This diary is for discussing chapters 9 and 10 of Capital Volume I by Marx. In it the explication of how surplus value as a concept is viable with certain reasonable, historical assumptions. apologies in advance for diverging from an established format.
Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. (p.342)
The reinvention of the vampire myth in the modern era is not without political overtones.[144] The aristocratic Count Dracula, alone in his castle apart from a few demented retainers, appearing only at night to feed on his peasantry, is symbolic of the parasitic ancien régime. In his entry for "Vampires" in the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), Voltaire notices how the mid-18th century coincided with the decline of the folkloric belief in the existence of vampires but that now "there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces".[145]
Marx defined capital as "dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks".[146] Werner Herzog, in his Nosferatu the Vampyre, gives this political interpretation an extra ironic twist when protagonist Jonathon Harker, a middle-class solicitor, becomes the next vampire; in this way the capitalist bourgeois becomes the next parasitic class.[147]
en.wikipedia.org/...
We use Kapital V. I as a primary text. This week it’s getting from p.320 to p.350~
Today’s weekly summary uses chapter four from Duncan Foley’s book,1986, Understanding Capital: Marx's Economic Theory, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press
The Theory of Capital and Surplus Value:
Capitalist production is explained with a conceptual space of a labor theory of value (LTV) and a theory of commodity. Capitalist production is human labor organized socially as a special form of commodity production related to a form of value called money. Capitalists (and their firms) operate to make a profit by selling commodities for more money than they pay for inputs used to produce those commodities. They appropriate a surplus value, how can we explain that with LTV? (we will wind up with a conclusion about exploitation) The movement of money and commodities can be described by this diagram:
C — M— C’
This could be a single transaction (paradoxically) but in fact it’s a series of such transactions because there is a systematic process of accumulation because of the dynamic relations among the various elements.
The reality of capitalist production is more like this:
M— C— M’ the simplest form of the capitalist movement of value
M— C {MP,LP}… (P) … C’ — M’ = M + M* (Foley 3.2b)
Here the (3.2b) commodities are bought and have inputs to production (P) that consist of means of production (MP) and labour power (LP), and
The different, produced commodities, which sell for more money that consist of more that what the capitalist laid out as initial outlay M and surplus value M*.
Capitalist circulation corresponds directly to the income and profit/loss statement of a capitalist firm. This is the circuit of capital
Sales: M’ = M + M* = C’
Less costs of inputs: M = C
Equals gross profit: M*
The goal is surplus value M* This must be a sum that has the power to create more value. This surplus value making commodity must be the the capacity of workers to do useful work. Doing useful labor in production is labor power as capacity rather than the actual expenditure of work. That surplus value (as labor) expressive as a wage. The capitalist buys the worker's capacity to do useful labor in exchange for a sum of money which generally reflects the value of labor-power. After that commodity purchase of labor potential, the worker loses claim to product or any part of its value. The remaining part of that contract is the agreement on the conditions under which the labor will be performed. The important point is that labor-power is a commodity in a market for labor. This is different from the feudal commitment to a specific labor process or the contract to a master under slavery. The detachment from landed obligations and the obligation to sell labor power to others providing the necessary means of production are an important historical development. (Duncan Foley Understanding Capital Chapter 4, pp. 31-35)
How do we apply this to the working day? We need to get a sense of the value of labor-power as labor time equivalent to wage:
w* = mw (3.4)
where w* is the value of labor power (the number of social labor a worker receives in exchange for his hour of labor power,
m is the value of money as defined in Chapter 2
w is the money wage the money received for that hour of labor-power
For example, if the wage is $5/hour and the value of money is 1/15 hour per dollar, then the value of labor power is ($5/hour) x (1/15 hour/$) = 1/3 hour of social labor time per hour of labor power.
This division of value (and its addition) can also be expressed as the ratio of surplus value to wages, which Marx calls the rate of surplus value, e:
e = surplus value /wages
= (1-w*)/w* = (1-mw)/mw
w* = 1/(1+e) (3.5b)
(Foley p.37-9)
The problem of capitalist labor-time (Foley figure 3.1) is whether commodities exchange at their labor values.
