let's read 'Capital'

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Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Harvey's lectures helped me get started with this stuff, and i recall lots of useful discussion in them. that said, when i recommend them, i strongly echo Harvey's own request that one should definitely read along with it. his presentation is not without weaknesses, and I've seen some compelling critiques. for example, this one focuses entirely on the first chapter of his Companion to Marx's Capital, which is more or less the book form of his lectures. but contained in that chapter are some of the most fundamental concepts in the entire analysis, and if he mishandles, e.g., "abstract labor" early on, it can complicate or otherwise screw up much of what follows

anyway, i'd bill that a serious issue, but don't let it stop you if you want to dive into the videos; the learning process has no endpoint, but it's got to start somewhere. if you're prone to a perfectionistic mindset, do your best to set it aside and accept that you probably won't apprehend every tiny detail in a single pass. and remember to be critical; "the ruthless criticism of all that exists" remains the task at hand.

(incidentally, Harry Cleaver's Reading Capital Politically is also a very good companion to the concepts of the first chapter or so. it's a short book; the meat of it is like 80 pages, including diagrams.)

Annual Prophet posted:

didn't see the free edition linked so here it is; i have a hard copy so i'm not sure about the translation quality of this version

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm

marxists.org also has a large library of other works and materials for anyone interested

i've been using it for years without ever finding it deficient, but there are some noticeable differences from the Penguin edition. off the top of my head, the word "valorization" doesn't appear in the MIA version, but there was definitely other stuff too

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 16:24 on Apr 11, 2017

# ¿ Apr 11, 2017 15:49

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:24

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

The theory does more or less hang together against these obvious objections but gives me a feeling of adding epicycles rather than getting to the truth. Unfortunately wiki tells me that Marx doesn't tackle the 'transformation problem' of turning values into prices until volume 3.

As far as published stuff goes, yeah. But his private correspondences illustrate that he had already solved the supposed "problem" long before even vol 1 was published. He doesn't spell it out in 1 mainly because to do so would require getting into a bunch of other topics also not covered in vol 1 (e.g., prices of production, individual and general rates of profit, etc).

As he says in the preface to the first edition (MIA ed), the aim of vol 1 is to provide a general theory:

quote:

Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. ...

It is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society. ...

Here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class relations and class-interests.

Vol 3, on the other hand, covers "the varied forms assumed by capital in the course of its development."

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 21:37 on Apr 14, 2017

# ¿ Apr 14, 2017 21:34

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

So in that light automation, rather than presenting problems for the LTV as is often assumed by critics, can instead make it more directly applicable.

Exactly. That capitalism turns automation into one theater of class struggle is an important point discussed quite explicitly in Capital. People who try to use automation as a value-theoretical "gotcha" against Marxists are only signaling their profound ignorance; it's on par with suggesting Darwin hadn't considered the role of natural selection in evolution.

For a relevant contemporary example, someone recently pointed out this passage to me (though I haven't had time to read the whole article):

quote:

The textile and garment industry is composed of the knitwear, fashion and textile (fabric-making) industries. In the knitwear enterprises, there is functional upgrading towards brand manufacturing. Additionally, there is also process upgrading through automation (i.e., using computer (or computerised) numerical control (CNC) machines). The former has enhanced demand for a small number of highly skilled workers in design and administration. The latter has reduced the number of manufacturing workers and deskilled them. A most fascinating finding with regard to the CNC machines is that even illiterate workers, guided by visual elements, can oversee their faultless operation; the manufacturers of these machines deliberately make them with a view to deskilling the machine operators. The fashion enterprises have undergone upgradation in terms of strengthening their capacities in product design and marketing resulting in the polarisation between creative and marketing functions requiring higher-skilled staff on the one hand, and low-skilled manufacturing functions on the other. It is clear that the growing sophistication of marketing and designing does not require skill upgrading at the level of production.

Re: moneychat:

In the case of fiat tokens it's not strictly accurate to think of its costs of production in terms of "value," since it's not produced as a commodity, and it is to that process the category belongs. As such, in the wide world of monies, the money commodity (gold, in this case) remains the essential store/measure of value. Capital is written from the perspective of capital, and capital sees only value, hence the necessity of a commodity money somewhere at the base of the totem pole is enforced by the process of accumulation itself.

People often mistake Marxists for goldbugs because of this, but there's a crucial distinction to be made. When we say "gold never stopped being money," it's a descriptive remark, not a prescriptive one. No Marxist advocates for a gold standard, for example. And of course other kinds of what we commonly think of as money — credit, tokens, derivatives, etc. — are acknowledged as well, but we also acknowledge that these each have different origins, functions and behaviors. Empirically, these paper forms are the dominant means of circulation in the world today. And Marx even discusses this very phenomenon (way, way, later, in vol 3), arguing that gold can be completely removed from circulation without inhibiting the process. Yet it would (and indeed does) still retain a critical role in international trade, as a sort of world money. Hence the continued importance of gold reserves.

I can upload some supplemental papers I found helpful on this when I get home.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 17:39 on Apr 20, 2017

# ¿ Apr 20, 2017 17:34

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

SomeMathGuy posted:

I'd certainly be interested; I like this idea that gold is still money even though it no longer "formally" backs up the value of currency as that definitely tracks with how I see people commenting on the markets.

