Das Kapital reading group, Week 6, Feb 5-11. From Vol. 1 we are reading sections 4-7 of Chapter 10 (hexbear.net)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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)

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] 14 points 7 months ago

skipping ahead a bit, but i'm currently on the chapter 'machinery and large-scale industry,' and i'm just amazed by how little the discourse and rethoric surrounding automation has changed since marx's time

After preaching a long sermon to show how adventagous the rapid development of machinery is to the workers, [Ure] warns them that by their obstinacy and their strikes they hasten that development (p. 564, end of section 5)

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

What would be your counter-response in an argument to that, if I can ask? (In good faith, of course)

Personally, my counter would be "who would operate, repair et replace the machines again?"...

[-] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The question betrays an unspoken fact about capitalism: technological development is only invested in when it lowers the cost of wages (eliminates workers.) Capitalists don't invest in tech advancement for the sake of advancement. If a technology already existed that could be invested in to replace workers, it would already be known about in the trades and chances are the capitalist would already have invested to stay competitive. If not, the cost of r&d to develop a solution, especially when capitalists make exorbitant sums off of the surplus labor of workers, is going to cost more than what it would to pay the workers a little more.

Large businesses with existing investments in capital, this is probably more true in a modern setting, since new technical advancements capable of replacing a vast swath of workers would require replacing that capital with new, bespoke, experimental machinery. This just isn't that common for existing large production operations. This is where smaller "interruptor" start ups enter the market, which brings me back to my first point. There's always the possibility of it happening but if it does it was going to happen anyway. Capitalists aren't paying workers out of the goodness of their heart, and striking will make them decide to invest in new tech. It's market competition that forces investment in new tech. I would say that most of the time those are just empty threats.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Thanks for your response!

[-] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

stirner-cool

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[-] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

The fact that value is created at a constant rate regardless of material productivity is astounding. 1 day’s labor is produced in 1 day, no matter in how many use-values it is embodied.

Therefore, technological advancement does not and cannot affect the rate of value production, nor can it save us from capitalism.

We are far more productive today than we were during the Industrial Revolution, yet the working class is still dominated by capital.

There is no Andrew Yang-style solution here, hoping that technology will make mankind so productive that we don’t have to work as much. Profit comes from surplus value i.e. unpaid labor, not from surplus use-value.

Chapter 8, while perhaps a bit tedious with the drawn out distinction between value preserved and value created, is quite interesting due to finding the origin in the dual character of labor. It is also necessary for justifying a separation between constant capital and variable capital.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I'm not reading capital right now, but I'm enjoying these threads and can't wait to get to capital after I get through some other stuff.

In any case, I like your little distillation here.

Profit comes from surplus value i.e. unpaid labor, not from surplus use-value.

It really gets at the idea I've recently been reading about in the Grundrisse, that under capitalism we're working to generate profit, not to meet needs. The implication, I suppose, is that you're never liberated. Even if all needs are or could be met, the cycle of capital still needs another round of profit.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

This is a bit ahead of our reading, but Chapter 16 is one of the rewarding chapters of Capital, like reaching a summit and looking out from a new vantage point.

Here Marx says (emphasis mine):

Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Also, thanks for the nice comment and I'm glad you are enjoying the discussion threads!

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I've been so busy lately I'm two weeks behind cri

I'll catch up to you all soon!

marx-hi

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

I'm perpetually a couple weeks behind, but on the flip side it means all the old threads are populated.

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[-] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I dunno if this is fitting for the bookclub or elsewhere, but like besides getting depressed, it was hard not getting mad at this chapter. A lot of the stuff just like reminded me of my mom and her workplace, that I still feel like worked her to death last year. Since like like at the end of 2022, I still remember my mom calling me while in pain, about how she needed help. Since like her workplace made her do something that like really hurt her physically. because that damned place like, had a lot of regulation violations that were never enforced. and I remember my mom constantly talking about it a lot and everything. along with her being like short staffed and other things.

but like literally thanks to that workplace she ended up hardly being able to move much at all. and she had to quit. and then she had to worry about her health insurance and eventually being out of it. and then she tried to get disability but was denied and just...

and just. I dunno. I know this chapter was generally about the working day, but still like, while maybe some things have changed, it hasn't changed in many other aspects. and it's hard to not get angry.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

it was hard not getting mad at this chapter

Definitely agree. Marx doesn't let his mask of academic impassivity slip often, but when it does (particularly common in these history-focused chapters) it becomes very clear that he's very angry too.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

I'm getting through these readings quicker because it is stories rather than the abstract concepts of the first 3 chapters or so.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

At the end of chapter 7 Marx justifies his simplifying assumption of all labor power being of an average skill. Because although of course higher skill labor power would require more labor for education etc, this quantitative difference in value doesn’t change the qualitative character of the worker’s labor compared to a lesser skilled worker; it is still divided into paid and unpaid labor, regardless of how that proportion works out quantitatively.

