On Preface: Inquiry Versus Exposition

The famous passage from the preface of the German Edition is as follows:
"Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction." p.28
In light with this passage how can we interpret the way Marx began its exposition in Volume 1. He seems to strangely starts with the discussion about commodity after years of years of reshuffling of Volume 1. Why? Could have been better if he had began the discussion in a different way?

Comment on Park's comment on commodity Money and Gold Standard

Park,
This is an interesting observation. As far as I remember, we had a similar discussion in one of our Grundrisse discussion. Although I partially agree with the idea that during the crisis, demand for commodity money increases, which means that fiat money system may have problems, these may not strongly support some Marxist's position that commodity money is necessary to anchor capitalism or fiat money may not survive. This is a huge topic. I guess, we can discuss this issue further at our face to face meeting.
For now, I would like rise a few points.
1-From a Marxian perspective, the commodity money's value (as a commodity) should come from the socially necessary time embodied in it. However, how can we explain the current price of gold in terms of labor theory of value? I feel that the gold prices are mainly driven by speculative purposes as in the case of the price of any other financial assets. So, for me, it would be better to treat gold as another form of financial asset (though it has a tangible character) due to the fact that there is no relation whatsoever between the price of gold and its underlying fundamental value.
2-Furthermore, during the crisis, the demand for treasury bills and bonds went hand in hand with very high demand for gold . That’s why, although all other interest rates were rising during the crisis, the treasury bills and bond interest rates were at their historical low levels. They are still very low. Under current system, treasury bills or/ bonds can be considered a form of claim in terms of paper money (fiat money). It is not linked to gold or any other commodity money. So, how can this be explained in relation to commodity money? I do not have an exact answer. But, I think, It shows that high gold prices may not always an indication of decrease in appetite for fiat money.
3-Capitalism, to be able to function in a worldwide scale ,needs several different institutional structures. In a Polanyian sense, one of the key institutions is a well established monetary system either based on gold standard or Bretton woods type of mixture, or current fiat money. However, as we know from history, pure gold system restricts the trade and exchanges in a way that total quantity of gold restricts the expansion . That’s why capitalism needs much more flexible worldwide monetary system which is suitable to its main tendency of “nestling everywhere and settling everywhere”. Bretton Wood system partially meets this. However, under strain, it works exactly as a gold standard due to the fact that dollar (main currency) is supported by gold reserves. I can argue that fiat system is the most developed and sophisticated system which is in line with the thrust of capitalism for expansio. However, it is also prone to several other problems. There is no anchor within the system and those countries who have world currency privileges (due to their hegemonic or semi-hegemonic position) have enormous amount of power. And, Fiat money system is much more prone to fluctuations etc.

In this sense, for me, commodity money system, mixed system, fiat money system should be discussed as historical and institutional episodes. So, it is not clear to me, a current developments can support the idea that money can be only in commodity money form. Indeed, I can even argue that given the development of capitalism, commodity money can be only burden to capitalist development. It does not have fluidity to support the functioning of current capitalism though fiat money has all sorts of its own problems..In short, Capitalism cannot return to commodity money.

What other people think….?

Rise in the price of gold and Marx's commodity money theory

Last week all news media were crazy about the gold price skyrocketing over $1,250 per ounce, the highest price ever. Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the connection between money and gold has officially disappeared. However, the demand for gold as a storage of value continued to exist; especially so at the time of crisis. And we have observed the price of gold soaring during the last couple of years marked by consecutive blows of financial crisis and sovereign crisis with tumbling of euro and stagnating dollar. Does this lend support to Marx's commodity money theory, as presented in the first three chapters, to any meaningful extent?

As we know, there are largely two responses to Schumpeterian critique of Marx's money theory as metallist: 1) Entirely reject Marx's money theory as being outdated in the contemporary capitalism where gold does not function as money anymore. 2) Explain that within Marx's theory non-commodity - e.g. fiat money anchored on government credibility not on material, metalic ground - can also function as money.

