Good work so far, crew. We are about a quarter of the way through Volume 1 and about 10% of the way through the whole thing. Having said that, we're also about 10% of the way through 2024, so don't get too comfortable, keep pedalling.
Having set up the idea of surplus-labour as the source of profit, Marx looked at how this plays out in practice, how it affects people's lives.
I think we have a minimum of 8 people reading; it could even be 12 or 13.
Let's use this shared activity as an excuse to also build camaraderie by thinking out loud in the comments.
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 10½ hours to catch up to where the group is.
Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5
Week 6, Feb 5-11, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 10 Sections 4, 5, 6, and 7.
In other words, read from the heading '4. Day Work and Night Work. The Shift System' to the end of the chapter
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)
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Harvey's guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf
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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
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Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/
If I'm reading your comments right, you are looking for a clarification on Ch9 section 3 right? What is Marx's argumentation against Senior's claim that all net profit is earned in the last (12th) hour of labor?
Senior's Last Hour
Nassau W. Senior was a vulgar economist who sought to prove that the working day could not be reduced from 12 hours because all of the net profit was earned in the final hour. Therefore reducing the working day even by an hour, from 12 to 11 hours, would wipe out the industry. Increasing the working day by just an hour, from 12 to 13 hours, would double profits by doubling the time devoted to profit.
His "analysis" goes as follows:
Marx's Refutation
Senior's mistake is confusing constant capital and variable capital.
Dividing $115k by 11.5 hours means that $10k of value is contained in each hour's gross product, but it does not distinguish between how much of that value was preserved or pre-existing in the constant capital, and how much of that value was created by labor-power. Even with a profit rate of 0%, labor would still preserve the value of the constant capital, and produce a gross product each hour. Value of the gross product ≠ value added.
Here Marx makes a small additional assumption that "in accordance with the calculation of the manufacturers" the wages would be reproduced in 1 working hour, i.e. the variable capital is $10k. So variable capital = surplus value or v = s.
c = $95k, v = $10k, s = $10k (note I added the $5k wear and tear to c). The rate of surplus value s/v is 100%. That means that half of the working day was necessary labor, and half of the working day was surplus labor. I.e., the surplus-value was not formed in one hour, but in 5¾ hours, with the variable capital being replaced in the other 5¾ hours.
In each hour, c/11.5 = $8,261 of the hourly gross product is purely pre-existing value transferred from the constant capital; v/11.5 = $870 new value merely replaces the variable capital; and s/11.5 = $870 new value is appropriated as surplus value. These sum to the full $10k hourly gross product from Senior’s analysis.
Conclusion
A laborer produces both use-value and value in one and the same act of labor. It is not possible to produce only surplus-value in one hour, without preserving the value of the constant capital, and in the other 11 hours to only preserve value without creating value.
Profit (equal to surplus value in this case) is created linearly over the entire working day, not all at once in the gross product of a single chunk of that time. Or said another way, surplus value only arises from the fact of having worked longer than necessary, not from a qualitative difference in the labor performed in the last hour compared to the rest.
Constant capital has no bearing the rate of surplus value s/v because its value exists prior to the labor process. Constant capital does affect the rate of profit (c+v+s)/(c+v), and this will matter a lot in volume 3 since constant capital tends to dominate as technology develops. But in any case, the absolute amount of surplus value depends only on the amount of unpaid labor, and does not depend whatsoever on the amount of constant capital that absorbs the labor.
If I understood one of your other comments right, you are correct that for a given length of the working day s/v is constant per unit time, be it hours or seconds. But it is not the case that s/v is constant with a varying length of the working day. If the length decreases, then surplus labor decreases, and so does s/v. But not in the proportions Senior uses, which includes constant capital. Senior's mistake is precisely why Marx "sets to 0" constant capital in his derivation of the rate of surplus value s/v.