Hop in, comrades, we are reading Capital Volumes I-III this year, and we will every year until Communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 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.
Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 'The Commodity'
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: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AA342398FDEC44DFA0E732357783FD48
(Unsure about the quality of the Reitter translation, I'd love to see some input on it as it's the newest one)
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. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!
Resources
(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)
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Harvey's guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf
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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
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Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/
2024 Archived Discussions
If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.
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2025 Archived Discussions
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 ) (Note: Seems to be on hiatus for now) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.
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Hi friends! I'm thinking about doing a comparative read between the Fowkes translation and the Reitter translation (making no promises, though!).
I probably won't get around to reporting anything until the 7th or later. In terms of format, will the 8th-14th be focused on chapter 2, so it would be best for me to not distract with chapter 1 content in the next thread? And I should ideally prepare any notes the week prior?
Week 2 will have Chapter 2 and the first 2 sections of Chapter 3, we are following last year's schedule. You can write up to the seventh or even later, and I would prefer you keep chapter 1 discussions on this post unless they link up with 2 and you want to discuss that.
Hi Comrade! Can I participate and get added to the list for pings as a gradder?
I make the rules, and I say that's okay! (Plus I think a bunch of gradders were in last year's too lol)
Thank you! I enjoy going back to Capital somewhat frequently. It is DENSE and I always find new things or ways in which my understanding can be corrected.
·1 day agoWhere the fuck are your pronouns?
Where do I add them? I feel like I missed something. Did I not read a rule? I am he/him but my first language is Arabic, so I don't have any emotional attachment to using English pronouns, if that makes sense.
You add them in settings.
Im not sure if it is a rule, but it is supposed to be impossible to not have pronouns.
Yea, that makes sense. Despite my comment being somewhat harsh, so long as the user is acting in good faith, I don't actually mean it harshly.
I am using the Voyager app and can't find it in the settings. Maybe that has something to do with it. I'll take a look at the website later and figure out how to add them. Thanks for letting me know.
I always thought pronouns defaulted to [none/use name] if you leave them default, is there actually a way around that?
It should, but I'm not entirely sure. I know someone got the Bureaucrat account to have no pronouns in the very early days of it, but I don't know how.
I think I figured it out and have contacted makotech about this.
I have the Princeton/Reitter edition I’ve been dying to read so I’ll be quoting from it (once I start). y’all can lemme know how it compares to the rest. Expect me to join in a few days or maybe next week onwards? Or maybe I’ll just keep updating this comment for this week’s discussion and hope I can catch up idk.
I think it would be best if you kept your discussion to the chapter related in the post, so that way digging back through the archives will be more coherent. I still need to leave my own thoughts, so no worries on waiting a few days! Once we get going proper it will be smoother.
As for Reitter, let me know how that goes!
Coincidentally I’ve been studying chapter 1 just this past week so I’m kinda ready to talk about it, if anyone else is. My questions are a bit technical and not necessary for understanding the chapter.
I am looking for answers to two questions:
- How does Marx settle on labor as being the exclusive content of value? Why couldn’t it be any other common property of commodities e.g. that they have an abstract utility?
- Does chapter 1 directly reveal a dialectical method? If so, how? Can it be traced out similar to the being–nothing–becoming example in Hegel?
If anyone has good answers to these, I’d be curious.
For #1, I think the answer is that Marx does not directly prove it in the text. Rather, he knows a priori that it must be labor. I base this on Marx’s well-known letter to Kugelmann where he explains from the opposite direction, starting from labor instead of value, that value must be labor because that is how labor is distributed.
I accept this reasoning but I’m not clear whether chapter 1 is intended to demonstrate a proof. It seems maybe not, based on Marx’s afterword to the second German edition, where he says that “the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry.” This implies that he may prove things to himself behind the scenes, and only explain his findings in popular form in the book. As well, this would answer my second question in the negative; however I’m not sure that I’m right about that.
I thought I’d give my thoughts on question 1. But there are a lot of big brained people here who can give a better and more thorough answer. I’d like to here from others too!
For question 2, I’d also like to know this, so I’m looking forward to what others have to say. I know that many interpretations of the first chapters regarding the description of commodities and the money-from explain it has a ‘historical-evolution’, but I’ve also heard that the development of these ideas is not meant to be taken as a diachronic description, but instead as the unfolding of a dialectic thought-process. I don’t know enough to speak on this, so I’d like to hear more on this. This latter point was argued by Andrea Ricci in her paper The Specter of Value: The Beginning of Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Logic of Being, but I’ve only given it a cursory reading. That may be a place to look if you can find a copy of it?
