This is the fourth set of notes for a reading group on Marx’s Capital, and includes a Volume I refresher for further reading of Volume II. There are links to earlier posts and texts that may be useful.
Marx does try to address Capital logically and David Harvey, in his interpretation, tries to frame it syllogistically where we can reason from its dialectical logic. For example, generality, particularity, singularity, and some implication for universality are identified his critique of a political economy that some might call classical, and have evolved into a neoclassical framework. That framework has interlocking sectors, where “production, distribution, exchange and consumption form a regular syllogism; production is the generality, distribution and exchange the particularity, and consumption the singularity in which the whole is joined together.” Capital and labor facilitate the dynamic relations of this system, and Marx tried to provide a means for assessing the critical analysis of its operations including its historical crises.
Marx established his new political-economic science through a critique of classical political economy rather than through direct historical, anthropological and statistical enquiry and induction.
This critique, most explicitly attempted in Theories of Surplus Value but also permanently present in Capital and the Grundrisse, accords a good deal of authority (some would argue far too much, and there are quite a few instances where I agree with that criticism) to the collective understandings of bourgeois political economy and bourgeois representations (as with, for example, the reports of the factory inspectors in England, the country where industrial capitalism was, according to Marx,
most advanced).
So how does he construe the general approach of the bourgeois political economists? And how did classical political economy frame its subject?
“Production,” he says in the Grundrisse,
appears as the point of departure, consumption as the conclusion, distribution and exchange as the middle.… Thus production, distribution, exchange and consumption form a regular syllogism; production is the generality, distribution and exchange the particularity, and consumption the singularity in which the whole is joined together.… Production is determined by the general natural laws, distribution by social accident.… exchange stands between the two as formal social movement; and the concluding act, consumption, which is conceived not only as a terminal point but also as an end in itself, actually belongs outside of economics except insofar as it reacts in turn upon the point of departure and initiates the whole process anew. (Grundrisse, 108–9)
This statement is foundational for understanding Marx’s approach in Capital. Notice, then, the distinctions here invoked between
- generalities (production), which are deterministic and lawlike;
- particularities (exchange and distribution), which are accidental and conjunctural (for example, outcomes of social struggles that depend on the balance of forces deployed); and
- singularities (consumption), which I take to be unpredictable and potentially chaotic.
Note also that the singularities of consumption belong largely “outside of economics” (and, presumably, within the realm of history as suggested on the first page of Capital). The general framework suggested here is laid out in Figure 1.
While this syllogism “is admittedly a coherence,” it is, says Marx, “a shallow one.” So he rejects it in favor of a dialectical conception of how production, distribution, exchange and consumption might be brought together within the totality of relations comprising a capitalist mode of production. After many pages discussing the inner and dialectical relations between, for example, production and consumption, and then production and distribution, and finally production and exchange, he reaches his conclusion. Production, distribution, exchange and consumption “form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity.… Mutual interaction takes place between the different moments. This is the case with every organic whole” (Grundrisse, 99–100).
The organic whole (totality) of a capitalist mode of production that Marx has in mind is not purely Hegelian (though it may well derive from revolutionizing Hegel’s conceptions rather than simply turning them right-side-up). Its structure is ecosystemic, comprising relations within what Gramsci and Lefebvre call an “ensemble” or Deleuze an “assemblage” of moments.
“Nothing simpler for a Hegelian than to posit production and consumption as identical,” complains Marx. “And this has been done not only by socialist belletrists but by prosaic economists themselves, e.g. Say” (Grundrisse, 93–4).
David Harvey, A Companion To Marx's Capital, Volume 2 (2013)
(h/t Ed George)
Capital Volume 1, Chapter 7: The Labour Process and the Valorisation Process
The use-value of labour-power is labour; its buyer consumes it by setting the seller to work. For the worker, to embody her labour in commodities she must embody it in use-values: that is what she is set to work to do by the capitalist. We start here, then, by first considering the labour-process itself, in a general sense, independently of its manifestation in any concrete social formation.
More (pdf: 99 KB): capital_v1_ch7
Capital Volume 1, Chapter 8: Constant Capital and Variable Capital
We have seen that the value of a commodity comes from two sources: from the new value created by the worker by means of her labour, and from the value of the means of production, which is preserved, and passed on, to the finished product. This double result arises from the dual character of labour. Insofar as it is concrete labour, directed at a specific activity, it preserves and passes on existing value; to the extent that it is abstract social labour, it creates new value.
More (pdf: 85 KB): capital_v1_ch8
Capital Volume 1, Chapter 9: The Rate of Surplus Value
1 The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power
If:
C = total capital advanced,
c = the portion of capital advanced which is turned into constant capital,
v = the portion of capital advanced which is expended on labour-power,
s = surplus labour, and
C΄ = the value of the final product,
then, evidently,
C = c + v, and
C΄ = (c + v) + s
But where does s come from? From the expenditure of the labour-power in production over and beyond the limit set by its price (i.e., here, value).