I think the author I've gotten the most out of has been Claus Germer. "Credit Money and the Functions of Money in Capitalism" is a good rundown of the overall idea I was trying to convey. "Monetary Economy or Capitalist Economy?" objects to certain attempts to equate Post-Keynesian and Marxian monetary theories — that is, it basically develops one section of the preceding paper into a fuller treatment. He also contributed the first chapter to the collection Marx�s Theory of Money: Modern Appraisals. (Some of the other authors in that volume can also give a sense of some of the opposing perspectives in the field.)

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 21:36 on Apr 21, 2017

# ¿ Apr 21, 2017 06:20

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

We also see our first glimpses of capitalist crisis, notably in the description of hoarding of money interrupting the commodity circuit. At the time 'Say's law' that held this was impossible, and this remained a popular opinion until the 1930s. Keynes and the Great Depression are normally credited with putting it to bed by liberal history, but Marx was well ahead of the game here.

fun fact: the 1933 draft of Keynes's General Theory directly referenced Marx's C-M-C/M-C-M' circuits in its critique of Say

he was never satisfied with his final (1937) version for reasons he never elaborated upon, but i'm content to speculate that distancing himself from Marx may have played a role

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 04:40 on Apr 25, 2017

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 02:15

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Electric Owl posted:

From what I understand, and I could be wrong, you can't express exchange value in terms of a price.

Small note: Price is exchange value, just expressed in terms of money instead of another commodity.

But good post; it really does get nuts to contemplate the enormity of world-spanning supply chains behind even the most minute purchase, the class struggle underlying it all.

Impermanent posted:

not only that, but the entire presentation of the things in the supermarket and their supposed worth is completely and utterly unrelated to their actual use-value

One thing that helped me get a handle on some of the ch. 1 distinctions is to disassociate "use-value" from "utility." Folks familiar with other economic theory generally try to just equate the two, when they're related but not congruent concepts. Utility is usually invoked to encapsulate a sense of relative preferences at a given moment, whereas use-value is something altogether more general and simple — is it useful, period? Note also Marx's use of language: things "are" use-values, rather than "have," as we might say with utility. In short, we're describing a category of product, rather than a property of a product.

So saying something has a price unrelated to its use-value is a bit off the mark. Use-value is the qualitative aspect of a commodity, while value (which is outwardly expressed via exchange value and ultimately price) is the quantitative. This is actually the biggest problem with trying to think of use-value in terms of utility; utility can be conceived of in a quantitative sense, whether cardinal or ordinal. The only quantitative interpretation of use-value, on the other hand, is binary, or boolean if you prefer — either it is or it's not.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 08:03 on Apr 30, 2017

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 07:54

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Electric Owl posted:

Sure, but since NNick says that you can produce 2 Juicero in the time it'd take to produce 1 iPhone then wouldn't a true price that reflected the exchange value be $350 for the Juicero and $700 for the iPhone? Not $700 equally? I understand how in a system where money already exists you could just as well express this value in dollars but this specific example seems divorced from an objective determination of the commodity's value, no?

Remember:

Value:

Exchange value:

So price is reflecting "exchange value" either way, but not necessarily "value." Since value can be expressed in terms of money, there are theoretical exchange values that are exactly equal to values, but Ruzihm is correct that this almost never happens in reality. In fact, when it does happen, I'd bet it's more of an accident than anything like a final tendential rest at an equilibrium point, since the market forces are just so vast, varied, and ever shifting. But as mentioned, rather than a commodity just landing on a "wrong" price and staying there, the difference between price and value becomes one major source of market dynamics.

As far as the book goes, value and exchange value are held as equal for simplicity in volume 1, but this assumption is done away with in volume 3.

Edit: since I pagesniped i'm gonna encourage anyone who missed it to jump back and peep Ruzihm's post

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 05:11 on May 1, 2017

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 20:44

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

also that particular passage is just remarking on the commodity's lack of an outward sign of its pedigree.

# ¿ May 2, 2017 19:15

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

I think it still stands as a fairly deep work on identity politics but yeah, it does have a couple lines that rattle, given how sensibilities have (mostly) evolved. I've never read Bauer's work ("The Jewish Question") to which Marx was responding, so I can't judge for myself how well those lines stand as direct allusions to prejudicial framings in the original.

Anyway, it is worth reading, but a "short" Marx piece still works out to like 12,000 words. If that seems a tad daunting for lunch break reading, this summary is around a tenth of that.

Also, people tend to read the infamous "opiate" remark as something much more aggressively contemptuous of religion. But it's not so much dismissive namecalling as it is an attempt to characterize its conditions and social role:

quote:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

# ¿ May 3, 2017 06:04

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

I've been out for a bit but before we get too far from it, I just want to reiterate how important chapters 4 and 5 are. Chapter 4 should come to mind whenever there's any confusion between the categories of "money" and "capital" — or a failure to recognize the primacy of the latter over the former — and 5 lays out in prose what will eventually be the first of the aggregate equalities (total price = total value) that will be important in Volume 3.

And, also touching upon the reason for it:

Electric Owl posted:

There appears to be some cognitive dissonance in academia since "double-entry", a core principle in the GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), requires accountants to always ensure that Assets= Liability + Equity.

