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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* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Reviewing some passages I highlighted:

I am amused how Marx dispenses with typical Libertarian rebuttals to the Labor Theory of Value 150 years in advance.

E.g.

It might seem that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended to produce it, it would be the more valuable the more unskilful and lazy the worker who produced it, because he would need more time to complete the article. However, the labour that forms the substance of value is equal human labour, the expenditure of identical human labour-power.

also

Finally, nothing can be a value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.

I also had some fun noticing themes that I am generally aware of through osmosis, like the application of dialectical thought very early on

E.g.

The relative form of value and the equivalent form are two inseparable moments, which belong to and mutually condition each other; but at the same time, they are mutually exclusive or opposed extremes, i.e. poles of the expression of value.

Speaking of things happening very early on, Marx hints at a theme I expect we will be seeing in more detail down the road:

Labour, then, as the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an external natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself.

I suppose we are all generally familiar with the 'stagist' conception of economic development. While Marx hasn't gotten into any of that yet, I read this as foreshadowing that this labor theory of value will transcend all modes of production. That it isn't fundamentally changed whether a society is Feudal, Capitalist, or Communist. As he begins to hint at later in the chapter, it is the emergence of commodity relations and a society mediated through them which defines the Capitalist epoch, not the characteristics of value in and of itself.

Around this time I got too lazy to keep underlining interesting passages. The last one I underlined was this:

Finally, a particular kind of commodity acquires the form of the universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the material embodiment of their uniform and universal form of value.

I read this and was like thinking-about-it

Then I flipped the page and it was like Bam! The Money Form!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

While Marx hasn't gotten into any of that yet, I read this as foreshadowing that this labor theory of value will transcend all modes of production. That it isn't fundamentally changed whether a society is Feudal, Capitalist, or Communist.

No, the labour theory of value is only a thing in a society wherein the capitalist mode of production prevails. A communist society would be dealing with pure use-values while in a feudal society (not in the market-interstices) the focus was also use-values, not on value or its reflection exchange-value.

The quote you are commenting on specifically notes that the universal form of labour, independent of social development, is labour as creator of use-values. This labour is a constant for human society, whereas labour as a producer of value is specific to a world where the commodity-form is generalized.

The labour theory of value also doesn't acknowledge all work as labour, e.g. the persistent denial even to this day by many that housework, childcare, etc, is labour.

Marx seems to be of two minds on the LToV in Capital; sometimes he seems to actually genuinely believe that there is something fundamentally unique about human labour or that reproduction of labour-powers can be excluded from his analysis because family is a natural sphere, and sometimes he seems to be simply accepting the bourgeois definition of 'real' labour as a given for purposes of criticising it on its own terms and sees the concept of commodity-value as a purely social thing with "not an atom of matter".

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

The quote you are commenting on specifically notes that the universal form of labour, independent of social development, is labour as creator of use-values. This labour is a constant for human society, whereas labour as a producer of value is specific to a world where the commodity-form is generalized.

That's a funny mistake. I guess that's why it is called the "labor theory of value" rather than the "labor theory of use-value."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In truth, Marx never calls it a labor theory of value. Some Marxists will say that it is more aptly described as a value theory of labor, because labor is the constant, value is the historically contingent.

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

Some Marxists will say that it is more aptly described as a value theory of labor

This is interesting, who writes about it like this?

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

Diane Elson, The Value Theory of Labour. I think there are others but maybe I'm misremembering. Actually it might have been David Harvey who originally said it, in that case take it with grain of salt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Thanks, I'll give that a read.

Actually it might have been David Harvey who originally said it, in that case take it with grain of salt.

Reading capital is haunted by a specter, the specter of Harvey

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

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It's really cool seeing other people also excited about the first chapter, as confusing and abstract as it can be.

Labour, then, as the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an external natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself.

Distinguishing the historical from the eternal is perhaps the most essential and pervasive point in all of Marx's writings. It appears in Grundrisse (chapter 1), The German Ideology (part 1A), 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, the Manifesto, Theories of Surplus Value (throughout, but especially in the chapter on Adam Smith and chapter 20 on David Ricardo), and probably in other writings too. I thought about bombarding with quotes on this point, but that probably belongs in a separate place as its own essay. As regards this chapter, I think footnote 33 is a good example.