So, for simplicity of presentation alone, it is valid for Marx to assume one average skill.

This “flaw” is sometimes pointed out by critics but I see no problem with it.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

This “flaw” is sometimes pointed out by critics...

Notably Ludwig von Mises –

*Yet such a manner of regulating distribution would be unworkable, since labor is not a uniform and homogeneous quantity. Between various types of labor there is necessarily a qualitative difference, which leads to a different valuation according to the difference in the conditions of demand for and supply of their products. For instance, the supply of pictures cannot be increased ceteris paribus, without damage to the quality of the product. Yet one cannot allow the laborer who had put in an hour of the most simple type of labor to be entitled to the product of an hour’s higher type of labor. *

[-] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Proving once again that the most prominent critics of Marx have barely read (and understood even less than) the first few chapters of volume 1

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

I mean, Mises just liked to lie about Marx.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I also love how this has absolutely no bearing on reality for the most part. The best box stacker in the world will be paid the same as the worst box stacker, even if demand for box stackers is high. Labor is the only commodity that, under capitalism, doesn't accede to laws of supply and demand because you have to labor to eat. It's almost as if it is it's a separate category with it's own rules for exploitation and needs to be studied as such.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Chapter 10 is another banger from Marx. Very depressing but addictive. The depth of the historical analysis surprises me. Mindblowing how fast the transformations 1780-1830 happened. Height and mortality stuff reminded me of this paper

[-] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Capital is dead labour, that, @[email protected]-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Lots of anti-vampire sentiment in these chapters, oh dear oh dear

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Protestantism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into working days, played an important part in the genesis of capital.

That is quite the statement.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I think Marx associated Protestantism with capitalist ideology and Catholicism with feudal ideology. I forget which writing but it was probably in The Holy Family.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

seems reasonable

what's paganism?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

A complicated topic.

"Paganism" in the sense of "Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian or Mesopotamian" is fairly straightforward; in "On the Leading Article in No. 179 of Kölnische Zeitung" Marx wrote:

That with the downfall of the ancient states their religions also disappeared requires no further explanation, for the "true religion" of the ancients was the cult of "their nationality", of their "state".

So in this case Marx would likely argue that their religion is simply "our state; our nation; 'us' as opposed to 'them'". Interestingly, Marx argues that constitutionalists are similarly religious.

"Paganism" in the sense of "animism" and/or indigenous religions generally is more contentious, because Marx wasn't able to access sources on them other than second/thirdhand accounts by bigots. So while Marx in Capital makes claims about 'primitive nature worship of the savage', I'm unsure what he is actually talking about.

Explanations from actual indigenous people about their spirituality/'religion' (e.g. God is Red and Bridging Cultures) have little in common with Marx's depiction. Some (e.g. Frank Black-Elk in "Observations on Marxism and Lakota Tradition") assert that their religion/spirituality is dialectical-er and materialist-er than Marx.

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I haven’t read anything relating to that, I think he primarily concerned himself with Christianity because it was by far the dominant religion in Western Europe

[-] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

After Constantine it was, yea. He has talked about Greece and Rome a bunch of times in what we've seen so far.

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

In order to reward the manufacturers for having, in the most barefaced way, ignored all the Acts as to children’s labour passed during the last twenty-two years, the pill was yet further gilded for them. Parliament decreed that after March 1st, 1834, no child under 11, after March 1st 1835, no child under 12, and after March 1st, 1836, no child under 13 was to work more than eight hours in a factory. This “liberalism,” so full of consideration for “capital”....

I think this might be the first time Marx has dunked on 'liberalism' by name

Hexbear loves to hate on liberalism (which I understand is mostly for fun), but I don't know how much that's a part of communist theory. (Mao isn't the same; Mao uses the word to mean 'half-assing revolution', not liberal principles)

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

on 1 May 1848 there should be a definite limitation of the working day to 10 hours

Is this part of how May Day became May Day?

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

It's nice to see in the Postlethwayt quote in Section 5 and the Horner quote in Section 6 just the simple human decency operating. It's not about economics or socialism, just saying what's obviously wrong and right.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

if Englishmen are to be eternal drudges, 'tis to be feared they will removed below the Frenchmen.

lol

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I fell behind with some very busy days with problems in my house and needing repairs but I'm back on board. Want to thank all the contributors enormously because I have still been able to follow a week or 2 behind and almost all of my questions were handled here. Keep it up comrades Care-Comrade

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

@[email protected]

Hey, do you know the series of 10-minute episodes that explains and acts as a reading guide to Das Kapital or Capital by Karl Marx?

