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10 months agoThat’s good to know they’re in the penguin edition. Those appendixes are not in mine either. Except I did find like the value-form Doubledee mention. It was kind of nice looking over. But I read the wrong appendix.
Kolibri [she/her]
Death to America
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I really liked Marx bringing in more of that dialectical materialism at the end of chapter 32? this part. Along with the appendix to.
The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.
The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.
to vol 1 being read!
going to chapter 31, I also found this part really interesting?
I know it’s like way back then with primitive accumulation, but it reminds me of some stuff today still? But things are different now with like, the United States and the dollar being a world reserve currency? I dunno it just like, this part was interesting to think a little about.
spoiler tagging because big
The system of public credit, i.e., of national debts, whose origin we discover in Genoa and Venice as early as the Middle Ages, took possession of Europe generally during the manufacturing period. The colonial system with its maritime trade and commercial wars served as a forcing-house for it. Thus it first took root in Holland. National debts, i.e., the alienation of the state – whether despotic, constitutional or republican – marked with its stamp the capitalistic era. The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is their national debt. [7] Hence, as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine that a nation becomes the richer the more deeply it is in debt. Public credit becomes the credo of capital. And with the rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national debt takes the place of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which may not be forgiven.
The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury. The state creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the government and the nation – as also apart from the tax-farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven – the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.
At their birth the great banks, decorated with national titles, were only associations of private speculators, who placed themselves by the side of governments, and, thanks to the privileges they received, were in a position to advance money to the State. Hence the accumulation of the national debt has no more infallible measure than the successive rise in the stock of these banks, whose full development dates from the founding of the Bank of England in 1694. The Bank of England began with lending its money to the Government at 8%; at the same time it was empowered by Parliament to coin money out of the same capital, by lending it again to the public in the form of banknotes. It was allowed to use these notes for discounting bills, making advances on commodities, and for buying the precious metals. It was not long ere this credit-money, made by the bank itself, became. The coin in which the Bank of England made its loans to the State, and paid, on account of the State, the interest on the public debt. It was not enough that the bank gave with one hand and took back more with the other; it remained, even whilst receiving, the eternal creditor of the nation down to the last shilling advanced. Gradually it became inevitably the receptacle of the metallic hoard of the country, and the centre of gravity of all commercial credit. What effect was produced on their contemporaries by the sudden uprising of this brood of bankocrats, financiers, rentiers, brokers, stock-jobbers, &c., is proved by the writings of that time, e.g., by Bolingbroke’s.
With the national debt arose an international credit system, which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumulation in this or that people. Thus the villainies of the Venetian thieving system formed one of the secret bases of the capital-wealth of Holland to whom Venice in her decadence lent large sums of money. So also was it with Holland and England. By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch manufactures were far outstripped. Holland had ceased to be the nation preponderant in commerce and industry. One of its main lines of business, therefore, from 1701-1776, is the lending out of enormous amounts of capital, especially to its great rival England. The same thing is going on today between England and the United States. A great deal of capital, which appears today in the United States without any certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood of children.
As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue, which must cover the yearly payments for interest, &c., the modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of the system of national loans. The loans enable the government to meet extraordinary expenses, without the tax-payers feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence, increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after another, compels the government always to have recourse to new loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of subsistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within itself the germ of automatic progression. Overtaxation is not an incident, but rather a principle.
I really like that Marx ended chapter 31 on this
If money, according to Augier, [14] “comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt
also, all that legislation in chapter 28 is extremely fucked up
yea! for sure! It reminded me of earlier chapters when Marx started to talk about the labor market
Section 5 was extremely depressing and I just kept thinking how all those landlords should’ve been killed. Also it was really depressing searching up about the mines of Potosi. Also like, it was really weird I guess like nutrients? and or calories? was measured in nitrogen and carbon?
Despite how depressing it is, it is nice Marx like, does his analysis like that and illustrates this stuff? Along with looking into conditions of the proletariat.