In this debate of 'commodity vs. non-commodity money theory,' the core controversy would be whether money itself necessarily has to have an intrinsic value or not within Marx's theoretical system. And some implications from the recent soaring of gold price seem to be the following: First, an artificial situation, where valueless non-commodity is assigned an essential function of money such as measure of value and storage of value, cannot be sustained especially during the time of (sovereign) crisis. Second, as commodity money theorists argue, if the circulation of non-commodity money is a transitory and unusual phenomenon relying upon the government credibility, which can possibly be subject to question and finally collapse, then something like the recent rise in the demand for gold at the expense of government-printed money or government bond may be repeated in a much more violent way anytime in the future.

Capital reading group

This blog is home to the online Capital Volume 1 reading group, running through August 2010. More soon!

Circulation labour is both necessary and unproductive

My thoughts on the question Iren posed in her notes below, i.e. "If circulation is socially necessary, a necessary condition for capital’s reproduction, on what grounds does Marx argue that it does not create value? Can his argument about specificity of use-value of commodity labour power be such a criterion? What is the difference between being socially necessary and value positing? Is his argument convincing?" (And at the last meeting we spent most of time on this issue.)

To rephrase the question, why does Marx treat production and circulation asymmetrically, i.e. one adds value while the other doesn't, when he admits that both are necessary for the reproduction of the economy?

I think we already know that Marx is implying 'necessary' in a different sense for production and circulation. As for production, it is necessary in the sense that it creates value through affecting use value; as for circulation, it is necessary in that it changes form of value, or realizes value already produced in production.

(Footnote: When Marx contrasts production and circulation, I think he is referring to circulation in a restricted sense of the word in that it involves only formal changes of value between money and commodity without affecting use-value at all. Thus when I say circulation I mean pure circulation as buying and selling excluding storage and transportation which, as Marx writes, are part of the production process disguised in circulation process, and therefore do add value.)

So, as Marx argues in Volume 2 of Capital, workers employed in circulation process is necessary and at the same time unproductive.

Marx has an interesting analogy in Volume 2:

Labour employed in the circulation process "behaves somewhat like the 'work of combustion' involved in setting light to a material that is used to produce heat. This work does not itself produce any heat, although it is a necessary moment of the combustion process." (208)

Now if our question is one of more fundamental type, i.e. "but still, why production, not circulation, as a site where labour is productive?" then I think the fact that value and use-value constitute dual nature of commodity, that thus there is no value creation without adding or conserving (in case of storage and transportation) use-value, and that (pure) circulation does not add or conserve use-value is enough to ground Marx's argument.

Grundrisse, p. 602-635

Here is my outline of the reading

1. Critique of Malthus, on three grounds (p. 605-607).
- First, an analysis should be historical, i.e. phenomena that can seem ahistorical (overpopulation, in case of Malthus) do have a specificity given to them by a particular mode of production of which they are an element. They are “historically determined relations”.
- Second, the role of social mediations: population needs to be analyzed in its relationship to employment, not agricultural products.
- Third, theory of rent (not discussed).
He also seems to argue (as a part of the 1st argument), that human phenomena are socially determined, hence, have only immanent, inner barriers, whereas natural phenomena have a social, i.e. outer, determination (p. 607).
Q: Is it convincing?

2. Smith’s concept of “work as sacrifice” (p. 610-614).
- Smith correctly captures only a specific historical form of the relationship (that of wage labour, slavery, etc.), but not the property of labour in general. For Marx, the latter is “self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom”, although at the same time “the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion” (p. 611).
- He also correctly captures worker’s subjective attitude to work, in this sense, it is a psychological theory.
- For Marx, Smith’s concept of labour is negative, whereas it is indeed “a positive, creative activity”. To create value, labour should be more than just a sacrifice – it requires social mediation (subject-subject relationship) and worker’s relationship to his product (subject-object relationship). Determination of value by labour time can be done only based on the second approach.