Yes! I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because double-entry bookkeeping was really important to Marx when he was puzzling out value theory. Rob Bryer, a Marxist accountant (which is a phrase that makes me happy for no reason I can articulate), has written at length about this. E.g.:

Bryer posted:

In Marx�s theory, this �inkling�, that [capital] gets its surplus only from labour, is embedded within the collective mentality of capitalists as a class, in the collective mentality of �total social capital�, signatured today in the universal use of double bookkeeping (DEB) and cost-based accrual accounting (Bryer, 1993, 1999a, 1999b, 2000a, 2006b). Predictably, Marx used DEB to deepen his understanding of �total social capital�, the aggregate logic of its circuits of capital, and its control of individual capitalists and their workers. ...

In June 1861, at the beginning of his most productive three years during which he wrote the second draft of Capital and the Theories of Surplus Value in the Economic Manuscript of 1861-1863, Marx asks Engels,

�If it could be done very briefly, without making undue demands on you, I should like to have a sample of Italian book-keeping (with explanations). It would help throw light on Dr Quesnay�s Tableau economique� (Marx and Engels, 1985b, p.381).

From his study of �Italian book-keeping�, that is, DEB, Marx would learn how it automatically accounts for flows of capital by simultaneously recording the effect of every transaction as both a source (a credit) and a use (a debit) of capital (Bryer, 1993a). He would also learn that capitalists used DEB to produce integrated departmental profit and loss accounts that calculated profitability as the increment to capital at the level of the individual department and at the level of the firm. This would certainly help him understand that it was necessary to distinguish between �capital� and �revenue� at the level of the individual firm or sectors of production (as Adam Smith did), and at the level of society (which Smith did not). Part 3 argues this was critical to Marx�s understanding of �total social capital� and therefore to his solution of the transformation problem in Volume 3, because it allowed him to reconstruct Fran�ois Quesnay�s Tableau and to reveal Adam Smith�s �nonsensicality of subsuming the gross product of a society simply under revenue (which may be consumed annually)�. Smith�s accounting was nonsense, Marx discovered, because �if this were so, a society would have to start each year de novo, without capital� (Marx and Engels, 1985b, p.485)!

Also, yeah, neoclassical "consumer surplus" is kind of a weird, dubious construct. All of that stuff about a double-inequality of subjective utilities in exchange doesn't contradict the idea of objective equality, but rather underpins it; it's a presupposition of classical theory that each participant of an exchange wants what they're obtaining more than what they have, so obvious and tautological as to not even warrant mention — which is true of most theoretical uses of subjective utility, in my opinion. That doesn't mean there are no objective terms to the transaction, though, especially when one of the objects of said exchange (money) is acting in a quantifying capacity.

Anyway, I keep hearing that every transaction I've ever conducted has lent me a personal surplus, but no one can tell me how to use this lifetime's worth of accumulation to pay my bills...

Ruzihm posted:

Chapter 11 is kind of dense and I feel like I might have overlooked something. Did Marx already explain this and is just being coy here or will he explain this later? I'm guessing it has to do with how rates of exploitation can differ.

It was a bit of a tease for him to mention profits here, since they're not considered in depth as a category distinct from surplus value until volume 3, by which time we'll have all our "intermediate terms." On the other hand, it was maybe less of a tease at the time it was written because of which economic theories prevailed. Basically, the classicals before Marx (Smith, Ricardo, et al) had worked out that competition creates a tendency of the rate of profit toward equalization, and in its time was so uncontroversial that he could just casually drop an "everyone knows" in there. (In Marx's own development of the idea, competition between workers will tend to equalize the rate of exploitation in parallel to that process.)

In short, a tendency toward a general rate of profit apparently (and remember, Marx always takes pains to distinguish appearance from reality) contradicts the idea that labor generates value, given different capital intensities. This apparent contradiction is what causes surplus value and profit to diverge in empirical terms, but will be ultimately revealed as transfers of surplus value in circulation.

Incidentally, I'm really pleased with how well the book is being understood so far ITT.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 18:37 on May 16, 2017

# ¿ May 16, 2017 18:19

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

the first time i read capital i got to chapter 10 and said "why isn't this chapter 1"

# ¿ May 24, 2017 03:11

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Oh my god, objectivists, building ever more elaborate systems of terminology to compensate for never getting any smarter.

quote:

To show the falsehood of axiological intrinsicism (the thing I accuse Marx of and who we will return to in just a bit) it is necessary only to show that this supposed intrinsic attribute is actually a relational one, i.e. to demonstrate the impossibility of existents being preferentially valenced per se.

Marxists have literally spent the last 150 years writing about value being a social relation. Congratulations, objectivists: You've defeated a straw Marx with the real one.

Anyway, when Marxists speak of "intrinsic" value, it doesn't denote a physical property of reality, but a social one embodied in a particular form by the social processes that generated it. Unless I've missed something, the paper seems to mount a relentless assault against the former understanding. In terms objectivists might understand, they're Committing the Most Odious and Egregious Fallacy of Equivocation.

What's really puzzling here is that they do take care to note that Marx didn't argue that value is absolute. (For clarity: Marx says "commodities ... are only relative expressions of social labour-time and their relativity consists by no means solely of the ratio in which they exchange for one another, but of the ratio of them all to this social labour which is their substance.") How the hell can you make that distinction and then use the version of "intrinsic" they do? I imagine one would have to be pretty ideologically hidebound.

That paper quotes (without citation) a footnote from a much more interesting essay on the topic, but seems to have missed the rest of it. So here, for some supplemental reading, is the essay they didn't bother to name: Andrew Kliman - Marx's Concept of Intrinsic Value. If you have the time and inclination, by all means, decide for yourselves whether the Rand cult is doing the topic justice.

