dance of the Dialectic has some a good description:

The third mode in which Marx's abstractions occur is that of vantage point. ... There are many similar, apparently contradictory positions taken in Marx's writings. They are the result of different abstractions, but not of extension or level of generality. They are due to different abstractions of vantage point. The same relation is being viewed from different sides, or the same process from its different moments.

In the same mental act that Marx's units of thought obtain an extension and a level of generality, they acquire a vantage point or place from which to view the elements of any particular Relation and, given its then extension, from which to reconstruct the larger system to which this Relation belongs. A vantage point sets up a perspective that colors everything which falls into it, establishing order, hierarchy, and priorities, distributing values, meanings, and degrees of relevance, and asserting a distinctive coherence between the parts. Within a given perspective, some processes and connections will appear large, some obvious, some important; others will appear small, insignificant, and irrelevant; and some will even be invisible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I get the feeling Marx is repeating himself over and over in this opening stretch and it confuses me as to whether I'm missing something, if he's just being repetitive to drive the point home, or if he's trying to put the censors to sleep

Same