3. Role of additional demand (from J. St. Mill): it increases output by 1) realizing the value of inventories that can be reinvested; 2) creating conditions for reconversion of financial assets into productive capital, hence, raising profit mass by the difference between the profit rate and the interest rate, times the volume of capital invested; 3) expanded accumulation by means of borrowing, with the same additional profit (p. 618). Notice, expanded reproduction based on rechanneling own funds and borrowing results in the same increase of profit, i.e. Mill is aware of the cost of capital idea.
Q: Mill implicitly assumes that the return on production is higher than the interest rate, otherwise his second argument would not hold. Does it always have to be the case though?

4. Circulation (p. 624-635).
- Does not create value, hence, circulation costs – costs of realization of value – are a deduction from the created value. Hence, costs of circulation are faux frais.
- Costs of circulation arise not from division of labour and necessity of exchange in general, but from their capitalist form. They stem from a necessary change in form of capital.
- In socialism, communal consumption replaces exchange.
- Circulation is a limit of production, in that sense, “circulation time becomes a determinant moment for labour time, for the creation of value. The independence of labour time is thereby negated, and the production process is itself posited as determined by exchange” (p. 628).
- “Magnitude of the capital can be replaced by the velocity of turnover” (p. 630). An n-time increase in the volume of capital generates the same mass of profit as capital turning over n times faster during the same time period. Nevertheless, if one accounts for a possibility of reinvestment after each turnover period, the smaller capital with higher turnover rate will produce more profit.
- Q1: If circulation is socially necessary, a necessary condition for capital’s reproduction, on what grounds does Marx argue that it does not create value? Can his argument about specificity of use-value of commodity labour power be such a criterion? What is the difference between being socially necessary and value positing? Is his argument convincing?
- Q2: Marx’s criterion of value creation is not whether activity is performed in the sphere of production or exchange, but whether it affects use-value of commodity (e.g., transportation, storage, etc.). Where is the boundary between activities affecting use-value in circulation (hence, productive of value) and those not affecting it? Is there such a boundary?

A few smaller points.

1. One of the reasons making the emergence of credit necessary is a difference in reproduction time of different individual capitals (p. 603). Hodgskin mistakenly takes this condition as a prerequisite for money. But it should be credit, not money.
2. Marx seems to argue that any theory is always written from a class perspective, consciously or not (p. 605).
3. An interesting observation that a mode of suspension of some barriers is their generalization (e.g., money, credit) (p. 623).

Malthus, surplus population, etc.

On reading pages 602-635 of Grundrisse, I found the following points worth emphasizing:

(1) Critique of Malthus' theory of population (which even Ricardo had used): the two main points of Marx's critique being (1) theory of population is not ahistorical as Malthus thinks, every mode of production has its own theory of population, and (2) Malthus' theory implicitly assumes full employment of labour, an assumption that is now ubiquitous in neoclassical economics (here again, the point is to realize that the relationship between the means of subsistence and population is mediated through the relations of production; it is not direct as Malthus assumes). Interesting aside: Malthus's theory is not his own! He borrowed a lot from James Steuart, I think.

(2) Surplus population or the industrial reserve army of labour: the mains idea here, to my mind, which Marx developed more fully in Chapter 25, Vol 1 of Capital, is that capitalism, as a mode of production always needs a substantial body of surplus population of workers (the industrial reserve army of labour) for its stability and continued existence; the process of capital accumulation, in fact, produces this surplus population over and over again through the displacement of labour by machinery. Since the unemployed are only a small part of the reserve army of labour, the study of the latter should replace the more restricted study of unemployment; this is one of the differences, to my mind, between a Keynesian and a Marxian approach to the study of labour underutilization.

(3) Critique of Smith?s theory of "labour as sacrifice": I found this point absolutely fascinating; when one grasps the positive, liberating aspect of labour, as Marx emphasizes, one is immediately able to see the idiocy of all of modern neoclassical macroeconomics that is based on the so-called labour/leisure choice.