@KurtVonnegut@hexbear.net I hope it’s okay to ping you? I just wanted to say like, this part in section 4 really reminded me a lot of what you said last week about like, underemployment
The third category of the relative surplus population, the stagnant, forms a part of the active labour army, but with extremely irregular employment. Hence it furnishes to capital an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour power. Its conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working class; this makes it at once the broad basis of special branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterised by maximum of working-time, and minimum of wages. We have learnt to know its chief form under the rubric of “domestic industry.” It recruits itself constantly from the supernumerary forces of modern industry and agriculture, and specially from those decaying branches of industry where handicraft is yielding to manufacture, manufacture to machinery.
I’m assuming section 4 also included? Also this sounds extremely familiar to today time. Mainly with employers talking about how “no one wants to work anymore”
The contradiction is not more glaring than that other one that there is a complaint of the want of hands, while at the same time many thousands are out of work, because the division of labour chains them to a particular branch of industry
That makes a lot of sense, esp. with the part on under employment. Since like you said, that is a really big problem.
I was kind of thinking about like the end of section three. Mainly with this part
as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades’ Unions, &c., they try to organise a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic production on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political Economy, cry out at the infringement of the “eternal” and so to say “sacred” law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the “harmonious” action of this law.
but why isn’t like organization of the unemployed not talk about much compared to like organization of the employed in today’s time? since both each play a role with like the accumulation of capital. and what would organization of the unemployed mean or look like? or like that regular co-operation between employed and unemployed
the only closet idea I have of like that and to what Marx said. Is like, when it comes to strikes, organized workers not wanting anyone to be scabs?
Chapter 25 and its first three sections are also really good. Can’t say I heard anyone talk about like value composition or like technical and organic composition of capital before? So that’s really new. I found these really interesting
. As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital relation itself, i.e., the relation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage workers on the other, so reproduction on a progressive scale, i.e., accumulation, reproduces the capital relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wage workers at that. The reproduction of a mass of labour power, which must incessantly re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital’s self-expansion; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslavement to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat.
Also I really like Marx going into centralization and along with clarifying differences between centralization and like concentration. Since I had some like misunderstandings over that? But Marx cleared it up. Thinking like, centralization was tied to concentration. But Marx made it cleared it’s not. Also this sounded like financial capitalism?
Apart from this, with capitalist production an altogether new force comes into play — the credit system, which in its first stages furtively creeps in as the humble assistant of accumulation, drawing into the hands of individual or associated capitalists, by invisible threads, the money resources which lie scattered, over the surface of society, in larger or smaller amounts; but it soon becomes a new and terrible weapon in the battle of competition and is finally transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the centralization of capital.
Marx also like had a really big footnote in this chapter with Malthus. Also like going to the periods and cycles of capitalism along with like the industrial reserve army. Really reminded me of how important dialectical materialism is for this. And speaking of misunderstandings, I think I had a misunderstanding from like the last few chapters with population where Marx also cleared it up when talking about the reserve army. Not entirely just the seeking of more people, but more like, the composition of like active and reserve army. Along with how like, that technical composition of capital, where like. Constant capital grows more while variable capital is less as capital wants to employ lesser people, or use overwork.
Along with this, it reminded me how much of like, how machinery is a form of class warfare like Marx mentioned before? I also really like the ending to section 3. that ill just quote here in a spoiler tag, since it’s big. But like it just really good. And it’s a nice thing to end the week off on.
spoiler
Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply of labourers by the “setting free” of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to furnish more labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent, independent of the supply of labourers. The action of the law of supply and demand of labour on this basis completes the despotism of capital. As soon, therefore, as the labourers learn the secret, how it comes to pass that in the same measure as they work more, as they produce more wealth for others, and as the productive power of their labour increases, so in the same measure even their function as a means of the self-expansion of capital becomes more and more precarious for them; as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades’ Unions, &c., they try to organise a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic production on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political Economy, cry out at the infringement of the “eternal” and so to say “sacred” law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the “harmonious” action of this law. But, on the other hand, as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.) adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it, the absolute dependence of the working class upon the capitalist class, capital, along with its commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels against the “sacred” law of supply and demand, and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.
