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Capital #1-3
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy
"The following abridgement of the first volume of Capital - the foundation of Marx's entire system of economics - was made by Otto Rühle with great care and with profound understanding of his task. First to be eliminated were obsolete examples, then quotations from writings which today are only of historic interest, polemics with writers now forgotten, and finally numerous documents which, whatever their importance for understanding a given epoch, have no place in a concise exposition that pursues theoretical rather than historical objectives. At the same time, Rühle did everything to preserve continuity in the development of the scientific analysis. Logical deductions and dialectic transitions of thought have not, we trust, been infringed at any point. It stands to reason that this extract calls for attentive perusal." Leon Trotzy, 1939
This edition is provided with an introduction by Leon Trotsky, better known as "Marxism in our time".
This edition is provided with an introduction by Leon Trotsky, better known as "Marxism in our time".
1152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1867
About the author
Karl Marx
2,949 books5,284 followersWith the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
(1848) and
Das Kapital
(1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
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July 8, 2020
Try to call me an uneducated socialist now, bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 7, 2022
Das Kapital = Capital (Volumes 1-3), Karl Marx
Capital, Volume I (Das Kapital), 1867,
Capital, Volume II (posthumously published by Engels), 1885,
Capital, Volume III (posthumously published by Engels), 1894.
Capital. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital is an 1867 economics book by German philosopher Karl Marx. In Volume I, the only part of Marx's multi-volume Capital: Critique of Political Economy to be published during his lifetime, Marx critiques capitalism chiefly from the standpoint of its production processes. After Marx's death, Friedrich Engels compiled and expanded his friend's notes into volumes II (1885) and III (1894).
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1972میلادی
عنوان: سرمایه (کاپیتال)؛ نویسنده: کارل مارکس؛ مترجم: ایرج اسکندری؛ تهران، حزب توده ایران، 1352؛ آلمان شرقی، زالتس لند، در یک جلد؛
عنوان: سرمایه نقدی بر اقتصاد سیاسی؛ نویسنده: کارل مارکس؛ مترجم: حسن مرتضوی؛ تهران، لاهیتا، چاپ نخست جلد اول 1392؛ در سه حلد، چاپ نخست جلد دوم 1393؛ چاپ نخست جلد سوم 1396 میلادی؛ موضوع: اقتصاد - روند گردش سرمایه - سده 19م
کارل مارکس کتاب «سرمایه (کاپیتال)» خویش را، نقدی بر اقتصاد بورژوائی، از ديدگاه سود قشر کارگر میدانند، «مارکس» در «سرمایه» بیش از یکبار همداستانی خویش با اثر «هاجسکین» به نام «دفاع از کارگر در برابر ادعاهای سرمایه» را، ابراز میکنند؛ «مارکس» نخستین جلد از کتابهای «سرمایه» را به ترسیم برداشت کلی خویش از ارزش اضافی، و استثمار کارگران، که به گفته ی ایشان، در پایان منجر به کاهش نرخ سود، و پاشیدگی و فروریزش سرمایه داری صنعتی خواهد شد، اختصاص داده اند؛ تا پاییز سال1871میلادی همگی نسخههای چاپ نخست به زبان «آلمانیِ» «سرمایه» به فروش رسیدند، و کتاب به چاپ دوم نیز رسید؛ درخواستها برای چاپ برگردان «روسی» کتاب، منجر به انتشار سه هزار نسخه از «سرمایه»، به زبان «روسی» در روز بیست و هفتم ماه مارس سال1872میلادی شد؛ «مارکس» باقیمانده ی زندگی خود را، به کار بر روی جلدهای دوم و سوم «سرمایه» بگذاشتند، و هر دو جلد دوم و سوم پس از درگذشت ایشان، توسط «انگلس»؛ جلد دوم با عنوان «سرمایه، جلد دو: فرایند گردش سرمایه»، در ماه ژوئیه سال1893میلادی؛ و جلد سوم یک سال پس از آن در ماه اکتبر سال1894میلادی، با عنوان «سرمایه، جلد سه: فرایند تولید سرمایهدارانه به مثابه یک کل»؛ منتشر شدند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 16/02/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Capital, Volume I (Das Kapital), 1867,
Capital, Volume II (posthumously published by Engels), 1885,
Capital, Volume III (posthumously published by Engels), 1894.
Capital. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital is an 1867 economics book by German philosopher Karl Marx. In Volume I, the only part of Marx's multi-volume Capital: Critique of Political Economy to be published during his lifetime, Marx critiques capitalism chiefly from the standpoint of its production processes. After Marx's death, Friedrich Engels compiled and expanded his friend's notes into volumes II (1885) and III (1894).
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1972میلادی
عنوان: سرمایه (کاپیتال)؛ نویسنده: کارل مارکس؛ مترجم: ایرج اسکندری؛ تهران، حزب توده ایران، 1352؛ آلمان شرقی، زالتس لند، در یک جلد؛
عنوان: سرمایه نقدی بر اقتصاد سیاسی؛ نویسنده: کارل مارکس؛ مترجم: حسن مرتضوی؛ تهران، لاهیتا، چاپ نخست جلد اول 1392؛ در سه حلد، چاپ نخست جلد دوم 1393؛ چاپ نخست جلد سوم 1396 میلادی؛ موضوع: اقتصاد - روند گردش سرمایه - سده 19م
کارل مارکس کتاب «سرمایه (کاپیتال)» خویش را، نقدی بر اقتصاد بورژوائی، از ديدگاه سود قشر کارگر میدانند، «مارکس» در «سرمایه» بیش از یکبار همداستانی خویش با اثر «هاجسکین» به نام «دفاع از کارگر در برابر ادعاهای سرمایه» را، ابراز میکنند؛ «مارکس» نخستین جلد از کتابهای «سرمایه» را به ترسیم برداشت کلی خویش از ارزش اضافی، و استثمار کارگران، که به گفته ی ایشان، در پایان منجر به کاهش نرخ سود، و پاشیدگی و فروریزش سرمایه داری صنعتی خواهد شد، اختصاص داده اند؛ تا پاییز سال1871میلادی همگی نسخههای چاپ نخست به زبان «آلمانیِ» «سرمایه» به فروش رسیدند، و کتاب به چاپ دوم نیز رسید؛ درخواستها برای چاپ برگردان «روسی» کتاب، منجر به انتشار سه هزار نسخه از «سرمایه»، به زبان «روسی» در روز بیست و هفتم ماه مارس سال1872میلادی شد؛ «مارکس» باقیمانده ی زندگی خود را، به کار بر روی جلدهای دوم و سوم «سرمایه» بگذاشتند، و هر دو جلد دوم و سوم پس از درگذشت ایشان، توسط «انگلس»؛ جلد دوم با عنوان «سرمایه، جلد دو: فرایند گردش سرمایه»، در ماه ژوئیه سال1893میلادی؛ و جلد سوم یک سال پس از آن در ماه اکتبر سال1894میلادی، با عنوان «سرمایه، جلد سه: فرایند تولید سرمایهدارانه به مثابه یک کل»؛ منتشر شدند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 16/02/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
May 1, 2024
Did not agree with everything Marx said...but there is no doubt that this book has changed the world. Over the years I don't think I have ever encountered a more misunderstood philosopher; I have had several people tell me they think he is evil incarnate - but when I ask them to tell me why they think that way (and ask if they have ever read any of his works) they say 'I will never read anything by him!' Go figure!
October 5, 2019
10/4/19 - A literary masterpiece and probably the greatest work of social theory. Rereading it with comrades, following the sudden collapse of our political home, proved to be an unexpected source of joy for me this year.
***
More than anything else, the genius of Marx lies in him having given us a dialectical framework for understanding and - hopefully - changing the world. Is that too pretentious a way of putting it? No, I don't think so...
A little over a hundred and fifty years since the publication of Capital, Volume 1, and the world has seen both horrors and progress that Marx himself could scarcely have imagined.
In chapter 15 ('machinery and large scale industry') Marx details how the introduction of machinery immediately caused workers to rebel wherever it happened. Much as he sympathizes with them, however, this is not Marx's own approach. Liberation will not come through the simple rejection of the social order but only through its dialectical transformation.
Marx leaves the question of revolution versus reform very much open, in my view. His discussion of the Factory Acts in chapter 10 hardly suggests a rejection of parliamentary tactics. What counts as a "revolution" is also an interesting question. It should not be controversial to assert that, in addition to creating unprecedented growth, capitalism also tends to plunge whole societies into unprecedented catastrophes.
Living when he did, Marx could only begin to have an inkling of the latter, but here he is on great Irish famine
In the last part of the 19th century, Ireland proved to be a harbinger of a global phenomenon, as perhaps 50 million people died in famines caused by European imperial expansion (see Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World). Capital is not the black book of capitalism, but it does continue provide the best framework for understanding human civilization for the past couple centuries. Without Marx, all we can do is either avert our gaze (eg, Steven Pinker) or else simply go insane from the parade of meaningless suffering.
***
9/12/2017 - I manage to finish Marx's opus a couple days before the 150th anniversary of its first publication. Per usual, I find the mere feat of powering through a great & difficult book doesn't automatically lead to an increase in wisdom. I'll have to cogitate on this one a while.
Yes, it's a brilliant, messy thing. Chapters of abstract algebra alternate with harrowing pieces of journalism and history. Marx's exact thesis, if he has one, is often elusive. Before reading it, I was under the impression that it was only the young, romantic Marx who was concerned with matters such as alienation. So I was pleasantly surprised by the many darkly lyrical passages here on the commodity form. While truth be told I struggled with the intricacies of his theory of value, I'd say old Marx is still the indispensable entry point for a critique of modern society.
*
Not clear if Marx thought he was being ironic here. One hundred fifty years later, these words read more starkly literal than they could have at the time. Capitalism is killing the planet. The past century and half hasn't been a total bust in terms of human progress. Even so, the crises and contradictions of the capitalist mode of production have yet to be resolved.
Marx wrote Capital in part as polemic against the liberals of his day (Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill come in for memorable drubbings). While he agreed with them in denouncing slavery and other premodern varieties of domination, he also sought to expose he new kind of oppression masked in the commodity form. Bourgeois freedoms, if not completely illusory, were certainly inadequate to ensure a just society.
This strand of his thought remains controversial. Many have seen Marxism as an authoritarian doctrine. Given the history of really existing socialism in the twentieth century, this has sometimes been fair. Nonetheless, it seems to me there's never been a better time to renew a Marxist critique of liberalism than right now. As Slavoj Zizek once slyly remarked, we're all supposed to have a great big orgasm whenever we hear the word 'democracy,' but we're also not supposed to talk about the conditions under which people are able to make meaningful decisions about their lives.
The granting of formal democracy to much of the earth's population does not seem to be doing much to stay the plagues of social stratification and climate change. Indeed it's hard to take the word 'democracy' as much more than a joke in a world where 6 individuals have as much combined wealth as the poorer half of humanity. In the US, home of freedom and capitalist hegemon par excellence, we are seeing a shockingly unprecedented collapse in living standards; in the richest country in the world, a drop in life expectancy for a large demographic (that would be the infamous 'white working class').
Which is just to say we may be on the cusp of a new dark ages, or we may have already passed over and be in the early stages of it. Marx's 19th century vision of proletarian revolution is not necessarily the solution. What is necessary is a lucid critique of the current social system if we have any hope to transform it. For this , Capital remains an incomparable resource.
*
How did Marx foresee the end of capitalism? This book really has far more to say about its origins. As a revolutionary he was always committed to the belief that a more just society was possible, and yet still we find passages such as
Not just brute exploitation, but also the spell of ideology. How then is it possible to awaken to revolutionary consciousness? Thirty pages later we get something of an answer
The fame of this passage is out of all proportion to its place in the book. In context it almost comes across as a non sequitur. In a massive book devoted overwhelmingly to the genesis and logic of capitalism, Marx suddenly shifts to speak, for less than a page, of the possibility of socialism.
Marx's marvelous rhetoric here may conflict with the substance of his point. He's not arguing that an increase in misery per se will lead to a revolutionary class. Plainly suffering does not necessarily empower or enlighten. Marx's political horizon is tied to the specific conditions of the industrial working class of time. The notion, say, of 'seizing the means of production' was by no means abstract or metaphorical in its original context. A highly disciplined army of workers could very well seize ownership of the factory in which they toiled. If this happened on the scale of the whole society, capitalism itself could be abolished.
At the time of his writing, and for decades afterwards, it was a plausible enough hypothesis. However, ultimately it was not borne out by history. For all the historic achievements the labor movement, it never managed to defeat capitalism for good. The capitalist mode of production has survived the advent of deindustrialization in the advanced western countries. To find a guide to the present conjuncture, then, I don't think we should look to his triumphalist mode about an ever-growing workers' movement. Rather, we can find insight in is earlier remarks (see page 783) about the progress of capital accumulation creating a redundant population.
Today we see not so much a strong proletariat growing in confidence, but an angry mass divided against itself, painfully aware of its own redundancy. In lieu of a strong revolutionary left, we're likely to see atomized communities continue competing with each other to prove who is more or less redundant. This is why reinventing class consciousness is such a daunting yet necessary task for then 21st century.
***
More than anything else, the genius of Marx lies in him having given us a dialectical framework for understanding and - hopefully - changing the world. Is that too pretentious a way of putting it? No, I don't think so...
A little over a hundred and fifty years since the publication of Capital, Volume 1, and the world has seen both horrors and progress that Marx himself could scarcely have imagined.
In chapter 15 ('machinery and large scale industry') Marx details how the introduction of machinery immediately caused workers to rebel wherever it happened. Much as he sympathizes with them, however, this is not Marx's own approach. Liberation will not come through the simple rejection of the social order but only through its dialectical transformation.
Marx leaves the question of revolution versus reform very much open, in my view. His discussion of the Factory Acts in chapter 10 hardly suggests a rejection of parliamentary tactics. What counts as a "revolution" is also an interesting question. It should not be controversial to assert that, in addition to creating unprecedented growth, capitalism also tends to plunge whole societies into unprecedented catastrophes.
Living when he did, Marx could only begin to have an inkling of the latter, but here he is on great Irish famine
Ireland, having during the last twenty years reduced its population by nearly one-half, is at this moment undergoing the process of still further reducing the number of its inhabitants to a level which will correspond exactly with the requirements of its landlords and the English woollen manufacturers. - pp 572
In the last part of the 19th century, Ireland proved to be a harbinger of a global phenomenon, as perhaps 50 million people died in famines caused by European imperial expansion (see Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World). Capital is not the black book of capitalism, but it does continue provide the best framework for understanding human civilization for the past couple centuries. Without Marx, all we can do is either avert our gaze (eg, Steven Pinker) or else simply go insane from the parade of meaningless suffering.
***
9/12/2017 - I manage to finish Marx's opus a couple days before the 150th anniversary of its first publication. Per usual, I find the mere feat of powering through a great & difficult book doesn't automatically lead to an increase in wisdom. I'll have to cogitate on this one a while.
Yes, it's a brilliant, messy thing. Chapters of abstract algebra alternate with harrowing pieces of journalism and history. Marx's exact thesis, if he has one, is often elusive. Before reading it, I was under the impression that it was only the young, romantic Marx who was concerned with matters such as alienation. So I was pleasantly surprised by the many darkly lyrical passages here on the commodity form. While truth be told I struggled with the intricacies of his theory of value, I'd say old Marx is still the indispensable entry point for a critique of modern society.
*
Capital, which has such "good reasons" for denying the sufferings of the legions of workers surrounding it, allows its actual movement to be determined as much and as little by the sight of the coming degradation and final depopulation of the human race, as by probable fall of the earth into the sun - pp 380
Not clear if Marx thought he was being ironic here. One hundred fifty years later, these words read more starkly literal than they could have at the time. Capitalism is killing the planet. The past century and half hasn't been a total bust in terms of human progress. Even so, the crises and contradictions of the capitalist mode of production have yet to be resolved.
Marx wrote Capital in part as polemic against the liberals of his day (Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill come in for memorable drubbings). While he agreed with them in denouncing slavery and other premodern varieties of domination, he also sought to expose he new kind of oppression masked in the commodity form. Bourgeois freedoms, if not completely illusory, were certainly inadequate to ensure a just society.
This strand of his thought remains controversial. Many have seen Marxism as an authoritarian doctrine. Given the history of really existing socialism in the twentieth century, this has sometimes been fair. Nonetheless, it seems to me there's never been a better time to renew a Marxist critique of liberalism than right now. As Slavoj Zizek once slyly remarked, we're all supposed to have a great big orgasm whenever we hear the word 'democracy,' but we're also not supposed to talk about the conditions under which people are able to make meaningful decisions about their lives.
The granting of formal democracy to much of the earth's population does not seem to be doing much to stay the plagues of social stratification and climate change. Indeed it's hard to take the word 'democracy' as much more than a joke in a world where 6 individuals have as much combined wealth as the poorer half of humanity. In the US, home of freedom and capitalist hegemon par excellence, we are seeing a shockingly unprecedented collapse in living standards; in the richest country in the world, a drop in life expectancy for a large demographic (that would be the infamous 'white working class').