(4) There is a nice discussion pertaining to the turnover time of capital (as the sum of production time and circulation time); the example where the annual rate of profit increases because of the increase in the turnover time of capital is illuminating.

(5) Cost of circulation as deductions from surplus value: the important point here is that exchange does not create value and hence the part of total social (labour) time that is devoted to circulation is a cost from the point of view of society, is a deduction from social surplus value. (Important exception: Transportation of goods from one location to another is not to be considered as circulation; it is a part of production and adds value. This has a nice contemporary ring: state contingent commodity markets!)

single-system argument in Marx

Marx seems to be making an argument in line with the so-called 'single system' approach in pages 423-434, where he criticizes Proudhon's explanation of overproduction. Proudhon understands overproduction to occur because capitalist adds interest and profit to the real value of product, i.e. its price is an overcharge on top of its real value, and as a consequence 'the worker cannot buy back his product.'

Marx counter-argues that capitalists' profit does not come from overcharging, and that surplus-value is already included in the value of the product.

There he makes several interesting statements:

"It might be said that necessary labour time (i.e. the wage) ... is .. determined by the prices of [subsistence goods] which already include profit." (p. 424)

"It is clear ... that the wage paid by the [capitalist] to his workmen must be high enough to buy the necessary [subsistence good], regardless of what profit for the capitalist may be included in its price." (425)

These seem to be consistent with the way the value of variable capital is determined not by the value of wage goods but by wage within the New Interpretation by Foley, etc.

Marx makes comments: "The puzzle arises simply because (1) price and value are being mixed up; (2) relations are brought in which are irrelevant to the determination of value of such." (425)

The first part is obvious from the above citations. 'Relations' referred in the second part seem to imply those which make price deviates from value, such as competition, 'fraud, reciprocal chicanery,' etc.

In sum, in these pages I read the single-system argument of Marx's as follows (citing without notice):

1) The determination of prices is founded on the determination of values.

2) But new elements enter in, and the price, not merely being the value expressed in money, but becomes further determined as itself a specific magnitude.

3) "Necessary labour time" i.e. the value of variable capital is determined by the prices of wage goods.

Grundrisse, pp 386-423

Short note – few thoughts (Grundrisse, pp 386-423)

1. The necessary of the working day will shorten by a rise in the productivity of labour, only if the latter touches the means of reproduction of the labour-force. A rise in the productivity in the industry of jewelry would have no affection at all in the necessary part of the working day. Of course, Marx refers here to a general rise in the productivity, which includes the means of reproduction of the labour-force.
2. A rise in the productivity of labour is meaningful for the capitalists only if it is accompanied by a change in the rate of exploitation, that is, if it lowers the ratio of necessary labour to surplus-labour (rising thus relative surplus-value). If the rate of exploitation rests the same after a rise in the productivity, then surplus-value produced will be less (both in mass and in %), profit will lower as well. Therefore, capitalists do not raise the productivity of labour unconditionally, braking the evolution of the means of production, if needed. That is a good reasoning for the limitation of capitalism in improving the means of production indefinitely – many cases can be drawn as examples; lately I was told the case of aircraft construction.
3. Alternatively, a rise in the productivity can be meaningful without a change in the % of expl. in the framework of competition but again, if capitals advanced with the new production relations are much bigger, producing thus bigger mass of surplus value. Take the case 60+40 (+40) and the next one: 700+300 (+300). The % expl. is the same (100%), the % profit is lower but 300 is much better than 40. Note that the Organic Composition of Capital (OCC) has changed (it has been raised) and that this is actually the argument for the falling tendency of the rate of profit. After all “relative surplus value rises much more slowly than the force of production, and moreover this proportion grows ever smaller as the magnitude reached by the productive forces is greater.”
4. Very insightful (I need to think further on the implications of this point concerning the emergence of financialisation, italics in the original, bold is mine): “The creation by capital of absolute surplus value -- more objectified labour -- is conditional upon an expansion, specifically a constant expansion, of the sphere of circulation. The surplus value created at one point requires the creation of surplus value at another point, for which it may be exchanged; if only, initially, the production of more gold and silver, more money, so that, if surplus value cannot directly become capital again, it may exist in the form of money as the possibility of new capital. A precondition of production based on capital is therefore the production of a constantly widening sphere of circulation, whether the sphere itself is directly expanded or whether more points within it are created as points of production. While circulation appeared at first as a constant magnitude, it here appears as a moving magnitude, being expanded by production itself. Accordingly, it already appears as a moment of production itself. Hence, just as capital has the tendency on one side to create ever more surplus labour, so it has the complementary tendency to create more points of exchange; i.e., here, seen from the standpoint of absolute surplus value or surplus labour, to summon up more surplus labour as complement to itself; i.e. at bottom, to propagate production based on capital, or the mode of production corresponding to it. The tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome. Initially, to subjugate every moment of production itself to exchange and to suspend the production of direct use values not entering into exchange, i.e. precisely to posit production based on capital in place of earlier modes of production, which appear primitive [naturwüchsig] from its standpoint. Commerce no longer appears here as a function taking place between independent productions for the exchange of their excess, but rather as an essentially all-embracing presupposition and moment of production itself.”
5. “It is equally a tendency of capital to make human labour (relatively) superfluous, so as to drive it, as human labour, towards infinity.” It came to mind the attempt in Greece to expand the limits of people getting their pension from 65 to 69 or even 71, while unemployment is rising significantly.