I found section 4 and 5 of ch. 24 interesting. Especially in terms of like trying to think about imperialism a bit? Like the end of section 5 feels like it lays down foundations again for the development of imperialism later on? With this part
An uncommonly knowing dodge this. It did not prevent Mr. Fawcett saying in the same breath:
“The aggregate wealth which is annually saved in England, is divided into two portions; one portion is employed as capital to maintain our industry, and the other portion is exported to foreign countries… Only a portion, and perhaps, not a large portion of the wealth which is annually saved in this country, is invested in our own industry. 55]
The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product, embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional capital thus exported, a part of the “labour fund” invented by God and Bentham is also exported.
and like going to section 4. The part talking about food and like adulteration and stuff. Reminded me of like today with the IMF. Where they dont want countries to be self sufficient and make their own food.
also I found this really interesting
This gratuitous service of past labour, when seized and filled with a soul by living labour, increases with the advancing stages of accumulation.
and
The powerful and ever-increasing assistance given by past labour to the living labour process under the form of means of production is, therefore, attributed to that form of past labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid labour, from the worker himself, i.e., to its capitalistic form. The practical agents of capitalistic production and their pettifogging ideologists are as unable to think of the means of production as separate from the antagonistic social mask they wear today, as a slave-owner to think of the worker himself as distinct from his character as a slave.
makes me think about just like. how massive all that past labor must be today, all over the world. like more then gigantic than like Marx’s time, it’s hard to even imagine? that it feels a little incomprehensible to even think about all that past labor that helps make up this world today.
I feel the same with like with reading it on a screen, or listening to an audio format. I been using a copy of Das Kapital from ‘Fingerprint! Publishing’. It has all three volumes. Except like, the text is tiny and a lot of pages are dense. Sometimes the pages are transparent that you can see the text on the other side kind of sort of. Not entirely. It’s hard to describe but its still legible. But its a little difficult to read, esp. in not good lighting. Thankfully those pages that get like that aren’t much.
But it does have all three volumes and it was pretty cheap and it’s been good enough so far. It also seems to use the version that the marxists org website uses. But it was like 20-30$ around there
We’re getting close to finishing volume 1! and part 8 of das kapital has very short chapters
Oh yea, I’m not like saying the idiom wrong. The reason why that idiom came up or like, why I was reminded of it due to abstinence. Is just mainly like. That distortion, that disguising or concealing of stuff? Like the hiding of relations in a way? Except like maybe not the best? Since that abstinence theory is wrong while that one idiom is right in some ways.
So from this footnote in chapter 24, isn’t this one of main things in dialectics? negation? I’m assuming so because of that last part "“Determinatio est Negatio.”
He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred to the vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be viewed, as “abstinence” from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling, idling, abstinence from working, &c. These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a while, over Spinoza’s: “Determinatio est Negatio.”
These chapters were a lot to process and to take in, but it’s really good. It also felt like at the end of section 3 of chapter 24 Marx was mad? I def was, but I really liking Marx getting getting snarky at the end of sec three. Marx talking about capitalist and abstinence reminded me of one idiom, to make money you got to make money. Except it leaves out like the whole, exploitation of buying another person labor power and then taking their unpaid portion and etc. But that idiom in a way feels like a modern day version of like that “abstinence” from the capitalist? Don’t spend money for yourself or anything, use to reproduce and accumulate more money.
Also I really enjoyed the footnote from Martin Luther and Marx applying to capitalists. It’s very fitting. It was also fitting when Marx mentioned tribute as well.
The never ending flow of accumulation, and reproduction, reminds me of monopolization and a few other things. Like how some capitalists like Musk whine about birth rates. Especially when Marx mention how like capital needs new labor. And the part of capital concerning itself about the necessities of life, reminded me of how people are owning lesser of things?
Also this part
Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers of society, and creates those material conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle.
reminded me of this quote from Stalin from his interview with Roy Howard
It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
Vol 2 gonna be fun to read. I really like reading Volume 1 especially since like, it cleared up some things I was a bit confused on, and helped like. Refine like the general picture a little more? But it just nice like, pretty much jumping deep into this stuff and then getting a better understanding of things than before. I do kind of want to re-read vol 1 later on in the future since there just a lot to everything Marx wrote?