Which is just to say we may be on the cusp of a new dark ages, or we may have already passed over and be in the early stages of it. Marx's 19th century vision of proletarian revolution is not necessarily the solution. What is necessary is a lucid critique of the current social system if we have any hope to transform it. For this , Capital remains an incomparable resource.
*
How did Marx foresee the end of capitalism? This book really has far more to say about its origins. As a revolutionary he was always committed to the belief that a more just society was possible, and yet still we find passages such as
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated at one pole of society in the shape of capital, while at the other pole are grouped masses of men who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Nor is it enough that they are compelled to sell themselves voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws. The organization of the capitalist process of production, once it is fully developed, breaks down all resistance - pp 899
Not just brute exploitation, but also the spell of ideology. How then is it possible to awaken to revolutionary consciousness? Thirty pages later we get something of an answer
Along with the constant decrease in the number of capitalist magnates, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, the mass of misery oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated - pp 929
The fame of this passage is out of all proportion to its place in the book. In context it almost comes across as a non sequitur. In a massive book devoted overwhelmingly to the genesis and logic of capitalism, Marx suddenly shifts to speak, for less than a page, of the possibility of socialism.
Marx's marvelous rhetoric here may conflict with the substance of his point. He's not arguing that an increase in misery per se will lead to a revolutionary class. Plainly suffering does not necessarily empower or enlighten. Marx's political horizon is tied to the specific conditions of the industrial working class of time. The notion, say, of 'seizing the means of production' was by no means abstract or metaphorical in its original context. A highly disciplined army of workers could very well seize ownership of the factory in which they toiled. If this happened on the scale of the whole society, capitalism itself could be abolished.
At the time of his writing, and for decades afterwards, it was a plausible enough hypothesis. However, ultimately it was not borne out by history. For all the historic achievements the labor movement, it never managed to defeat capitalism for good. The capitalist mode of production has survived the advent of deindustrialization in the advanced western countries. To find a guide to the present conjuncture, then, I don't think we should look to his triumphalist mode about an ever-growing workers' movement. Rather, we can find insight in is earlier remarks (see page 783) about the progress of capital accumulation creating a redundant population.
Today we see not so much a strong proletariat growing in confidence, but an angry mass divided against itself, painfully aware of its own redundancy. In lieu of a strong revolutionary left, we're likely to see atomized communities continue competing with each other to prove who is more or less redundant. This is why reinventing class consciousness is such a daunting yet necessary task for then 21st century.
December 10, 2008
Had Marx avoided moral judgments in this tome, had he stuck only to symptoms of capitalism’s maladies, this book might still be read in the West today. Instead, Marx and his labor theory of value are considered discredited by economics departments and worthy of little more than synopses and essays about the work – Das Kapital is still cited by many and read by none – and this is probably because Marx’s moral remedy led to greater woes than capitalism did.
This book is also too long by about 2/3. I would recommend reading it the following way: Review the title and first two pages of each chapter. If you grasp what Marx is after, move along to the next chapter – otherwise, keep reading until you do have a grasp on it. Marx will repeat himself tirelessly and occasionally leaven things with mathematical formulae that are entirely unnecessary for a contemporary reader. If you’re reading Das Kapital for its economics insights, you may skip large parts of the book’s second half. If you are reading it for a condemnation of the moral failures of free-market capitalism, you may skip large parts of the book’s first half – and most of the first halves of each chapter.
Is this book still timely in some of its observations? Absolutely. Is it worth the 40 or so hours it takes to read cover-to-cover? Probably not.
Here are the book’s two greatest insights, I believe:
1. The farther money moves from human labor, the more dangerous it becomes.
2. At every moment capitalism reduces the value of every existing commodity and subsequently the value of every skill set required to provide it.
The overarching insight that Marx had about capitalism, the one we’re contending with right now, is that it eventually cannibalizes itself.
Trouble is, Marx insisted on putting faces on the system. He insisted on chronicling the immorality of some English capitalists of the 1860s. In so doing, he failed to predict today’s United States of America: Everybody is a participant, an exploiter and an exploited, and all are ruined by the system. Today’s corporate officer works 100 hours/week. Today’s lower middle-class laborer works 40 hours/week. One envies the other’s wealth. One envies the other’s time. Neither is fulfilled or content. Both realize capitalism’s constant revolution and reinvention will render them obsolete at least once in their lives.
Capitalism’s fundamental instability is incompatible with human contentment.
But the acceleration of capitalism’s cycles is not something Marx explicitly predicted. Make no mistake, though: Were Marx able to stand in the middle of today’s Manhattan and behold the meltdown of a commissions-based economy in which trillions of dollars are made by electronically moving capital from one place to another, he would say, “What took so long?”
This book is also too long by about 2/3. I would recommend reading it the following way: Review the title and first two pages of each chapter. If you grasp what Marx is after, move along to the next chapter – otherwise, keep reading until you do have a grasp on it. Marx will repeat himself tirelessly and occasionally leaven things with mathematical formulae that are entirely unnecessary for a contemporary reader. If you’re reading Das Kapital for its economics insights, you may skip large parts of the book’s second half. If you are reading it for a condemnation of the moral failures of free-market capitalism, you may skip large parts of the book’s first half – and most of the first halves of each chapter.
Is this book still timely in some of its observations? Absolutely. Is it worth the 40 or so hours it takes to read cover-to-cover? Probably not.
Here are the book’s two greatest insights, I believe:
1. The farther money moves from human labor, the more dangerous it becomes.
2. At every moment capitalism reduces the value of every existing commodity and subsequently the value of every skill set required to provide it.
The overarching insight that Marx had about capitalism, the one we’re contending with right now, is that it eventually cannibalizes itself.
Trouble is, Marx insisted on putting faces on the system. He insisted on chronicling the immorality of some English capitalists of the 1860s. In so doing, he failed to predict today’s United States of America: Everybody is a participant, an exploiter and an exploited, and all are ruined by the system. Today’s corporate officer works 100 hours/week. Today’s lower middle-class laborer works 40 hours/week. One envies the other’s wealth. One envies the other’s time. Neither is fulfilled or content. Both realize capitalism’s constant revolution and reinvention will render them obsolete at least once in their lives.
Capitalism’s fundamental instability is incompatible with human contentment.
But the acceleration of capitalism’s cycles is not something Marx explicitly predicted. Make no mistake, though: Were Marx able to stand in the middle of today’s Manhattan and behold the meltdown of a commissions-based economy in which trillions of dollars are made by electronically moving capital from one place to another, he would say, “What took so long?”
November 12, 2015
Ugh.
Soul-crushing in its hatred of human nature, and irritating in its misconstruing of economic maxims. Beginning with a vast oversimplification of Adam Smith's theory of value, Marx proceeds to describe, for ants, bees and other insectile collectivists, the kind of economics he wishes had evolved among humans. He then offers--via a distortion of the Hegelian dialectic, which is itself a distortion of logic--a historicist, "scientific" account of how the "proletariat" will inevitably rise and take control of the world.
Conspiratorial, ignorant, brutally authoritarian. Bring antidepressants.
Soul-crushing in its hatred of human nature, and irritating in its misconstruing of economic maxims. Beginning with a vast oversimplification of Adam Smith's theory of value, Marx proceeds to describe, for ants, bees and other insectile collectivists, the kind of economics he wishes had evolved among humans. He then offers--via a distortion of the Hegelian dialectic, which is itself a distortion of logic--a historicist, "scientific" account of how the "proletariat" will inevitably rise and take control of the world.
Conspiratorial, ignorant, brutally authoritarian. Bring antidepressants.
September 17, 2016
دوستانِ گرانقدر، این کتاب یکی از دشوارترین کتاب هایی است که در زمینهٔ فلسفه و فلسفهٔ سیاسی و اقتصادی، به چاپ رسیده است
عزیزانم، در زمان خواندن کتاب، برایِ معنی کردنِ برخی از واژه هایِ فلسفی و سیاسی و فهمِ برخی از جملاتِ این کتاب، بهتر است که از کتب یا رفرنس هایِ دیگر کمک بگیرید
این کتاب بسیار تخصصی است و متأسفانه ترجمۀ بسیار ضعیفِ کتاب برایِ غیرقابلِ فهم شدنِ برخی از جملاتِ کتاب نیز، مزیدِ بر علت شده است
دوستانِ خردگرا، نمیشود منکر این بود که «مارکس» ظلم ستیز بوده و در راهِ آگاهیِ انسان ها تلاش فراوان نموده است، هر انسانِ خردمندی بیشترِ اقداماتِ «مارکس» را گرامی میدارد، ولی ممکن است در بینِ خردگرایان، در نوعِ پذیرفتنِ اندیشه هایِ «مارکس» اختلافِ سلیقه وجود داشته باشد... به هرحال هرکدام از ما از نظرات و نوعِ تفکرِ فیلسوفِ موردِ پسندمان استفاده کرده و از سخنانِ او بهره میبریم، به عنوانِ مثال، من دوستدارِ فلسفهٔ زنده یاد «برتراند راسل» و «آرتور شوپنهاور» هستم... ممکن است که از دوستانِ خردمند و اهلِ مطالعه، یکی علاقه مند به «نیچه» باشد و دیگری علاقه مند به «مارکس» باشد ... پس مطالعۀ کتبِ فلاسفه و اندیشمندانی که مخالفِ خرافات و موهومات بوده اند، بدون تردید برای شما زیانی نخواهد داشت
فلسفهٔ مورد پسندِ من با اندیشه های <مارکس> همسو و همجهت نمیباشد... او از آن دسته از روشنفکرانی بود که هدفش تغییر دادنِ این جهان بود، من شخصاً این روشِ «مارکس» را نمیپسندم... به عقیدهٔ من، به جایِ تغییرِ جهان، بهتر است جهان را بشناسیم... در این یک مورد شناخت بهتر از تغییر میباشد
البته ممکن است که برخی از دوستان با نظرِ من مخالف باشند و الگویِ تغییر جهان موردِ پسندشان باشد
پس دوستانِ گرامی، اختلاف در عقیده با یک روشنفکر و فیلسوف، دلیل نمیشود که ما آثار و نوشته هایش را نخوانیم... متأسفانه در ایران بسیاری از مردم و حتی تحصیل کرده ها با آنکه شناختی از <مارکس> و فلسفهٔ او ندارند، اصطلاحی در دهانشان افتاده که به هرکسی که با دین و مذهبشان مخالف باشد به او <مارکسیسم> میگویند در صورتی که هیچ ربطی به یکدیگر ندارند ... و دریغ از ذره ای تحقیق و مطالعه از سوی این مقلّدان!! فقط همچون طوطی حرف های یک سری بیخرد را تکرار میکنند...پس خواهشاً تحتِ تاثیرِ صحبت هایِ عده ای مذهبیِ خرافاتی و بهتر بگویم موجوداتِ «یک کتابی» یا "تک کتابی" قرار نگیرید، و خودتان کتبِ گوناگون را بخوانید و جویایِ راستی و درستی باشید و به نوشته ها و حرف های پوچ و بدون پایه و اساسِ موجوداتِ مذهبی، ذره ای توجه نکنید.. آنها افکارشان توسطِ دین، فاسد و کرم خورده شده است و اندکی فهم به شناختِ فلسفه و فلاسفهٔ نامی ندارند و نخواهند داشت
امیدوارم بهترین فلسفه را برایِ زندگی خودتان، در نظر گرفته و توجه زیادی به کرامتِ انسانی خودتان داشته باشید
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
عزیزانم، در زمان خواندن کتاب، برایِ معنی کردنِ برخی از واژه هایِ فلسفی و سیاسی و فهمِ برخی از جملاتِ این کتاب، بهتر است که از کتب یا رفرنس هایِ دیگر کمک بگیرید
این کتاب بسیار تخصصی است و متأسفانه ترجمۀ بسیار ضعیفِ کتاب برایِ غیرقابلِ فهم شدنِ برخی از جملاتِ کتاب نیز، مزیدِ بر علت شده است
دوستانِ خردگرا، نمیشود منکر این بود که «مارکس» ظلم ستیز بوده و در راهِ آگاهیِ انسان ها تلاش فراوان نموده است، هر انسانِ خردمندی بیشترِ اقداماتِ «مارکس» را گرامی میدارد، ولی ممکن است در بینِ خردگرایان، در نوعِ پذیرفتنِ اندیشه هایِ «مارکس» اختلافِ سلیقه وجود داشته باشد... به هرحال هرکدام از ما از نظرات و نوعِ تفکرِ فیلسوفِ موردِ پسندمان استفاده کرده و از سخنانِ او بهره میبریم، به عنوانِ مثال، من دوستدارِ فلسفهٔ زنده یاد «برتراند راسل» و «آرتور شوپنهاور» هستم... ممکن است که از دوستانِ خردمند و اهلِ مطالعه، یکی علاقه مند به «نیچه» باشد و دیگری علاقه مند به «مارکس» باشد ... پس مطالعۀ کتبِ فلاسفه و اندیشمندانی که مخالفِ خرافات و موهومات بوده اند، بدون تردید برای شما زیانی نخواهد داشت
فلسفهٔ مورد پسندِ من با اندیشه های <مارکس> همسو و همجهت نمیباشد... او از آن دسته از روشنفکرانی بود که هدفش تغییر دادنِ این جهان بود، من شخصاً این روشِ «مارکس» را نمیپسندم... به عقیدهٔ من، به جایِ تغییرِ جهان، بهتر است جهان را بشناسیم... در این یک مورد شناخت بهتر از تغییر میباشد
البته ممکن است که برخی از دوستان با نظرِ من مخالف باشند و الگویِ تغییر جهان موردِ پسندشان باشد
پس دوستانِ گرامی، اختلاف در عقیده با یک روشنفکر و فیلسوف، دلیل نمیشود که ما آثار و نوشته هایش را نخوانیم... متأسفانه در ایران بسیاری از مردم و حتی تحصیل کرده ها با آنکه شناختی از <مارکس> و فلسفهٔ او ندارند، اصطلاحی در دهانشان افتاده که به هرکسی که با دین و مذهبشان مخالف باشد به او <مارکسیسم> میگویند در صورتی که هیچ ربطی به یکدیگر ندارند ... و دریغ از ذره ای تحقیق و مطالعه از سوی این مقلّدان!! فقط همچون طوطی حرف های یک سری بیخرد را تکرار میکنند...پس خواهشاً تحتِ تاثیرِ صحبت هایِ عده ای مذهبیِ خرافاتی و بهتر بگویم موجوداتِ «یک کتابی» یا "تک کتابی" قرار نگیرید، و خودتان کتبِ گوناگون را بخوانید و جویایِ راستی و درستی باشید و به نوشته ها و حرف های پوچ و بدون پایه و اساسِ موجوداتِ مذهبی، ذره ای توجه نکنید.. آنها افکارشان توسطِ دین، فاسد و کرم خورده شده است و اندکی فهم به شناختِ فلسفه و فلاسفهٔ نامی ندارند و نخواهند داشت
امیدوارم بهترین فلسفه را برایِ زندگی خودتان، در نظر گرفته و توجه زیادی به کرامتِ انسانی خودتان داشته باشید
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
June 3, 2010
Karl Marx's Capital can be read as a work of economics, sociology and history. He addresses a myriad of topics, but is most generally trying to present a systematic account of the nature, development, and future of the capitalist system. There is a strong economic focus to this work, and Marx addresses the nature of commodities, wages and the worker-capitalist relationship, among other things. Much of this work tries to show the ways in which workers are exploited by the capitalist mode of production. He also provides a history of past exploitations. Marx argues that the capitalist system is ultimately unstable, because it cannot endlessly sustain profits. Thus, it provides a more technical background to some of his more generally accessible works, like The Communist Manifesto.
This study guide focuses on one component of Capital, Marx's schema of how the capitalist system functions. Marx argues that commodities have both a use-value and an exchange-value, and that their exchange-value is rooted in how much labor-power went into them. While traditionally people bought commodities in order to use them, capitalists use commodities differently. Their final goal is increased profit. Therefore, they put out money and buy commodities, in order to sell those commodities for a profit. The cycle then repeats itself. The reason why the capitalists are able to make a profit is that they only need to pay workers their value (how much it takes to keep them functional), but the workers produce more than that amount in a day. Thus, the workers are exploited. The capitalists are able to do this because they have more power, and control the means of production. Furthermore, the workers' character is negatively affected by the system. They don't own the products of their labor, and the repetitive work they have to do makes them little more than machines.
Marx presents several definitions that will be important throughout his work, so it is very important to be clear on their meanings. A use-value corresponds to the usefulness of an object, and is internal to that object. For example, a hammer is a use-value because of its contributions to building. Its use-value comes from its usefulness. In contrast, a hammer's exchange-value comes from its value relative to other objects. For example, a hammer might be worth two screwdrivers. An object doesn't have an exchange value in itself, but only in its relationship with other objects.
