Good work so far, crew. We are about a quarter of the way through Volume 1 and about 10% of the way through the whole thing. Having said that, we're also about 10% of the way through 2024, so don't get too comfortable, keep pedalling.

Having set up the idea of surplus-labour as the source of profit, Marx looked at how this plays out in practice, how it affects people's lives.

I think we have a minimum of 8 people reading; it could even be 12 or 13.

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 10½ hours to catch up to where the group is.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5

Week 6, Feb 5-11, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 10 Sections 4, 5, 6, and 7.

In other words, read from the heading '4. Day Work and Night Work. The Shift System' to the end of the chapter

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/

  • quarrk [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    At the end of chapter 7 Marx justifies his simplifying assumption of all labor power being of an average skill. Because although of course higher skill labor power would require more labor for education etc, this quantitative difference in value doesn’t change the qualitative character of the worker’s labor compared to a lesser skilled worker; it is still divided into paid and unpaid labor, regardless of how that proportion works out quantitatively.

    So, for simplicity of presentation alone, it is valid for Marx to assume one average skill.

    This “flaw” is sometimes pointed out by critics but I see no problem with it.

    • Vampire [any]M
      ·
      9 months ago

      This “flaw” is sometimes pointed out by critics...

      Notably Ludwig von Mises –

      *Yet such a manner of regulating distribution would be unworkable, since labor is not a uniform and homogeneous quantity. Between various types of labor there is necessarily a qualitative difference, which leads to a different valuation according to the difference in the conditions of demand for and supply of their products. For instance, the supply of pictures cannot be increased ceteris paribus, without damage to the quality of the product. Yet one cannot allow the laborer who had put in an hour of the most simple type of labor to be entitled to the product of an hour’s higher type of labor. *

      • IceWallowCum [he/him]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Proving once again that the most prominent critics of Marx have barely read (and understood even less than) the first few chapters of volume 1

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
        ·
        9 months ago

        I also love how this has absolutely no bearing on reality for the most part. The best box stacker in the world will be paid the same as the worst box stacker, even if demand for box stackers is high. Labor is the only commodity that, under capitalism, doesn't accede to laws of supply and demand because you have to labor to eat. It's almost as if it is it's a separate category with it's own rules for exploitation and needs to be studied as such.

    • Beaver [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      This “flaw” is sometimes pointed out by critics but I see no problem with it.

      I'm not totally convinced by a lot of Marx's arguments, but it's obvious that a lot critics are just shadowboxing. As others point out, a lot of people seem to point at marginal utility theories of wage determination as this big Gotcha that Disproves Marx... but he's just describing what any MBA would obviously agree with about how laborers' wages would be determined. Capitalists are obviously always going to pay as little as they can get away with, and will simply shift their capital to a different enterprise if the profit (unpaid labor) ever shrinks to zero due to market forces.