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. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 41 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 – Week 32 – Week 33 – Week 34 – Week 35 – Week 36

Week 37, Sept 9-15 – Chapters 17, 18, and 19 of Volume III.

Chapter 17 is called Commercial Profit

Chapter 18 is called The Turnover of Merchant's Capital

Chapter 19 is called Money-Dealing Capital

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

  • Kolibri [she/her]
    ·
    2 months ago

    I wanted to ask this last weekly thread but forgot but I was thinking of examples of commercial capital, and besides distributors today, would grocery stores also be commercial capital to? I think they are? I'm just not very confident. But don't they buy from producers, and so it still a part of that sphere of circulation until people buy it from stores, completing that circuit fully for like manufacturers of foodstuff or retail stuff?

    • Doubledee [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Commodity trading firms seem like a good example but I think most of those deal in petroleum products? I think most companies that do commercial capital in the Marxist sense would be alien to normal people, who have no reason to know about them.

      I think a lot of grocery stores get their inventory from a grocery distributor, often these are the guys associated with "store brands" which are their warehouse's version of a product. Those distributors seem more like commercial capital than a grocery store to me. Especially grocery stores that have a bakery and a deli/butcher etc, where a bunch of value is added to commodities through labor (big meat -> cut and portioned packages of meat a single customer could use) but that's not all of them.

      For a place like Dollar General (in the US) I think it's murkier. Is stocking shelves and maintaining the premises of the store "creating value" or are their employees 'just' commercial middlemen? It's less clear to me.

      • Kolibri [she/her]
        ·
        2 months ago

        What you said about grocery stores having their own bakery and deli/butcher and the mention of store brands, reminded me of grocery stores like Walmart selling their own brand of products. I think with stocking shelves or maintaining the premises, it doesn't add value since the product has already been produced? And it's just awaiting it's final "metamorphosis" and what stuck out to me in last chapter was Marx mentioning this

        1. that as a result of the division of labour the capital devoted exclusively to buying and selling (and this includes not only the money required to buy commodities, but also the money which must be invested in labour to maintain the merchant's establishment, and in his constant capital-the storehouses, transport, etc.) is smaller than it would be if the industrial capitalist were constrained to carry on the entire commercial part of his business on his own;

        Merchant's capital is simply capital functioning in the sphere of circulation. The process of circulation is a phase of the total process of reproduction. But no value is produced in the process of circulation, and, therefore, no surplus-value.[...]

        and with that it could be regarded to the merchant investing labor like store employees to maintain the establishment? Except for deli or bakery and such? where they produce value

        In a way grocery stores seem like a weird mix of commercial and industrial capital? but the reason I ask is grocery stores seem like an extra step in that distribution chain, and in a way the distributor offloading their products but those products still have yet to complete that final circuit or "metamorphoses"? and so it just sort of like, an extra step but still the same thing? just with an extra middle man.