In chapter 10 Marx asks us to imagine the whole social labor time as one great “working day” where labor time corresponds to value added in the aggregate in Marx’s theory, so a working day is aggregate value added = certain number of hours of social labor expended in production. As indicated above, the rate of surplus value is greater than 0 and the the value of labor power is “normally" less than 1.
In this chapter the workers in the first part of that working day receive wages equal to the wage. The second part of the working day (corresponds to surplus value) is labor expended by workers for which they receive no equivalent in terms of wages (paid/unpaid labor time). Surplus value is result of unpaid labor time.
For example if the value of money is 1/15 hour per dollar and that the average wage is $7.50/hour. Then the value of of labor-power is ½ hour of social labor per hour of labor power sold, therefore an average worker in an 8-hour day would produce $120 (8 hours x $15/hour) of value added and receives $60 (8 hours x $7.50/hour) in wages. Thus workers making an average wage would receive $4 in terms of wage and work for 4 hours without compensation.
The difference is between socially necessary labor and surplus labor time. The examples Marx uses are the controls over time and the exploitation of labor capacity such as employing children. The importance is the assumption that labor produces the entire value added, even if it seems in the modern context more contingent. It is more obvious in the contemporary context where the mass of expropriated labor is concentrated not simply in wages but uneven development in wage differentials, including race and gender marginalization, as well as flexible production and backwards cost shifting under globalization. The reminder will arrive that constant capital and variable capital not be confused with fixed capital and circulating capital.
Marx expresses the total price of commodities as c+v+s where the markup on costs is
q = s/(c+v) (Foley 3.7)
Organic composition of capital c/v =(1-k)/k where a fall in k corresponds to a rise in c/v
the markup in costs relates to the rate of surplus value and the composition of capital (noting that e=s/v is the rate of surplus value and k = v/(c+v) is
q = s/(c+v) = (s/v) [v/(c+v)] = ek (Foley 3.8)
(Foley p.40-45)
Notes
das Kapital as Marxological “Bible’ and its interpretive problems.
Commandments and Canon(s) of Land, Labour, & Capital
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities, its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity (Marx)
Juridical relation as contractually defining / governing property (as commodities)
Time and the work-day of ceramics, baking. (social relations of production)
Mike Wayne’s examples of the teabag, the hammer, and the binoculars.
Critics of Marx (and the commentary of Marx on Ricardo & Smith)
Included is a critique of Marx's exploitation theory. Eugen Böhm-Bawerk argued that capitalists do not exploit their workers; they actually help employees by providing them with an income well in advance of the revenue from the goods they produce, stating, "Labor cannot increase its share at the expense of capital." In particular, he argued that the Marxist theory of exploitation ignores the dimension of time in production, which he discussed in his theory of roundaboutness, and that a redistribution of profits from capitalist industries will undermine the importance of the interest rate as a vital tool for monetary policy. From this criticism it follows, according to Böhm-Bawerk, that the whole value of a product is not produced by the worker, but that labor can only be paid at the present value of any foreseeable output.
en.wikipedia.org/...öhm-Bawerk
Roundaboutness, or roundabout methods of production, is the process whereby capital goods are produced first and then, with the help of the capital goods, the desired consumer goods are produced.
The term was devised by the Austrian School economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, who maintained that it was consumer demand, and not necessarily the supply of savings, that would determine the capital investment in any industry.
The Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk argued against both the Ricardian labor theory of price and Marx's theory of exploitation. On the former, he contended that return on capital arises from the roundabout nature of production. A steel ladder, for example, will be produced and brought to market only if the demand supports the digging of iron ore, the smelting of steel, the machines that press that steel into ladder shape, the machines that make and help maintain those machines, etc. Advocates of the labour theory of value point out that every step in that process, however roundabout, involves labor. But Böhm-Bawerk said that what they missed was the process itself, the roundaboutness, which necessarily involves the passage of time.
en.wikipedia.org/…
Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von; Macdonald, Alice M. (1898). Karl Marx and the Close of His System: A Criticism. London: T.Fisher Unwin
archive.org/...
