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Thug Lessons posted:You seem fond of quoting Capital. Can you remind me what Marx said happens when the organic composition of capital rises too high and dead labor predominates over living labor? Yes, and that would be relevant if you could demonstrate that, globally speaking, Capital has reached (or is near to reaching) that point. It hasn't, and it isn't. Locally in certain economies it may be true (I would argue against it). Globally it's not even close.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:12
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Oberleutnant posted:You're fundamentally misrepresenting my argument. Or your own. Yes workers should always be ready to fight back in times of crisis, but the argument that is being put forward is that an upcoming crisis created by automation in the west represents an existential threat to capital that is different to any previous upheaval, and I don't believe that's the case. It is simply part of an ongoing process that won't reach the level of total collapse for many generations. I don't think automation's gonna destroy capitalism unless the policy response is wrong in which case it'd destroy a lot more. And I'm not rooting for that because I'm a capitalist.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:13
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Oberleutnant posted:You're fundamentally misrepresenting my argument. Or your own. Yes workers should always be ready to fight back in times of crisis, but the argument that is being put forward is that an upcoming crisis created by automation in the west represents an existential threat to capital that is different to any previous upheaval, and I don't believe that's the case. It is simply part of an ongoing process that won't reach the level of total collapse for many generations. I don't think it's the end of capitalism. It's just going to create a massive economic crisis, probably the biggest in modern history, and one that lays bear the folly of capitalism as explained by Marx: quote:Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:14
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Oberleutnant posted:Yes, and that would be relevant if you could demonstrate that, globally speaking, Capital has reached (or is near to reaching) that point. It hasn't, and it isn't. Locally in certain economies it may be true (I would argue against it). Globally it's not even close. It doesn't have to be global. It just has to exceed capital's capacity to expand into new markets, which it will do in spades.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:15
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Thug Lessons posted:I don't think it's the end of capitalism. It's just going to create a massive economic crisis, probably the biggest in modern history, and one that lays bear the folly of capitalism as explained by Marx: Marx's predicted final implosion of capital rests essentially on the system exhausting all available fuel (in the form of available workers and consumers) and reaching a point where it cannot grow any more. All automation actually does is push back the hand on the doomsday clock a little bit, by freeing up more cheap labour for capital to expand again - sometimes into new and different areas of production.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:21
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Oberleutnant posted:But we've seen it all before - every collapse is worse than the last, but the system recovers. I hate to be a debbie downer but you have to demonstrate why this particular time it will be fundamentally different from the last 50 times. As somebody upthread pointed out, we've been through absolutely devastating crises precipitated by automation and overproduction again and again in the last couple hundred years. Of course we're due for another crisis, we're always due for a crisis. I lust for the (further) development of industry that carries down dirt from mountains to put it into the ocean to combat rising sea levels.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:30
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Ruzihm posted:I lust for the (further) development of industry that carries down dirt from mountains to put it into the ocean to combat rising sea levels.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:34
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Oberleutnant posted:But we've seen it all before - every collapse is worse than the last, but the system recovers. I hate to be a debbie downer but you have to demonstrate why this particular time it will be fundamentally different from the last 50 times. I've done that again and again. If you want to cling to the idea that contemporary labor participation rates are set in stone, despite the fact that it's demonstrably false by looking at both historical and contemporary societies, then don't let me stop you. But I feel pretty confident I've explained my point well enough you can understand it.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:53
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Oberleutnant posted:Comrade this would be the perfect approach if only the bourgeoisie hadn't ruthlessly invented the phenomena of fluid displacement specifically to counteract it.. I must also tell you that they engineered sea-level rises specifically so they could raise rents on the reduced available landmass. The only solution is revolution.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:54
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This discussion really underlines the necessity of reading and understanding volumes 2-3.
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Jun 6, 2017 22:05
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Curiously the second set of the Harvey lectures covers both volume 2 and parts of volume 3 in the middle of it, and there's no third set (though there is a series of six on the book and theory in general). I'm planning to follow his lead with my own reading and the weekly updates until the lectures are done, then clear up the remainder of volume 3 on a schedule I work out myself once we're done.
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Jun 6, 2017 22:35
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Thug Lessons posted:I've done that again and again. If you want to cling to the idea that contemporary labor participation rates are set in stone, despite the fact that it's demonstrably false by looking at both historical and contemporary societies, then don't let me stop you. But I feel pretty confident I've explained my point well enough you can understand it. Thug Lessons posted:This discussion really underlines the necessity of reading and understanding volumes 2-3. If you think that there's some killer argument hidden in vols 2 or 3 then by all means share it. But from my memory the only standout point of relevance would be in vol 2, which lumps services (distribution in particular) in as a necessary element of the production chain with only cosmetic differences (that is it's the production of a change of location for the commodity) from conventional production. This would tend to support my argument that the automation of services is not particularly epoch-defining or something that heralds some serious shift in the nature of capitalism. It's only different from the invention of the conveyor belt in terms of scale. The fact that you made a vague reference to vols 2 and 3 without actually advancing a specific argument makes me wonder if you werent just hoping i hadn't read them and would take your remark on faith.
