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/

  • Kolibri [she/her]
    ·
    5 months ago

    I finished this week reading and it got really dark. It's easy to still see some of that stuff today happening still. Like child labor, or stuff that shouldn't be put in food. Or like that railroad stuff like what happened in the U.S last year.

    Also Corvée's, kind of remind me a lot of like, modern day prison labor like in the u.s? or like a court forcing someone to do "community service" instead of jail.

    “The profit to be gained by it (over-working in violation of the Act) appears to be, to many, a greater temptation than they can resist; they calculate upon the chance of not being found out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs, which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they find that if they should be detected there will still be a considerable balance of gain.... [23] In cases where the additional time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course of the day, there are insuperable difficulties to the inspectors making out a case.”

    This just like reminded me how this is still seen today, a lot.

    If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist

    1. “Si le manouvrier libre prend un instant de repos, l’économie sordide qui le suit des yeux avec inquiétude, prétend qu’il la vole.” [If the free labourer allows himself an instant of rest, the base and petty management, which follows him with wary eyes, claims he is stealing from it.] N. Linguet, “Théorie des Lois Civiles. &c.” London, 1767, t. II., p. 466.

    and this just reminded me of like, using the restroom on company time.

    oh also like for ch.9 for the rest of the sections past section 1. just to be sure. Marx is kind of saying that like. When someone works for a day, it's all in proportion for that hours worked in that day? And that it can't be simply just thought as like someone working half a day for that variable and constant capital, and then the rest of that "working day" then that surplus value. but instead more like, that proportion or like that rate of surplus value, along with the variable and constant capital, is found within all the hours of that working day, in proportion?

    • Vampire [any]M
      ·
      5 months ago

      This just like reminded me how this is still seen today, a lot.

      If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist

    “Si le manouvrier libre prend un instant de repos, l’économie sordide qui le suit des yeux avec inquiétude, prétend qu’il la vole.” [If the free labourer allows himself an instant of rest, the base and petty management, which follows him with wary eyes, claims he is stealing from it.] N. Linguet, “Théorie des Lois Civiles. &c.” London, 1767, t. II., p. 466.

      and this just reminded me of like, using the restroom on company time.

      https://web.archive.org/web/20210615210349/https://www.yahoo.com/news/amazon-tracks-warehouse-workers-every-171830353.html

      • Kolibri [she/her]
        ·
        5 months ago

        that's really fucked, fuck amazon and Bezos so much. I still recall like the news story about workers at amazon having to work alongside another worker who died