However, the fact that the hammer and screwdriver can be exchanged at all suggests that there must be something common between them, some means of comparison. Marx says that this is the object's value. Value means the amount of labor it takes to make the commodities. This labor theory of value is very important to Marx's theory. It implies that the price of commodities comes from how much labor was put into them. One implication of this is that objects with natural use-value, such as forests and other natural resources, do not have value because no labor went into them. One problematic question, then, is how such natural resources can have exchange-value (people do spend money on them) without benefiting from labor. It is also important to consider how Marx's conception of the roots of exchange value differs from modern economic theory. In modern theory, something's exchange value is rooted in people's subjective preferences. While the amount of labor required would be linked to the supply curve of a commodity, its exchange value is also determined by the demand curve. Marx focuses exclusively on labor.
This book also gives a general sense of Marx's approach in Capital.Here he dissects one aspect of the modern capitalist system and presents a schema for understanding why it functions as it does. Later Marx will analyze things like the role of money and the capitalist. While this book makes many historical and sociological arguments, it is largely a book of economic theory and its implications.
One thing to consider when thinking about Marx's characterization of capitalism is where this capitalistic ethic came from. Marx says that capitalists have an endless need for more money, and that the system of capitalism requires and perpetuates this attitude. Even if this is true, however, it does not explain how capitalism developed in the first place. What made people view M' as an end in itself? Where does this thirst for profit come from? Marx's description does not spend a lot of time explaining how people could have come to develop these ideas. This limitation is a potential theoretical difficulty.
Marx spends a lot of time discussing the ways in which capitalism is rooted in social institutions. Capitalism is not natural, but rather depends upon social structures, such as property laws. One social factor that is very important for Marx's theory is that the workers don't own the means of production. Because of this, they must sell their labor to others. It is precisely because workers do own their own labor that they are able to give up all claims to it, by selling it as property. As a result, they don't own the commodities they produce; somebody else owns their labor and the products of that labor. The result is that workers become alienated from their labor—they do not control or own what they create. In Marx's framework, labor-power is a commodity in the market. Its value is determined in the same way as for other commodities, and it is used by capitalists as another commodity in the production process.
Marx's labor theory of value becomes very important when looking at the commodity of labor-power. A hammer's value comes from the amount of labor put into it. What, then, is labor-power's value? Marx applies the definition of value—its value is the amount of labor needed to produce and sustain labor-power. Or more simply, it is the amount of labor needed to keep the laborer alive and functioning at his capacity. Let's say that a worker needs $100/week to survive and function. The value of his labor-power is, therefore, $100/week as well. A worker's "price" (his wage) must be at least $100/week in order for the worker to be paid at value. This concept will be very important in later chapters, when Marx will try to show that it is possible to exploit labor.
Marx's labor theory of value again makes an appearance, as he tries to explain a seeming paradox. A capitalist purchases all of the inputs needed to make a commodity (labor-power, raw materials, etc.) at their value. He also sells the end-product at its value. If this is the case, where does the surplus value come from? If there's no surplus value, then capitalism cannot exist, because there would be no profit. Marx's answer comes from the unique character of labor- power. Labor-power's use-value (what it can create) is not the same thing as its exchange-value (what is needed to sustain the worker). A worker sells himself at his value, but he produces more than this value. In this way, the capitalist gains surplus-value. This is significant, because it explains how exploitation can occur as the result of a series of freely made trades. The worker could complain that he is not being paid for the value of what he produces. However, the capitalist can reply that the worker is being paid his value. Once the worker is paid for a day's work, the capitalist has the right to use him for a day. Justice is part of the overall mode of production of the times, and as a result, this exchange can be considered "just."
Why do the workers put up with such exploitation? Couldn't they demand higher wages, that match the value their labor-power produces? Marx's answer is that the workers don't have the capacity to work without the capitalists; they require factories and other means of production. The workers are selling an abstract capacity to labor, and because of this, the capitalist is able to exploit them by only paying labor-power's value. Consider whether you think Marx's characterization of the labor market is fair. Does labor have the ability to fight exploitation and set wages closer to the value of what they produce? Think of this both historically and theoretically.
An important theme in Marx's work is class tension. According to Marx, all of history has been defined by class conflict. Modern times are no different in this regard, and are defined by tension between the capitalist and the worker. Marx describes one source of this tension in this chapter, as he mentions again the asymmetry between the use-value and exchange-value of labor-power (already discussed in Chapter 7). In this class conflict, the capitalists are the stronger class. This allows them to exert more force and define what workers will be paid. However, the fact that they are the stronger class does not simply give capitalists more bargaining power. Rather, social institutions such as property laws are defined to support the capitalists' needs. The mode of production reflects the economic system of capitalism. It will continue to do so, and continue to favor the capitalists, until it self-destructs.
It is important to realize that the capitalists cannot behave differently; there will always be tension between them and the workers. The very essence of a capitalist is his desire to gain surplus-value. The only way to do so is to exploit workers by failing to pay workers for the full value of what they produce. In order to survive, the capitalist must exploit. Thus, the tension between workers and capitalists is structural. The capitalist system requires exploitation. Measures to ease workers' hardships, such as a minimum wage or welfare are simply band-aids; they cannot change what a capitalist is.
This study guide focuses on one component of Capital, Marx's schema of how the capitalist system functions. Marx argues that commodities have both a use-value and an exchange-value, and that their exchange-value is rooted in how much labor-power went into them. While traditionally people bought commodities in order to use them, capitalists use commodities differently. Their final goal is increased profit. Therefore, they put out money and buy commodities, in order to sell those commodities for a profit. The cycle then repeats itself. The reason why the capitalists are able to make a profit is that they only need to pay workers their value (how much it takes to keep them functional), but the workers produce more than that amount in a day. Thus, the workers are exploited. The capitalists are able to do this because they have more power, and control the means of production. Furthermore, the workers' character is negatively affected by the system. They don't own the products of their labor, and the repetitive work they have to do makes them little more than machines.
Marx presents several definitions that will be important throughout his work, so it is very important to be clear on their meanings. A use-value corresponds to the usefulness of an object, and is internal to that object. For example, a hammer is a use-value because of its contributions to building. Its use-value comes from its usefulness. In contrast, a hammer's exchange-value comes from its value relative to other objects. For example, a hammer might be worth two screwdrivers. An object doesn't have an exchange value in itself, but only in its relationship with other objects.
However, the fact that the hammer and screwdriver can be exchanged at all suggests that there must be something common between them, some means of comparison. Marx says that this is the object's value. Value means the amount of labor it takes to make the commodities. This labor theory of value is very important to Marx's theory. It implies that the price of commodities comes from how much labor was put into them. One implication of this is that objects with natural use-value, such as forests and other natural resources, do not have value because no labor went into them. One problematic question, then, is how such natural resources can have exchange-value (people do spend money on them) without benefiting from labor. It is also important to consider how Marx's conception of the roots of exchange value differs from modern economic theory. In modern theory, something's exchange value is rooted in people's subjective preferences. While the amount of labor required would be linked to the supply curve of a commodity, its exchange value is also determined by the demand curve. Marx focuses exclusively on labor.
This book also gives a general sense of Marx's approach in Capital.Here he dissects one aspect of the modern capitalist system and presents a schema for understanding why it functions as it does. Later Marx will analyze things like the role of money and the capitalist. While this book makes many historical and sociological arguments, it is largely a book of economic theory and its implications.
One thing to consider when thinking about Marx's characterization of capitalism is where this capitalistic ethic came from. Marx says that capitalists have an endless need for more money, and that the system of capitalism requires and perpetuates this attitude. Even if this is true, however, it does not explain how capitalism developed in the first place. What made people view M' as an end in itself? Where does this thirst for profit come from? Marx's description does not spend a lot of time explaining how people could have come to develop these ideas. This limitation is a potential theoretical difficulty.
Marx spends a lot of time discussing the ways in which capitalism is rooted in social institutions. Capitalism is not natural, but rather depends upon social structures, such as property laws. One social factor that is very important for Marx's theory is that the workers don't own the means of production. Because of this, they must sell their labor to others. It is precisely because workers do own their own labor that they are able to give up all claims to it, by selling it as property. As a result, they don't own the commodities they produce; somebody else owns their labor and the products of that labor. The result is that workers become alienated from their labor—they do not control or own what they create. In Marx's framework, labor-power is a commodity in the market. Its value is determined in the same way as for other commodities, and it is used by capitalists as another commodity in the production process.
Marx's labor theory of value becomes very important when looking at the commodity of labor-power. A hammer's value comes from the amount of labor put into it. What, then, is labor-power's value? Marx applies the definition of value—its value is the amount of labor needed to produce and sustain labor-power. Or more simply, it is the amount of labor needed to keep the laborer alive and functioning at his capacity. Let's say that a worker needs $100/week to survive and function. The value of his labor-power is, therefore, $100/week as well. A worker's "price" (his wage) must be at least $100/week in order for the worker to be paid at value. This concept will be very important in later chapters, when Marx will try to show that it is possible to exploit labor.
Marx's labor theory of value again makes an appearance, as he tries to explain a seeming paradox. A capitalist purchases all of the inputs needed to make a commodity (labor-power, raw materials, etc.) at their value. He also sells the end-product at its value. If this is the case, where does the surplus value come from? If there's no surplus value, then capitalism cannot exist, because there would be no profit. Marx's answer comes from the unique character of labor- power. Labor-power's use-value (what it can create) is not the same thing as its exchange-value (what is needed to sustain the worker). A worker sells himself at his value, but he produces more than this value. In this way, the capitalist gains surplus-value. This is significant, because it explains how exploitation can occur as the result of a series of freely made trades. The worker could complain that he is not being paid for the value of what he produces. However, the capitalist can reply that the worker is being paid his value. Once the worker is paid for a day's work, the capitalist has the right to use him for a day. Justice is part of the overall mode of production of the times, and as a result, this exchange can be considered "just."
Why do the workers put up with such exploitation? Couldn't they demand higher wages, that match the value their labor-power produces? Marx's answer is that the workers don't have the capacity to work without the capitalists; they require factories and other means of production. The workers are selling an abstract capacity to labor, and because of this, the capitalist is able to exploit them by only paying labor-power's value. Consider whether you think Marx's characterization of the labor market is fair. Does labor have the ability to fight exploitation and set wages closer to the value of what they produce? Think of this both historically and theoretically.
An important theme in Marx's work is class tension. According to Marx, all of history has been defined by class conflict. Modern times are no different in this regard, and are defined by tension between the capitalist and the worker. Marx describes one source of this tension in this chapter, as he mentions again the asymmetry between the use-value and exchange-value of labor-power (already discussed in Chapter 7). In this class conflict, the capitalists are the stronger class. This allows them to exert more force and define what workers will be paid. However, the fact that they are the stronger class does not simply give capitalists more bargaining power. Rather, social institutions such as property laws are defined to support the capitalists' needs. The mode of production reflects the economic system of capitalism. It will continue to do so, and continue to favor the capitalists, until it self-destructs.
It is important to realize that the capitalists cannot behave differently; there will always be tension between them and the workers. The very essence of a capitalist is his desire to gain surplus-value. The only way to do so is to exploit workers by failing to pay workers for the full value of what they produce. In order to survive, the capitalist must exploit. Thus, the tension between workers and capitalists is structural. The capitalist system requires exploitation. Measures to ease workers' hardships, such as a minimum wage or welfare are simply band-aids; they cannot change what a capitalist is.
May 4, 2015
'Let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common.'
June 13, 2019
To judge a book by the way it affected the world is a mistake, though a tempting mistake. If we are to do so, almost all religious books will get a one-star rating because of the violent actions of followers of the respective religion. I don't wish to be so cruel as to judge Marx, his 'Das Kapital' or socialism, on the basis of human rights violations in communist Russia and China.
..... But even if we are to give in to this temptation, we will find that Marx has a mostly positive impact. Before him, the world was driven by a blind capitalist force which burns down everything to profits - mostly based on the exploitation of workers who (often mere children) worked more than 16 hours at times. Some laws for the benefit of workers were already being made by the time Marx wrote the book, but I think it is mostly thanks to Marx that overexploitation of workers is no longer taken for granted in the west.
Socialism can't be any more blamed for the suffering of people in communist countries (blame stays for communism, the political system) just as democracies cannot be blamed for their poor and homeless (blame lies with badly created capitalism, the economic system). Dr. B. R. Ambendkar, the father of constitution of India, said that political equality (the aim of democracy) can't be of much value without social and economic equality (the aim of socialism). Just as the solution to all problems of democracy is more democracy, the solution to all problems of socialism is more socialism. Unfortunately, the two systems seem to resist each other. Socialism seems to prefer communism or dictatorship while democracy leans toward capitalist or mixed economic systems.
Anyway, to get back to the book, Marx does an amazing job of bringing out the ways in which the workers are getting violated when he goes to real-life examples. But his theory itself seemed to be as absurd as that of capitalist economist he argues against. At the end of the day, a capitalist does take risks, does bring assets together, does bear the loss if such loss were to come; and deserves what goes by name of profit.
The problem is not profits, the problem lies in two things. First, how the profits are made. By exploitation of workers. Where profits can only be made by undertaking workers, such business have no right to exist. This trashes the argument of those who are against the minimum wages because it would reduce the profitability of businesses. Where businesses are too big to die, it means the government (and indirect taxpayer who mostly workers) is paying for inefficiency of Management who will get big cheques for their badly done jobs. If capitalism means survival of fittest, those managers should lose their jobs first.
Another cruel way in which profits are made is by way of heavy discrimination in salaries of upper and lower levels of workers. The CEOs of big companies might give a better quality of work than average ground level worker but the difference between the two qualities doesn't excuse the difference in reimbursement (the two can often stand in a ration of 100:1). Now I know I know a capitalist would say that salaries are decided by laws of demand and supply. the But then the supply of highly qualified managers far more exceed the need for them (a handful needed in any organization) than ground-level level workers can exceed their demand. To create an artificial scarcity of supply you could make education expensive. But even though education keeps getting expensive, the supply of workers top-level jobs still vastly outnumber the demand for them. A highly paid manager has good reason to exploit workers under him to make profits for his bosses or he risks losing his job and the big package.
Last cruel way profits or high incomes are made is holding onto ridiculously big assets. In Middle-East, it is oil the wells; in the USA it is technology giants like Whatsapp, Facebook, and Google. One important difference is that later have at least use their minds to create something truly valuable rather just get lucky. They might just seem to deserve all the money but, beyond some limits, we no more own products of our own genius than ones we inherit from fathers. A genius like money we inherited from poor looks are the gifts of accident of luck. The government in name of people will take away the old treasures that might be found in your backyard after paying you a percentage. I don't see why products of intelligence shouldn't go the same way.
The second thing that I'd wrong with capitalism is laws of inheritance. It is not always about survival of fittest but just as much as survival of children and grandchildren of fittest. You can call capitalism a race but a race is equal only if we start at some point. A country truly dedicated to capitalism would not let too much of wealth get inherited by the children. Capitalist countries suffer from income gaps because they aren't being capitalist enough. The best version of capitalism (at least as Adam Smith, another misunderstood soul sees it) would have best of socialism embedded inside it. The government of a truly capitalist country would take actions against corporations that resist workers (peaceful) movements.
Anyway returning back to book, I don't agree with Marx's ideas that capitalist doesn't add value to goods. But I do agree though that profits, rents, interests beyond a certain limit (beyond what might be needed to maintain the assets they are connected to) are an unproductive transfer of money from poor to rich rather than actually earned incomes.
I do have an argument of my own to make. You might fix sums to be paid to different stakeholders (workers, capitalists, entrepreneurs, landlords, government, )from revenue of the business and you will have a surplus left in the end. Now according to capitalism, this surplus belongs to an entrepreneur who has taken the risk in running operations and so a fixed sum is not big enough payment for him. But these days, you can shrug that argument off, and say he got insurance at a fixed premium to ward off the risk. And even if he didn't, the argument still holds - if an insurance company can undertake risk for fixed sum why not let an entrepreneur or capitalist do the same?
However, the problem is who gets the surplus? Who ensures that the system runs smoothly? Because that party would have too much power not to abuse it. In capitalism, it lies with filthy rich capitalists while in socialism it is taken over by the government, and though the last do so in name of workers, the workers who are the bulk of population do not gain much in either case.
..... But even if we are to give in to this temptation, we will find that Marx has a mostly positive impact. Before him, the world was driven by a blind capitalist force which burns down everything to profits - mostly based on the exploitation of workers who (often mere children) worked more than 16 hours at times. Some laws for the benefit of workers were already being made by the time Marx wrote the book, but I think it is mostly thanks to Marx that overexploitation of workers is no longer taken for granted in the west.