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Jun 7, 2017 02:49
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Oberleutnant posted:If you think that there's some killer argument hidden in vols 2 or 3 then by all means share it. But from my memory the only standout point of relevance would be in vol 2, which lumps services (distribution in particular) in as a necessary element of the production chain with only cosmetic differences (that is it's the production of a change of location for the commodity) from conventional production. There's nothing hidden, volume three just describes crisis theory. But the problem you're having is more fundamental in that it makes no sense. You're saying that everyone thrown off by automation is going to see their income depressed to third-world levels, (which, I have to add, is a claim at least as bold as saying they'll be unemployed), and when I confronted you about how this, you know, would torpedo the entire world economy due to the lost markets you brushed it off and mumbled something about prices of production. Even in your own scenario you're positing effects that will lead to the greatest economic depression in the history of capitalism, but somehow it's also no big deal and just first world problems. There's always been crises who cares about the biggest? I'm really at a loss, I can't really conclude anything here beyond a) you don't care about automation and b) you don't know what you're talking about.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:01
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Thug Lessons posted:There's nothing hidden, volume three just describes crisis theory. But the problem you're having is more fundamental in that it makes no sense. You're saying that everyone thrown off by automation is going to see their income depressed to third-world levels, (which, I have to add, is a claim at least as bold as saying they'll be unemployed), and when I confronted you about how this, you know, would torpedo the entire world economy due to the lost markets you brushed it off and mumbled something about prices of production. Even in your own scenario you're positing effects that will lead to the greatest economic depression in the history of capitalism, but somehow it's also no big deal and just first world problems. There's always been crises who cares about the biggest? I'm really at a loss, I can't really conclude anything here beyond a) you don't care about automation and b) you don't know what you're talking about. My argument is very simply that the automation of services will not be so complete either locally or globally to produce a total collapse in global capitalism. You're positing that it will, and it really falls on you to justify how and why in far more detail than you have currently, because you're working off a series of assumptions as if they're inarguable facts, which they're not. In particular you need to address why you think that productive capital will not find a use for an influx of cheap labour made available in a developed country by mass unemployment resulting from this automation, bearing in mind that this has invariably been the case historically. Magical machines which take care of the entire chain of commodity production from raw materials onward are not a reasonable or realiistic answer to this question. communism bitch has issued a correction as of 03:18 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 03:10
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Oberleutnant posted:My argument is very simply that the automation of services will not be so complete either locally or globally to produce a total collapse in global capitalism. The problem is that the outcomes you're proposing imply that, and you're in denial about it because you think it's white people poo poo or something.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:23
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Thug Lessons posted:The problem is that the outcomes you're proposing imply that, and you're in denial about it because you think it's white people poo poo or something. No, it's because, as i've stated clearly and repeatedly, global industrial capital is underdeveloped outside of advanced western countries, and that they are not likely to have their workforces automated out of existence even if the west is - which as I just said, is not something you can predict in the near future based on any argument from historical observation. Hell, certain segments of the service industry have been partly automated out of existence in the past (domestic service with the explosion in household labour saving commodities such as white goods) and.... what happend historically? The labour was absorbed elsewhere. You're positing a cataclysm in capitalism based on nothing but wishful thinking.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:32
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IDK dude, maybe you're right, and after a decade or two of doing nothing to help the millions are made unemployed by automation they will eventually find the most menial of jobs making subsistence wages. That's a bold, very speculative prediction, but it's possible. But your underlying point that this is no big deal, it's just another crisis in an endless series, no one should care about this, and the only reason people care about it is because they're rich white narcissists, is so spectacularly wrong and frankly ignorant that there's not much else to say. I'm sorry you feel that way, maybe unfuck your poo poo. Anyway, sorry, I'll stop dragging this out. For real this time.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:50
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quote:In relation to the discharged workmen, the £1,500 worth of means of subsistence never was capital. What really confronted them as capital, was the sum of £1,500, afterwards laid out in machinery. On looking closer it will be seen that this sum represented part of the carpets produced in a year by the 50 discharged men, which part they received as wages from their employer in money instead of in kind. With the carpets in the form of money, they bought means of subsistence to the value of £1,500. These means, therefore, were to them, not capital, but commodities, and they, as regards these commodities, were not wage-labourers, but buyers. The circumstance that they were “freed” by the machinery, from the means of purchase, changed them from buyers into non-buyers. Hence a lessened demand for those commodities — voilà tout. If this diminution be not compensated by an increase from some other quarter, the market price of the commodities falls. If this state of things lasts for some time, and extends, there follows a discharge of workmen employed in the production of these commodities. Some of the capital that was previously devoted to production of necessary means of subsistence, has to become reproduced in another form. While prices fall, and capital is being displaced, the labourers employed in the production of necessary means of subsistence are in their turn “freed” from a part of their wages. Instead, therefore, of proving that, when machinery frees the workman from his means of subsistence, it simultaneously converts those means into capital for his further employment, our apologists, with their cut-and-dried law of supply and demand, prove, on the contrary, that machinery throws workmen on the streets, not only in that branch of production in which it is introduced, but also in those branches in which it is not introduced. Here's another tease at crisis theory