THE WEEKLY MARX READINGS
getting from pp. 300-350
The Valorization Process (p.302)
'.By turning his money into commodities which serve as the building materials for a new product, and as factors in the labour process, by incorporating living labour into their lifeless objectivity, . the capitalist simultaneously transforms value, i.e. past labour in its objectified and lifeless form, into capital, value which can perform its own valorization process, an animated monster which begins to ' work ', ' as if its body were by love possessed '.*If we now compare the process of creating value with the process of valorization, we see that the latter is nothing but the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If the process is not carried beyond the point where the value paid by the capitalist for the labour-power is replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of creating value ; but if it is continued beyond that point, it becomes a process of valorization.
www.surplusvalue.org.au/...
What does that “point” look like? (Trump COVID masks)
Capitalist dual coding (Soviet amortizing vs. the US MIC (Wolff & State Capitalism))
Chapter 9
The surplus-value generated in the production process by C, the capital advanced, i.e. the valorization of the value of the capital C, presents itself to us first as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent elements.
The capital C is made up of two components,
one the sum of money c laid out on means of production, and the other the sum of money v expended on labour-power;
c represents the portion of value which has been turned into constant capital,
v that turned into variable capital.
- At the beginning, then, C = c + v: for example, if £500 is the capital advanced, its components may be such that the £500 = £410 constant + £90 variable.
- When the process of production is finished, we get a commodity whose value= (c + v) + s, where sis the surplus-value; or, taking our former figures, the value of this commodity is (£410 constant +£90 variable) + £90 surplus.
- The original capital has now changed from C to C', from £500 to £590. The difference is, or a Surplus value of £90.
Since the value of the constituent elements of the product is equal to the value of the capital advanced, it is a mere tautology to say that the excess of the value of the product over the value of its constituent elements is equal to the valorization of the value of the capital advanced, or to the surplus-value produced. (p.320 Capital V. I)
up to p.326.
' The commodity I have sold you differs from the ordinary crowd of commodities in that its use creates value, a greater value than it costs. That is why you bought it. What appears on your side as the valorization of capital is on my side an excess expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one Iaw, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer who acquires it. The use of my daily labour-power therefore belongs to you. But by means of the price you pay for it everyday, I must be able to reproduce it every day, thus allowing myself to sell it again...By an unlimited extension of the working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour, I lose in the substance of labour. Using my labour and despoiling it are quite different things. If the average length of time an average worker can live (while doing a reasonable amount of work) is 30 years, the value of my labour-power, which you pay me from day to day, is 1/365 x30 or 1/10,950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily 1/10,950 instead of 1/3,650 of its total value, i.e. only one-third of its daily value, and you therefore rob me every day of two-thirds of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour-power, while you use three days of it. That is against our contract and the law of commodity exchange. I therefore demand a working day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. (Marx p.342-43)
We see then that, leaving aside certain extremely elastic restrictions, the nature of commodity exchange itself imposes no limit to the working day, no limit to surplus labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and, where possible, to make two working days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the worker maintains his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to a particular normal length. There is here therefore an antinomy, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights, force decides. (Marx p.344)
Sports labor contracts example.
