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 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30
Week 31, July 29-Aug 4. We started Volume III last week. From Part One (called The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit), we are reading Chapter 4 (The Effect of the Turnover on the Rate of Profit), and Chapter 5 (Economy in the Employment of Constant Capital).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm
Discuss the week's reading in the comments.
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I think the "here's a timeline of innovations in milling machinery" parts are almost always my favorite. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing.
I really liked Marx talking more about alienation in chapter 5. Expanding on that more from vol 1, along with natural science and that.
it was kind of funny to see Marx suddenly bring up poop and stuff.
[...] Excretions of consumption are of the greatest importance for agriculture. So far as their utilisation is concerned, there is an enormous waste of them in the capitalist economy. In London, for instance, they find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense.
But anyways, it was really interesting when Marx talked about ventilation? I know there a different context way back then, but some of it reminded me of Covid. Also this part reminded me a lot of fast fashion
By the end of 1862 the rejuvenated shoddy made up as much as one-third of the entire consumption of wool in English industry. (Reports of Insp. of Fact., October 1862, p. 81.) The "big benefit" for the "consumer" is that his shoddy clothes wear out in just one-third of the previous time and turn threadbare in one-sixth of this time.
also the part about communications like in the previous chapter, sort of gave me the thought that like, if the u.s military didn't develop the internet, would it of arisen anyways? considering like, how helpful digital computers are and the internet? since like money can instantly be put into someone account, no need to wait by boat or something. and internet helps sell a wide variety of things to a larger market? but it helps with reducing that turnover time or time of circulation a lot faster?
And this is also was interesting to
The far greater cost of operating an establishment based on a new invention as compared to later establishments arising ex suis ossibus. This is so very true that the trail-blazers generally go bankrupt, and only those who later buy the buildings, machinery, etc., at a cheaper price, make money out of it. It is, therefore, generally the most worthless and miserable sort of money-capitalists who draw the greatest profit out of all new developments of the universal labour of the human spirit and their social application through combined labour.
I read a book called “The Devils Element” about phosphorous which goes into great detail about the importance of the poop stuff
In the same report, Horner relates how in many factories the machines are switched on without the workers being given advance warning. Since there is always something to be done on the machines when they are standing still, some hands and fingers are always busy with this, and accidents constantly arise simply from failing to give a signal.
Not even the zero effort of just shouting out "hey, we're going to turn the machine back on". It's worth remembering that your boss would casually sacrifice your limbs for profit too if not for those pesky laws.
I did a stint designing guarding for material handling equipment (stuff that pushes boxes and product around conveyor belts). Pretty much every single customer was like "put as little guarding on it as possible, we don't want that shit getting in the way of stuff". They would get insanely pissy with us when we followed osha guidelines to the letter, and would send us emails with all sorts of creative interpretations of regs. Capitalists love machines that munch their worker's fingers.
