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Das Kapital Reading Group 2025 – Week 4, Jan 22-28 –Volume 1 Chapters 6, 7, & 8 (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 months ago by Cowbee@hexbear.net to c/theory@hexbear.net
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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.

Congratulations to those who've made it this far! Over the harder stuff, now we are on track to take it easier and digest Capital. The reward for our efforts is significant.

Week 4, Jan 22-28, we are reading Volume 1, Chapters 6, 7 & 8

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)

2024 Archived Discussions

If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.

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 – Week 38 – Week 39 – Week 40 – Week 41 – Week 42 – Week 43 – Week 44 – Week 45 – Week 46 – Week 47 – Week 48 – Week 49 – Week 50 – Week 51 – Week 52

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.

Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3

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[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 13 points 2 months ago

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 @khizuo@hexbear.net @glimmer_twin@hexbear.net @Sebrof@hexbear.net @CommieTurtle@lemmy.ml

[–] devils_dust@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Not directly related to this week's chapters but a question that came up when discussing Das Kapital irl: did you change your intuition / understanding about certain Marxist terms after reading it?

What motivates this question is that I previously thought that commodity fetishism meant something like "people ascribe magic to their possessions", and I believed it was very closely related to some moral condemnations of consumerism. After reading the term in the book, with the context around it, now it feels more like "the commodity form and its commerce superficially looks liberating, but it constrains us all in strange ways".

(Or maybe I just misread it again, who knows?)

What were your experiences with it? Did you go through something similar?

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I previously thought that commodity fetishism meant something like "people ascribe magic to their possessions"

This is correct, except it’s not about consumerism.

In the 19th century, European scholarship on “primitive” societies was Eurocentric and racist. Using manmade talismans, dolls, and amulets, these societies attributed supernatural properties to objects which the literature referred to as fetishes. There is a degree of condescension here as the external observer sees through the fetish as a mere material object without real powers. It is easily concluded by the European intellectual that these societies are backward and irrational, unlike supposedly rational bourgeois society.

Marx analyzed bourgeois society from the same external standpoint. He found something analogous to the spiritual fetish: the commodity. The commodity, by all means a man-made object, is nonetheless regarded by bourgeois society as something which moves by its own accord, independent of the human will. Is this not the same as a fetish? Is not bourgeois society just as “backward” as any other?

Commodity fetishism is about two things. First, there are the perceived “magical” properties described above. Second, and more importantly, the commodity form generates its own fetish by obfuscating its true nature, by portraying human relations as relations between commodities. Commodity fetishism is not something that we can snap out of as participants. It expresses a reality of our conditions of life under capitalism, because indeed production relations are expressed through commodities. Rather than being irrational, it is quite rational to treat commodities as having minds of their own, although we know that they are really simple material objects.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

The fetishism of commodities is the almost supernatural aspect of them that compels us to move in specific manners. You were partially correct originally, in that it's almost supernatural without analyzing commodity production and exchange.

[–] StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

"Alienation" is being reworked in my head as the reading advances.

[–] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

An 18 year old coworker that just started is already taken to my reading list.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

Nice!

[–] StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Now we are cooking with fire" is my vibe from my reading today.

This weeks chapters were very satisfying to read, very comprehendable. Might come back to this with a second comment later in the week after I've let my mind work on it a bit.

But what came to my mind this time is the way Marx writes with such admiration and dare I say love for the working class, I can feel it. He elevates us in his words.

And the picture he paints about progress and human labor, it's beautiful to me. Reminds me of my own personal autistic joy I often get when existing amongst all the wonders or human labor, stuff that now feels so mundane and then I realize: None of this was here, we did this. As a collective we now travel in the lanscape in metal tubes like it's nothing, but it was all made, by us. It's amazing, because it is so mundane.

I am really getting into it now. And appreciate Marx the storyteller more and more each week. I am enlightened and entertained.

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

the way Marx writes with such admiration and dare I say love for the working class, I can feel it. He elevates us in his words.

Reminds me of Marx’s preface to the French translation of volume 1:

To the citizen Maurice Lachâtre

Dear Citizen,

I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of “Das Kapital” as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else.

This Lachâtre was one of the French communists who was exiled after the Paris Commune (not sure how directly involved). Marx obviously held a deal of respect for the man who was directly involved in the working class struggle, despite not being an academic on the same level as Marx.

