Sorry for the late posting: there's a lot of work this time of the year and I'm not often near computers. Next week I might be late again; if so simply continue from where we were. Week 17 I should be able to pay more attention.

I may have also messed up (I'm a real disaster) by overestimating the progress-bar last week: the progress bars above are right.

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 !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) 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, April 8-14. We are reading Vol.1, Chapter 25, parts 4 and 5

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.

Audiobook of Ben Fowkes translation, American accent, male, links are to alternative invidious instances: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9

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/

  • Kolibri [she/her]
    ·
    7 months ago

    @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.

    • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Yeah, I don't mind being pinged, especially for interesting topics like this.

      I think for the section you quoted, when Marx is talking about "domestic industry," he is talking about pre-capitalist manufacturing, or maybe very early capitalist manufacturing. What I mean is that, before capitalism, people had to make everything themselves. Moms and sisters would usually sew all the clothes for the family, and fathers and brothers would make/repair tools and equipment they needed. The first industry that really jump-started capitatim in England was clothing, as home-made clothing was replaced by factory-made clothing. Of course, this involved a huge world-wide network with cotton coming in from the American south, India, and Egypt, where raw materials were turned into finished goods, and exported for profit.

      Before factories existed, capitalists would actually just contract out what were basically "gig workers" to make clothes in their own home. This was often "piece work," where people would be paid per unit of clothing sewed, instead of hourly work. Centralizing everything in factories then led to the rise of "Taylorism" and then eventually "Fordism," as clothing factories were joined by all sorts of other factories (cars, glass, chemicals, etc.).

      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.

      Marx is talking about the death of this home-made industry (handicraft) and the rise of factories with machines. Because these small, individual producers are being replaced by factories, they basically become jobless. Factories are just more efficient and thus more cost-effective, lowering prices, so handicraft workers can't make a living anymore. It's the 1800s version of Wal-Mart putting mom-and-pop stores out of business. Marx is emphasizing that these people, now unemployed, are forced to join the ranks of the proletariat, alongside rural workers who lost their farms when they were bought up during the enclosure period. We can see the same thing happening today -- AI replaces software engineers, so those unemployed programmers have to find another job. We don't have "elevator operators" or "switchboard operators" because a microchip can do their job now. Bowling allyes used to have "pin boys" who reset the pins, also replaced by machines. It's interesting to think about what will happen when automation replaces almost all the jobs. That could result in "luxury socialism" (good ending) or neo-feudalism (bad ending).