Das Kapital reading group, Week 19, May 6-12. Reading Volume 2, Chapter 1, plus the first section ('Simple Reproduction') of Chapter 2 (hexbear.net)

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My laptop is fucked so I can't even format this in the usual way or encourage your brain-switches with a progress bar.

Explain the bookclub: We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year and discussing it in weekly threads. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included in this particular reading club, but comrades are encouraged to do other solo and collaborative reading.) This bookclub will repeat yearly. The three volumes in a year works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46⅔ pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at [email protected] ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7 – Week 8 – Week 9 – Week 10 – Week 11 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18

Week 19, May 6-12, From Vol. 2, we are reading all of Chapter 1, 'The Circuit of Money-Capital', plus just the first part ('Simple Reproduction') of Chapter 2

In other words, aim to reach the heading 'Accumulation and Reproduction on an Extended Scale' by Sunday.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Sorry this lacks the usual links and polish: I have tech problems and little time to solve them

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

maxwell-party

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

hell yeah, i'm ready for vol 2 marx-goth

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

diagraming production schema let’s fucking gooooo

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Finished vol 1 last night

success all caught up just in time for vol 2

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

The process of production appears merely as an unavoidable intermediate link, as a necessary evil for the sake of money-making. All nations with a capitalist mode of production are therefore seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the intervention of the process of production.

– Ch. 1, section 4 (p. 137 in my Penguin ed.)

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

So the end of this week's reading describes our first crisis, of idle money and decreased consumer demand.

Competitors begin to produce equivalent commodities at a lower price. Our original capitalist is left with his yarn unsold while he has forwarded his Money for Labor and means of production.

But since the market has already satisfied their need for yarn at a lower price, a certain portion of M in our market is just in consumers' sock drawers. Original capitalist is in debt and our market has ground to a halt.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

The mechanisms that leads to crisis is something I'm really looking forward to reading more about.

So far, I'm not sure I totally understand the argument against the supply and demand explanation? If I understand Marx correctly, I think he's saying that it's overproduction—brought on by the constant need for capitalists to expand their production, and thus produce more goods—that leads to a decrease in commodity prices.

But bourgeois economists explain the decrease in commodity prices by showing to supply and demand, which they treat as some sort of "natural" cycle:

The quantity of commodities created in masses by capitalist production depends on the scale of production and on the need for constantly expanding this production, and not on a predestined circle of supply and demand, on wants that have to be satisfied.

Continuing, from the same paragraph...

The commodity-capitals compete with one another for a place in the market. Late-comers, to sell at all, sell at lower prices. The former streams have not yet been disposed of when payment for them falls due. Their owners must declare their insolvency or sell at any price to meet their obligations. This sale has nothing whatever to do with the actual state of the demand. It only concerns the demand for payment, the pressing necessity of transforming commodities into money. Then a crisis breaks out. It becomes visible not in the direct decrease of consumer demand, the demand for individual consumption, but in the decrease of exchanges of capital for capital, of the reproductive process of capital.

– Ch 2., Section 1, p. 156 of my Penguin ed.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

In the bold section of your quote he's saying that in the case of these capitalists in their hypothetical crisis they MUST sell their commodities because they NEED money right now, they can't wait to dispose of their commodities according to the original plan, which would have realized all of their money capital plus the new portion. He's making an observation about the reality of capitalist production being a continuous cycle, one in which your accumulation is premised on making the productive part of your business keep growing, not just supplying the same amount each cycle. Every capitalist competing in the market wants to make as many things as they possibly can to outcompete the others through economies of scale. That pressure only works in one direction, they're not even considering an abstract demand as a factor.

Unless I misunderstand, I am open to correction by a smarter comrade.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

It kinda feels good when you're reading a section and a question occurs to you which is the subject of the next section. Makes it feel like you're following what's going on.

Time to learn why logistics is still productive labor.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Because M -> C -> P -> M'. M still gets valorized by the action of P to M' its just that there's no C'. Also holds true for travel and communication. Arguably, entertainment.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Yeah I was shorthanding it basically as "the commodity you're buying is moving the cargo, which is given to you by virtue of the productive labor being completed."

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Whatever the social form of production, labourers and means of production always remain factors of it. But in a state of separation from each other either of these factors can be such only potentially. For production to go on at all they must unite. The specific manner in which this union is accomplished distinguishes the different economic epochs of the structure of society from one another.

That part in section 2 of chapter 1, and the rest of section 2 with Marx talking again slightly about development mainly for capitalism, reminded me of how socialism will have its own development stages towards communism based on surrounding material conditions. Mainly it just reminded me of China, and other AES states working on their own paths of developing socialism towards communism. And it's interesting to think of the different economic epochs kind of happening concurrently in our time? With capitalism being highly developed, along with socialism also being developed in AES states towards communism.

Also it's really nice that for this week reading there not so much footnotes surprisingly. I really like Marx expanding upon the circuit of capital more, and it's also nice just like, Marx putting things into place/carrying stuff from the last volume and it just easily fitting into place.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah it feels like being back at the beginning of 1 a little, dealing with a lot of the same ideas but deliberately changing which part of the process you focus on to show more features of the cycle.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Thought you might enjoy the new NJR Piece defending Marx’s intellectualism and dirtbaggery.

this post was submitted on 08 May 2024

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