More (pdf: 101 KB): capital_v1_ch9
Capital Volume 1, Chapter 10: The Working Day
1 The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power
Let us assume a given value of labour-power, say, 6 hours of labour-time a day (i.e. 6 hours of labour-time are socially necessary to produce the daily subsistence of the worker). These 6 hours are represented below by the line A – B. The line B – C represents the time which the working day is prolonged beyond this necessary labour of 6 hours:
Day 1 (7 hours) A – – – – – – B – C
Day 2 (9 hours) A – – – – – – B – – – C
Day 3 (12 hours) A – – – – – – B – – – – – – C
Evidently, the ratio BC/AB gives us the rate of exploitation of labour, the rate of surplus-value.
More (pdf: 83 KB): capital_v1_ch10
Capital Volume 2, Chapter 7: Turnover Time and Number of Turnovers
As we have seen, the total time capital takes to describe its cycle is the sum of its production time and circulation time.
Here, we are concerned with the reproduction of capital:
If production has a capitalist form, so too will reproduction. Just as in the capitalist mode of production the labour process appears only as a means towards the process of valorisation, so in the case of reproduction it appears only as a means of reproducing the value advanced as capital, i.e. as self-valorising value.
More (pdf: 86 KB): capital_v2_ch7
Observing that capital, as it loses its monetary form, is split up and directed into different forms of existence and transformed into different elements of the production process, Marx distinguishes between two different parts of capital:
variable capital: that part of capital which is transformed into labour-power, and which consequently undergoes a quantitative increase in its value in production.
constant capital: that part of which is turned into means of production, and which undergoes no quantitative alteration of value in production.
More (pdf: 144 KB): capital_v2_ch8
The overall turnover of capital advanced is its average turnover. Although apparently simple to calculate, there arise certain complications which must be resolved.
More (pdf: 72 KB): capital_v2_ch9
Capital Volume 2, Chapter 10: Theories of Fixed and Circulating Capital. The Physiocrats and Adam Smith
Quesnay conceived of the distinction between fixed and circulating capital as that between avances primitives (original advances) and avances annuelles (annual advances). Correctly, he presented the distinction as one within productive capital, i.e. capital already incorporated into the production process. Quesnay also (correctly) conceived of the distinction as a distinction between the different ways these two elements of productive capital entered the value of the finished product, the value of one being completely replaced in a year, that of the other piecemeal over a longer period.
The above nine moments in the path of argument can be seen in this kind of order
This is a (not comprehensive or complete) diagram of the circuit(s) of capital explained by Marx.
Its useful to break apart each exchange (signified by arrows) into separate chunks. We start off with M -> C. This is the exchange of Money for Commodity, in this context of production being the purchase of commodities for production by the capitalist. The final basic exchange going on here is from C -> M', making the basic formula M -> C -> M'. Using Money (M) to exchange for a Commodity (C) which you then exchange for more Money (M'). This is for Marx the fundamental cycle capital takes: buying in order to sell at a higher price. In between M -> C -> M' however in this diagram it is expanded to "M -> C ... P ... C' - M'" which is the more complete cycle of money-capital given by Marx. This expansion explains more exactly how C makes M into M', or makes money into more money. That is, the Commodity (C) goes through the Production process (P) and turns the Commodity into a Commodity of more value (C'), which thus means it can be exchanged for more Money (M'). Thus that is the whole cycle of capital: Money is exchanged for a Commodity which is then put into the Production process to make a Commodity of more value which is the exchanged for more Money than we started out with.
The part which comes off from the top of C is showing what exactly the C is that is being bought by a capitalist. The C which is bought by a capitalist in order to engage in production is means of production and labor-power, L used for labor-power, MP used for means of production. It seems that the diagram only has labor power there, probably to demonstrate the point that labor power has its own separate circulation itself. You start off as a laborer selling your Labor power (L) for Money (M) expressed as wages (L -> M). You then use that Money (M) to buy Commodities (C), making the whole formula of labor power L -> M -> C. In continuing the formula to L -> M -> C ... P* ... LP * , which I don't recall seeing notated like this before, I'm pretty sure the diagram creator is trying to show how this exchange of money to commodity then restarts the cycle. Buying a Commodity makes the Production process (P * ) continue, which presupposes the need for Labor power (LP*). The cycle of buying commodities with the money you receive for labor power maintains labor power through the production process.
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In Fred Moseley and Tony Smith’s Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Logic: A Reexamination we are reminded that Marx emphasizes the universality of value theory is located in material elements and that surplus is measurable.
Patrick Murray’s contribution (‘The Secret of Capital’s Self-Valorisation“ Laid Bare": How Hegel Helped Marx to Overturn Ricardo’s Theory of Profit’) argues that Marx’s appropriation of Hegel’s Logic of Essence enabled him to show that profit is the necessary form of appearance of surplus-value. In overturning the existing theories of profit, Marx overturns classical value theory, which explains individual prices as expressions of individual (labour) values, replacing it with a holistic labour-theory of value that holds only for the total capital. For individual capitals, profit is in fact proportional to capital’s magnitude —and, apparently, nothing else. Capital’s expansion seems to be its doing; capital appears to be a self-valorising‘ automatic subject’. In overlapping the presentation of capital, which appears to mimic the self-sufficient movement of Hegel’s Concept, with the presentation of surplus-value as the essence that necessarily appears as profit, Marx ‘lays bare’ capital’s secret: capital increases in value (is valorised) only by appropriating the unpaid labour of wage-workers. (p.10)
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