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Jun 7, 2017 16:22
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1-10: Chapters 16-24 "Part 7 ... is I think the culminating argument of volume 1 of Capital. It's here that he starts to put all the bits and pieces together, and create an understanding of the dynamics of a capitalist mode of production." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1JeKZU5N1Q This week's (long) reading covers two complete sections and the start of a third. In Part 5 ('Absolute and Relative Surplus Value'), Marx first covers the general history of labour and the surplus, and discusses the concepts of collective and productive (vs. unproductive) labour. The next two chapters (17&18) are a series of transformations of the variables going into quantities of surplus value that's mostly just a survey of fairly obvious possibilities. In Part 6 ('Wages') Marx discusses, uh, wages. Chapter 19 is a somewhat theoretical chapter analysing the concept of the 'value of labour' and the 'value of labour-power', and how the age system masks capitalist class relations and surplus value extraction. Chapters 20 and 21 bridge the daily or weekly accounting of labour-power used so far with the more familiar hourly- or piece-wages used in capitalist practice. Chapter 22 about differing international wage rates is interesting in the late C20th/early C21st context of globalisation and outsourcing. In Part 7 ('The Process of Accumulation of Capital') we finally come to the change and expansion of capital over time. After a prologue explaining the limits of the analysis and pointing forward to volumes 2 and 3, chapter 23 covers how capitalism can simply reproduce itself. Chapter 24 discusses for the first time 'accumulation', or the transformation of extracted surplus value into new capital, how this works, what it requires and why it happens. Timestamps: 0:10:17 - chapter 17 0:13:45 - chapter 18 0:15:30 - chapters 19-21 0:24:45 - chapter 22 0:28:10 - part 7 introduction 0:41:50 - chapter 23 1:02:10 - chapter 24 Peel has issued a correction as of 18:48 on Jun 12, 2017 |
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Jun 12, 2017 17:00
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Chapter 17 posted:The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a given quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the mass of these necessaries that varies with the productiveness of labour. It is, however, possible that, owing to an increase of productiveness, both the labourer and the capitalist may simultaneously be able to appropriate a greater quantity of these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour-power or in surplus-value. If the value of labour-power be 3 shillings, and the necessary labour time amount to 6 hours, if the surplus-value likewise be 3 shillings, and the surplus-labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness of labour were doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to surplus-labour, there would be no change of magnitude in surplus-value and price of labour-power. The only result would be that each of them would represent twice as many use-values as before; these use-values being twice as cheap as before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price, it would be above its value. If, however, the price of labour-power had fallen, not to 1s. 6d., the lowest possible point consistent with its new value, but to 2s. 10d. or 2s. 6d., still this lower price would represent an increased mass of necessaries. In this way it is possible with an increasing productiveness of labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling, and yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the mass of the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such case, the fall in the value of labour-power would cause a corresponding rise of surplus-value, and thus the abyss between the labourer's position and that of the capitalist would keep widening. Marx acknowledges that when productivity increases, with the working day and work intensity kept constant, real wages can increase even as wealth inequality widens. It's almost an optimistic remark, but it's just one of those concessions that capitalists can make in the short term. Also, the last section of Chapter 17 is just great. The last sentence, especially: quote:In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time. Edit 2: In chapter 19 there's a neat paragraph that explains how capitalism is subtle about the extraction of surplus labor time, compared to feudalism or slavery (which is the opposite: subtle about necessary labor time): quote:We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the working-day – i.e., 6 hours’ labour-is paid for, appears as the value or price of the whole working-day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours unpaid for. The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvée, the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave labour, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer. Ruzihm has issued a correction as of 22:20 on Jun 12, 2017 |
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Jun 12, 2017 18:44
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The mystificatory power of capitalism is a long-term interest of mine. One of my formative political-economic experiences was arguing about the Euro crisis and the number of people convinced Greece and the rest of the periphery were somehow getting one over on Germany & co. was extraordinary. So the occasional emphasis Marx puts in these chapters on how every part in isolation follows the formal rules of liberal freedom was welcome to read.