Socialism can't be any more blamed for the suffering of people in communist countries (blame stays for communism, the political system) just as democracies cannot be blamed for their poor and homeless (blame lies with badly created capitalism, the economic system). Dr. B. R. Ambendkar, the father of constitution of India, said that political equality (the aim of democracy) can't be of much value without social and economic equality (the aim of socialism). Just as the solution to all problems of democracy is more democracy, the solution to all problems of socialism is more socialism. Unfortunately, the two systems seem to resist each other. Socialism seems to prefer communism or dictatorship while democracy leans toward capitalist or mixed economic systems.
Anyway, to get back to the book, Marx does an amazing job of bringing out the ways in which the workers are getting violated when he goes to real-life examples. But his theory itself seemed to be as absurd as that of capitalist economist he argues against. At the end of the day, a capitalist does take risks, does bring assets together, does bear the loss if such loss were to come; and deserves what goes by name of profit.
The problem is not profits, the problem lies in two things. First, how the profits are made. By exploitation of workers. Where profits can only be made by undertaking workers, such business have no right to exist. This trashes the argument of those who are against the minimum wages because it would reduce the profitability of businesses. Where businesses are too big to die, it means the government (and indirect taxpayer who mostly workers) is paying for inefficiency of Management who will get big cheques for their badly done jobs. If capitalism means survival of fittest, those managers should lose their jobs first.
Another cruel way in which profits are made is by way of heavy discrimination in salaries of upper and lower levels of workers. The CEOs of big companies might give a better quality of work than average ground level worker but the difference between the two qualities doesn't excuse the difference in reimbursement (the two can often stand in a ration of 100:1). Now I know I know a capitalist would say that salaries are decided by laws of demand and supply. the But then the supply of highly qualified managers far more exceed the need for them (a handful needed in any organization) than ground-level level workers can exceed their demand. To create an artificial scarcity of supply you could make education expensive. But even though education keeps getting expensive, the supply of workers top-level jobs still vastly outnumber the demand for them. A highly paid manager has good reason to exploit workers under him to make profits for his bosses or he risks losing his job and the big package.
Last cruel way profits or high incomes are made is holding onto ridiculously big assets. In Middle-East, it is oil the wells; in the USA it is technology giants like Whatsapp, Facebook, and Google. One important difference is that later have at least use their minds to create something truly valuable rather just get lucky. They might just seem to deserve all the money but, beyond some limits, we no more own products of our own genius than ones we inherit from fathers. A genius like money we inherited from poor looks are the gifts of accident of luck. The government in name of people will take away the old treasures that might be found in your backyard after paying you a percentage. I don't see why products of intelligence shouldn't go the same way.
The second thing that I'd wrong with capitalism is laws of inheritance. It is not always about survival of fittest but just as much as survival of children and grandchildren of fittest. You can call capitalism a race but a race is equal only if we start at some point. A country truly dedicated to capitalism would not let too much of wealth get inherited by the children. Capitalist countries suffer from income gaps because they aren't being capitalist enough. The best version of capitalism (at least as Adam Smith, another misunderstood soul sees it) would have best of socialism embedded inside it. The government of a truly capitalist country would take actions against corporations that resist workers (peaceful) movements.
Anyway returning back to book, I don't agree with Marx's ideas that capitalist doesn't add value to goods. But I do agree though that profits, rents, interests beyond a certain limit (beyond what might be needed to maintain the assets they are connected to) are an unproductive transfer of money from poor to rich rather than actually earned incomes.
I do have an argument of my own to make. You might fix sums to be paid to different stakeholders (workers, capitalists, entrepreneurs, landlords, government, )from revenue of the business and you will have a surplus left in the end. Now according to capitalism, this surplus belongs to an entrepreneur who has taken the risk in running operations and so a fixed sum is not big enough payment for him. But these days, you can shrug that argument off, and say he got insurance at a fixed premium to ward off the risk. And even if he didn't, the argument still holds - if an insurance company can undertake risk for fixed sum why not let an entrepreneur or capitalist do the same?
However, the problem is who gets the surplus? Who ensures that the system runs smoothly? Because that party would have too much power not to abuse it. In capitalism, it lies with filthy rich capitalists while in socialism it is taken over by the government, and though the last do so in name of workers, the workers who are the bulk of population do not gain much in either case.
Want to read
May 21, 2020"In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power. Thenceforth, the class struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms."
Karl Marx, London,
January 24, 1873
(he meant "stimulate"...)
Marxism applied failed. Still, The Economist finds virtue in the ideology.
https://www.economist.com/news/books-...
I am glad there was one called Mises, to counter Marx: https://mises.org/wire/mises-myth-marx
And, Marx didn't use the word "capitalism"
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n07/james-m..."
But, communism failed.
PS a propos China's case: https://qz.com/1270109/chinas-communi...
PPS Still, some forget History: http://mnemosyne.ee/en/participation-...
UPDATE
Yes, there are those who still believe the marxist theory is one of "the most perceptive critiques"
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...
UPDATE
The cover and a cartoon inside the latest issue of "Philosophy Now" pleased me greatly.
Right, Marx needs to be questioned.
Karl Marx, London,
January 24, 1873
(he meant "stimulate"...)
Marxism applied failed. Still, The Economist finds virtue in the ideology.
https://www.economist.com/news/books-...
I am glad there was one called Mises, to counter Marx: https://mises.org/wire/mises-myth-marx
And, Marx didn't use the word "capitalism"
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n07/james-m..."
But, communism failed.
PS a propos China's case: https://qz.com/1270109/chinas-communi...
PPS Still, some forget History: http://mnemosyne.ee/en/participation-...
UPDATE
Yes, there are those who still believe the marxist theory is one of "the most perceptive critiques"
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...
UPDATE
The cover and a cartoon inside the latest issue of "Philosophy Now" pleased me greatly.
Right, Marx needs to be questioned.
July 26, 2016
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Karl Marx
Preface to the First German Edition
Afterword to the Second German Edition
--Capital [Abridged]
Marx's Selected Footnotes
Explanatory Notes
Subject Index
Name Index
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Karl Marx
Preface to the First German Edition
Afterword to the Second German Edition
--Capital [Abridged]
Marx's Selected Footnotes
Explanatory Notes
Subject Index
Name Index
September 5, 2017
It’s shameful that it’s taken me so long to read 'Capital'. I should have done so when I was an undergrad, more than a decade ago. This is not my first attempt, though. I borrowed an aged hardback library edition of Volume 1 in 2011 and was defeated by the 8 (EIGHT) forewords and prefaces; I never made it to Marx’s actual words. This edition seemed more manageable, due to being abridged and having a mere four introductions and prefaces. Abridged or not, ‘Capital’ is undoubtedly hard work. I read it at a third or less of my usual rate. Marx’s sentences are long and often require reading twice to grasp what exactly he means. The sections recounting the development of the industrial revolution are easier, as they are more historical than theoretical. For the most part, however, this is theory and thus dense and demanding. Nonetheless, I found it highly rewarding to read.
If, like me, you have been mired in free market economic theory throughout your academic life, 'Capital' can be extremely satisfying. There were times when I could feel it rewiring my brain, as I’d hoped it might. It presents a fundamentally different approach to macroeconomics than the neoclassical economics I’ve been taught since 2001. Given Marx’s dismissal of the classical ('vulgar') economists, I can only imagine how scathing he would be of their heirs. Although I’ve read plenty of theory and academic work that refers to Marxism, none of it gave me more than the vaguest possible grounding in the actual content of 'Capital', because it says so many complex and nuanced things that require careful explanation.
There are number of ways in which Marx’s analysis of capitalism significantly differs from neoclassical macroeconomics that seemed important to me:
i) the assumption that change is always happening and that technological developments are not a magically exogenous factor (cf the frustrating Solow-Swan model of long term growth).
ii) The related disdain for any notion of equilibrium. It’s a non-existent mirage, I swear economics is only obsessed with it because it lends itself to tidy graphs.
iii) Assuming from the start that wages are set by how much the employer can get away with paying, not by individual contract negotiations in which employer and employee are somehow on a level playing field.
iv) Dismissal of the idea of full employment. Markets cannot achieve this and never have - why would they? Full employment only occurs with heavy government intervention, for example in the UK during WWII when much of the economy was nationalised. Marx’s concept of the reserve labour force remains extremely helpful and apposite today – which is why I’d come across it before.
v) Much fuller explanation than macroeconomics can manage of why and how production becomes progressively more capital-intensive, how rates of profit can fall while absolute profits rise, and how the labour-intensity of production can fall while longer hours and higher productivity are perpetually demanded from employees.
I have a mug with a picture of Marx in all his bearded glory and the caption, ‘I warned you that this would happen’. It’s true, he did. Although Capital is explicitly analysing relations between capital and labour at a specific point in time, there is an inevitable temptation to extrapolate to the present day (from this and his other work – the Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy is often cited in recent commentary, I should read that). I found a number of points that meaningfully echoed the structural economic problems of today:
I thought a lot about the service industries while reading 'Capital'. Of course, factory-based worker exploitation is still very much in existence in 2017; we in Britain just don’t have to look at it. Children and women still work for long hours in terrible conditions to make cheap garments, but in Asia rather than Europe. The impoverished employees of the developed world are now largely in service industry jobs, essentially replicating the work of 19th century domestic servants that has escaped mechanisation. Other than the very rich, most people do not have live-in servants anymore (in the UK housing market there’s no space for them, apart from anything else). Instead, we hire snippets of servitude when getting a house cleaned, or a child minded, or food delivered to our door. Generally such service workers are on insecure low-paid contracts, employed by large companies. This trend is by no means incompatible with Marx’s analysis.
Page 389 has a tidy explanation of how service work can become productive to capital: ‘The same labour (for example, that of a gardener, a tailor) can be performed by the same worker on behalf of a capitalist or on immediate uses. In the two cases, he is wage-earning or hired by the day, but, if he works for the capitalist, he is a productive worker, since he produces capital, whereas if he works for a direct user he is unproductive.’ This brought to mind the so-called disruptive platforms like Uber. Whereas a taxi driver working independently was not contributing to the accumulation of capital, an Uber driver is, as a parasitic firm skims off a portion of their takings. These misleadingly-termed ‘sharing economy’ service companies accumulate forms of capital that Marx would likely not recognise, though: personal data and algorithms for the most part.
One thing I was left wondering at the end of the book was: how exactly can we define the term ‘capital’ today? (Clearly I should read Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century soon.) A line from the HBO sitcom Silicon Valley sprang to mind: “Our product is our stock”. By some bizarre convolution, tech firms seem to accumulate capital in the form of their own stock valuation, an abstraction that should depend on their capital, profits, turnover, etc. Tech giants and social media companies either make massive losses or profit only by advertising products sold by other companies. Their capital has melted into air, or bytes.
This may be a function of the abridged edition I read, which contains almost all of Vol 1 but only extracts of 2 and 3, but I was surprised to find no speculation about the future path of capitalism. I knew that ‘Capital’ would be essentially a historic analysis. However I wonder if there is anything further about the ultimate results of the falling rate of profit relative to capital (‘The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall is, therefore, just an expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of production.’) The current state of Late Capitalism raises the questions: what else can be commoditised? How much faster can the population be persuaded to consume? How much more of the day can be occupied by activities that generate revenue for businesses? Is there a point at which the credit system collapses under the weight of loans that can never be repaid? (In the latter case, 2007/8 could have been a false alarm or an early warning.) There was also less discussion of class than I’d expected. The division into working class, bourgeoisie, landowners, and capitalists was merely assumed as part of the context.
Something I did locate, however, was the seed of Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming on pages 231 and 267:
My only quibble with ‘Capital’ was occasional disagreement with the translator’s comma placement, although that must have been a real challenge to get right with such lengthy sentences in German. Marx’s occasional zingers were great, particularly the Bentham burns: 'The arch-philistine Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence.' Likewise this description of the English parliament: 'a permanent Trade's Union of the capitalists'. In short, 'Capital' definitely did not disappoint. It’s always pleasing when a classic that is still widely read and hugely influential lives up to expectations.
If, like me, you have been mired in free market economic theory throughout your academic life, 'Capital' can be extremely satisfying. There were times when I could feel it rewiring my brain, as I’d hoped it might. It presents a fundamentally different approach to macroeconomics than the neoclassical economics I’ve been taught since 2001. Given Marx’s dismissal of the classical ('vulgar') economists, I can only imagine how scathing he would be of their heirs. Although I’ve read plenty of theory and academic work that refers to Marxism, none of it gave me more than the vaguest possible grounding in the actual content of 'Capital', because it says so many complex and nuanced things that require careful explanation.
There are number of ways in which Marx’s analysis of capitalism significantly differs from neoclassical macroeconomics that seemed important to me:
i) the assumption that change is always happening and that technological developments are not a magically exogenous factor (cf the frustrating Solow-Swan model of long term growth).
ii) The related disdain for any notion of equilibrium. It’s a non-existent mirage, I swear economics is only obsessed with it because it lends itself to tidy graphs.
iii) Assuming from the start that wages are set by how much the employer can get away with paying, not by individual contract negotiations in which employer and employee are somehow on a level playing field.
iv) Dismissal of the idea of full employment. Markets cannot achieve this and never have - why would they? Full employment only occurs with heavy government intervention, for example in the UK during WWII when much of the economy was nationalised. Marx’s concept of the reserve labour force remains extremely helpful and apposite today – which is why I’d come across it before.
v) Much fuller explanation than macroeconomics can manage of why and how production becomes progressively more capital-intensive, how rates of profit can fall while absolute profits rise, and how the labour-intensity of production can fall while longer hours and higher productivity are perpetually demanded from employees.
I have a mug with a picture of Marx in all his bearded glory and the caption, ‘I warned you that this would happen’. It’s true, he did. Although Capital is explicitly analysing relations between capital and labour at a specific point in time, there is an inevitable temptation to extrapolate to the present day (from this and his other work – the Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy is often cited in recent commentary, I should read that). I found a number of points that meaningfully echoed the structural economic problems of today:
The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.
[...]
‘It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about the same. […] The more extended the scale of production, the stronger this motive. Its force increases with the accumulation of capital. […] We have further seen that the capitalist […] progressively replaces skilled labourers by less skilled, mature labour-power by immature, male by female, that of adults by that of young persons or children.
[...]
The over-work of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces them to submit to over-work and to subjugation under the dictates of capital.
I thought a lot about the service industries while reading 'Capital'. Of course, factory-based worker exploitation is still very much in existence in 2017; we in Britain just don’t have to look at it. Children and women still work for long hours in terrible conditions to make cheap garments, but in Asia rather than Europe. The impoverished employees of the developed world are now largely in service industry jobs, essentially replicating the work of 19th century domestic servants that has escaped mechanisation. Other than the very rich, most people do not have live-in servants anymore (in the UK housing market there’s no space for them, apart from anything else). Instead, we hire snippets of servitude when getting a house cleaned, or a child minded, or food delivered to our door. Generally such service workers are on insecure low-paid contracts, employed by large companies. This trend is by no means incompatible with Marx’s analysis.
Page 389 has a tidy explanation of how service work can become productive to capital: ‘The same labour (for example, that of a gardener, a tailor) can be performed by the same worker on behalf of a capitalist or on immediate uses. In the two cases, he is wage-earning or hired by the day, but, if he works for the capitalist, he is a productive worker, since he produces capital, whereas if he works for a direct user he is unproductive.’ This brought to mind the so-called disruptive platforms like Uber. Whereas a taxi driver working independently was not contributing to the accumulation of capital, an Uber driver is, as a parasitic firm skims off a portion of their takings. These misleadingly-termed ‘sharing economy’ service companies accumulate forms of capital that Marx would likely not recognise, though: personal data and algorithms for the most part.
One thing I was left wondering at the end of the book was: how exactly can we define the term ‘capital’ today? (Clearly I should read Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century soon.) A line from the HBO sitcom Silicon Valley sprang to mind: “Our product is our stock”. By some bizarre convolution, tech firms seem to accumulate capital in the form of their own stock valuation, an abstraction that should depend on their capital, profits, turnover, etc. Tech giants and social media companies either make massive losses or profit only by advertising products sold by other companies. Their capital has melted into air, or bytes.
This may be a function of the abridged edition I read, which contains almost all of Vol 1 but only extracts of 2 and 3, but I was surprised to find no speculation about the future path of capitalism. I knew that ‘Capital’ would be essentially a historic analysis. However I wonder if there is anything further about the ultimate results of the falling rate of profit relative to capital (‘The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall is, therefore, just an expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of production.’) The current state of Late Capitalism raises the questions: what else can be commoditised? How much faster can the population be persuaded to consume? How much more of the day can be occupied by activities that generate revenue for businesses? Is there a point at which the credit system collapses under the weight of loans that can never be repaid? (In the latter case, 2007/8 could have been a false alarm or an early warning.) There was also less discussion of class than I’d expected. The division into working class, bourgeoisie, landowners, and capitalists was merely assumed as part of the context.