EDIT:

quote:

If anyone was ever in doubt about Marx's fundamental commitment to axiological intrinsicism this passage is all she would need. This illustrative analogy fails for the same reason Marx's basic analysis of the commodity fails; value is not an intrinsic but a relational phenomenon. Area is an intrinsic attribute of two-dimensional figures and is "decomposable" into different and dissimilar figures each containing their own respective areas. Area is a self-contained phenomenon but value is NOT. The existence of a calculating subject is not necessary for the existence of area but only its determination. The existence of a valuing subject is necessary for both the existence of value and its determination.

More equivocation here, though subtler. The commodity form itself is not mind-independent, but only exists "in gear" within a particular set of social processes. So in fact the analogy actually holds very well; to the form of the commodity, value is an intrinsic component, just as to the form of a polygon, area. The only way to treat a commodity as a mind-independent structure is to consider it only in its physical properties — a mass of treated shoe leather arranged in certain shapes, or what have you. But in doing so we've abolished the traits that made it specifically a commodity.

So, they fail to keep their sights fixed on commodities qua commodities, rather than just "goods," or products or matter in general.

Edit 2: If you wanna get real pedantic, you can point out to them that Euclidean geometry isn't mind-independent, either, but a construct we impose upon what we now recognize as more complex, curved spaces.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 23:58 on May 26, 2017

# ¿ May 26, 2017 00:10

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Yeah, no prob. I rephrased one line slightly to hopefully be clearer

also thankee~

# ¿ May 27, 2017 00:00

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

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.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 23:23

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

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

# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 16:17

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

The LTV is supposed to be a theory of what things exchange for against one another, underlying supply/demand fluctuations.

It's more "to describe the laws of motion of a capitalist economy."

I feel like even the phrase "LTV" might be inherently misleading. When we discuss it simply as a Theory that Labor creates the underlying Value, this nevertheless kind of fixes one's gaze on price, as if to suggest "ah, so THIS explains THAT" — giving the impression that such is point of the exercise, via some linear or perhaps even monocausal relation.

Marx himself doesn't use the phrase; he instead refers to the "law of value" as the basic principle of conservation underpinning commodity exchange. That's where the analysis starts, but not its ultimate aim. The law of value, after all, applies to all commodity exchange, including in pre-capitalist contexts, whereas Capital is trying to get into the workings of, well, capital and, ultimately, the world system it generates.

Peel posted:

Why would some of the costs required to get from M to M' factor into the 'value' but not others? What's the analytic significance of the productive/unproductive distinction? It's all the same to the capitalist. But the point is also made in this chapter that capitalism is limited by time and space, and there's advantages to collapsing these in expanding your market and reducing transport costs.

The significance is this: The analysis is conducted from the perspective of capital. We've got these cyclopean, amorphous structures looming over humanity, whispering unceasingly of their own limitless hunger. If you're not actively helping them grow, you're forced to fight not to be thrust straight into one or another grasping, formless maw.

In more straightforward terms, let's say you're a petty-bourgeois craftsperson, perhaps a carpenter. You make "artisanal" commodities that you sell directly; you own your own means of production and you don't employ wage labor. You're therefore producing value for certain, but you are not producing surplus value. If the entire hypothetical economy consisted of people such as yourself in this example, then there could be no capital accumulation, because there is no exploitation via wage labor, no concentration, no centralization. Even if you manage to save via abstention, you'd just be substituting consumption-now for consumption-later, in exactly the manner described by Austrians and other vulgar economists who don't adequately treat capital. It would be C-M-C, or the circuit of simple commodity exchange, all the way down.

A lot of puzzlement seems to get expressed on this point. I think part of it is that people mistake a descriptive category for a normative one; if you say a public school teacher is "unproductive" in Marxist terms, people grow indignant, as though you suggested that they are not contributing usefully to society. Of course they are, to the perspective of a human being. But to our aforementioned world-dominating shoggoths, if you're not shoveling surplus directly into their manifold and nebulous orifices, you're wasting your brief, inconsequential little life. Thus, in this example, they might work to privatize the school system — to break the shell and feast upon what lies within.

I've also seen people assert that service workers are not productive, but that's more of a Smithian hangup than a Marxist one. For Marx, it's not about a physical object so much as a social relation. If you're giving massages or whatever as a wage-labor gig to make someone else profit, that means you're being employed to create surplus value. If you work as an independent domestic, whose labor is completely consumed within a household without entering into a circuit of capital, that's unproductive. If you work as a domestic for a capitalist enterprise that sends its staff to perform housekeeping activities for clients, then there's a part of the day during which you work for MaidCo for free, and from this MaidCo can accumulate capital. Thus, it is productive.

The bit about merchants' capital being an exception to this fits into the law of value's system of accounting. Merchants are some of the "necessary" unproductive labor; they improve systemic efficiency, they temper the circulation that is one of the conditions of the very existence of capital, etc. But at the end of the day, their private consumption will have to come out of the mass of commodities produced, whereas they haven't forwarded any of their own. "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities,' its unit being a single commodity," etc.

In short, the creation of surplus value is inextricable from the creation of values, and therefore of use-values.

