Very proud of us all who have kept it going. We've gotten into a nice groove now. We looked at the labour theory of value, and how all commodities are commensurable by measuring the labour time. We saw that money is a commodity (gold) used to measure value. We learned that surplus value isn't generated by trade, because that would cancel out over the economy. We saw that surplus value comes from the variation between the value of the food etc. required to MAKE a day's labour, and the value of the work done in that day. We have learned the general formula of capital, and how capital differs from money. Not only am I proud of you, Stalin would be proud of you.

Let's use this shared activity as an excuse to also build camaraderie by thinking out loud in the comments.

The overall plan is to read Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. (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? It'll take you about 8½ or 9 hours to catch up to where the group is.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4

Week 5, Jan 29-Feb 4, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 9, and from Chapter 10 we are reading section 1 'The Limits of the Working Day', PLUS section 2 'The Greed for Surplus-Labour', PLUS section 3 'Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation'

In other words, aim to get to the heading '4. Day Work and Night Work. The Shift System' by Sunday

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D

AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn't have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added, or if you're a bit paranoid (can't blame ya) and don't mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself.

Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)

  • Harvey's guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf

  • A University of Warwick guide to reading it: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/worldlitworldsystems/hotr.marxs_capital.untilp72.pdf

  • Engels' Synopsis of Capital or PDF

  • Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/

  • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    I think the easiest way to understand these two terms (surplus-value + variable capital) is to imagine you are the capitalist in this situation. What do you have? Money. What do you want? More money. Marx is just describing how capitalists use money to make more money, using industrial production to do that. That's why he gives the formula:

    M --> C --> M

    In Volumes II and III he also gives an alternative form of that formula, which might be helpful to you:

    M --> C --> P --> C' --> M'

    This "expanded" version is just saying that the capitalist takes his money (M), turns it into commodities (C), uses those commodities in a production process (P), which creates a finished product (C'), which he sells for more money (M'). For an oversimplified example, lets say you are a capitalist, and you hire a child to sell lemonade at a lemonade stand. The formula is:

    $100 (M) -->

    $100 worth of lemons, water, sugar, paper cups, folding table, child labor-power (C) -->

    making the lemonade (P) -->

    $150 worth of lemonade (C')-->

    $150 revenue from the lemonade sales (M')

    In this example, in the second step, the lemons, water, sugar, paper cups, and folding table are the constant capital and the child labor-power is the variable capital. That's a distinction Marx really wants to make clear. Because imagine if the child was running the lemonade stand him/herself - they would get to keep all the revenue and profits. But since this example is using the model of industrial capitalism, the child is an employee, and the capitalist exploits the child and steals the surplus-value the child produces.

    So, let's just say the capitalist spent $70 on the lemons, water, sugar, paper cups, and folding table, and also paid the child $30. So, that means they spent $70 on constant capital and $30 on variable capital. The surplus-value is $50. That's M'-M, and that's how much money the capitalist stole from the child. This seems like a silly example... except that for the past 200 years child-labor has been a very real problem in capitalist societies. Capitalism literally steals money by exploiting the labor of children, and it does this every single day. The only reason it doesn't happen in developed countries is because labor activists consciously fought against it and passed laws in favor of workers, against child labor.

    Hope that helped! The answer was longer than I intended.

    • Kolibri [she/her]
      ·
      10 months ago

      I think that helped, thanks, esp. viewing it from like that M --> C --> P --> C' --> M' angle. I mainly got like really tripped up when Marx started to go into the math of this stuff, like in this near the end of section 1 in ch.9. I felt like I got variable and surplus value confused when like looking at it with like the formula view of like (v + c) + s

      spoiler

      First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing 10,000 mule spindles, spinning No. 32 yarn from American cotton, and producing 1 lb. of yarn weekly per spindle. We assume the waste to be 6%: under these circumstances 10,600 lbs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 lbs. go to waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 7¾d. per lb.; the raw material therefore costs in round numbers £342. The 10,000 spindles, including preparation-machinery, and motive power, cost, we will assume, £1 per spindle, amounting to a total of £10,000. The wear and tear we put at 10%, or £1,000 yearly = £20 weekly. The rent of the building we suppose to be £300 a year, or £6 a week. Coal consumed (for 100 horse-power indicated, at 4 lbs. of coal per horse-power per hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed in heating the mill), 11 tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to about £4½ a week: gas, £1 a week, oil, &c., £4½ a week. Total cost of the above auxiliary materials, £10 weekly. Therefore the constant portion of the value of the week’s product is £378. Wages amount to £52 a week. The price of the yarn is 12¼d. per. lb. which gives for the value of 10,000 lbs. the sum of £510. The surplus-value is therefore in this case £510 - £430 = £80. We put the constant part of the value of the product = 0, as it plays no part in the creation of value. There remains £132 as the weekly value created, which = £52 var. + £80 surpl. The rate of surplus-value is therefore 80/52 = 153 11/13%. In a working-day of 10 hours with average labour the result is: necessary labour = 3 31/33 hours, and surplus-labour = 6 2/33

      and in that, like. M would be like, 430? or like that money, since that like the that costs for that week? And that 430 comes from like the constant and variable, which in this would be like that 378 + 52? And then for the process of C, like, constant capital would be 378 and then the variable capital would be 52? and then like P is the yard being made, in which there that product, which is like 510 or that money of 510? And then Marx does that math for that surplus value. Which he found is like 80. I think viewing it from that M-C-P-C'-M' angle helps a lot better, and helps keep track of things better?

