Wow this is going great. The hard part is over, and now we have hit a stride. We have learned Karl Marx's theory of money, and of trade. We have learned what capital is and how it differs from money.

If you've made it this far, you've done the hardest part. Several people noticed it is getting easy and fun now. All the same, don't let up til we reach our destination.

Please be chatty in the comments. Let us know you're here.

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 seven hours to catch up to where the group is.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3

Week 4, Jan 22-28, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8

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/

  • IceWallowCum [he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    Marx alludes to the fact that, women, for instance, may be commodities in ch2fn1, but the point isn't developed further here (or anywhere else in Capital, tbh. Marx dropped the ball on feminism.)

    I think that's an Engels thing, he develops that somewhere else

    Edit:

    page 284 where he creates a metaphysical justification for this

    I'm reading in another language with a lot of prefaces and such, so the pages are all different. What chapter is this? I'd like to read his original reasoning

    • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      5 months ago

      I can say with some confidence (happy to be shown incorrect) Engels doesnt pick up the ball Marx dropped. Origin of the Family does not represent picking this ball back up, bc the balls both dropped were

      1."did not realise that the exploitation and subjugation of women intensifies under capitalist mode of production"

      1. "did not point out the devaluing of female labour-powers and the systemic dismantling of gender equality in the lower classes going on at the time they were writing"

      2. "placed reproductive labour outside of their analysis at a time when capital itself was increasingly concerned with controlling women's reproductive labour".

      Origins of the Family is also notably based on the same books Marx read, but Engels' positions are often less nuanced than Marx's in his excerpt notes. As far as I remember, it does not touch on the above three points.

      Federici's essay in Musto's Capital 150th anniversary book (cant remember the title) gives a good summary of how Capital!Marx messes up.

      Marx's metaphysical justification is at the beginning of chapter 7 (the paragraph about bees and spiders vs. architects and weavers).

      His differentiation is already mushy and metaphysical (and false; spiders, bees, arcitects and weavers all start with plans, but will change the plan if the conditions change), but it particularly collapses later given his discussion of labour-powers' deformation under division of labour in manufacture and machinery. All the points he notes about human labour power's uniqueness stop being true in manufacture and machine production.

      Marx will also point to instances of human, horse and ox labour being interchangeable in manufacture and machine production, further eroding the justification presented here

      • IceWallowCum [he/him]
        ·
        5 months ago

        Thank you for taking the time to answer me, comrade.

        Yeah, I agree with you. Maybe he didn't consider animals as being able to plan the results of their actions and learn from them? But, as you said, that wouldn't fit with "human, horse and ox labour being interchangeable in manufacture and machine production."

        But, in this case, couldn't he be speaking about commodified labor? I can see the argument of how human labor getting commodified turned creative human labor into a sort of 'animal labor'.

        tangential rambling

        In the examples of oxen used for human labor, their work seems as merely a tool for a human activity. Maybe this distinction of animal labor in nature and human social labor is a problem with considering nature as a collection of individuals (either individual animals or individual species) instead of a single Whole with multiple perceivable manifestations. In that way, animal labor (without any relation to human activities) could be seen as social, too, I think.

        But I'm just rambling and going on tangents now, this is my favorite part of theory 😄 and there's still a lot to learn

        About the commodification of women, I'll for sure read more into it, thanks!

        • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          5 months ago

          Tangential rambling is very interesting /genuine, but not quite what I'm talking about wrt "human and animal labour being interchangeable". What I mean is e.g. when the human is turned only into the prime mover (the power source) of a machine, they are replaceable with an animal entirely, to the point that many early machines were operable by man or animal. Similar, coal power can replace human power, and many early machines were operable by burning coal, or by manually turning a wheel. And then as we move further into manufacture and production, we find humans turned into beings that instinctively repeat the same task endlessly without knowledge of the task's goal, any will beyond "avoid being beaten or starving", etc, and this whole ideal-intellectual distinction Marx sets up here becomes much more nonsensical, for example:

          In manufacture, the social productive power of the collective worker, hence of capital, is enriched through the impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power. 'Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a habit of moving the hand or the foot is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may ... be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men.'45 As a matter of fact, in the middle of the eighteenth century some manufacturers preferred to employ semi-idiots for certain operations which, though simple, were trade secrets.

          (ch14 section 5, Fawkes edition, p483)