It’s also touching that Marx prioritized, over technical or academic accuracy, the clarity of his ideas to the working class. It shows his commitment to the belief that philosophy cannot be contemplative only — it’s proved in practice like any real science.

[–] StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

Oh this is amazing.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I was reading last year's comments from Capital and I found one by @Vampire@hexbear.net that I wanted to comment on, if it's okay. Their comment was

Has anyone discussed how the (Marxist) concept of 'surplus value' corresponds to the (non-Marxist economic) concept of 'value added'?

John Smith in his Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis makes the same point, and it is especially of interest to him in national accounts within and especially between nations.

Value-added shouldn't be seen as value that capitalists somehow add to the product, either because they 'organized' the process, took the risk, perfomed advertising, etc., which is how orthodox economists describe it.

The "value added" should be, according to Smith and I agree, thought of as "value captured" ... or just surplus value.

When workers produce a product, typically in the Global South, their productive labor is what creats (actually adds) value to the product. Their labor transfers the value of the means of production and also adds value via their direct labor on the objects of labor which produces a new use-value.

The capitalists, typically in the Global North or perhaps some Global South affiliate to a northern firm, pay the workers their wage. With this wage the workers can buy their means of subsistence to reproduce their labor-power. The value of this means of subsistence is the value of labor-power as Marx mentions in chapter 6

But, as we know from chapter 8, "the activity of labor-power, therefore, not only reproduces it's own value, but produces value over and above this," - surplus value. But where does this surplus value come into play?

When the capitalists take the product and sell it, typically at northern prices in the context of imperialism, the money they make from the sales (after deducing the costs of the wages and means of production and other costs - taxes, perhaps future investments etc.) are called "value added", but this isn't value they've added! What is it? Well the capitalists take the money from the "value added" and use it to purchase, and consume, other products of labor - products of labor that have value - products of labor that the working class, as an aggregate, can't afford after spending their wages on their means of subsistence. This "value added", when in money-form, is used by capitalists to consume surplus value that workers have produced elsewhere in the economy.

"Value added" is value added indeed, it's surplus value that the workers have added to the economy that capitalists are able to capture from us. Hence value added is actually value extracted.

But, this exploitation is masked in orthodox economics and viewed as value that the capitalists somehow rightfully deserve. They claim it is the capitalists' value added, not our surplus value exploited.

From Smith

spoiler

...just how do “companies in developed economies” “extract product” from workers in Bangladesh, China, and elsewhere? The only visible contribution these workers make to the bottom line of firms in “developed economies” is the flow of repatriated profits from FDI, but not one penny of H&M’s or General Motors’ profits can be traced to their independent suppliers in Bangladesh or Mexico; all of it appears instead as value added by their own activities. This conundrum, inexplicable to mainstream economic theory and therefore ignored, can only be resolved by redefining value-added as value captured; in other words, a firm’s “value-added” does not represent the value it has produced, but the portion of total, economy-wide value it succeeds in capturing through exchange, including value extracted from living labor in far-flung countries. Not only is value capture not identical to value creation, as mainstream theory maintains, there is no correlation between them—banks, for example, generate no value but capture a great deal of it. Since a country’s GDP is nothing else than the sum of its firms’ value-added, GDP statistics systematically diminish the real contribution of southern nations to global wealth and exaggerate that of the “developed” countries, thereby veiling the increasingly parasitic, exploitative, and imperialist relationship between them. I call this the GDP illusion.

Also, and this is my own take here so take it with a critical eye, the above description of value added is how I understand Wright's concept of the capitalist consumption matrix and the super-integrated labour value. This super-integrated labor value is an accounting of labor value which counts the surplus value produced in the economy which appears as value added, and hence allows natural prices to correspond with value without a transformation proble... but this is getting in the weeds and is one of many interpretations of the weeds. As already mentioned here, others disagree with Wright's framework and there are other models of these weeds such as the standard interpretation (which can be found in Howard & King's The Political Economy of Marx), TSSI (tempral single system interpetation), the Sraffian/neo-Ricardian school which ends up rejecting value as in anyway tied to price, whatever school Duncan Foley is in... like I said this is getting into the weeds I'm a novice explorer. So this last paragraph isn't gospel.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I made a diagram to help keep track of the how Means of Production, Instruments of Production, Labor Process, etc. etc. fit together. This is also taking some definitions from the Kozlov book I've mentioned before, as well as Althusser's On the Reproduction of Capitalism. I thought I'd share it in case others find it useful.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

Excellent resource, comrade!