' What is a working day ? What is the length of time during which capital may consume the labour-power whose daily value it has paid for? How far may the working day be extended beyond the amount of labour-time necessary for the reproduction of labour power itself? ' We have seen that capital's reply to these questions is this: the working day contains the full 24 hours, with the deduction of the few hours of rest without which labour-power is absolutely incapable of renewing its services. Hence it is self-evident that the worker is nothing other than labour-power for the duration of his whole life, and that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and by right labour-time, to be devoted to the self-valorization of capital. (Marx p.375)
Mike Wayne’s take is one interpretation and at the bottom of this page is the idiographic representation of the argument path for Kapital. (no pork bellies for these commodities, darn vegan futures)
So a commodity has two sides to it. It has a use value and an exchange value. An exchange value expresses itself as the price at which the commodity exchanges. (Wayne p.3)
So use value has its origins in nature and human labor. And this is true throughout human history – not just the recent history of capitalist production. Human beings have always produced use values from natural raw materials. And this process of production has in turn developed us as creative, intelligent human beings. (Wayne p.5)
Now, human labor produces two types of products. One type functions as tools or raw materials that will be used in further acts of labor. The other type produces final products that can be consumed or used by individuals to reproduce themselves – whether that is a roof over their heads or a bite to eat.
Finally we should note that although labor is absolutely central to what Marx called our “species being,” labor is in turn dependent on nature. (Wayne p.7)
Use values … constitute the substance of all wealth,whatever may be the social form of that wealth. (Marx)
However, in the last few hundred years, the production of use values has been embodied largely in commodities. This is a new social form of wealth that we call capitalism, and it means that use values are now combined with exchange values.
In the form of society we are about to consider, [use values] are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value. (Marx)
So what is exchange value? It must be the value at which commodities exchange for each other. This exchange value finds its expression in prices. And what are prices?
Prices are wooing glances cast at money by commodities. (Marx)
In money, commodities find an easily divisible and portable means of exchange. But money also measures the value of commodities. So the exchange value of a commodity finds a mirror of its value in money. (Wayne P.8)
Money is the universal mirror or equivalent that keeps company with all other ordinary commodities. It is in fact no more than a commodity itself, because it is a representation of the exchange value of the ordinary commodity.
Money functions as a means of circulation only because in it the values of commodities have independent reality. (Marx)
Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labor embodied in them and the concrete forms of that labor. There is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labor, human labor in the abstract.
So while human labor produces use values on the one hand, on the other, human labor undergoes some sort of “abstraction” and it is this abstract human labor that produces value in commodities. We have now learned that commodities are made up of two parts: use value and exchange value. We have begun to see that their combination in a commodity might not be as harmonious as we first supposed. (Wayne p.12)
Use value and exchange value then are strange bedfellows. They are joined together in the commodity but one is characterized by the principle of quality (use value) and the other by the principle of quantity (exchange value). (Wayne p.13)
But we can already see that the internal contradictions between use value and exchange value, and between concrete labor and abstract labor, are a problem. Marx was convinced that these contradictions, as they developed and deepened, eroded the historic justification for capitalism’s continued existence.
The method of analysis Marx employed is called immanent critique. It starts with a simple category (e.g., the commodity) and gradually “unfolds” into more elaborate and complex webs of categories. It is motivated to do so because this “internal” criticism finds contradictions within and between the categories and discovers aspects of reality that the categories cannot explain. This then motivates the critic to develop new categories or refine old ones so they have greater explanatory power. (Wayne p.14)
It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make exchanges of their own account. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are also their owners. Commodities are things, and therefore without power of resistance against man. … In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such away that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by means of an act done by mutual consent. They must therefore, mutually recognize in each other the rights of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real economic relation between the two. (Wayne p.16)
This circuit of exchanges looks like this:
C – M – C
C = Commodity (labor power)
M = Money
C = Another Commodity (e.g., a coat)
The circuit C-M-C starts with one commodity, and finishes with another, which falls out of circulation and into consumption. Consumption, the satisfaction of wants, in one word, use value, is its end and aim. (Marx)
This circuit of exchange has a number of important features:
1) It begins with one commodity and ends with a completely different commodity.
2) In principle, there is no intrinsic reason why the first commodity and the second commodity, although different in their qualities, are not of equivalent value.
3) This second commodity is withdrawn from circulation and is consumed.
4) The satisfaction of human wants is the end and aim of this circuit of exchange.
the circuit of exchange that characterizes capital. That circuit of exchange looks like this:
M – C – M+
M = Money
C = Commodity
M+ = More Money
The circuit M – C – M+, on the contrary, commences with money and ends with money. Its leading motive, and the goal that attracts it, is therefore more exchange value. (Marx)
This circuit of exchange has a number of important features which contrast with C – M – C, the circuit the majority of people are engaged in:
1) It begins with money and ends with MORE money –money plus.