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Jun 13, 2017 22:05
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I mean, it's truly, staggeringly mind-boggling in a certain way that an economic system based entirely on the accrual of power by private, unaccountable individuals - where the vast majority of people labour under them with no recourse against their predations, save to beg for scraps from a different master - managed to pass itself off as a system of ultimate freedom for so long.
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Jun 15, 2017 01:26
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Vermain posted:I mean, it's truly, staggeringly mind-boggling in a certain way that an economic system based entirely on the accrual of power by private, unaccountable individuals - where the vast majority of people labour under them with no recourse against their predations, save to beg for scraps from a different master - managed to pass itself off as a system of ultimate freedom for so long. when you pull back and look at the system as a whole, in all its glory, it is endlessly disgusting, not least because at that point you see so many others stuck within framing and assumptions that cause them either to be oblivious to the myriad harms that inhere in the system or to buy into and support it for me, this means that re reading capital, while always fascinating and an intellectual adventure, is also depressing and disheartening
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Jun 15, 2017 01:57
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On the one hand, then, we assume that the capitalist sells at their value the commodities he has produced, without concerning ourselves either about the new forms that capital assumes while in the sphere of circulation, or about the concrete conditions of reproduction hidden under these forms. On the other hand, we treat the capitalist producer as owner of the entire surplus-value, or, better perhaps, as the representative of all the sharers with him in the booty. We, therefore, first of all consider accumulation from an abstract point of view — i.e., as a mere phase in the actual process of production. 
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Jun 16, 2017 16:49
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But seriously, here's a good quote:quote:From a social point of view, therefore, the working class, even when not directly engaged in the labour process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain limits, a mere factor in the process of production. That process, however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious instruments from leaving it in the lurch, for it removes their product, as fast as it is made, from their pole to the opposite pole of capital. Individual consumption provides, on the one hand, the means for their maintenance and reproduction: on the other hand, it secures by the annihilation of the necessaries of life, the continued re-appearance of the workman in the labour-market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract.
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Jun 16, 2017 17:02
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1-11: Chapter 25 "So the point here is that in this model of accumulation what we see is the utilisation of capital's command over organisational forms and technologies: centralisation, new technological forms and organisational forms, as a weapon in class struggle which actually regulates both the demand and supply of labour." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=147Ie78Qio4 This week is also long, but the back half of it (section 5) is a long study of real conditions and history in British capitalism, which is historically interesting but doesn't need to be read closely. In the front half, Marx describes the process and effects of accumulating capital under the assumptions governing part 7. After defining the composition(s) of capital, he covers accumulation when the composition is constant and when it is affected by concentration, centralisation or technical change. The 'reserve army of labour', and its regulatory effect on the working class over the industrial cycle, enters the stage in a way that will be familiar in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Credit and labour unions also make brief appearances. In the lecture there's also some discussion of the falling rate of profit, which will become a thing in volume 3. Timestamps: 0:06:00 - chapter 25 0:10:40 - section 1 0:35:17 - section 2 1:01:14 - section 3 1:30:40 - section 4 1:53:11 - section 5
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Jun 19, 2017 16:45
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Next week is the last week, and back down to a more manageable size, 70 pages. And then we're done with Volume 1. The end is in sight.
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Jun 19, 2017 17:53
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I was thinking it would be cool if someone made a lil economic simulator and saw under what kinds of assumptions the labor theory of value more or less holds true. Looks like someone did that at some point: http://www.jonathancogliano.com/Cogliano%20-%20Agent-Based%20Approach%20to%20Value%20Theory.pdf I kind of wish it separated out workers from owners but it's pretty neat for a start.
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Jun 23, 2017 20:12
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There are a bunch of economists who have modeled Marx and illustrated the properties claimed of the system, sure. Alan Freeman or Ian Wright also come to mind.
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Jun 23, 2017 23:23
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I read this book about a decade ago and it absolutely galaxy brained me. I had taken about a half dozen econ classes in undergrad while also majoring in hard science and political science and marx made undergrad econ look so, so bad.
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Jun 24, 2017 03:14
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It's also cool to see marx repeat the same thing like 20 times about linen and gold and whatever and people, many in this thread, still don't get it because goddamn modern econ has plagued our minds, each and every one of us.