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Aeolius has issued a correction as of 16:13 on Jul 25, 2017

# ¿ Jul 25, 2017 16:10

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

asdf32 posted:

things this post does not do:

Autism Sneaks posted:
Articulate Marx's assumptions about human nature and then explain how they're flawed.
Hilario Baldness posted:
Also, please articulate how his conception of the capitalist class system is NOT exploitative.
demonstrate even a passing familiarity with the author or topics in question
decrease the aggregate asdf32 presence in this thread

maybe work on some/all of those

# ¿ Jul 26, 2017 13:54

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

asdf32 posted:

I'll assume this reflects your objection to anyone trying to interpret Marx from anything other than a Marxist perspective.

I get that "death of the author" still carries weight in literary analysis, but in science a consistent frame of reference is critically important.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2017 19:35

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Stepping back into the bot-dung because I didn't see anyone catching this but

asdf32 posted:

One step at a time here.

If everyone involved in production is "productive" (as in Aeolius's carpenter example above) there cannot be S by definition in LTV. Correct?

The carpenter in the example was unproductive. We're discussing being "productive" of surplus value, which does not exist under simple commodity production. And, as I said, this analysis is from the perspective of capital. Capital needs to exist to have a perspective.

now get the gently caress out of here with your Just Asking Questions game; you've had literal years (most of a decade iirc) of attempting to nitpick this stuff to have picked up even one or two elementary details. go read a book

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 02:14 on Jul 27, 2017

# ¿ Jul 27, 2017 02:05

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Crap, it finally happened to me

Quote != edit

# ¿ Jul 27, 2017 02:10

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Ruzihm posted:

Agreed, but that is because there is no commodity production here. The carpenter appears to be operating in a gift-based society, not in one where his future livelihood depends on his competitiveness in a market.

We are indeed discussing commodities, per "simple commodity production" or circulation. It's the "what if C-M-C were universalized" thing; see Vol 1, Ch 4.

You were correct before to regard it as a poor model of capitalism, because it's not really a model of capitalism, but of commodity exchange in a form prior to capital. It has existed in a minor capacity under various modes of production, but it doesn't generally get the full "mode of production" billing because it's never (and almost certainly could never) predominate and therefore structure a society. So when we envision a whole society of individual self-employed producers, this is taken to be an imaginary construct just for illustrative purposes.

Ruzihm posted:

I'm not convinced that a worker co-operative that is producing for exchange is anything but a capitalist firm, albeit one in which the exploitation is agreeably distributed among its worker-owners.

I agree with this. A cooperative, a non-profit, etc., is still subject to the logic of capital that rings through the entire system. It still deals with the labor market, anarchy of production, the law of value, etc. I've remarked elsewhere about how subordinate modes of production become structured by a dominant one (e.g. the NEP of the USSR, slavery in the USA, etc), and that's something we can see plainly here — an ostensible workplace democracy is still confronted with the overarching external contradictions, in the end effectively internalizing and reproducing them.

In fact, this relates directly to the point up top; a society entirely made up of competing market cooperatives would essentially exhibit the same character as the "simple" system mentioned, with the firm rather than the individual being the market-facing productive structure. Either case tendentially (even if only through market frictions initially) creates conditions that would enable capital to dominate once more.

Socialism will require building a system in which cooperation ultimately replaces competition, with collaborative efforts to plan production on the basis of use rather than exchange.

Here's a blurb from David McNally's "Against the Market," which is as thorough a treatment of the topic as I've encountered:

quote:

The essence of the political economy of capital is the exploitation of labour, the maximization of surplus-value for capital. But whereas capital defines wealth in terms of the maximization of surplus labour, for workers "wealth is disposable time and nothing more." The Ten Hours Bill, like more than a century of subsequent working-class struggle internationally, demonstrates that workers strive to limit the time in which they are subject to the dictates of capital, to win time for their own free self-development. For workers, "free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for the free activity which - unlike labour - is not dominated by the pressure of an extraneous purpose."23

From this principle flows the basic dynamic of a socialist economy, its tendency to develop the forces of production not in order to produce surplus value, but in order to reduce the amount of necessary social labour performed by its members. A society of freely associated producers would thus organize production with the following principle to the fore:

quote:
The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific, etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created for all of them.24

This principle, embodied in workers� struggles to shorten the working day, had for Marx already found its corresponding form of production: the co-operative factory. The co-operatives, he suggested, "have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modem science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters." Not that Marx was starry-eyed about co-operative production within capitalism. On the contrary, he recognized that, because they operated in the atomized framework of commodity exchange, they would inevitably reproduce the "defects of the existing system" by forcing workers to become "their own capitalist" and to subject themselves to competitive pressures to exploit their own labour.25 However, notwithstanding this severe deficiency, co-operative production prefigured a society based upon "associated labour"; indeed, the very deficiencies of co-operative workplaces within capitalism underlined the need for workers to overthrow the rule of capital. The limits imposed by capitalism on workers� co-operatives highlight the fact that "to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted," changes which can be realized only "by the transfer of the organized forces of society, viz. the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves."26 And, as I have noted above, reuniting workers with the means of production involves much more than instituting workers� control at the level of the firm; it also requires establishing democratic control of the whole process of economic regulation of society.

(So, the dictatorship of the proletariat remains the first major objective.)

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 20:31 on Jul 27, 2017

# ¿ Jul 27, 2017 20:25

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

But when you get to the state, what does it mean to be the 'managing committee of the whole bourgeoisie' when there's no separate bourgeoisie?