Something I did locate, however, was the seed of Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming on pages 231 and 267:
‘Not until the invention of Watt’s second and so-called double-acting steam engine, was a prime mover found, that begot its own force by the consumption of coal and water, whose power was entirely under man’s control, that was mobile and a means of locomotion, that was urban and not, like the water-wheel, rural, that permitted production to be concentrated in towns instead of, like the water-wheels, being scattered up and down the country, that was of universal technical application, and, relatively speaking, little affected in its choice of residence by local circumstances.’
[...]
‘According to Gaskell, the steam engine was from the very first an antagonist of human power, an antagonist that enabled the capitalist to tread under the foot the growing claims of the workmen, who threatened the newly born factory system with a crisis.’
My only quibble with ‘Capital’ was occasional disagreement with the translator’s comma placement, although that must have been a real challenge to get right with such lengthy sentences in German. Marx’s occasional zingers were great, particularly the Bentham burns: 'The arch-philistine Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence.' Likewise this description of the English parliament: 'a permanent Trade's Union of the capitalists'. In short, 'Capital' definitely did not disappoint. It’s always pleasing when a classic that is still widely read and hugely influential lives up to expectations.
July 29, 2018
Everyone knows Marx. And everyone knows Das Kapital. Or rather: everyone knows about Marx and Das Kapital. His name seems to come up with great frequency in public debates and public discourse; almost always in a polemical sense: someone either uses Marx or marxism as charicature to defend radical liberalism or someone uses Marx or marxism as ideal to promote radical equality (on any topic, basically: cultural marxism is as widespread as economic marxism).
I'm just like everyone. I heard and read about Marx. In school, and later when reading about philosophy and economics. Being a child of the 80's, I grew up with the idea of Western supremacy and the failure of marxism. Some years ago I watched a BBC documentary on the economic crisis of 2008, in which the host of the show used Marx, Keynes and Hayek to explain the different views (on both cause and solution) on solving the financial/banking crisis. In this documentary, it became clear to me that Marx wasn't some nutjob who simply wanted revolution; he seemed to be a clear-minded and consequentual thinker. Ever since, reading Marx has been on my list.
In this review I won't outline the whole book - this would be impossible, since the book itself contains 840 pages (and this is just the text). Besides impossible, it would also be highly obscure, since Marx's message is pretty clear and short, and he uses more than half of the book to offer detailed descriptions about the conditions of the worker, the statistics of economic trends and cycles, etc. Simply put: the message of Capitcal can be summarized rather quick.
According to Marx, in the fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe saw a major shift. Before this time, Europe consisted of mostly regional agricultural societies, in which most peasants owned some land, had to work on the land of their landlord or give some part of their produce to the landlord in order to pay rent, and lived a fairly decent live, in which family and community were important pillars of stability.
During the fifteenth century, things started to change. Due to local power shifts, the possessors of land started to confiscate the lands of peasants and expulse these peasants and their families to the towns. This trend was intensified by the Reformation, when most of the European states started to confiscate the enemy church's lands and divide these lands among the wealthy nobles. Later on, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the aristocracy (for example in Britain) started stealing lands from the state, as well.
Almost at the same time, there happened a shift in agriculture. No longer was arable land needed; pasture was what would be the future. Further, due to technological improvements, farmers could do with fewer and fewer hired personnel - meaning even more trekking to the towns. In these towns, guilds and cooperations were the protection of artisans and traders. This meant that these ever-growing towns were put under more and more strain of an increasing population of poor, unskilled labour force.
But even though these huge shifts in European societies created a totally new form of living for many, they didn't radically change the relations between labour and production. This changed with the scientific and technological breakthroughs in the seventeenth century, combined with the economic changes (for example, the origin of the banking system, the system of public debt and the colonization of the New World, etc.). Now it was possible to apply the newest technologies and inventions to produce more efficiently and cost-effective. The owner of the means of production - the natural resources/materials and the machinery - could buy labour force to create value. This is - according to Marx - the very foundation of capitalism.
Before capitalism there was division of labour, in the sense that each labourer produced a product. Later, when manufacture became possible (i.e. putting a group of labourers together in a building), the output could be increased. But the social division of labour only happened when the Industrial Revolution started: now the making of products was broken down in sequences of tiny steps, in which first each labourer would be selected for one single step in this process of production, and later on the labourer was replaced by machinery that could accomplish those tiny steps in the process of production much faster and much more accurate. This was capitalism at its finest: before this time, the labourer used to tools to produce, now the capitalist bought machinery that used up labour force to produce. Human beings went from creators to being simple input into machinery to produce value.
I should rather add some important caveat to this last point. This is Marx's second main thesis in Capital. The labourer is used up - as labour force - by the means of production (i.e. the machinery), in order to create value. But value for whom? According to Marx, this is the main stumbling block in (contemporary) economics. The economists before him - Adam Smith, David Ricardo, etc. - thought value was created by the laws of supply and demand: the capitalist would sell his products on the market above the cost price and make profits off them (Smith's 'invisible hand'). But Marx claims these economists either were mistaken, or worse were frauds and henchmen of the bourgeousie. According to Marx, value is not created by the law of supply and demand, but value is created by labour.
How does this work? Well, due to the economic and social changes in Europe, capital accumulated in the hands of the rich few - the capitalists. The masses were driven to the towns, creating a huge potential labour force. The problem is, all men - capitalist and proletarian alike - need to eat, drink, live in a house, raise a family, etc. This means that every man, woman and child needs to earn enough to procure these means of subsistence. Before capitalism, this wasn't a problem: everyone could produce his own means of subsistence and live off the land (so to speak). Now the situation was drastically altered: in order to buy the means of subsistence the masses had to sell their one and only product - labour force. The capitalist was the buyer, the worker the seller.
But the labour market is no free market (in the sense of Adam Smith's invisible hand): the capitalist has the monopoly on the means of production, meaning, in effect, that he could demand anything from the worker. If the worker had to work 5 hours in order to earn enough wages to procure the means of subsistence for him and his family, the capitalist wouldn't be happy. He wouldn't make any profit. So what happened? The capitalists demanded - over decades and centuries - ever longer working days. At the time of Marx's writing, men, women and children had to work (slave is a more appropriate word here) for 14-18 hours in factories and industrial plants, in abominable conditions (safe and decent conditions cost money...). This meant that all the hours above the fictional 5 hours were hours in which the worker produced value for the capitalist without getting anything in return for this.
And now we see immediately what is the foundation of capitalism: the capitalist creates value by buying more and more means of production, which continuously use up labour force.
There is an intrinsic drive to extremities within this capitalist system of production. According to Marx, capital consists of two parts: constant capital (i.e. the macinery, the natural materials used in production, etc.) and variable capital (i.e. the labour force). Over time, the capitalist will invest his generated capital into more constant capital: he will buy more, and more sophisticated machinery and natural resources. You might think this is good news for the worker, since this means more work. No so fast. Technological improvements lead to replacing the worker - who was degraded to doing insanely routine micro-steps within the process of production anyways - by machines. Machines need to be tended to, but one doesn't need as skilled a person to watch a machine compared to a person who needs to produce with his own hands. This meant that the male work force was steadily sacked; women, and preferably children (some as young as 5 or 6 years old), were now demanded. Lower skilled workers; less wages. Capital wins.
Over time, capitalism uses up the Earth and its inhabitants as material; its only goals is creating value, creating more capital. Or rather: letting the Earth and its inhabitants create more value - at the cost of themselves. Since capital attracts capital, capitalists will take over rival capitalists - leading to an accumulation of more and more capital in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists. But since the capitalist only can produce value (or rather: let others produce it for him) when there's a market for his products, throwing more and more people into abject poverty is not really good for business. This is the internal contradiction in the capitalist system of production, at least according to Marx. The system will break down eventually, when capital cannot create any new capital anymore. The machinery has consumed itself, so to speak.
This is when the workers need to scare away - or kill off, Marx never was that clear on this - the remaining capitalists and confiscate the means of production for themselves. According to Marx, who applied so Hegelian dialectic on the system of production, capitalism was the negation of the former state in which the individual worker produced for himself and his family. Eventually, capitalism is negated by another negation (a 'negation of the negation'), namely the taking over of the means of production by the workers. Communism as a Hegelian dialectical end-state - how convenient.
The above is, in a sense, the main message of Das Kapital. The strength of the book lies in that fact that Marx doesn't just offer us a technical analysis of capitalism - he backs up his arguments with facts, statistics and illustrations. So when he talks about how the poor are being used up by the system as material (i.e. labour force - literally dehumanized beings, only counted in labour hours), he cites report after report by British Commissions send to investigate the working conditions and life standards of the workers. It is really shocking and heart-breaking to read these stories. Young boys who would work 20+ hours in mines - without light - and be 'lived up' when reaching 20; the housing conditions of the poor, where tens of people would sleep together, crammed up, only to switch beds with the workers returning from night shifts; the brutal working conditions, including all the injuries and deaths, of men, women and children; the continuous lobbying of capitalists and economists to increase the pressure on the poor; the diseases and epidemics running rampant in the poor districts and workplaces - in a word: the awful dehumanization of human beings.
No matter how touching it all is (it really is, in my opinion), one should also ask questions of truth when such radical claims are made. There are some major points in the book where Marx's moral anger seems to fly out of control. For starters, he divides up society in capitalists and proletarians. This is much too simplistic: there's always a huge room for graduate and intermediate positions. Not everyone was equally effected by the capitalist system of production - for better or for worse. Next, his labour theory of surplus value is wrong. Commodities can't be bought and sold to create value; but neither can capital create value. At least not in the sense that Marx mentions (maybe the modern day global banking system is a vindication of Marx's theory?).
Also, Marx's view of history as a process of dialectic progress towards communism is a Hegelian illusion. Hegel thought history follows a law (the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis; this synthesis forms the start, a new thesis, for a new dialectical process, and so on), and this law would result in the end-state. For Hegel, this was the Prussion state. For Marx, this is the Communist state. No matter what state one prefers, the claim is based on the assumption that history follows a law (or laws). This is proven to be impossible (cf. Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism [1957]). History doesn't follow laws, so Marx's fundamental assumption is false. Last, Marx put forward his theories on capitalism as scientific. The problem is: Marx's predictions (for example, the revolution coming in the most highly developed countries; the revolution coming - at all; etc.) were falsified by experience. In the USA, people like Henri Ford started to treat and pay their workers better, so they had a bigger market for their products. If you pay your workers better, they can buy your cars, and you will earn even more. In this sense, the solution of the horrors of industrial capitalism were (and are - in my opinion) to be sought for WITHIN capitalism, rather than throwing away the baby with the bathwather.
Anno 2018, Marx is usually brought up in highly intellectual debates on eceonomic policies or some such subject. Reading Das Kapital really made me see this is such a distorted view. Das Kapital is, first and foremost, an analysis of a capitalist system of production that crushed millions of people - worldwide - under its wheels, all for the benefit of the upper echelons. Second, it made me realize the unscrupulous attitude of the economists, especially in the UK and France, to support oppression by distorting the truth and giving politicians fance arguments to increase the oppression of the poor. Third, the book really struck a tone - its humanity, its cynical treatment of all the henchmen of capitalism, and its message (stop the oppression). Fourth, the book is, simply put, one of the building blocks of our modern world.
I can truly recommend teading this book - it would be great if more people had an inkling of an idea about what Marx actually wrote (and what not), instead of all the mainstream propaganda - pro or contra.
I'm just like everyone. I heard and read about Marx. In school, and later when reading about philosophy and economics. Being a child of the 80's, I grew up with the idea of Western supremacy and the failure of marxism. Some years ago I watched a BBC documentary on the economic crisis of 2008, in which the host of the show used Marx, Keynes and Hayek to explain the different views (on both cause and solution) on solving the financial/banking crisis. In this documentary, it became clear to me that Marx wasn't some nutjob who simply wanted revolution; he seemed to be a clear-minded and consequentual thinker. Ever since, reading Marx has been on my list.
In this review I won't outline the whole book - this would be impossible, since the book itself contains 840 pages (and this is just the text). Besides impossible, it would also be highly obscure, since Marx's message is pretty clear and short, and he uses more than half of the book to offer detailed descriptions about the conditions of the worker, the statistics of economic trends and cycles, etc. Simply put: the message of Capitcal can be summarized rather quick.
According to Marx, in the fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe saw a major shift. Before this time, Europe consisted of mostly regional agricultural societies, in which most peasants owned some land, had to work on the land of their landlord or give some part of their produce to the landlord in order to pay rent, and lived a fairly decent live, in which family and community were important pillars of stability.
During the fifteenth century, things started to change. Due to local power shifts, the possessors of land started to confiscate the lands of peasants and expulse these peasants and their families to the towns. This trend was intensified by the Reformation, when most of the European states started to confiscate the enemy church's lands and divide these lands among the wealthy nobles. Later on, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the aristocracy (for example in Britain) started stealing lands from the state, as well.
Almost at the same time, there happened a shift in agriculture. No longer was arable land needed; pasture was what would be the future. Further, due to technological improvements, farmers could do with fewer and fewer hired personnel - meaning even more trekking to the towns. In these towns, guilds and cooperations were the protection of artisans and traders. This meant that these ever-growing towns were put under more and more strain of an increasing population of poor, unskilled labour force.
But even though these huge shifts in European societies created a totally new form of living for many, they didn't radically change the relations between labour and production. This changed with the scientific and technological breakthroughs in the seventeenth century, combined with the economic changes (for example, the origin of the banking system, the system of public debt and the colonization of the New World, etc.). Now it was possible to apply the newest technologies and inventions to produce more efficiently and cost-effective. The owner of the means of production - the natural resources/materials and the machinery - could buy labour force to create value. This is - according to Marx - the very foundation of capitalism.
Before capitalism there was division of labour, in the sense that each labourer produced a product. Later, when manufacture became possible (i.e. putting a group of labourers together in a building), the output could be increased. But the social division of labour only happened when the Industrial Revolution started: now the making of products was broken down in sequences of tiny steps, in which first each labourer would be selected for one single step in this process of production, and later on the labourer was replaced by machinery that could accomplish those tiny steps in the process of production much faster and much more accurate. This was capitalism at its finest: before this time, the labourer used to tools to produce, now the capitalist bought machinery that used up labour force to produce. Human beings went from creators to being simple input into machinery to produce value.
I should rather add some important caveat to this last point. This is Marx's second main thesis in Capital. The labourer is used up - as labour force - by the means of production (i.e. the machinery), in order to create value. But value for whom? According to Marx, this is the main stumbling block in (contemporary) economics. The economists before him - Adam Smith, David Ricardo, etc. - thought value was created by the laws of supply and demand: the capitalist would sell his products on the market above the cost price and make profits off them (Smith's 'invisible hand'). But Marx claims these economists either were mistaken, or worse were frauds and henchmen of the bourgeousie. According to Marx, value is not created by the law of supply and demand, but value is created by labour.
How does this work? Well, due to the economic and social changes in Europe, capital accumulated in the hands of the rich few - the capitalists. The masses were driven to the towns, creating a huge potential labour force. The problem is, all men - capitalist and proletarian alike - need to eat, drink, live in a house, raise a family, etc. This means that every man, woman and child needs to earn enough to procure these means of subsistence. Before capitalism, this wasn't a problem: everyone could produce his own means of subsistence and live off the land (so to speak). Now the situation was drastically altered: in order to buy the means of subsistence the masses had to sell their one and only product - labour force. The capitalist was the buyer, the worker the seller.
But the labour market is no free market (in the sense of Adam Smith's invisible hand): the capitalist has the monopoly on the means of production, meaning, in effect, that he could demand anything from the worker. If the worker had to work 5 hours in order to earn enough wages to procure the means of subsistence for him and his family, the capitalist wouldn't be happy. He wouldn't make any profit. So what happened? The capitalists demanded - over decades and centuries - ever longer working days. At the time of Marx's writing, men, women and children had to work (slave is a more appropriate word here) for 14-18 hours in factories and industrial plants, in abominable conditions (safe and decent conditions cost money...). This meant that all the hours above the fictional 5 hours were hours in which the worker produced value for the capitalist without getting anything in return for this.
And now we see immediately what is the foundation of capitalism: the capitalist creates value by buying more and more means of production, which continuously use up labour force.
There is an intrinsic drive to extremities within this capitalist system of production. According to Marx, capital consists of two parts: constant capital (i.e. the macinery, the natural materials used in production, etc.) and variable capital (i.e. the labour force). Over time, the capitalist will invest his generated capital into more constant capital: he will buy more, and more sophisticated machinery and natural resources. You might think this is good news for the worker, since this means more work. No so fast. Technological improvements lead to replacing the worker - who was degraded to doing insanely routine micro-steps within the process of production anyways - by machines. Machines need to be tended to, but one doesn't need as skilled a person to watch a machine compared to a person who needs to produce with his own hands. This meant that the male work force was steadily sacked; women, and preferably children (some as young as 5 or 6 years old), were now demanded. Lower skilled workers; less wages. Capital wins.