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

Some comments about the relations of production including relations of consumption, distribution, and exchange.

Chapter 7 mentions how the labor process is also a consumption process, labor-power is consumed as well are objects of labor which serve as accessories. And I was remined of an entire section in the Gundrisse where Marx discusses the inter-relationships between production, consumption, exchange and distribution, while still relaying that each is an moment of production

Some quotes from Gundrisse

spoiler

Production creates the objects which correspond to the given needs; distribution divides them up according to social laws; exchange further parcels out the already divided shares in accord with individual needs; and finally, in consumption, the product steps outside this social movement and becomes a direct object and servant of individual need, and satisfies it in being consumed.

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 also immediately consumption. Twofold consumption, subjective and objective: the individual not only develops his abilities in production, but also expends them, uses them up in the act of production, just as natural procreation is a consumption of life forces. Secondly: consumption of the means of production...

Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant. It is clear that in taking in food, for example, which is a form of consumption, the human being produces his own body. But this is also true of every kind of consumption which in one way or another produces human beings in some particular aspect. Consumptive production.... Production, then, is also immediately consumption, consumption is also immediately production. ... Production mediates consumption; it creates the latter’s material; without it, consumption would lack an object. But consumption also mediates production, in that it alone creates for the products the subject for whom they are products... each supplies the other with its object (production supplying the external object of consumption, consumption the conceived object of production); but also, each of them, apart from being immediately the other, and apart from mediating the other, in addition to this creates the other in completing itself, and creates itself as the other.

The category of wages, similarly, is the same as that which is examined under a different heading as wage labour: the characteristic which labour here possesses as an agent of production appears as a characteristic of distribution. If labour were not specified as wage labour, then the manner in which it shares in the products would not appear as wages; as, for example, under slavery. ... The relations and modes of distribution thus appear merely as the obverse of the agents of production. An individual who participates in production in the form of wage labour shares in the products, in the results of production, in the form of wages. The structure [Gliederung] of distribution is completely determined by the structure of production. Distribution is itself a product of production, not only in its object, in that only the results of production can be distributed, but also in its form, in that the specific kind of participation in production determines the specific forms of distribution, i.e. the pattern of participation in distribution.

But (1) there is no exchange without division of labour, whether the latter is spontaneous, natural, or already a product of historic development; (2) private exchange presupposes private production; (3) the intensity of exchange, as well as its extension and its manner, are determined by the development and structure of production. For example. Exchange between town and country; exchange in the country, in the town etc. Exchange in all its moments thus appears as either directly comprised in production or determined by it.

The conclusion we reach is not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity. Production predominates not only over itself, in the antithetical definition of production, but over the other moments as wel

[–] blackbread@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 months ago

These chapters (especially 8) exposing the actual behaviors of the capitalist class (e.g. brutal overworking by extending the workday, trying to redefine 10 years old as an adult, etc).

I found the discussion about "the last hour" very interesting. The idea is that the capitalist is, in some sense, paid last -- so if you ever gave the workers even an hour off then it's all coming directly from the "poor" capitalists pocket book. And thus the morality that any kind of break or holiday is cheating a capitalist out of their god-given right to profit. The idea dovetails nicely into the reality: capitalists want their dead capital to always be being rejuvenated (i.e. valorized) by the living labour, at all times and in ever greater quantities. And it's for this reason that Marx called them vampires. I think the description is exceedingly apt, whereas before I thought it was poetic.

The other (more worrying) thought of mine -- Marx shows how capital simple consumes humans. Especially when pennyless foreign workers are lined up to get the job, and then also with widespread child labour. I wonder if the west will return to widespread child labour as it becomes more openly racist and facist in response to its waning imperialism. I don't see any reasons why it wouldn't.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

Diving further and further to find Surplus Value extraction, and separating Constant and Variable Capital. Again, I want to stress that Marx's method of analysis at display really helps elucidate the various sides of concepts I thought familiar, the new angles further and further elaborating and crystalizing my knowledge. Really cool to see, and much easier to digest than Chapters 1-3.