I think Hakim praised it but I can't find it anywhere.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I'm not sure.... it's not the one at the bottom of the top post?

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Ok now then a question that I haven't seen but feel like I already know the answer: Ch 9 could just as easily be represented by the fractions of minutes worked, fractions of weeks, etc. correct? There is nothing special about it being the final hour that I'm missing? (Except that Marx is critiquing it on his grounds)

I guess the amount of the tool (spindle) used in production is always a fraction of whatever amount of the commodity we choose to analyze, meaning that there is no need for totals. I'm specifically confused because section 3 of ch 9 has the calculation for the rate of surplus value does not hold to this, I think. Marx specifically days that, without the last hour, "All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus labour will fall from 5¾ hours to 4¾ hours, a period that still gives a very profitable rate of surplus-value, namely 82 14/23%"

Why does this percentage change at all? Isn't there just less "v" at the same ratio as less "s"?

I'm an engineer by trade so it would make so much more sense for me and it's definitely how I conceived it until now, but now I'm afraid that I'm fucking something up by ignoring the numbers and just going for understanding the percentages.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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:

Assume some rate of profit, say 15%. If a capitalist advances $100k on capital ($80k mill and machinery, $20k raw materials and wages), they will have $115k worth of gross product at the end of the labor process, before deducting for expenses like wear and tear on machinery.
Divide $115k by the number of working hours (here 11.5 hours, since 0.5 hours are allowed for a meal). This works out to each working hour producing $10k of the gross product.
Assume some amount of deductions, say $5k for wear and tear in a working day.
All of the above means that the $100k capital advanced is replaced in 10 hours, wear and tear is replaced in 0.5 hours, and the remaining hour is profit.

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.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I have thoughts on this but I won’t have time to write them out til later today. It’s a good question

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Thanks comrade, take your time, I'm already through most of ch 10 and this question is permanent in my mind so an answer anytime in the next month is genuinely find.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Oh I just realized that the concrete total value necessary might be what a worker needs to survive, the value that they need to reproduce their labour (of which a daily basis is a pretty fine way to analyze it). So could we make it fractions relative to that number, then fill in the "x" everywhere with that value to find the exact hours?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Oh I just realized that the concrete total value necessary might be what a worker needs to survive, the value that they need to reproduce their labour (of which a daily basis is a pretty fine way to analyze it).

do you mean necessary labour time?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yes, so my question is then, if we analyze rate of surplus by using fractions instead of totals like Marx does, is that still correct but with necessary labor time as the definite value which determines the magnitude?

It would be like: 1/8=v

6/8=c

1/8=s

So rate is (1/8)/(1/8) =%100

Is Marx agreeing or disagreeing while critiquing the "last hour" claim? The math of the chapter tends to disagree (because the c doesn't vary with the hours worked, which I would guess it would considering the need for more cotton to spin during the last hour). But maybe that's because he's assuming v wouldn't vary in this scenario (labour power is purchased and the time of labour is not considered related here?)

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

lol footnote in section 3, in the discussion of adulteration of food:

Even God Almighty does not escape this fate. See Rouard de Card, “On the Falsifications of the materials of the Sacrament.”

I can tolerate the exploitation of the toiling masses, but I draw the line at shitty communion bread!

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I just finished section 4 and it never really occurred to me how way back then, children were being forced to work in the night. I know way back when I was in school when this stuff was talked about, it was very limited. mainly just only talking about like kids in coal mines and not much else. This chapter is really depressing. Also seeing Marx cite a footnote and talk about health effects of night shift works reminded me of when I did night shift work, and like reading about modern day medicine stuff about health effects of night shift work

[-] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Yeah things were really bad during the Industrial Revolution and also Marx’s time. (They’re still bad, but they used to be, too)

I was also sad reading the end of chapter 9 about the last hour stuff; how the English businessmen called children lazy for wanting to work less — despite English workers working longer than neighboring countries! Including children! All this in horrendous conditions such as a cotton mill, where the air is so thick with cotton dust that it’s painful to breathe.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

These chapters could give the wrong idea that exploitation is something that only happens in 19th century factories. Someone should do an updated edition with modern-day services workers, modern factories, delivery drivers.

The improvements are largely caused by the labour movement, and the reforms capitalist goverments made out of fear of communist revolution in the 20th century.

Marx talks as though Monday-Saturday was the working week, whereas most places now have a 2-day weekend (1½ days in my country)

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