Geoff is very well-versed in this area. At his suggestion, I am now working through Capital with the lectures of David Harvey. "Watch the first," he said, "without ever reading the text." It was an ideal suggestion. I completed the first lecture, taking notes (see below) and am now working through Chapter 1 with little issue.
I remember learning about Marx in high school Philosophy and coming home to ask my parents "What was so bad about Communism anyway?"
People keep asking me why I'm reading this text. I say: "To better understand."
After each reading, I will post my reading notes. Then I will watch the lecture. After each lecture, I will post the lecture notes.
Reading Marx’s Capital Volume 1 with David Harvey
Class 1, Introduction
My lecture notes (which were originally scrawled onto a notepad app in my phone):
- Volume 1: Capitalist mode of production from the
standpoint of production
- Methods: presentation, inquiry, dialectics (does not
detail causal relationships, but dialectal ones; considers himself to be
opposite to Hegelian dialectics)
- impressed by the fluidity/dynamism of Capitalism (Marx
himself is not static)
- his dialectics* deal with contradictions and motion
- everything defined in motion (i.e. “labour process”, not “labour”)
- value does not exist unless it is in motion
*dialectic (definition): thesis/antithesis/synthesis;
systematic reasoning that juxtaposes opposed/contradictory ideas
- watch out when Marx uses the word “appears” – does not
equal “is” (something else is going on)
- Commodity: a commodity is something that satisfies a human
need (Marx is not so much interested in the psychology behind why)
- Usefulness of a thing = use value
- as use values, commodities differ in quality, whereas in exchange
values, can only differ in quantity (how much of this = how much of that, etc.)
- “human labour in the abstract”
- three fundamental concepts: use value, exchange value,
value
- value is what is
passed on in the process of commodity exchange; it is the hidden element in a
commodity that makes all commodities exchangeable
- exchange value
(what you will actually get in the market for that commodity) is a representation of value, of labour
- you can’t see the labour in the commodity (i.e. produce in
the supermarket), but you get a sense of what it is because of its price.
- commodity: a labour process becomes objectified in a
thing; process itself cannot be sold, but thing itself would not exist without
the process (necessitates objectification)
- “value is always in motion”
- How does Capitalist mode of production structure time?
(time = money; associated with value)
- world of commodities is a global situation, even at this
point; Marx is writing at a point where world is opening very fast (by rail or
steamship) to a global economy; consequence: value not determined in our backyard,
but in a world of global commodities
- “value is socially-necessary labour time”: conceptual
apparatus based on Ricardo; Marx basically saying that it is inadequate to say
value = labour time, but does not define “socially-necessary”, especially at
the outset
- What is “socially-necessary”? How is it determined? What
determines it? That is the big issue. (Harvey argues that this continues to be
the big issue in global Capitalism)
- fluidity of value: value changes with productivity –
therefore, value is extremely sensitive to revolutions in technology – Capital will
focus on these relations
- variables (value of commodity does not remain constant):
individual worker’s skill and average degree of skill, level of a development
of science and its technological application (consider contribution, then, of
scientific advancement to Capitalism), social organization of the process of
production, the extent and effectiveness of the means of production and the
conditions found in the environment (ß elements that can all impinge upon value)
- value is therefore subject to a vast array of forces, and
is never constant
- a thing can have a use
value without having value – i.e.
we breathe air, but we do not (yet) bottle and sell it
- a thing can be useful without being a commodity (i.e. even
within a Capitalist system, growing and eating tomatoes in your own backyard)
- nothing can be of
value without being an object of utility – if object is useless, so is the
labour contained within it – values dependent
on there being a use value for
someone, somewhere
- Marx interested in what happens when supply and demand are
in equilibrium