Here are my thoughts on question 1:
On pg 127-128 of the Penguin edition Marx states that the exchange values of commodities - the fact that commodities can be exchanged with all sorts of other commodities, expresses something equal between the commodities - between all exchangeable commodities. And this exchange value is a mode of expression or ‘form of appearance’ of some underlying content distinguishable from the commodity itself and its use-value. Two commodities, such as corn and iron can be exchanged, and their exchange value signifies a common element of magnitude exists between them, a common third thing.
It follows that … the valid exchange-values of a … commodity express something equal, and … exchange-value cannot be anything other than the mode of expression … of a content distinguishable form it.
For instance 1 quarter of corn = x cwt of iron. What does this equation signify? It signifies that a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things… Both are therefore equal to a third thing, which in itself is neither the one nor the other.
And you can make this argument for any set of two exchangeable commodities, there must be some “third thing”. So the first clue here is that there is some element that is common to all commodities that explains these exchange ratios that can be made for all commodities.
The second clue is in the next couple of paragraphs where Marx states that this common element can’t be a property of the commodity’s use-value. Why? Because “the exchange relation of commodities is characterized precisely by its abstraction from their use-values.” One use-value is worth just as much as another in some appropriate quantity. In exchange, the use-values don’t matter.
When commodities are in the relation of exchange, their exchange-value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use-value.
(Though it is useful to keep in mind that with no use-value, there would be no social demand for products and hence the private labor put into a useless product would never be made/realized as social labor, never realized as value. So no use-value also means no value)
So clue 1 and clue 2 together mean there must be something that all commodities have in common which is also independent on their “geometrical, physical, chemical, or other natural property”, i.e. independent of their material use-value.
The only “third thing” between any pair of exchanged commodities that can be abstracted from use-value is human labor in the abstract.
If we disregard the use-value of commodities, only one property remains, that of being products of labor.
With the disappearance of the useful character of the products of labor, the useful character of the kings of labor embodied in them also disappears… They can no longer be distinguished, but are all together reduced to the same kind of labor, human labor in the abstract.
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It’s also important to note that value, and these exchange ratios, emerge independently of the will and foreknowledge of the exchangers. It isn’t that people know that they
“bring the products of their labor into relation with each other as values because they see these objects merely as … homogenous human labor. The reverse it true: by equation their different products to each other in exchange as values, they equate their different kinds of labor as human labor. They do this without being aware of it” (pg. 167)
And an important part about labor being the origin of value, and this is also important for the law of value is that these exchange ratios, value, signifies the quantitative proportions of the social division of labor. Within an economy there is a “homogenous mass of human labor-power” (pg 129) and to reproduce the use-values of this economy, given some levels of productivity for each branch of industry, this “homogenous mass” must be redistributed into distinct branches. A social division of labor must occur across the branches so the “correct proportion” of labor-time is applied to each branch to adequately reproduce our society (our use-values and ourselves). This necessary proportion of labor-time into each branch is the socially necessary labor-time, and it is what is ‘underneath’ value, in my interpretation.
... all the different kinds of private labor … are continually being reduced to the quantitative proportions in which society requires them. The reason for this reduction is that in the midst of accidental and ever-fluctuating exchange relations between the products, the labor-time socially necessary to produce them asserts itself as a regulative law of nature … The determination of the magnitude of value by labor-time is therefore a secret hidden under the apparent movements in the relative values of commodities. (pg. 168).
My take is that value, being social, is a product of our own species’ limited social labor-time. There are only so many working hours possible in a day, and in order to recreate our society these limited labor-hours must be divvied up into concrete proportions across various “branches” (types of concrete labor). And unlike any other commodity or product, such as oil, electricity, grain, etc., all products of labor (all commodities) have their ultimate source in labor, hence in a definite division of social labor. So all commodities, and the facts of their production, their supply, the quantities in which they exchange with each other, etc. can be traced down to the labor-time that our society spends on creating them. No other element is the “common element” to all commodities.
There have also been some empirical studies to investigate this. Cockshott comes to mind (though if you ever look into him be warned he is a transphobe), as well as Zachariah and Petrovic. There have been some studies that investigate the correlation between production prices vs labor values vs the prices of other “potential value sources” such as oil, electricity, etc. These suggest that the empirical evidence also supports the labor theory of value - though I don’t recall much of their methodology. I’d have to go back and reread them more thoroughly!
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Petrovic - The Deviation of Production Prices from Labor Values: Some Methodology and Empirical Evidence (1987)
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Zacharia - Testing the labor theory of value in Sweden (2004)
Appreciate the write up! I agree with the outline you give here. It’s a good summary of the first couple sections of chapter one.
I think the question remains, however. I don’t think the third thing argument leads, by internal necessity, to abstract labor as the common social substance of commodities. There is a leap being made here that can’t be made without an additional, external consideration or constraint. In other words, we can’t derive abstract labor as the substance of value merely from the exchange of two commodities.
