Good work so far, crew. We are approaching being ⅓ of the way through Vol.1 and ⅛ of the way through the 3-volume work; we'll cross those marks this week.
Last week we looked at the political struggle between labour and capital, how it played out in real life. We saw how abstract principles of economics lead to lung problems in children.
Don't forget that this is a club: it is a shared activity, it's not only reading, it's something we do together to also build camaraderie. So engage 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 13 hours to catch up to where the group is. Use the archives below to help you.
Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6
Week 7, Feb 12-18, we are reading from Volume 1: all of Chapters 11, 12, and 13, and then the first 2 sections of Chapter 14
In other words, aim to reach the heading 'The Two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture' by Sunday
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/
The math in chapter 12 gets a little hard to follow. Here's my go at working through it.
British currency denominations if you're like me and have to keep reminding yourself
Source: Wikipedia
All quotes henceforth from Fowkes/Penguin ed., p. 435-6.
Recall that Marx’s baseline scenario, before innovation, is as follows:
A worker works 12 hours a day, producing 6s. of value (of which 5s. remunerates 10 hr of necessary labor time, and 1s. is surplus-value representing 2 hr. of surplus labor). This labor-value produces 12 products, so each product gets (6/12)s., or 6d, each of newly produced value, plus a further 6d preserved from expense of the means of production, for a total value of 1s.
Now, when the capitalist introduces an innovation, the 6s. of value added by the worker produces instead 24 articles, so each gets (6/24)s. or 3d. of new value, for a total value of 9d. But the social value is still at 1s. or 12d., so the innovating capitalist undercuts the market at 10d. and still gets an extra 1d. surplus. And this is where Marx starts doing some algebra behind the scenes and expecting you to follow along.
This is simply the total price the capitalist fetches on the market. 24 articles * (10d. / article) * (1s./12d.) = 20 s.
The means of production are 12s. because they still represent 6d. or ½s. per article. If each article sells at 10d. or ⅚s., the number of articles that represent the means of production is 12s. / (⅚s. / article) = 72/5 or 14⅖ articles.
(The capitalist has no immediate obligation to raise the workers’ compensation, so the price he’s paying for labour-power across the 24 articles is the same he laid out previously for the production of 12 articles.)
5s. / (⅚s. / article) = 6 articles
6 / (3⅗) = (30/5) / (18/5) = 30/18 = 5/3. Now skipping down a bit:
As has been shown, the necessary : surplus ratio is 5:3, so ⅝ of labour time is necessary labour time. 12 hr * ⅝ = 60/8 = 15/2 or 7½. I’m pretty sure “7⅕” is a mistake, probably Marx or an editor had bad handwriting and misread “½” or “.5” as “⅕”. The error is then replicated on the next page with
which should instead be 10-7.5 = 2.5 hours. However, the following remains correct:
Of the 20s. realized for the capitalist by the 24 articles, 12s. is the cost of consumed means of production; the remaining 8s. is split 5/3 necessary/surplus, as shown, so 5s. to the worker and 3s. to the capitalist.
This works out, but to me it is slightly simpler if you don't include the price per article; just divide the totals:
On marxists.org it is 7½, so it must be an editor's mistake in whatever edition you are using. But it is good to check for this kind of thing because I have caught typos like that before. Worth having at least one other edition to compare as needed.
that was really helpful! esp. since like, I kind of glossed over that part a little bit.