Over time, capitalism uses up the Earth and its inhabitants as material; its only goals is creating value, creating more capital. Or rather: letting the Earth and its inhabitants create more value - at the cost of themselves. Since capital attracts capital, capitalists will take over rival capitalists - leading to an accumulation of more and more capital in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists. But since the capitalist only can produce value (or rather: let others produce it for him) when there's a market for his products, throwing more and more people into abject poverty is not really good for business. This is the internal contradiction in the capitalist system of production, at least according to Marx. The system will break down eventually, when capital cannot create any new capital anymore. The machinery has consumed itself, so to speak.
This is when the workers need to scare away - or kill off, Marx never was that clear on this - the remaining capitalists and confiscate the means of production for themselves. According to Marx, who applied so Hegelian dialectic on the system of production, capitalism was the negation of the former state in which the individual worker produced for himself and his family. Eventually, capitalism is negated by another negation (a 'negation of the negation'), namely the taking over of the means of production by the workers. Communism as a Hegelian dialectical end-state - how convenient.
The above is, in a sense, the main message of Das Kapital. The strength of the book lies in that fact that Marx doesn't just offer us a technical analysis of capitalism - he backs up his arguments with facts, statistics and illustrations. So when he talks about how the poor are being used up by the system as material (i.e. labour force - literally dehumanized beings, only counted in labour hours), he cites report after report by British Commissions send to investigate the working conditions and life standards of the workers. It is really shocking and heart-breaking to read these stories. Young boys who would work 20+ hours in mines - without light - and be 'lived up' when reaching 20; the housing conditions of the poor, where tens of people would sleep together, crammed up, only to switch beds with the workers returning from night shifts; the brutal working conditions, including all the injuries and deaths, of men, women and children; the continuous lobbying of capitalists and economists to increase the pressure on the poor; the diseases and epidemics running rampant in the poor districts and workplaces - in a word: the awful dehumanization of human beings.
No matter how touching it all is (it really is, in my opinion), one should also ask questions of truth when such radical claims are made. There are some major points in the book where Marx's moral anger seems to fly out of control. For starters, he divides up society in capitalists and proletarians. This is much too simplistic: there's always a huge room for graduate and intermediate positions. Not everyone was equally effected by the capitalist system of production - for better or for worse. Next, his labour theory of surplus value is wrong. Commodities can't be bought and sold to create value; but neither can capital create value. At least not in the sense that Marx mentions (maybe the modern day global banking system is a vindication of Marx's theory?).
Also, Marx's view of history as a process of dialectic progress towards communism is a Hegelian illusion. Hegel thought history follows a law (the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis; this synthesis forms the start, a new thesis, for a new dialectical process, and so on), and this law would result in the end-state. For Hegel, this was the Prussion state. For Marx, this is the Communist state. No matter what state one prefers, the claim is based on the assumption that history follows a law (or laws). This is proven to be impossible (cf. Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism [1957]). History doesn't follow laws, so Marx's fundamental assumption is false. Last, Marx put forward his theories on capitalism as scientific. The problem is: Marx's predictions (for example, the revolution coming in the most highly developed countries; the revolution coming - at all; etc.) were falsified by experience. In the USA, people like Henri Ford started to treat and pay their workers better, so they had a bigger market for their products. If you pay your workers better, they can buy your cars, and you will earn even more. In this sense, the solution of the horrors of industrial capitalism were (and are - in my opinion) to be sought for WITHIN capitalism, rather than throwing away the baby with the bathwather.
Anno 2018, Marx is usually brought up in highly intellectual debates on eceonomic policies or some such subject. Reading Das Kapital really made me see this is such a distorted view. Das Kapital is, first and foremost, an analysis of a capitalist system of production that crushed millions of people - worldwide - under its wheels, all for the benefit of the upper echelons. Second, it made me realize the unscrupulous attitude of the economists, especially in the UK and France, to support oppression by distorting the truth and giving politicians fance arguments to increase the oppression of the poor. Third, the book really struck a tone - its humanity, its cynical treatment of all the henchmen of capitalism, and its message (stop the oppression). Fourth, the book is, simply put, one of the building blocks of our modern world.
I can truly recommend teading this book - it would be great if more people had an inkling of an idea about what Marx actually wrote (and what not), instead of all the mainstream propaganda - pro or contra.
Read
November 11, 2020English: Karl Marx's Capital
Those were the times, when we read the complete "Kapital" for the introductory seminar to Political Theory (and many other interesting books as well)...
Now re-read the chapter "Goods and Money" (hint: Commodity fetishism!) for a seminar on economy and literature.
Those were the times, when we read the complete "Kapital" for the introductory seminar to Political Theory (and many other interesting books as well)...
Now re-read the chapter "Goods and Money" (hint: Commodity fetishism!) for a seminar on economy and literature.
May 23, 2013
Let's face it, Marx was more philosopher than economist. He spent a lifetime trying to justify a particular ideology/philosophy....based primarily on jealousy. He insists upon putting an intrinsic value of things (e.g., labor)....rather than the value which the market determines for them, based on their free marketable worth based on free exchange. In a fair and free market, labor is not "cheated". It is just like any other product, which is demanded and supplied. Keep in mind that much of what you see today is not true capitalism based on free choices and markets. It is something quite different.
December 31, 2014
Granted I only read it the half way through. But it was still about 600 pages that I read over this summer. It's unlikely that I will return to this book. The experience of reading this book felt like taking a very difficult intellectual hike. The book was massive and very detailed. Maybe one day I can return to it and understand it better.
July 9, 2016
There are a lot of editions of Marx's Das Kapital out there; some shorter, some longer and multi-volume. I read the one-volume 869-page Modern Library edition (which I can't seem to find on here). Marx's examination of the rise of capitalism from feudal roots is illuminating and his accounts of human exploitation in the early industrial age in England are harrowing. His examination of the mathematics of production was a little dense for me, but I stuck with it and did derive some insight. It's heavy duty stuff but way more fun than the much shorter Communist Manifesto. A memorable read, affording me also the bragging rights of saying I actually got through it.
(KevinR@Ky, with slight amendments in 2016)
(KevinR@Ky, with slight amendments in 2016)
June 23, 2019
If I could excise two pieces of literature from the Western intellectual canon, I would axe The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; both for the same reason. I would do so not out of hatred for my old friends Nick and Charlie, but rather from a maternal, henlike affection for them, and a desire not to see their extraordinary bodies of work overshadowed and their reputations bludgeoned to death by their shortest and most polemical—and thus most popular—treatises.
Though separated by three centuries, The Prince prefigures the Manifesto because both prescribe spectacular acts of revolutionary violence as a means of establishing new foundations of power in a world where the old modes and orders have lost their legitimacy. Novelty, being unstable and indeterminate by its very nature, must puncture the plated cuirass of the given like an arrow fired from a war-bow. It is unsurprising, when these works are assigned in discrete isolation in undergraduate political philosophy courses, that their outsized reputation portrays their authors as cynical marauders in the public imagination.
Yet however troubling these writers are in the normative realm, those who study them in depth come to appreciate their descriptive and analytical genius. Machiavelli doted on his hypothetical prophet-prince with far less attention and enthusiasm than that which he applied to his exegesis of Livy’s antique republicanism. Marx, for his part, was not at all given to the hazy utopian thinking so often ascribed to him, but dedicated the bulk of his prolific intellectual career to the analysis of a social system—masquerading as an economic system—called capitalism.
That capitalism is a system at all—a mode of material social relations embodied in a particular historical context and thus subject to transformation by the vagaries of human endeavor, and not merely a fixity of human life, which, like the weather, can be mitigated in its wrath and enjoyed in its benevolence but never superseded altogether—is Marx’s original and perhaps most profound move. By snatching the capitalist mode of production from the upper room of assumption and delivering it to the earth to instruct mankind on its existence and functionality, Marx figures as an antitype of his favorite dramatic personage, Aeschylus’s Prometheus, whose famous line in Prometheus Bound, “In sooth all gods I hate”, was understood by Marx to be the lodestar of all philosophy.
The task of philosophy, for Marx, is to expose and confront the hidden gods haunting the shadows of social normativity for the liberation of the human will. Philosophy is the sword and shield of philanthropy. In this sense Marx is a forerunner of today’s critical theorists in the humanities and social sciences, notorious for their obsession with “deconstruction” and their reduction of every normative social system to an arbitrary expression of power—a cult of a false god. The ensuing identitarian anarchy of our time may be an indication that man cannot extract himself from the realm of the gods without mutilating himself in the process; but that’s another discussion.
Marx’s Prometheanism, his subordination of the ideal and timeless to the material and socially determined, thus informs his understanding of what he calls the capitalist mode of production. He defines capitalism in very specific terms; and this is the first of many places where most of his critics go astray. Capitalism, for Marx, is not simply the production and exchange of commodities; production and exchange are characteristics of most of the historical modes of production. Nor is it defined by the existence of a money commodity: a universal “language” of value through which various use-values (i.e. the actual usefulness of a commodity) are “translated” into exchange-values, represented by money, through which they can be exchanged for other commodities. Capitalism, more precisely, is a mode of production in which the traditional form of exchange—in which commodities are exchanged with one another and money is merely a means of circulation (by representing the exchange-values of the commodities in question)—is replaced by a new model of exchange in which money uses commodities to increase itself in the hands of its original owner.
The C—M—C form is replaced by the M—C—M’ form. The M’ represents the increased amount of money the money owner gets back after selling the commodity that he used his money to procure in the first place; the extra money is what Marx calls surplus-value. Capitalism is about the commodification of money; the decisive phase of a social phenomenon called commodity fetishism: the (mis)perception of commodity production and exchange as a series of relationships between things, instead of what they really are: a series of relationships between people.
The value of commodities (including money itself) does not exist in any purely objective sense. Value is determined socially; Marx invokes Smith and Ricardo (as well as Benjamin Franklin, surprisingly enough), while adjusting their conceptions, to define value as socially necessary labor time, or the average time spent working to create a particular commodity within a particular social context. Commodities are embodiments of human labor, and so when we buy and sell them we are trading in the abstracted and alienated labor-time of workers. Because we don’t see this, we don’t recognize the sharply disproportionate accumulation of wealth by the biggest money owners for what it is: an exploitative and arbitrarily hierarchical social system in which human labor power—encompassing the physical, intellectual, emotional, and artistic creativity of human beings—is alienated from the workers and taken captive by people who didn’t produce them.
Many of Marx’s critics don’t realize just how highly Marx values human labor. For him it is absolutely central to human life. Though his materialist conception of history allows him to posit few human universals since most social norms are epiphenomena of historically-contingent relations of production, labor itself is something truly innate to human character. If there is such a thing as “human nature”—or, as Marx calls it, species-being—it is constituted by the uniquely human capacity to view one’s own life as a product of labor; to use the exclusive human capacity for forethought (there’s Prometheus again) to imagine a desired creative end and then to work to bring it about from the given elements of nature. Our labor transforms the world around us by creating use-values, and it also transforms us, as the things we create reshape us in turn. Labor is thus a field through which nature and culture are mediated. Marx says that labor regulates the “metabolism” between nature and humanity: the two join together just as our bodies “join” with the things we eat when we digest them.
It is painfully ironic that the socialist tradition pioneered by Marx has become known as a creed for layabouts who want to live off the work of others. Marx would agree emphatically with your standard free-market Republican who claims to reject any form of social organization in which the wealth one has earned through hard work is taken from him and redistributed to those who haven’t earned it. He would merely identify a different culprit. It is not the poorest who are confiscating our hard-earned dollars, but the wealthiest: the large corporate CEOs, the major shareholders, the real estate moguls, the creditors, the speculators, and the industrial tycoons, who confiscate the value produced by workers as surplus-value—which is distributed unevenly at the top and then reinvested into the enterprise to create yet more surplus-value—and then give the workers who created the surplus-value a paycheck which is worth less than they value they produced. It is a critical condition for human flourishing that people are able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but that metabolic fusion of labor and laborer is severed by the alienating process of capital accumulation.
Nor would Marx disagree with a libertarian skepticism of central planning; in fact he would embrace it wholeheartedly. But why, he would ask, do libertarians rightly criticize the central planners of the state without even acknowledging the central planners of the so-called private sector? The executives of the big tech companies, the retail sector, the pharmaceutical industry, and all manner of other enterprises which have totally reshaped our way of life are as much engaged in central planning and social engineering as any government initiative; the only major difference is that nobody voted for them, and they are held to no standard of responsibility except to deliver profit to their shareholders. There are many who sport the Gadsden flag on their patios and car bumpers who are routinely tread on by employers because they’re in the precarious position of having their livelihoods tied to their ability to work for wages from a boss who can fire them at his discretion. Theoretically they can sell their labor elsewhere, but have our libertarian friends considered how it came to be that so many people were reduced to such a condition that the only commodity they could reliably sell was so many hours of work? Marx has.
Marx remains the greatest analyst and critic of the social order of capitalism. Yet the prescriptive problem remains: how could a new order be instituted in the flow of history without the arbitrary violence of revolution—without the Prince? The twentieth century had more than its share of princes and revolutions. Stalin was said to have read and annotated The Prince, in addition to his obvious infatuation with the Manifesto. The history of political vanguardism in the cause of socialist revolution has an unbelievably hideous track record. If socialists are merely democrats who extend their democratism to the corporate realm, change will have to come through democratic processes, or perhaps from a more fundamental change in popular consciousness.
Capitalism has already adapted itself dramatically over its now centuries-long history, and there’s the obvious fact that the brutal conditions of industrial labor in the Victorian Britain of Marx’s time have mostly passed away—or been exported to the global south. Capitalism is more ubiquitous than it was when Marx was writing, but it has also become softer around the edges; at least in those parts of the world where labor has been organized, democracy has been stable, and individual rights have traditionally been respected. It could be that capitalism will simply keep on adjusting itself, bit by bit, until it transforms into something new. Yet if Marx’s materialism is well-founded, then our changes in awareness can only follow haltingly on the heels of changes in the social order. It may be that in the final account, Prometheus will have to come to an understanding with the gods.
Though separated by three centuries, The Prince prefigures the Manifesto because both prescribe spectacular acts of revolutionary violence as a means of establishing new foundations of power in a world where the old modes and orders have lost their legitimacy. Novelty, being unstable and indeterminate by its very nature, must puncture the plated cuirass of the given like an arrow fired from a war-bow. It is unsurprising, when these works are assigned in discrete isolation in undergraduate political philosophy courses, that their outsized reputation portrays their authors as cynical marauders in the public imagination.
Yet however troubling these writers are in the normative realm, those who study them in depth come to appreciate their descriptive and analytical genius. Machiavelli doted on his hypothetical prophet-prince with far less attention and enthusiasm than that which he applied to his exegesis of Livy’s antique republicanism. Marx, for his part, was not at all given to the hazy utopian thinking so often ascribed to him, but dedicated the bulk of his prolific intellectual career to the analysis of a social system—masquerading as an economic system—called capitalism.
That capitalism is a system at all—a mode of material social relations embodied in a particular historical context and thus subject to transformation by the vagaries of human endeavor, and not merely a fixity of human life, which, like the weather, can be mitigated in its wrath and enjoyed in its benevolence but never superseded altogether—is Marx’s original and perhaps most profound move. By snatching the capitalist mode of production from the upper room of assumption and delivering it to the earth to instruct mankind on its existence and functionality, Marx figures as an antitype of his favorite dramatic personage, Aeschylus’s Prometheus, whose famous line in Prometheus Bound, “In sooth all gods I hate”, was understood by Marx to be the lodestar of all philosophy.
The task of philosophy, for Marx, is to expose and confront the hidden gods haunting the shadows of social normativity for the liberation of the human will. Philosophy is the sword and shield of philanthropy. In this sense Marx is a forerunner of today’s critical theorists in the humanities and social sciences, notorious for their obsession with “deconstruction” and their reduction of every normative social system to an arbitrary expression of power—a cult of a false god. The ensuing identitarian anarchy of our time may be an indication that man cannot extract himself from the realm of the gods without mutilating himself in the process; but that’s another discussion.
Marx’s Prometheanism, his subordination of the ideal and timeless to the material and socially determined, thus informs his understanding of what he calls the capitalist mode of production. He defines capitalism in very specific terms; and this is the first of many places where most of his critics go astray. Capitalism, for Marx, is not simply the production and exchange of commodities; production and exchange are characteristics of most of the historical modes of production. Nor is it defined by the existence of a money commodity: a universal “language” of value through which various use-values (i.e. the actual usefulness of a commodity) are “translated” into exchange-values, represented by money, through which they can be exchanged for other commodities. Capitalism, more precisely, is a mode of production in which the traditional form of exchange—in which commodities are exchanged with one another and money is merely a means of circulation (by representing the exchange-values of the commodities in question)—is replaced by a new model of exchange in which money uses commodities to increase itself in the hands of its original owner.
The C—M—C form is replaced by the M—C—M’ form. The M’ represents the increased amount of money the money owner gets back after selling the commodity that he used his money to procure in the first place; the extra money is what Marx calls surplus-value. Capitalism is about the commodification of money; the decisive phase of a social phenomenon called commodity fetishism: the (mis)perception of commodity production and exchange as a series of relationships between things, instead of what they really are: a series of relationships between people.