Marx's use of the term "civil society."

Oct 26, 2009. Just to restate a point we ran across in reading his early writings, that I at least did not fully appreciate until I read those again this past summer – “civil society” for him (here used p 85) means something quite different from how we use the term – it means (as one sees here again) exactly society of each against all, of the individual apparently detached from how the individual used to be considered a component of the social whole, with each carrying out what God or whoever had assigned to him in the interests of the functioning of society. So what Marx means when he use the term “civil society” is the growth of bourgeois ideology and practice for the role of the worker in society. He goes on how this concept had only been around for about 200 years, that is, since the rise of pre-capitalism. As he says, they came out of the dissolution of the feudal forms of society. Again, he uses terms as they were used in the discussion then – the “Natural Individual,” which he says is just their “notion of human nature” (which again, is basically Robinson Crusoe – or as Marx says here p 84, “the isolated individual” Note while he specifically ridicules the idea of Robinson Crusoe isolated production (saying p 84 it could on occasion happen if a socially created individual got thrown into isolation, but its absurd as a general concept), his concern here is actually much broader than just production, but to the essence of humans, to human nature, to our species-nature being collective and so that pertains to everything we do). Note he associates this as an 18th century development above all (1700s). SO WHAT I REALLY WANT TO STRESS IS how differently other people are using this term “civil society” today than Marx used it then, and how we need be careful therefore not to misread Marx. Today, civil society is generally held as a positive thing involved in transcending capitalism – the state is a bourgeois state, and the idea is to increase direct democracy by transforming power from the state to civil society (lots of problems with that concept in my opinion, but I am just trying to indicate how it is often thought or today, often as a background idea that the user of the term just has built into the concept without being really aware of it). For Marx, to the contrary, civil society was largely a false ideological construct of bourgeois ideology, a misrepresentation of human nature and human interaction, one of the pillars of capitalist denial of the essential species-nature of humans. Marx was FOR humans promoting a transcendence of capitalism by using a STATE that they democratically controlled, because such a state was nothing else than an expression concerning political activity of their collective nature, their species-nature. Of course, by the time the process of transition beyond capitalism reached the phase of socialism, the state as an organ of power (to impose the will of one group on another, which under the transition would be to impose the will of the majority on the minority who wanted to restore their previous privileges) would wither away (but would still exist as an accounting mechanism, for coordinating and executing the democratically decided on decisions of society, now no longer to suppress opposition but just to administratively make happen what society decided it wanted to happen)