2) M+ occurs within the sphere of circulation and has no concern with the satisfaction of human wants.
3) The aim of this exchange is to add value to the amount it began with.
4) On the surface, more money or value seems to arise from money itself.
This then is the circuit of exchange that characterizes a small minority of social actors.
The value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains intact while in circulation, but adds to itself a surplus value or expands itself. It is this movement that converts it into capital. (Marx)
The expansion of M into M + is what makes capital capital.
On the surface it appears as if money begets money simply through the process of exchange.
As a periodic increment of the capital advanced, or periodic fruit of capital in process, surplus value acquires the form of a revenue flowing out of capital. (Marx)
Marx contrasts the two circuits of exchange:
The simple circulation of commodities – selling in order to buy – is a means of carrying out a purpose, unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of use value, the satisfaction of wants.
The circulation of money as capital is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement.The circulation of capital has therefore no limits. (Marx)
(Wayne p.27)
Let’s have a look at how the two circuits of exchange are interconnected. The majority of people are involved in the circuit of simple exchange or C – M – C. Their fate is to become directly incorporated into the circuit M – C – M +.Look at C – M in the C – M – C circuit. We have implied that the C being sold for M is the ability to work. Hence the ability to buy the second C and consume its use values (e.g., a winter coat).
Now look at the circuit of capital. Look at the M – C exchange.What is the C that Mr. Moneybags buys? Of course it is that which is sold in the circuit of simple exchange – the ability to work. Work has become a commodity to be purchased. Something wonderful happens, from the perspective of the capitalist when he or she “consumes” this commodity. It leads to M-PLUS.
These and other justifications for the way things are, however, would be less powerful and less persuasive if capitalism were not in some way hardwired to conceal inequalities. This process of concealment is quite unique to our present mode of production.For example, under feudalism, peasants would typically work some of their time on their own small land holdings and some of the time on the land of the lord.While peasants work their own land, they are performing labor that is necessary to support themselves and their families. This Marx calls NECESSARY LABOR. When they are working for the lord,peasants are performing SURPLUS LABOR – that is, they are producing wealth above and beyond what they, the direct producers,need to survive, and that surplus is going to the lord.This exploitation is very clear because the division between the labor that peasants perform for themselves and the labor that they perform for the lord is clearly divided in space and time. Such clarity is,as we shall see, completely missing when it comes to capitalism. (Wayne p.31)
ia600902.us.archive.org/...
Reading schedule:
#GoodMorningMarx @MorningMarx
Day56 041020 Praxis for the Perplexed p354-7 1/5
Day55 031020Praxis for the Perplexed p350-3 1/5
Day54 021020 Praxis for the Perplexed p346-9 1/5
Day53 011020 PraxisforthePerplexed p342-5 1/5
Day52 300920 Praxis for the Perplexed p338-41 1/5
Day50 300920 Praxis for the Perplexed p334-7 1/5
Day 49 290920 Praxis for the Perplexed p330-3 5/5
Day48 270920 PftP p328 3/5
Day47 260920Praxis for the Perplexed p322-5 1/5
Day46 250920Praxis for the Perplexed p318-21 1/5
Day45 240920Praxis for the Perplexed p314-7 1/5
Day44 230920Praxis for the Perplexed p310-3 1/5
Day43 220920Praxis for the Perplexed p306-9 1/5
Day42 210920Praxis f t Perplexed p302-5 1/5
Day41 200920PraxisforthePerplexed p297-301 1/5
Day40 190920Praxis for the Perplexed p294 1/5
Day39 180920Praxis for the Perplexed p290-3 1/5
Day38 170920Praxis for the Perplexed p286-9 1/5
Day37 160920Praxis for the Perplexed p281-4 1/5
Day36 150920Praxis for the Perplexed p277-80 1/5
Day35 140920P.F.T.P p275-8 1/5
Day34 130920Praxis for the Perplexed p271-4 1/5
#WeeklyMarx
AAH summary:
- Installment 7, #GoodMorningMarx Day 48 of Capital v. 1, pp. 299-326. Chp 7 sec 2 partial, Chp 8, Chp 9 sec 1. We have to go back a bit to the start of Chp 7 sec 2: the valorization process.
