Notes from the 2021 Zoom and in-person Capital study group

On abstract and concrete labour as social relations, and on chapter 1 section 3 and chapters 2 and 3

From the Loomio for the 2020 Zoom study group on Capital volume 1

Comments on: exchange-value and value; “universal social labour”; labour; social relations and material relations; labour vs labour-power; productive and unproductive labour; commodity fetishism.

Notes for a study session on chapter 3

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Harvey ch.11; Capital ch.26-33

Compared to the feudal serf, the wage worker is more free in a straightforward sense. And also more free in a sarcastic or ironic sense.

Harvey ch.10-11; Capital ch.25 (and ch.32)

I think chapter 32 is best read as a summary postscript to chapter 25, though Harvey discusses in his ch.11.

Harvey ch.09; Capital ch. 16-24

Productive labour produces surplus-value for capital. In chapter 16 Marx defines another category of labour, which is social labour, and abstract labour, and labour for capital, but from which capital does not extract surplus value.

Harvey ch.06: Capital ch.12-14

Marx identifies three stages of development of capitalist production prior to machine industry.

28-35: Banking, money, and credit

These chapters are messy. A big part is played by often-repetitious discussions of the 1847 crisis and economists’ controversies about it.

27: How credit reshapes society

Marx concludes this chapter by declaring: “The credit system… develop[s] the incentive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling, and… reduce[s] more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, constitute[s] the form of transition to a new mode of production”.

20: Merchant capital before capitalist production

Merchant capital is older than capitalist production. For its existence it requires only the more or less extensive circulation of commodities, irrespective of how those commodities are produced.