reporting back in to the theory trenches

i've sorta reached the end, but i've mostly just been skimming the last two chapters. i think i'm just gonna say i'm finished with vol 2 for now and maybe revisit mandel's introduction

I'm still here, just busy with a bunch of visitors and such so I'll likely be quieter for the next few weeks. Still trucking though, thanks as always for hosting the sessions for us.

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• inv.nadeko.net
• yt.artemislena.eu
• piped.video

Yeah it's been pretty neat to see the implications of the theory start rearing up from the fog like that.

yea, esp. this part that also interesting.

Once the capitalist form of reproduction is abolished, it is only a matter of the volume of the expiring portion — expiring and therefore to be reproduced in kind — of fixed capital (the capital which in our illustration functions in the production of articles of consumption) varying in various successive years. If it is very large in a certain year (in excess of the average mortality, as is the case with human beings), then it is certainly so much smaller in the next year. The quantity of raw materials, semi-finished products, and auxiliary materials required for the annual production of the articles of consumption — provided other things remain equal — does not decrease in consequence. Hence the aggregate production of means of production would have to increase in the one case and decrease in the other. This can be remedied only by a continuous relative over-production. There must be on the one hand a certain quantity of fixed capital produced in excess of that which is directly required; on the other hand, and particularly, there must be a supply of raw materials, etc., in excess of the direct annual requirements (this applies especially to means of subsistence). This sort of over-production is tantamount to control by society over the material means of its own reproduction. But within capitalist society it is an element of anarchy.

Foreign trade is just adding an extension onto the circuit, like adding an extra extension onto a raceway. It changes the dynamics, but not the fundamentals - capital is still racing around the racetrack (in this tortured analogy). Capitalism today is much more globalized; foreign trade is the norm on a lot of basic goods. And yet, we see all the same contradictions and failures of Marx's time, where much more economic activity stayed circulating within a region.

I was going to say something about how it's all a closed system, but that's not really accurate (this is the chapter on reproduction, after all).