- Installment 6, Day 41 of Capital v. 1, pgs. 270-298, Chps 6 and most of 7 complete Chp 3, 3:c on "World Money" and stop here.
- Installment 5 130920. reviews Capital vol1.
Marx began a universal inquiry into the labor process as the human transmuting of nature and, being shaped by that dialectical process, implying that each mode of production would have a particularly relationship to ecology. He specified at the end of the section, some features of the labour process under capitalism:
1) the worker gives up control of organizing one's own labor to the capitalist,
2) gives up ownership of the product of labour and all its use values and value since the capitalist has purchased the labour-power. As we see now in the valorization process that the use value of the commodity of labor-power to the capitalist is surplus value. Crucial point. Capitalist aims to produce a use-value in a commodity that has value greater than the sum of the values of the commodities used to produce it, the means of production and the labour-power. The goal is to produce value, a surplus value.
Marx introduces the idea that the process of production as a unity is composed of two dimensions of the labour process and that of creating value. He goes into examples to illustrate process of value creation and begins by calculating the objectified labour in the means of production. There are some questions here about specialized vs general labor here, but Marx insists on the abstract labour time here materialized through the unrest of work into being, motion into objectivity (296).
The key, 301, is that the purchase of a day's labour power exceeds its value when consumed/used by the capitalist and money becomes capital through this process."Every condition of the problem is satisfied while the laws governing the exchange of commodities have not been violated in any way." This resolves the contradictions of being both inside and outside the circulation of commodities. It takes place in the sphere of production where value is made by using labour-power, a special commodity. Past labour in objectified form is enlivened through living labour that valorizes it into capital: value which can "perform its own valorization process, an animated monster which begins to 'work', 'as if its body were by love possessed.'"
Valorization is the value making process continued beyond a definite point of equivalent value for the commodity of labour-power. The capitalist makes sure to organize that process to be efficient, at the standard of what is normally socially necessary.
Chp 8 on Constant Capital and Variable Capital elaborates on the labor process. Constant capital is simply the value of all the means of production in the labour process for production. They are bearers of the past labour but do not create new value which are only transferred by labour which creates value and surplus value but brings forward and conserves the past value that would otherwise be lost. Variable capital can produce new value and surplus value. These two concepts elaborate on those essentially established in the previous chapters but, according to Harvey, the importance of the discussion is to critique the classical political economists concerned with fixed capital costs advanced in production vs capital expended in production processes. Part of the value of the constant capital passes into the product, essentially depreciation, as Marx notes. The value transferred might escape calculation of surplus value--he defers until later resolving this complication. But he uses these two distinctions to formulate the value of the commodity as constant capital (means of production) plus variable capital (labor-power) plus surplus value. The ratio between constant capital and variable capital is an interesting issue and changes according to context: historically, socially, and technically. Technology vs labour intensive forms--an issue emerges about why would technical innovation happen if labour is where surplus value comes from? Marx will talk about this later. For the time-being the ratio of importance is surplus value to variable capital (labor). Hence he will turn to the rate of surplus value or "rate of exploitation"
in Chp. 9, the subject for next week. We are getting to the heart of it now! Keep reading, comrades! Comment, discuss, share #WeeklyMarx
creative accounting, amortizing, and MMT
socialist exploitation (John Roemer) and analytic Marxism
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Amortization of Fixed Capital
an objective economic process of transferring the value of fixed capital to the product produced by the capital or to services as the fixed capital wears out. The necessity of amortization derives from the particular features of fixed capital participation in the production process; that is, it functions over a number of production cycles, maintaining its physical form. A portion of the value of fixed capital proportional to the wear on the capital is embodied within each unit of new product.