The value of commodities (including money itself) does not exist in any purely objective sense. Value is determined socially; Marx invokes Smith and Ricardo (as well as Benjamin Franklin, surprisingly enough), while adjusting their conceptions, to define value as socially necessary labor time, or the average time spent working to create a particular commodity within a particular social context. Commodities are embodiments of human labor, and so when we buy and sell them we are trading in the abstracted and alienated labor-time of workers. Because we don’t see this, we don’t recognize the sharply disproportionate accumulation of wealth by the biggest money owners for what it is: an exploitative and arbitrarily hierarchical social system in which human labor power—encompassing the physical, intellectual, emotional, and artistic creativity of human beings—is alienated from the workers and taken captive by people who didn’t produce them.
Many of Marx’s critics don’t realize just how highly Marx values human labor. For him it is absolutely central to human life. Though his materialist conception of history allows him to posit few human universals since most social norms are epiphenomena of historically-contingent relations of production, labor itself is something truly innate to human character. If there is such a thing as “human nature”—or, as Marx calls it, species-being—it is constituted by the uniquely human capacity to view one’s own life as a product of labor; to use the exclusive human capacity for forethought (there’s Prometheus again) to imagine a desired creative end and then to work to bring it about from the given elements of nature. Our labor transforms the world around us by creating use-values, and it also transforms us, as the things we create reshape us in turn. Labor is thus a field through which nature and culture are mediated. Marx says that labor regulates the “metabolism” between nature and humanity: the two join together just as our bodies “join” with the things we eat when we digest them.
It is painfully ironic that the socialist tradition pioneered by Marx has become known as a creed for layabouts who want to live off the work of others. Marx would agree emphatically with your standard free-market Republican who claims to reject any form of social organization in which the wealth one has earned through hard work is taken from him and redistributed to those who haven’t earned it. He would merely identify a different culprit. It is not the poorest who are confiscating our hard-earned dollars, but the wealthiest: the large corporate CEOs, the major shareholders, the real estate moguls, the creditors, the speculators, and the industrial tycoons, who confiscate the value produced by workers as surplus-value—which is distributed unevenly at the top and then reinvested into the enterprise to create yet more surplus-value—and then give the workers who created the surplus-value a paycheck which is worth less than they value they produced. It is a critical condition for human flourishing that people are able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but that metabolic fusion of labor and laborer is severed by the alienating process of capital accumulation.
Nor would Marx disagree with a libertarian skepticism of central planning; in fact he would embrace it wholeheartedly. But why, he would ask, do libertarians rightly criticize the central planners of the state without even acknowledging the central planners of the so-called private sector? The executives of the big tech companies, the retail sector, the pharmaceutical industry, and all manner of other enterprises which have totally reshaped our way of life are as much engaged in central planning and social engineering as any government initiative; the only major difference is that nobody voted for them, and they are held to no standard of responsibility except to deliver profit to their shareholders. There are many who sport the Gadsden flag on their patios and car bumpers who are routinely tread on by employers because they’re in the precarious position of having their livelihoods tied to their ability to work for wages from a boss who can fire them at his discretion. Theoretically they can sell their labor elsewhere, but have our libertarian friends considered how it came to be that so many people were reduced to such a condition that the only commodity they could reliably sell was so many hours of work? Marx has.
Marx remains the greatest analyst and critic of the social order of capitalism. Yet the prescriptive problem remains: how could a new order be instituted in the flow of history without the arbitrary violence of revolution—without the Prince? The twentieth century had more than its share of princes and revolutions. Stalin was said to have read and annotated The Prince, in addition to his obvious infatuation with the Manifesto. The history of political vanguardism in the cause of socialist revolution has an unbelievably hideous track record. If socialists are merely democrats who extend their democratism to the corporate realm, change will have to come through democratic processes, or perhaps from a more fundamental change in popular consciousness.
Capitalism has already adapted itself dramatically over its now centuries-long history, and there’s the obvious fact that the brutal conditions of industrial labor in the Victorian Britain of Marx’s time have mostly passed away—or been exported to the global south. Capitalism is more ubiquitous than it was when Marx was writing, but it has also become softer around the edges; at least in those parts of the world where labor has been organized, democracy has been stable, and individual rights have traditionally been respected. It could be that capitalism will simply keep on adjusting itself, bit by bit, until it transforms into something new. Yet if Marx’s materialism is well-founded, then our changes in awareness can only follow haltingly on the heels of changes in the social order. It may be that in the final account, Prometheus will have to come to an understanding with the gods.
January 20, 2019
For a long time I've been troubled that, for all my reading, I have learnt nothing about the world or about people. If I am asked about my beliefs, be they political, religious or philosophical, I'd have a hard time giving a straight answer. I have to suspend my judgment on every topic until such time as I've read about it and come to my own conclusions. Yet despite my reading, I haven't really come to any conclusions. And for me to read something in a text and find it to be true says less about the truth of the text than about my propensity to believe. On one hand, I try to be open-minded, but perhaps my unconscious ideological biases are pushing me toward certain conclusions that betray that promise of neutrality.
I don't know anything about economics, never studied it in school. A lot of this book went over my head, and I'd have trouble explaining even what I thought I'd understood. Marx is, like Freud and Nietzsche, so influential on the big issues of society that it's hard to read him for himself, without the baggage of history's opinion. Luckily, he's almost as good a writer as he is an important one - I understand economic theory being necessarily dry, but he weaves in passages of great fervour around them, so the text is rarely a slog.
The emotive aspects of left-wing capitalist critique are what draw me in, if only because I am not learned enough to read about the labour theory of value and critique it - it's business enough getting my head around it. I didn't get the feeling he could be casually dismissed, that his argumentation was fatally flawed. I suppose one's experience of the text is highly influenced by any political notions before the book is opened.
I shouldn't overly chastise myself for being ideologically biased. Perhaps one's political or religious identity, or outlook on philosophical questions, is not based upon careful, labourious surveyance of the arguments presented and forming an ironclad, fully-formed worldview, but from continued dialectic between one's efforts to self-educate and from observation of life as it happens. I wanted to say I could read Capital and proclaim it Right, but I can't. Still kinda believe in Marx, though.
I don't know anything about economics, never studied it in school. A lot of this book went over my head, and I'd have trouble explaining even what I thought I'd understood. Marx is, like Freud and Nietzsche, so influential on the big issues of society that it's hard to read him for himself, without the baggage of history's opinion. Luckily, he's almost as good a writer as he is an important one - I understand economic theory being necessarily dry, but he weaves in passages of great fervour around them, so the text is rarely a slog.
The emotive aspects of left-wing capitalist critique are what draw me in, if only because I am not learned enough to read about the labour theory of value and critique it - it's business enough getting my head around it. I didn't get the feeling he could be casually dismissed, that his argumentation was fatally flawed. I suppose one's experience of the text is highly influenced by any political notions before the book is opened.
I shouldn't overly chastise myself for being ideologically biased. Perhaps one's political or religious identity, or outlook on philosophical questions, is not based upon careful, labourious surveyance of the arguments presented and forming an ironclad, fully-formed worldview, but from continued dialectic between one's efforts to self-educate and from observation of life as it happens. I wanted to say I could read Capital and proclaim it Right, but I can't. Still kinda believe in Marx, though.
October 11, 2008
Karl would be spinning in his grave right now and in between gaffuws saying I TOLD YOU SO! as America saves its most stalwart capitalist icons with socialist policies! Read it and understand that the only real value is human labor...not paper or plastic.
October 31, 2021
Full disclosure: Have I done this book as much justice as most other books? No. Did I read a heavily abridged version? Yes. Did my skimming speed gradually increase throughout? Yes. Do I think I missed out on anything? No. Is there anything to be gained here? Truly, I think not.
When you study metaphysics, the frist technique you learn is to uncover implicit or explicit premises, the axioms on which the whole argument, paragraph, chapter, or in extreme cases, the whole book, hinges on. Marx is such a writer, that is to say, he bases his whole book on a few axiomatic assumption, which he, presumably, feels to be undeniable.
Before being exposed to Capital, I would often say things such as: "Marx's labour theory of value is wrong, but his criticism of capitalism is surely very valuable, and has largely colored capitalism as it manifests itself today." Now, after being exposed, I worry that I was being to conciliatory. As with the communist manifesto, I think the whole idea fails in the very first pages and never recovers from there.
I read three short introductions to Capital, I read the labour theory argument in full, as it is presented in the unabridged version of volume 1. I read the manifesto, I've seen debates, and I've been involved in debates. This is as much work as I will put into Marx, I don't think he deserves more.
One premise in Capital is the labour theory of value, which separates price from value, where value fully derives from the labour which went into it. In other words, what fundamentally underpins the value of something, is the amount of human work which went into it. This is the essence of Marx's thinking, this argument comes back on almost every page, and if it falls, it would be disastrous for marxism. I was never convinced of the legitimacy, nor the usefulness, of simply making a categorical differentation between price and value. It seems to me that Adam Smith, as far as I understand him, has the correct idea. Finding the value/price of something, is, computationally speaking, an infinite problem which can only be imperfectly solved by outsourcing pricing to the market, thereby letting the sum of all the interaction between economic agents decide what something is worth. Instead of, as Marx would have it, deciding the price a priory based on arbitrary levels of value projected into labour. Furthermore, Marx seems to be saying that labour is uniform, which must be wrong. Price/value is the samething, and it is fundamentally and essentially an intersubjective phenomenon, it cannot be further reduced. Value is simply what another person is willing to pay for it. That interaction includes within itself all relevant factors; co-operation, competition, labour, innovation.. There is no way of calculating beforehand what another person might be able to do with a certain commodity, how he or she might transform it, hence what it is, potentially, worth. Simply identifying labour with value seems intellectually lazy, and possibly worse, ideologically motivated.
Once again I'm likely being to careful in my wording, after having been exposed to Marx, I can no longer consider him a philosopher. He is a man with an agenda, he does not seem to be intellectually honest, all his arguments are soaked in normative flavour, instead of letting the reader decide on the basis of facts, most of his explanations are written with extreme one-sidedness, as if he is unable to regonize the simple, undeniable benefits of capitalist generative production.
Another premise that is prevalent and shows itself in different guises, similarly to the manifesto, is Marx's childish and blind incapacity of seeing two sides of the same coin. The capitalists are always characterised as exploitators, and only that. There is no awereness of the obvious benefits of capitalists; they take the risk, they are innovators, they provide work, they optimize production and so on and so forth. Would Marx include these obvious beneficial aspects in his reflection, reading him would be worthwile. But he does not. He removes one side of the conversation and lets us with the evil, fake characterisation that he cooks up in his own mind. Furthermore, with surplus-value, Marx thinks of as the capitalist simply taking more to themselves. What he, supposedly, doesn't see however, is that taking profit and be reinvested into the business, or another business, and that this is the generative force of capitalism which eventually trickles down and provides benefits for all.
One doesn't have to have a raging boner for capitalism in order to critique Marx, it simpy glows from every page, his extreme onesidedness, it blinds him, and it has blinded many many young readers, unable to consider the implicit counter-argument or implicit axiomatic (false) assumptions of his arguments.
One could continue in a similar vein for most of this book, the extreme one-sidedness is impossible to ignore, and as a consequence, it is impossible for me to consider Marx a serious philosopher or thinker. He is a clever, manipulative ideolog with an agenda. As an ex-communist, before I read anything at all, I do feel that marxist/communist ideas grows out of what Nietzsche would call a slave morality. That is, a sort of ideology that comes to be by one being subordinate, by one failing in the current system. In that light, marxism is more of a psychological self defence mechanism, as a consequence of one's own shortcomings, rather than rational philosophy honestly searching for truth.
I think Marx even admits this himself? Hegel was a brilliant thinker, creative and original, yet a horrible writer. Before reading either Hegel or Marx, I assumed Hegel to be the thief which Marx expanded upon. Not so. Marx famously took Hegel and "turned him on his head". But, if you take someone brilliant, and a brilliant set of ideas, and you negate them, turn them into their opposite, you turn gold into shit, do you not?
/rant over.
I truly do not know what to say. It is incomprehensible to me how so many people would refer to themselves as marxists or communists, AFTER having read. Before reading it is understandable, one is young, dumb and idealistic, one wants to be an anarchist and bring down the system, hence one becomes reactionary and takes whatever standpoint is opposite to the hegemonic. After having read him though? Red flag for sure.
As a scandinavian reading in the 21st century, nothing in Capital speaks to me. Hegel is fascinating and original, Marx is dishonest and nefarious. That's what I'm left with.
When you study metaphysics, the frist technique you learn is to uncover implicit or explicit premises, the axioms on which the whole argument, paragraph, chapter, or in extreme cases, the whole book, hinges on. Marx is such a writer, that is to say, he bases his whole book on a few axiomatic assumption, which he, presumably, feels to be undeniable.
Before being exposed to Capital, I would often say things such as: "Marx's labour theory of value is wrong, but his criticism of capitalism is surely very valuable, and has largely colored capitalism as it manifests itself today." Now, after being exposed, I worry that I was being to conciliatory. As with the communist manifesto, I think the whole idea fails in the very first pages and never recovers from there.
I read three short introductions to Capital, I read the labour theory argument in full, as it is presented in the unabridged version of volume 1. I read the manifesto, I've seen debates, and I've been involved in debates. This is as much work as I will put into Marx, I don't think he deserves more.
One premise in Capital is the labour theory of value, which separates price from value, where value fully derives from the labour which went into it. In other words, what fundamentally underpins the value of something, is the amount of human work which went into it. This is the essence of Marx's thinking, this argument comes back on almost every page, and if it falls, it would be disastrous for marxism. I was never convinced of the legitimacy, nor the usefulness, of simply making a categorical differentation between price and value. It seems to me that Adam Smith, as far as I understand him, has the correct idea. Finding the value/price of something, is, computationally speaking, an infinite problem which can only be imperfectly solved by outsourcing pricing to the market, thereby letting the sum of all the interaction between economic agents decide what something is worth. Instead of, as Marx would have it, deciding the price a priory based on arbitrary levels of value projected into labour. Furthermore, Marx seems to be saying that labour is uniform, which must be wrong. Price/value is the samething, and it is fundamentally and essentially an intersubjective phenomenon, it cannot be further reduced. Value is simply what another person is willing to pay for it. That interaction includes within itself all relevant factors; co-operation, competition, labour, innovation.. There is no way of calculating beforehand what another person might be able to do with a certain commodity, how he or she might transform it, hence what it is, potentially, worth. Simply identifying labour with value seems intellectually lazy, and possibly worse, ideologically motivated.
Once again I'm likely being to careful in my wording, after having been exposed to Marx, I can no longer consider him a philosopher. He is a man with an agenda, he does not seem to be intellectually honest, all his arguments are soaked in normative flavour, instead of letting the reader decide on the basis of facts, most of his explanations are written with extreme one-sidedness, as if he is unable to regonize the simple, undeniable benefits of capitalist generative production.
Another premise that is prevalent and shows itself in different guises, similarly to the manifesto, is Marx's childish and blind incapacity of seeing two sides of the same coin. The capitalists are always characterised as exploitators, and only that. There is no awereness of the obvious benefits of capitalists; they take the risk, they are innovators, they provide work, they optimize production and so on and so forth. Would Marx include these obvious beneficial aspects in his reflection, reading him would be worthwile. But he does not. He removes one side of the conversation and lets us with the evil, fake characterisation that he cooks up in his own mind. Furthermore, with surplus-value, Marx thinks of as the capitalist simply taking more to themselves. What he, supposedly, doesn't see however, is that taking profit and be reinvested into the business, or another business, and that this is the generative force of capitalism which eventually trickles down and provides benefits for all.
One doesn't have to have a raging boner for capitalism in order to critique Marx, it simpy glows from every page, his extreme onesidedness, it blinds him, and it has blinded many many young readers, unable to consider the implicit counter-argument or implicit axiomatic (false) assumptions of his arguments.
One could continue in a similar vein for most of this book, the extreme one-sidedness is impossible to ignore, and as a consequence, it is impossible for me to consider Marx a serious philosopher or thinker. He is a clever, manipulative ideolog with an agenda. As an ex-communist, before I read anything at all, I do feel that marxist/communist ideas grows out of what Nietzsche would call a slave morality. That is, a sort of ideology that comes to be by one being subordinate, by one failing in the current system. In that light, marxism is more of a psychological self defence mechanism, as a consequence of one's own shortcomings, rather than rational philosophy honestly searching for truth.
I think Marx even admits this himself? Hegel was a brilliant thinker, creative and original, yet a horrible writer. Before reading either Hegel or Marx, I assumed Hegel to be the thief which Marx expanded upon. Not so. Marx famously took Hegel and "turned him on his head". But, if you take someone brilliant, and a brilliant set of ideas, and you negate them, turn them into their opposite, you turn gold into shit, do you not?
/rant over.