Embedded here is the primary challenge to building socialism. Because the state belongs to the bourgeoisie, and because the bourgeoisie also works actively to reproduce itself — as much through the state as through cultural institutions — it strikes as unrealistic to posit that we could get from the current state of affairs to Full Co-op Economy without basically already having established a DoP. Though from the discussion thus far it seems that y'all are pretty much already intuiting this.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 14:13

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

IMO once you start thinking of it in accounting terms the basic principles become really obvious. but the economics most people learn tends to veer more towards stuff like simple optimization problems, counterfactuals and the classic "totems", so people arrive expecting a pair of intersecting curves or the like

# ¿ Aug 3, 2017 17:36

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

The former are the ones who treat it as some kind of superpower, possibly applicable to the whole universe including the domains of natural science,

That category would include Engels and, considering the bulk of The Dialectics of Nature was written while Marx was still alive and the two were constantly bouncing their ideas off one another to refine them, very likely Marx himself. (Maybe the distinction you're driving at is that Marx didn't use it to short-cut the process of actually putting in the work of empirical study.)

Part of the reason it can seem offputting to take so strong a reading is that Marx's philosophy is mainly interpreted as a position on the philosophy of history, when he was really developing a complex of interconnected positions, with specific implications varying by domain. So "dialectical materialism" at base has a slightly different content in application to ontology or logic than the "historical materialism" that acts as the more familiar lens for the human sciences. It hardly makes sense to read backwards from the human sciences to the natural ones, but that's not what's happening; if anything, it's closer to the other way around, starting with the reconciliation of mind and matter into a dynamic monism.

A book that addresses the topic in a direct way is John Somerville's The Philosophy of Marxism, though I'm also very fond of the way critical realists frame these questions. This is also highly digestible.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 19:16 on Oct 30, 2017

# ¿ Oct 30, 2017 01:01

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

3-04: Chapters 8-12

Great summary.

Said it before but I agree that the transformation problem is a red herring. In recent years (especially since the early 90's) there's been a huge explosion of literature delving into the matter and in my opinion laying it decisively to rest.

Anyway, now that we're past the introduction of cost-price, the general rate of profit, prices of production, etc., we can take the algebra to places we never could, before. Of particular interest (to me at least) is that we have a new way to do one of the exact things folks who completely miss the point often prod us to do: illustrate a mathematical way to determine an individual commodity's value on the basis of measurable data.

Everyone following along by now should already be extremely comfortable with our old friends c, v, and s.

Let:
K = cost-price (c+v)
p = profit
OCC = organic composition (c/v)
r = general rate of profit (s/(c+v) in aggregate)

A commodity's value is c+v+s, or K+s
A commodity's price is c+v+p, or K+p

Obviously, the two share a lot in common right out the gate, with the only quantitative distinction being the difference between s and p. Incidentally, this is why a lot of naive attempts to "prove" the value theory by showing strong correlations between price and value are unfortunately a case of spurious correlation.

Because no value is created in exchange (per vol 1 ch 5), we already have Marx's first aggregate equality in hand:
∑K+∑s = ∑K+∑p

Subtracting the K gives us the second aggregate equality:
∑s = ∑p

Thus, individual variations between s and p (caused by market factors and conditions of production) net out systemically.

When a commodity realizes the general rate of profit, it realizes its price of production. When it happens in the real world, it might as well be a special or accidental case; the important detail about the general rate of profit for our purposes is that it is an average.

K+K*r = price of production

On average, K+p = K+K*r. For individual sales, p fluctuates around K*r according to, e.g., supply and demand, as mentioned in the summary. Studying the difference between p and K*r might tell us something about the market position of a good, but for the sake of this synoptic search for value, we can proceed by taking the profit realized by a price of production as the general case:

p = K*r

Prices of production all definitionally realize the same rate of profit regardless of the OCC, meaning that higher OCC implies p > s, while the opposite holds for a low OCC.

p and s are therefore exactly equal when what we'll call OCC_p (the organic composition of a price of production) is equal to OCC_a (the average organic composition of capital).

s/p = (1+OCC_a)/(1+OCC_p)

Which finally gives us:

s = p((1+OCC_a)/(1+OCC_p))

Plug that into c+v+s, and voila. You can test it out using the sorts of diagrams Marx uses in chapter 9.

So, putting this together, we see that an individual commodity's value is a determinate quantity that can be discovered with reference to empirical data: aggregate statistics (general rate of profit, capital intensity, etc.) and production data (cost-price, etc). In practice, I doubt you're going to find a lot of cases where you can actually assemble the stats to illustrate this in-principle calculable thing, but in practice it's not really something you'd probably ever have any reason to do anyway, except when making a point to jackass liberals on the internet.

Peel posted:

arch dismissal of established scientific theories, and crude analogical matching with sterile 'dialectical' formulae presented as insight and confirmation. ... there's a gulf between that and 'dialectical materialism' being a necessary, productive method for natural science that scientists are in need of adopting. ... Natural science is proceeding perfectly well without using that label.

That critical realism book however looks great, the concept of a realist inversion of Kant is great bait for me given I like Kant but don't much like idealism.