There is a third thing, yes, and it’s something which abstracts from the particular material properties of each commodity in the relation; but that third property, from this limited perspective, could be anything one may speculate as common among commodities. One such common property would be that commodities are all abstractly useful: every commodity has utility, regardless of which use it satisfies. So how can it be justified for Marx to set apart labor as the sole determinant of value?
I have researched more since I posted this question, and I have found an answer I can accept in I. I. Rubin’s lecture on abstract labor.
I can explain more if needed, but the basic conclusion is that the identification of labor as the third thing can only happen through additional analysis which accounts for the specific character of labor in capitalism as social labor whose division is mediated through exchange value. You mentioned this part already, but I think it is theoretically significant that the third thing argument is not, in itself, a proof that the third thing is labor. (Rubin argues that Marx himself did not intend this as a proof of such.) There are additional points I can make about the necessity of money in Marx’s argumentation, specifically in the assertion that each commodity is replaceable by any other in actual fact, not ideally or hypothetically. This subtle point about money is explained by Rubin but also by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value.
Rubin excerpt
[I]t is the concrete structure of commodity production which forms the starting point of all Marx’s reflections and in no way the purely logical comparison of two commodities.
Marx thus starts out from the fact of the universal equalisation of all commodities with each other, or from the fact that every commodity can be compared with a vast number of other commodities. Nevertheless this assumption alone is not adequate for all the conclusions Marx draws. There is another tacit assumption underlying these which Marx expressed elsewhere.
The second assumption consists in this: we assume that the exchange of a quarter of wheat for any other commodity, is an exchange which is governed by a known regularity (Gesetzmässigkeit), and the regularity of these acts of exchange is due to their dependence on the process of production. We have to reject the notion that the quarter of wheat can be exchanged for any random quantity of iron, coffee etc. We cannot agree with the assumption that the proportions of exchange are laid down each time in the act of exchange itself, and so have a completely accidental character. We maintain that all these possibilities for the exchange of a specific commodity with another, are governed by a determined regularity which is based in the process of production. In this case Marx’s whole argumentation takes the following form:
Marx says: let us take not the accidental exchange of two commodities wheat, and iron, but exchange in the form in which it actually occurs in commodity production, and then we will see that each object can be universally equated with all other objects; in other words, we can observe countless numbers of proportions of exchange of a given product with all others. But the proportions of the exchange are not accidental, they are regular, and their regularity is determined by causes which are grounded in the process of production.
Thus we reach the conclusion, that independently of the fact that the value of a quarter of wheat is expressed on one occasion as two pounds of coffee, on another as three chairs etc., the value of a quarter of wheat remains one and the same in all the different cases. If we were to assume that a quarter of wheat has a different value in each of the infinite number of proportions of exchange — and Bailey’s assertions amount to this — then we would be acknowledging that complete chaos reigns in the phenomenon of price formation, in that sublime phenomenon of exchange of products, through and by means of which a universal inter-relation of all modes of labour is established.
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On the second question: It's not an answer but this maybe helpful. Read from left to right and line by line, this lays out the basic structure of argument of capital one, as Harvey sees it. As you can see, it's not a "line of argument", but rather an interlinking chain of contradicting forces, which hints at a dialectic method.
This implies that he may prove things to himself behind the scenes, and only explain his findings in popular form in the book
Yes, but I think he does intend to show everything and make it as accessible as possible, it's just, that he has the three volumes in mind from the beginning. That's why chapter one might be too early to answer both questions actually. Or rather it might be useful in reading capital to keep the totality in mind. Here is another picture by Harvey intend to help with that.
Once I get through the text myself I'll be sure to revisit and edit my comment, thanks for contributing!
Hey, I’d like to be added to these discussions! I didn’t know we’d started already. I’ll have to quickly catch up
Hey everyone, it's time to come discuss Capital again!
@FromPieces@lemmygrad.ml @roux@hexbear.net @0__0@hexbear.net @bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml @pierre_delecto@hexbear.net @StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net @RedWizard@hexbear.net @o_d@lemmygrad.ml @IceWallowCum@hexbear.net @quarrk@hexbear.net @real@hexbear.net @Sasuke@hexbear.net @ComradeSpahija@hexbear.net @NinjaGinga@hexbear.net @SabbaticGoat@hexbear.net @woodenghost@hexbear.net @Parsani@hexbear.net @inTheShadowOf@hexbear.net @radio_free_asgarthr@hexbear.net @pr0kch0p@hexbear.net @NedIsakoff@hexbear.net @LibsEatPoop@hexbear.net @LisaTrevor@hexbear.net @AernaLingus@hexbear.net @devils_dust@hexbear.net @burntpopcorn@hexbear.net @ExtimateCookie@hexbear.net @oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net @CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml @blackbread@lemmygrad.ml @imogen_underscore@hexbear.net
I got halfway through this last year, so sign me up again, I think I can get through it this year.