I truly do not know what to say. It is incomprehensible to me how so many people would refer to themselves as marxists or communists, AFTER having read. Before reading it is understandable, one is young, dumb and idealistic, one wants to be an anarchist and bring down the system, hence one becomes reactionary and takes whatever standpoint is opposite to the hegemonic. After having read him though? Red flag for sure.
As a scandinavian reading in the 21st century, nothing in Capital speaks to me. Hegel is fascinating and original, Marx is dishonest and nefarious. That's what I'm left with.
July 14, 2014
If you want to know why Marx is considered to be a "Materialist" by some writers and thinkers, go no further. This is perhaps Marx most densely philosophical book. This is due to Marx breaking down (much like Adam Smith--even with the same language) the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism, how it works and what it does. It ultimately had to be finished by Marx sponsor Fred Engels (who was a Capitalist bastard) and you can't really tell the difference. Some think that Marx (who was basically journalist) could not have written this book. And Capitalists worship this book. Thank you Karl Marx for telling us how it all works.
For me (SPOILERS) the best part is this: reading about land, and matter and material and real estate and so on, then into the means of production, then into the next thing and the next, and then it comes: Suddenly you realize "OH, HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE RESOURCE AND COMMODITY BEING TALKED ABOUT!"
And from then on it's just scary. Especially Volume III where Engels, finishes up the work. This is definitely the book par excellence of Wall Street and is leather bound on a mahogany bookshelf in Gordon Gecko's office. This is no book on Communism. It's a beautiful song to Capitalism, how it came to be, piece by logical (almost scientific) piece. And for people who think people are just "resources" it's probably their Bible.
For me (SPOILERS) the best part is this: reading about land, and matter and material and real estate and so on, then into the means of production, then into the next thing and the next, and then it comes: Suddenly you realize "OH, HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE RESOURCE AND COMMODITY BEING TALKED ABOUT!"
And from then on it's just scary. Especially Volume III where Engels, finishes up the work. This is definitely the book par excellence of Wall Street and is leather bound on a mahogany bookshelf in Gordon Gecko's office. This is no book on Communism. It's a beautiful song to Capitalism, how it came to be, piece by logical (almost scientific) piece. And for people who think people are just "resources" it's probably their Bible.
September 3, 2018
A revolutionary engagement with means of production, surplus value, alienation of labor, and other capitalistic phenomena.
June 8, 2020
A spectre is haunting the body of the Earth. If you're lucky, you'll see the former tear the latter to shreds.
Liberals and humanists are liars. You are not a human being. You are not free. You have no dignity and you have no rights. You are, quite simply, a mode of capital, a moment in its self-valorisation, nothing more than a container of labour-power. You are fundamentally no different than a "lifeless instrument of labour"; in fact, you might as well be one, condemned as you likely are to repetitious and mindless work. Soft-hearts would like you to believe at least that self-care is revolutionary, but even that forms a necessary component of the reproduction of capital. As soon as that is no longer necessary, you will be disposed of—if the biosphere doesn't burn down first.
That is, unless the expropriators are expropriated. It's a matter of life or death. Capitalism is destroying the planet, polluting the atmosphere and oceans, draining groundwater, spreading deserts. If we get rid of the greedy capitalists, everything will be alright. That's certainly what your leftist friends will tell you. They haven't read their Marx.
Marx stood Hegel on his head, stripping the dialectic of its preposterous idealism and giving it a materialist content. In this way, Marx brutalises the political economy of his day with sarcasm and style, throwing Smith, Malthus, Bentham and others into a whirlwind of critique from which they don't emerge alive. But Marx, for all his genius (and he is a genius) is a prisoner of his time. I have said before that Georges Sorel is the most honest successor to Marx, that his Reflections on Violence reflects the most respectable attempt to build on his musings about the post-capitalist world. In my review of that, I wrote: "The dream of indefinite progress is no longer tenable today... socialism will not rescue industrial society from barbarism. Industrial society is barbarism. Finite planet, finite resources, finite time. The story of the rise of the proletariat is not an epic. It is, in truth, quite tragic. But mostly it's a farce."
You see, modern political Marxism is a well-intentioned joke, whose endpoint seems to be the construction of a bloodless Christian heaven-on-Earth. Marx, whatever he thought the future might look like, surely did not think it would look like that. A society in which fully-developed individuals hold the means of production in common is not one where the process of technological development or wealth creation ends, but one where the process is accelerated. Importing this doctrine uncritically into the 21st century is only marginally less absurd than organising a party in the hopes of instituting Plato's Republic. Realising Marx's dream now would only mean kicking industrial society's omnicide program in hyper-hyperdrive. Besides, comrades, you missed the boat back in 1988.
It was always going to end up this way. Marx didn't realise it, but Capital is a schematic for the construction of a death machine whose task cannot be interrupted once started. Capital is the unfriendly optimiser, the nightmare of every society. Once it arrives on the scene, it strips everything of its meaning and purpose, chews it up, spits it back out as capital; all that is solid melts into air, everything becomes capital = shit. As capital burns through every possible market, absorbing resources, obliterating its basis for existence (i.e. living beings) it is supposed to create a proletarian subjectivity that rises up and smashes it. This is Marx at his most naive, his most embarrassingly humanist, and he himself fills his book with many examples of the abject failure with which every attempt to rebel against capital's dominion meets. Saying 'Well, one day, it'll be different! It has to happen!' is not scientific no matter how hard you try. There is no natural law of revolutionary consciousness. In fact, the opposite may well be true. Lyotard said it well enough in his Libidinal Economy—"they... enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body which was indeed imposed upon them..." Deny the jouissance of being fucked by the capitalist all you like; if there is truly nothing to lose but our chains, we will cling to our chains all the tighter. You may be a liberty-loving outlier, but "thousands of years of authoritarian socialisation favour the jackboot." (Down with the Empire! Up with the Spring! [2003])
In the end, there is only one class: the Human Class. The capitalists, despite modern day resentful proclamations to the contrary, do not exploit you because they're greedy, mean, psychopathic, naughty sinners, cruel, etc. but because the laws of capitalist production compel ruthless competition between capitalists lest they be outcompeted and expropriated. A capitalist is not a human any more than you are. A capitalist is an avatar of capital, their soul is the soul of capital. Likewise you, as worker, reproduce not only capital but the antagonistic relations of capital. It isn't really appropriate to say you're parasitised by the capitalist. Rather, we all collaborate in the production of a system that will inevitably sterilise the planet. Welcome to desiring-production. Next stop: the Body without Organs. Snacks and drinks are available at the bar and a trolley will be coming through shortly. We only accept contactless payment methods at the moment: there's a virus going around and it's killing everybody.
Why read Capital then, if I'm such a pessimist? It's simple really: this text is truly a touchstone for modern thought, and if you want to engage with any political text that comments on our modern times with even a hint of intelligence and relevance, odds are it'll be participating in a conversation that Capital started. Certainly, if you'd like to prove the naysayers like myself wrong, save the world, reterritorialise the Earth, you will have to go through Marx. And as an example of the summit of brilliance a critical mind can reach, there are not many books that can stand with Capital.
Besides, don't you want to know how the story ends?
Liberals and humanists are liars. You are not a human being. You are not free. You have no dignity and you have no rights. You are, quite simply, a mode of capital, a moment in its self-valorisation, nothing more than a container of labour-power. You are fundamentally no different than a "lifeless instrument of labour"; in fact, you might as well be one, condemned as you likely are to repetitious and mindless work. Soft-hearts would like you to believe at least that self-care is revolutionary, but even that forms a necessary component of the reproduction of capital. As soon as that is no longer necessary, you will be disposed of—if the biosphere doesn't burn down first.
That is, unless the expropriators are expropriated. It's a matter of life or death. Capitalism is destroying the planet, polluting the atmosphere and oceans, draining groundwater, spreading deserts. If we get rid of the greedy capitalists, everything will be alright. That's certainly what your leftist friends will tell you. They haven't read their Marx.
Marx stood Hegel on his head, stripping the dialectic of its preposterous idealism and giving it a materialist content. In this way, Marx brutalises the political economy of his day with sarcasm and style, throwing Smith, Malthus, Bentham and others into a whirlwind of critique from which they don't emerge alive. But Marx, for all his genius (and he is a genius) is a prisoner of his time. I have said before that Georges Sorel is the most honest successor to Marx, that his Reflections on Violence reflects the most respectable attempt to build on his musings about the post-capitalist world. In my review of that, I wrote: "The dream of indefinite progress is no longer tenable today... socialism will not rescue industrial society from barbarism. Industrial society is barbarism. Finite planet, finite resources, finite time. The story of the rise of the proletariat is not an epic. It is, in truth, quite tragic. But mostly it's a farce."
You see, modern political Marxism is a well-intentioned joke, whose endpoint seems to be the construction of a bloodless Christian heaven-on-Earth. Marx, whatever he thought the future might look like, surely did not think it would look like that. A society in which fully-developed individuals hold the means of production in common is not one where the process of technological development or wealth creation ends, but one where the process is accelerated. Importing this doctrine uncritically into the 21st century is only marginally less absurd than organising a party in the hopes of instituting Plato's Republic. Realising Marx's dream now would only mean kicking industrial society's omnicide program in hyper-hyperdrive. Besides, comrades, you missed the boat back in 1988.
It was always going to end up this way. Marx didn't realise it, but Capital is a schematic for the construction of a death machine whose task cannot be interrupted once started. Capital is the unfriendly optimiser, the nightmare of every society. Once it arrives on the scene, it strips everything of its meaning and purpose, chews it up, spits it back out as capital; all that is solid melts into air, everything becomes capital = shit. As capital burns through every possible market, absorbing resources, obliterating its basis for existence (i.e. living beings) it is supposed to create a proletarian subjectivity that rises up and smashes it. This is Marx at his most naive, his most embarrassingly humanist, and he himself fills his book with many examples of the abject failure with which every attempt to rebel against capital's dominion meets. Saying 'Well, one day, it'll be different! It has to happen!' is not scientific no matter how hard you try. There is no natural law of revolutionary consciousness. In fact, the opposite may well be true. Lyotard said it well enough in his Libidinal Economy—"they... enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body which was indeed imposed upon them..." Deny the jouissance of being fucked by the capitalist all you like; if there is truly nothing to lose but our chains, we will cling to our chains all the tighter. You may be a liberty-loving outlier, but "thousands of years of authoritarian socialisation favour the jackboot." (Down with the Empire! Up with the Spring! [2003])
In the end, there is only one class: the Human Class. The capitalists, despite modern day resentful proclamations to the contrary, do not exploit you because they're greedy, mean, psychopathic, naughty sinners, cruel, etc. but because the laws of capitalist production compel ruthless competition between capitalists lest they be outcompeted and expropriated. A capitalist is not a human any more than you are. A capitalist is an avatar of capital, their soul is the soul of capital. Likewise you, as worker, reproduce not only capital but the antagonistic relations of capital. It isn't really appropriate to say you're parasitised by the capitalist. Rather, we all collaborate in the production of a system that will inevitably sterilise the planet. Welcome to desiring-production. Next stop: the Body without Organs. Snacks and drinks are available at the bar and a trolley will be coming through shortly. We only accept contactless payment methods at the moment: there's a virus going around and it's killing everybody.
Why read Capital then, if I'm such a pessimist? It's simple really: this text is truly a touchstone for modern thought, and if you want to engage with any political text that comments on our modern times with even a hint of intelligence and relevance, odds are it'll be participating in a conversation that Capital started. Certainly, if you'd like to prove the naysayers like myself wrong, save the world, reterritorialise the Earth, you will have to go through Marx. And as an example of the summit of brilliance a critical mind can reach, there are not many books that can stand with Capital.
Besides, don't you want to know how the story ends?
February 4, 2019
I went into reading Das Kapital hoping to get a grip on the more technical and mathematical side of Marxism, as well as hoping to develop a deeper appreciation of the ideology in general. To some extent, I was succesful in both. I was surprised that there wasn't more mathematics in this book - there is some certainly, but nothing so substantial as I had hoped for (of course that could have been the abridgement).
In terms of negatives, the biggest problem with this text as I see it, is Marx's verbosity. I can only imagine what it would be like to read the unabridged Das Kapital - I cannot conceive of any situation in which that might be necessary. In just this five hundred page abridgement, there is a great deal of repetition as Marx explains already introduced and discussed ideas over and over and over again. My edition omits two thousand pages out of the original three volume work - I could hardly imagine reading the whole thing. There were large parts of even this edition that I scanned or even skipped, because they consisted of Marx simply repeating material in different wording.
If you can cope with wading through the wordiness however, there is some really rewarding reading here. Marx is an enduring figure in the realm of political philosophy. His ideas have not lost relevance. Despite his name being anathema to many modern Westerners (particularly among the right wing), the content of this book is not shocking or violent - and most of it isn't even controversial. For example, almost everybody in the Western world would agree with Marx on the necessity of reforming the factory working conditions he describes.
Das Kapital is also a dramatic change in tone from the fervent populism of The Communist Manifesto. This book doesn't scapegoat, it never really gets angry and it makes few dramatic predictions. It is a work of theory, and it has the same detached cerebral quality that one would expect from most reasonable theorists.
In terms of negatives, the biggest problem with this text as I see it, is Marx's verbosity. I can only imagine what it would be like to read the unabridged Das Kapital - I cannot conceive of any situation in which that might be necessary. In just this five hundred page abridgement, there is a great deal of repetition as Marx explains already introduced and discussed ideas over and over and over again. My edition omits two thousand pages out of the original three volume work - I could hardly imagine reading the whole thing. There were large parts of even this edition that I scanned or even skipped, because they consisted of Marx simply repeating material in different wording.
If you can cope with wading through the wordiness however, there is some really rewarding reading here. Marx is an enduring figure in the realm of political philosophy. His ideas have not lost relevance. Despite his name being anathema to many modern Westerners (particularly among the right wing), the content of this book is not shocking or violent - and most of it isn't even controversial. For example, almost everybody in the Western world would agree with Marx on the necessity of reforming the factory working conditions he describes.
Das Kapital is also a dramatic change in tone from the fervent populism of The Communist Manifesto. This book doesn't scapegoat, it never really gets angry and it makes few dramatic predictions. It is a work of theory, and it has the same detached cerebral quality that one would expect from most reasonable theorists.
November 15, 2015
کتاب را با ترجمه ایرج اسکندری که ترجمه بدتری نسبت به نسخه نشر آگاه است خواندم. به همه قسمت هایش نرسیدم ولی در مجموع کمک بزرگی برایم بود... سرمايه نكارش دقيق و فني ماركس درباره مفاهيم كالا و مبادله و بازار و بول و كار و عناصر نظام سرمايه داري است كه از منطق خاص ماركس بيروي ميكند و در جارجوب نظام او معنا ميابد... خواندش را به كساني كه اندك اشتياقي به فهم اقتصاد دارند به شدت توصيه مي كنم...
«كالا به صورت طبيعي اش يعني انجنان كه طبيعتا و به خودي خود هست نه مبادله بذير است و نه معادل هر كالاي ديكر. تنها به عنوان ارزش مبادله اي است كه كالا ذات طبيعي خود را از دست مي دهد و با جيزي غير از خود مبادله مي شود.در ارزش مبادله اي بيوند اجتماعي بين اشخاص به رابطه اجتماعي بين اشيا تبديل مي شود و غناي شخصي هم به ثروت عيني»
از كتاب
«كالا به صورت طبيعي اش يعني انجنان كه طبيعتا و به خودي خود هست نه مبادله بذير است و نه معادل هر كالاي ديكر. تنها به عنوان ارزش مبادله اي است كه كالا ذات طبيعي خود را از دست مي دهد و با جيزي غير از خود مبادله مي شود.در ارزش مبادله اي بيوند اجتماعي بين اشخاص به رابطه اجتماعي بين اشيا تبديل مي شود و غناي شخصي هم به ثروت عيني»
از كتاب
October 13, 2022
You can easily see people wanting to flee from communist countries. That should explain it all. This book is nothing but a long endless communist rant. If you are looking for a blood stained red utopia, this is your treat. But if you prefer to live in a well balanced reality, avoid this. Its way too biased and its practical applications and how humanity has suffered under them is a good enough testimonial to what it is. Karl Marx, the man who had never worked a day as a worker or a farmer, overnight becomes philosopher of workers and farmers, and offers them the solution of violent revolution. A revolution that would supplant his kind as ruling class. Well that is something, that the book doesnt say openly, but you figure it out eventually.
October 29, 2023
Re-read this scientific masterpiece for my posterior university investigation.
I cannot believe how fresh it feels despite almost two centuries of difference.
Marx's magnum opus is full of insightful commentary, witty remarks and cultural signifiers that transcend the tides of time.
I cannot believe how fresh it feels despite almost two centuries of difference.
Marx's magnum opus is full of insightful commentary, witty remarks and cultural signifiers that transcend the tides of time.
January 25, 2015
I should say that I did not read this unabridged, I kinda doubt that even Trotsky did.
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