      I like it when Marx just spells it out when he does it like this C value = (X const + Y vari) + Z surp.

      • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        Yeah for that example I think he's saying (excuse me, I don't know how British money works) that the capitalist spends, per week

        M = £430

        C = £378 worth of raw materials, machines, etc. + £52 worth of of labor-power (paid out in wages)

        P = turning raw materials into finished yarn

        C' = £510 of yarn

        M' = £510

        And then he says £510 - £430 = £80 is the surplus-value. But then, Marx goes even further than that. He is asking, implicitly, what if the capitalist did not exist? What if the laborer did not make £510 worth of yarn, but just made £430 worth of yarn? If that happened, he would still get his wages, and be able to survive, but he would work less hours. How many less hours? Well, since the wages paid out are £52 and the capitalist gets £80, you can take that fraction and figure out that the worker only has to work 39.4% the amount of hours to earn his salary back. So if he was working 10 hours per day before, he only has to work 10*.394 = 3.94 hours per day now. Marx is basically making the "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" argument that, because we have advanced technology, people should be working shorter hours, because they are more productive than they were in the past. And furthermore, Marx is saying the only reason that laborers are working longer hours than they want to is because capitalists are unfairly stealing the surplus profit created by their surplus labor.

        I promise, the book gets easier as it goes along, and the last chapters of Volume I are some of Marx's best stuff. It's definitely worth reading!

        • Kolibri [she/her]
          ·
          10 months ago

          I think I understand? I have like trouble reading deeper into stuff. With what you said it seems like you flipped like the rate of surplus value to, to like find the rate of like necessary labor instead? meanwhile with Marx he does like the rate of surplus value or like degree of exploitation to. Just like, the math really confusing me a bit. I think I'm getting like too caught up on the math and like possibly missing Marx point. I'm just like, trying to better understand stuff. but like I can see what your saying to, esp. because in like an earlier part of section 1 in ch.9 there this part.

          But in truth, the rate of surplus-value is not equal to s/C or s/(c+v), but to s/v: thus it is not 90/500 but 90/90 or 100%, which is more than five times the apparent degree of exploitation. Although, in the case we have supposed, we are ignorant of the actual length of the working-day, and of the duration in days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of the number of labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus-value s/v accurately discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression, surplus-labour/necessary labour the relation between the two parts of the working-day. This relation is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Hence, it is plain, the labourer, in our example, works one half of the day for himself, the other half for the capitalist.

          The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer.

          also with like this all, if like, they made 430 worth, wouldn't like. wouldn't it mean no surplus value was generated? since that would just be like the money forwarded initially? since it initially took 430 to put into this process. unless if that initial money was lower or like? I dunno I feel like more confused now

          • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
            ·
            10 months ago

            , if like, they made 430 worth, wouldn't like. wouldn't it mean no surplus value was generated? since that would just be like the money forwarded initially?

            Yes, exactly. So, Marx is putting forward a thought experiment: what if the capitalist didn't exist? What if the worker owned his own means of production? In the yarn example, what if the worker owned the machine, and the raw materials, etc.?

            Then, the worker could choose to work 3.94 hours per day, and make the same wages they are making now, or work 10 hours a day, and earn the wages they are earning now PLUS the money that the capitalist is taking, aka the surplus-value. So, if the laborer worked 3.94 hours per day, they would make £52 per week, but if they worked 10 hours a day, they would make £132 per week. (£430-£378 versus £510-£378) And if they worked any number of hours in between, then the amount of money they made would depend on how many hours they worked, and how much yarn they made. Their starting cost is always £378, the constant capital. The number of hours they can work can vary (hence variable capital).

            I guess one of the hidden assumptions here is that capitalists pay their workers as little as they possibly can. That is something that Marx says again and again in Volume I. The capitalist only pays the worker enough to survive and "reproduce" himself and his family. Obviously, Marx was writing in the 1800s, and if anything, things are even worse now. In America today, a lot of companies do not even pay their workers enough to survive, because those workers can also get government benefits to help (WalMart is a good example). But Marx is assuming that workers are being paid just enough to afford rent, food, and basic necessities. That's why he calls the 3.94 hours a week "necessary" labor time - if the worker works any less than 3.94 hours a week, they won't be able to pay rent/ buy food anymore. Anything above "necessary" labor time is "surplus," which under capitalism is taken away by the employer, but under socialism would (theoretically) go to the worker instead, to use how they wish.