I came in here to sign up and got jumpscared by my own username lmao
Sorry about the dead links! If anyone can recommend some good (ideally more permanent) hosts for small files and/or text/code that are known to have good privacy practices, please share! In the meantime, I'll just recreate my comment with updated links for @Cowbee@hexbear.net to copy-paste into the post:
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. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!
edit: huh, Hexbear is erroneously replacing the
+signs in that URL with spaces (since that is typically what a plus signifies in a URL). I tried manually URL encoding but the website didn't like it. Wonder if this is a weird corner case of the new anti-tracking-link feature.https://cryptpad.fr/code/#/2/code/view/ +L0+i8N7ysSxuXBXIpYoVmhL+k6CE+lQFogFnsXp+0IThank you, I'll get you added! Thanks for the updated links too, though that's really frustrating with the way that specific URL is handled, ugh...
Glad to be reading this finally! Please let me know if you would like to be added to the notifications list, or removed. I look forward to reading this with everyone!
As a side note, I will be reading the Fowkes version, but I'd love to know if anyone else has read the Reitter version, as that is the latest English translation. I am curious how it stands up to the other 2 translations.
Please add me to the notifications list (I'll be trying the Reitter version).
I'd love to be added considering I've literally just started reading, although I'm already on chapter 4
Will do! Feel free to reread or leave your thoughts on each chapter as they come, or slow down and let us catch up to you!
I would like to be added. I will likely end up reading this in a different pace, but the discussion last year was so valuable in helping my understanding that I'd like to at least follow it weekly.
I'll be reading a Finnish translation that is based on the work of O.V. Louhivuori and was made official in Petroskoi in 1957. It has been revised in 1974 and in the print version they state it would need a new translation.
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My plan is to read this side by side with one of the online English translations so I can discuss it better, but have to see how taxing that makes this.
Bonus picture from the book, a letter to Engels from Marx in 1867 and the man himself.
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Edit. Just got the notification that you added me already, thanks so much. Let's go!
A bit nerdy to admit this, but that is one of the books I have read in order to practice my Finnish, since I know the first three-ish chapters in English very well.
Is this what you’re doing?
I am Finnish so it't kind of the other way around for me.
And kudos for the effort. The Finnish in this is definitely on the trickier side and many words aren't necessarily in everyday use. Lots of words are sort of "made up" for this book to describe what Marx is saying.
Ah got it! Have you picked an English translation yet? I have always read the Aveling & Moore translation in English, the one on marxists.org. Most people recommend the Fowkes translation due to supposed clarity, but in my opinion it loses precision for more common phrasing. I would rather read an uncommon word that is extremely precise in meaning, instead of a more “modern” word with ambiguous meaning. That said, Fowkes is probably easier for English practice.
I've read the same one you are reading in the past and reading it now too. It's fairly easy to understand imo, but having one in my own language on the side definitely helps. I'm almost done with chapter 1.
Added! And that's a super cool copy, would love to see if you can share any input as we move along with respect to the Finnish version, that sounds very interesting to me.
Appreciate it. I'm in no position to pick up Capital right now since I'm already reading 3 books and falling down on the job with regards to even that lol. I think the discussions will be a fun way to re-solidify the concepts since it's been a minute for me.
Yea, no worries! Just hope we can get enough people joining so that it isn't just me talking into the void in 2 months for the rest of the year, haha.
Add me please! I fell behind the reading group last time, but I'd like to jump back in
can you add me to the ping list, please? i participated last year too, but i'm ready and eager to report back to posting duty. it's also cool that we now have a complete archive of discussions to look back on.
oh and thank you for leading this year's book club!
Will do, thanks for joining again! It's my first time through so that's helpful. And no problem comrade
Would like to be added as well! Been >10 years since I read it and that was for college course/wasn't the full thing.
thank you for leading this - please add me to the list!
I am reading the Reitter version - I can't make a serious comparison to the other 2 translations, but I would say so far that his translation notes/footnotes are a nice add. There are so many notes that it can be slow going, but I like the added context.
Added! And please, feel free to add any input regarding Reitter's translation that may contrast with Fowkes or shed new light, that would be very productive!
Can you add me to the pings please. I got a penguin classics version for Christmas.
Can you add me to the notification list please? I'm going to read the Paul Reitter version (Anna's Archive Link), mostly because I just listened to the episode of Guerrilla History with him and Paul North. I originally read this edition published by Dyalpha(?), because it was available to download from my local public library and I could remove the DRM 😈. But I'm not sure which edition or translation it's based on 🤷.
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.
FYI The link for "formatted plain text bookmarks" has an error on cryptpqd.fr "The document you've requested has an invalid URL." Either I am blocked by them or the file is no longer available.
Thanks for that! This was copied over from last weeks book club so I wasn't familiar, I'll add another note about that and see if we can get restored links.
but it says subscribe, please and thank you