[...]
Under socialism, amortization provides for the restitution of the value of withdrawn fixed capital. It reflects the wear on fixed capital and is used for the purposes of correctly figuring aggregate social product and the financial resources channeled into capital investments, major overhauls, and modernization. Amortization is also of importance for calculating product costs, prices, and effectiveness of capital investments, for encouraging the rational use of fixed capital, and for strengthening economic accountability.
Under the conditions of capitalist production, the amortization fund is earmarked for the replacement of fixed capital. In order to understate the actual amounts of profit, capitalists often intentionally deduct into the amortization fund amounts which significantly surpass actual wear, thereby understating actual taxable income. This is also aided by the extremely high amortization rates and advantageous calculation methods permitted in the capitalist nations. These privileges have developed particularly widely under the conditions of state monopolistic capitalism. Here the right of accelerated amortization has been granted to the powerful capitalist monopolies involved primarily in the development of military production. Thus, amortization under capitalism becomes an additional means for enriching the capitalists and for redistributing national income in their favor.
encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/…
encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/...
The term as generally understood refers to systematic misrepresentation of the true income and assets of corporations or other organizations. "Creative accounting" has been at the root of a number of accounting scandals, and many proposals for accounting reform—usually centering on an updated analysis of capital and factors of production that would correctly reflect how value is added.
Newspaper and television journalists have hypothesized that the stock market downturn of 2002 was precipitated by reports of "accounting irregularities" at Enron, Worldcom, and other firms in the United States.
According to critic David Ehrenstein, the term "creative accounting" was first used in 1968 in the film The Producers by Mel Brooks, where it is also known as Hollywood accounting.[3]
en.wikipedia.org/...
In Capital, Marx develops further the ideas contained in the Grundrisse. Now value – and no longer money or exchange value – appears explicitly as the element which, through market mediation, gives the productive activity of individuals its social character. It is in this framework that the concept of fetishism will come to life. Impelled to drive their activities not by the results of their own material development and level of consciousness, but by the presuppositions of the commodities exchange, the producers themselves are caught up in a movement of things. Fetishism is the other name of labor alienation.
Footnote: In fact, Marx uses Entäusserung [alienation] and Entfremdung [estrangement] as synonyms. To pick up a single concept able to express the common content of alienation/estrangement [Entäusserung/Entfremdung], on the one hand, and fetishism [Fetischismus] on the other, we could also recur to a third concept, namely reification [Versachlichung or Verdingerung].
sdonline.org/...
VERSACHLICHUNG AND VERDINGLICHUNG — BASIC CATEGORIES OF MARX'S THEORY OF REIFICATION AND THEIR LOGICAL CONSTRUCTION —
www.jstor.org/…
Tomonaga Tairako, Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies Vol. 48, No. 1 (January 2017), pp. 1-26 (26 pages)
In Uneven Development, a classic in its field, the late Neil Smith offers the first full theory of uneven geographical development, entwining theories of space and nature with a critique of capitalism. Featuring groundbreaking analyses of the production of nature and the politics of scale, Smith’s work anticipated many of the uneven contours that now mark neoliberal globalization. This third edition features an afterword examining the impact of Neil's argument in a contemporary context.
www.versobooks.com/…
The Edinburgh-based band New Urban Frontier took their name from the title of Smith's book The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. Their 2015 album Game of Capital commemorates Smith.[12]
en.wikipedia.org/…
Uneven Development web.archive.org/...
This resource is for those who haven't come across this before, because everyone needs (neo-)"classic comics" for free https://www.academia.edu/34506723/_Rius_Michael_Appignanesi_Marx_for_Beginners_BookZZ_org_
also this introduction to Marx’s Kapital (also free)
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-2ZCqM065WT7tuisv
and then there's the 13-part series by David Harvey https://youtu.be/gBazR59SZXk
en.wikisource.org/...