It tends to create more heat than light when people use it as a means to shortcut the actual process of inquiry, but that's true of all philosophies of science. Likewise true of all Phil'o'sci is that scientists don't strictly speaking need to consciously adhere to one. But I like Bhaskar's framing of it as "underlaboring" scientific inquiry. A good lens compatible with the best available scientific understanding can clear away brush and clutter for further investigation, so long as it doesn't lose sight of that role and suddenly become an independent variable in the process. But if you're against both idealism and dualism, it still seems like the best game in town (in its more developed forms especially).

In fact I'm happy that you're jazzed about the CR book because out of those three it'd probably be my top rec, especially since it's clear you're already familiar with the laws of dialectical logic etc. There's still interesting stuff to be found in the terminologically "orthodox" end of the field (here's an example), but I felt CR came across as doing a better job of presenting itself as a complete program when I was still getting acquainted with this stuff. And then, for me at least, the one angle wound up reinforcing the other. Plus the latter emerged from a critique of positivism and other more modern idealisms in the era of Popperian ascendancy, too, so it tends to feel less detached from present-day discourse. Also, yeah, inverting Kant is a good idea and concepts like "explanatory critique" really lit me up.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 16:10 on Nov 9, 2017

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 06:03

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

It's a load of hooey.

By the 23-minute mark he's done summarizing Marx's system and proceeds into Bohm-Bawerk's arguments against the errors he continually insists he's pointed out. I've paused the video here because I'm honestly perplexed, because literally nothing he's shared so far suggests an error of any sort.

The big "error" seems to be the author's: confusing the value theory for a theory of price. It's almost like Marx introduced distinctions between value and exchange value for no reason at all. People who struggle with empirical appearances that diverge from real essence have been completely bowled over by this for a century and a half and I just don't get it.

I mean, you've got the relevant pieces there in the summary he provides. You have value, you have equal quantities exchanging; you have profit and market forces and organic compositions, and then once the sphere of circulation develops in tandem with production, you wind up with differences in OCC and prices of production that differ from values. Ah, the Austrian smirks, but then value is meaningless! And it's like... did you even pay attention to anything you just said about how all these parts fit together, and how values are obscured by the evolution and development of the system based on values? A few aliquot parts got shifted around due to the dynamism of market forces. You're really going to be completely defeated by that?

If an Austrian were running a supermarket and learned that cash had passed between registers, imagine the existential crisis that would ensue. "These two tills are off. I give up," he sighs. "There's just no way to determine our sales revenues today, no order or meaning to any of this."

The author describes dialectics as some kind of obfuscatory labyrinth, but it's exactly what he needs right now, because a dialectical perspective is capable of understanding the idea that "more is different" and that increasing levels of complexity give rise to different emergent behaviors. Biological processes are not solely determined by chemical ones, but nor do they violate the laws of chemistry. Same thing here; the developed capitalist economy cannot violate the basic systemic constraints imposed by the law of value. You can't spend your money twice, and you can't exchange the sum of all commodities produced in order to consume more than the sum of all commodities produced.

I say this a lot but I wish these folks would just once try to think like accountants.

Anyway, on to the part past 23:00.

� first arg: "it's just a tautology"

Properly speaking, it's an accounting identity, based on the arguments given (e.g., Vol 1 Ch 5) that value is not created in exchange. In double-entry bookkeeping, which is something Marx studied closely while devising his value theory, all flows come from somewhere and go to somewhere. The stocks are adjusted in accordance with this, and the net effect is that all rows and columns net to 0. The $X of value we started with have moved around in geographical or legal terms, but they remain $X of value. "Tautology!" By that logic, the Balance of Payments identity is also a tautology; think we can't learn anything from it?

� second arg: "prices of production aren't equivalent to values"

That's correct in individual commodities or even sectors, but when Marx equates them, he does so in aggregate, or abstracting from an aggregate view.

� third: "worker-controlled production doesn't necessarily mean commodities exchange at value"

I actually agree with this point. It's a question of policy, really. The USSR, especially in the first half of its existence, heavily subsidized heavy industry at the expense of light. You get what you reward and incentivize, and if it is decided that society will be better off by growing one industry faster, then that's a society's prerogative to sort out.

I think the more important point is that under worker control, commodities can exchange according to value (the considerations laid out in Critique of Gotha Program notwithstanding). In that case, it's a question of rational and democratic decision-making, rather than the raw currents of market forces dictating everything.

� 3.5: "Marx doesn't incorporate competition"

lol i can't even, what the hell is this

There's a part where the author discusses going far enough back in time that competition wasn't a Thing, which is odd to me but whatever. I'd like to make a different point on the same tack, though: Observing the law of value in its most basic operation if you go far enough back is something Marx & Engels (iirc especially Engels) argue. The law of value is fundamental to commodity exchange and, as we know, commodity exchange predates the capitalist mode of production — indeed, it's one of the conditions for the latter's emergence. But prior to capitalism, there would not have been radical differences in organic composition, since capital itself was marginal if existent at all. And as we've seen in all the discussion up to this point, if everyone is operating at the average organic composition (and thus that variable is held static), then average price is equal to value. Maybe this or that buyer will get a better deal than the other, but those are gains or losses in trade; there's always going to be someone getting ripped off somewhere, but it's aside from the broader point.

Finally: The part at the end ("Counterarguments") is actually good, and odd. It butts against some of the very points he's shared prior, and he doesn't really push back. He seems still confused about dialectics but he's clearly on firmer footing than most of the folks he'd likely consider on "his side." In short, this guy is a puzzle.