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Jun 24, 2017 03:20
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Modest Mao posted:It's also cool to see marx repeat the same thing like 20 times about linen and gold and whatever and people, many in this thread, still don't get it because goddamn modern econ has plagued our minds, each and every one of us. As much as I would like to say I get it, there's just a lot of nuance to try and digest. It's a good book to read and re-read and re-read 
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Jun 24, 2017 06:29
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Ruzihm posted:As much as I would like to say I get it, there's just a lot of nuance to try and digest. It's a good book to read and re-read and re-read My dad used to always read a few things of the bible every night to meditate on before he went to bed. I have a feeling this book will be that for me.
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Jun 24, 2017 23:31
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Vermain posted:I mean, it's truly, staggeringly mind-boggling in a certain way that an economic system based entirely on the accrual of power by private, unaccountable individuals - where the vast majority of people labour under them with no recourse against their predations, save to beg for scraps from a different master - managed to pass itself off as a system of ultimate freedom for so long.
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Jun 25, 2017 11:04
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1-12: Chapters 26-33 "And it begins with a tale of violence, and violent appropriation, and violent dissolution of a pre-existing mode of production, and its supplanting by a capitalist mode of production." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-8U_Rpd9wk This is the end of the book. How did we get to this point? Marx details the process of brutality, robbery and state force that led to the initial creation of capital and free labour. This is where the property which capitalists have a sacred right to actually comes from. It's mostly British and Irish history, but chapter 32 stops to give us a broader historical view of the transition to capitalism, and then the transition from capitalism as Marx saw it. It's one of the few explicit statements of Marx's revolutionary vision in this book. Chapter 33 is something of an addendum about the theory of colonisation. We're done with volume 1, but there's a 'conclusion' lecture remaining which will give some time to catch up before we move on to Volume 2. I'm going to try to gather my thinking about the LTV and other topics over the next couple of weeks. Timestamps: 0:02:30 - part 8; Marx, Hegel & Smith 0:23:50 - Marx's account of primitive accumulation 0:59:00 - chapter 32 1:01:41 - colonisation 1:09:00 - 'primitive' accumulation in the 20th and 21st centuries Peel has issued a correction as of 14:20 on Jun 26, 2017 |
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Jun 26, 2017 14:12
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I said at the start that we'd 'take stock' at the end of vol. 1, but given the long discussion about automation and the contemporary importance of the volume 2/3 topics of markets, finance and crisis, and how manageable the book is when paced like this, my preference is to move straight on to the second volume and lecture series. Given the 'conclusion' and 'introduction' lectures that gives us two free weeks, though I'm going to read the appendix to my copy of vol. 1 and the introduction to my copy of vol. 2 in that time.
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Jun 26, 2017 14:18
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Chapter 33, Footnote 1 (MIA trans), posted:We treat here of real Colonies, virgin soils, colonised by free immigrants. The United States are, speaking economically, still only a Colony of Europe. Besides, to this category belong such old plantations as those in which the abolition of slavery has completely altered the earlier conditions. This is one of those details that really cements how he prioritized material relations — e.g., the net transfer of surplus value — over de jure designations. It also prefigures the writings on imperialism that would follow in the 20th century. On that note, a supplemental piece I recommend is Lucia Pradella's "Imperialism and Capitalist Development in Marx's Capital." While Marx's work on imperialism was not as developed as that of Lenin or Luxemburg, it illustrates that both were very much faithful to Marx's method, as their conclusions track with a number of his writings that weren't even published at the time they wrote. Lots of other interesting details, too, regarding the continued relevance of primitive accumulation and the evolution of his take on anti-colonial struggle. Aeolius has issued a correction as of 04:19 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 26, 2017 16:17
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I could have sworn somewhere in vol 1, marx briefly mentions what seems similar to a worker owned cooperative business operating in a market. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I'd like to go back and re-read that section but I don't know where that was, or the exact wording he used.
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Jun 29, 2017 18:22
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Ruzihm posted:I could have sworn somewhere in vol 1, marx briefly mentions what seems similar to a worker owned cooperative business operating in a market. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I'd like to go back and re-read that section but I don't know where that was, or the exact wording he used. So I must have read a quote from vol 3 or something, because this is from vol 3 ch 27 quote:The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other. Looking forward to reading this in context.
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Jun 30, 2017 21:13
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 12:21 |
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Ch. 27 is in the bits of Vol. 3 put in with Vol. 2 in the Harvey presentation, so we'll be getting to it sooner rather than later.
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Jul 1, 2017 00:51
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