EDIT:

I just remembered that Kliman's Reclaiming Marx's Capital (which IMO is required reading when delving into the thicket of Marxian value theory controversies) has a section on Bohm-Bawerk. See pp. 144-146 (163-165 in pdf terms).

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 21:13 on Nov 11, 2017

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 23:30

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

I don't have time for longposting today, or probably this whole week, but one brief remark feels warranted:

Peel posted:

The 'M' in M-C-M' isn't an abstract store of value but money, so what needs to be explained from the perspective of M-C-M' is not the origin of net extra 'value' but the origin of net extra money. ... And both of those assume a zero inflation rate

I feel like you're underselling just how important the linkage is between these two ideas. Removing the assumption makes it clear that there is a reference to something abstract and objective. This is where the "basic" elements of commodity form analysis give rise to an integrated theory of money — which seems to have faded from view here.

Alan Freeman put it tersely: "An adequate theory of money must establish what symbolic money symbolizes."

Ruzihm, I'll need to do some digging when I have the time, but I think the Grundrisse treated that matter at some length, iirc critiquing Proudhon's labor voucher concept and putting forth an alternative. Been some years, though. But this is the area where "directly social" vs "indirectly social" labor enters the discussion, which is very interesting.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 15:07 on Nov 21, 2017

# ¿ Nov 21, 2017 15:03

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

It's a good thread, I have been reading your posts and they have been great refreshers. I really do owe Vol II an honest effort reread, because I recall kinda getting kinda dozy and skimmy with it here and there.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 03:01

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

Peel posted:

Chapter 52 analyses the nature of a class. We've spent three books in the shadow of these social classes, and here Marx finally analyses how they are defined, how they are formed, how they are maintained, how...

oh

There's a passage I like in Meditations on Frantz Fanon's 'Wretched of the Earth' by James Yaki Sayles that suggests some distinguishing characteristics:

quote:

Contrary to popular belief Marx didn't write on the subject of class in the definitive or detailed manner in which We too often believe that he did. It's said that he was about to define "class" in the third volume of Capital, but the work breaks off before he could do so.

However, We find a useful example of Marx's concept of class in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where he holds:

quote:
In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not form a class.

Clearly, Marx didn't see "class" in purely economic terms, and it isn't the mere objective economic similarity of interests that make class formation and function. While economic conditions are surely part of the criteria for class formation, Marx gives us other indispensable criteria, which could be listed as: 1) that class members must share a common position in their relation co the means of production, i.e., common economic conditions, relative to their labor and the appropriation of the social surplus; 2) that they must share a separate way of life and cultural existence; 3) that they must share a set of interests which are antagonistic to other classes; 4) that they must share a set of social relations, i.e., a sense of unity which extends beyond local boundaries, and constitutes a "national" bond; 5) that they must share a corresponding collective consciousness of themselves as a "class," and; 6) they must create their own political organizations, and pursue their interests as a "class."

Present in this passage from The 18th Brumaire, is a distinction between a "class-in-itself" and a "class-for-itself" which Marx also made in The Holy Family. There, he used the term "in-itself" to capture the contingent character of that group which merely met the first of the criteria listed above. That is, the group which only shared an objective, common relation to the means of production wasn't a "real" or "complete" or revolutionary class-it wasn't the gravedigger of capitalism that We tend to equate with the term "working class" or "proletariat." The transformation of the group into a class "for-itself" depends upon the acquisition and development of the remaining elements, i.e., the group must develop consciousness of itself as a class; create political organizations; engage in unified action to oppose and defeat its class enemies; begin to build a society free of all forms of exploitation and oppression, and eliminate all class divisions.

Hardly the final word, but perhaps a good starting point.

Peel posted:

My edition has an appendix by Engels written shortly before his death arguing with reviewers (of course) and advancing a theory that commodities exchanged at their values during 'simple commodity production' before the rise of capitalism and telling a historical story of the rise of price over value in later history. I'm sceptical, but it's an empirical question I'm not equipped to judge on and an interesting enough narrative.

You can make a case for it on the framework we've already established. In earlier societies, the capital social relation would have been marginal. Where crude wage labor existed, there would be little variation in the (low) organic composition of capital. Where it didn't exist, that entire category might as well be argued not to apply at all, though even if we continue to admit it, it'd have that same uniform quality. Point is, without capital intensity differentials, average price would equal value.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 06:39

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:24

Aeolius: Jul 16, 2003; Simon Templeman Fanclub

I don't have any secondary sources for that particular result; it was just something I sussed while working out the problems for myself, making my own tables in the style of Vol III, Ch 9 with arbitrary row counts, etc.

That said, I got a lot out of Alan Freeman's "Price, value and profit," which might be along the lines you're looking for. It appears as the final chapter in Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics.

If you have any more specific types of work in mind, I might be able to scrounge up something.

Also, if you're wondering where those 1's in the formula came from, you can actually see them by way of derivation:

quote:

The organic composition of capital, c/v, measures the difference between the rate of surplus value, s/v, and the rate of profit, s/(c + v)

(s/v) / (s/(c+v)), strictly speaking, reduces to 1+(c/v). I imagine dropping the constant is probably just practical for exposition of the basic relationship, since it doesn't affect the order of the function. Either way, I left them outside the OCC variable just to keep the terms familiar.

Aeolius has issued a correction as of 10:49 on Dec 28, 2017

# ¿ Dec 28, 2017 04:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > let's read 'Capital'