Marx on individuality

I am not sure what version of the "Grundrisse" everyone is using - if one is using the stuff in the Marx and Engles Collected Works, or if everyone has what has long been the standard version in English, the version put out by Pelican (an imprinture of Penguin) in 1973. Anyway, I will assume people are using this, unless people indicate otherwise.
I am not sure if the groups began their 30 pages with the beginning of the text, say page 81 (or a sort of table of contents page 69), or with the introduction by Martin Nicolaus. So I will assume people began with page 81 for the first reading.
I want to respond a little to some of the points others posted to this site, but like everyone I am way behind on time - we will see. But I will make 5 or 10 points on the reading over the course of the fall, just things that interest me.
The first is right on page 81. It is a good statement, I think, of one aspect of Marx's view of the relation individual-society (which was central to his whole theory and goal), the nature of individuality (which he was for allowing to develop, as the goal of social change, capitalism prevented the development of authentic individuality), and thereby his view on human nature. He had a thoroughly social view of humanity (our "species nature") Among other things, since production is thoroughly social, and even beyond that our individual nature is socially conditioned (not entirely socially created), the concept of paying people according to their marginal contribution, at the heart of neoclassical economics (at least their theory, not really their practice) is totally meaningless.
Here are some comments on p 81
Note the phrase in the second sentence – “Individuals producing
in society – hence socially determined individual production.” On the
one hand, this reflects why the idea of being paid according to “your”
marginal contribution to output is stupid – besides the fact that one
cannot calculate the contribution associated with a particular
individual in a process of production that is integrated (as all are to
some extent), in addition it is “socially determined” individual
production. That is, what it is specified that you will do is partially
socially determined (though there is room in that for individual choice
on how hard one will work, and individual variation on how well one is
capable of working), and further, even a significant part of your
abilities are also socially determined – the fact that you can talk, the
basic education that enabled you to learn modern job skills, part of
your attitude toward work, and on and on. We see here the focus on
thinking of production as a thoroughly social process that Marx had from
his earliest writings until his death, a central aspect of his political
economy, and of his vision of transcending capitalism.
The rest of this section talks on exactly what the title of the
sub section indicates – the idea of “independent individuals.” It
particularly takes on the Robinson Crusoe idea, counterpoising to it the
social individual (the individual who develops their individuality in
the frame of a given society, and whose individuality can only be
understood as existing in that frame – note Marx clearly states this p
84 – “The human being is …. an animal which can individuate itself only
in the midst of society” – this is very clearly stated and well put, and
(note to myself) I should use this as a quote when making this point to
others about the nature of Marx’s thought in the future). He talks
briefly of Rousseau, Smith, Ricardo, Bastiat, Carey Proudhon (and a
person hardly remembered today, Steuart, who he says partly rejected
this “radical individualistic” (my term) capitalist concept because he
was coming from an aristocratic partial resistance to the rising
bourgeoisie and therefore its ideology).

Marxian Methodology: Theory must be developed dialectically

Clarification for Last week's Conversation.

For Marx the scientifically correct method arises from the movement from simple abstract determinations i.e. in modern society, the commodity, value, waged labor- to their relation to the whole, the real concrete i.e. capital. As he states: ‘the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is the only way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind’. Only through this method that we move from a ‘reality of few determinations and relations’ (political economy and bourgeoisie science End Result) unable to grasp the concrete whole, to a reality that is a ‘rich totality of many determinations and relations….unity of the whole’. The latter is the internalization of a totality of determinations in thought, appropriation of the real concrete, ‘the working up of observation and conception into concepts’. This totality is a totality of a thinking mind, ‘which appropriates the world in the only way it can a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of the world’. This method, movement from the abstract to the concrete, is the only way that we are able to understand what the social forms of production and organization historically. In modern society we see in Capital, Marx moves from the simplest abstract categories i.e. commodity, Value etc. to their relation with the developed concrete whole, this being Capital which for Marx ‘is not a thing but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and lends itself a specific social character’. Capitalist social relations in this sense, is a developed/developing concrete whole in that epoch (at least for the most part in England or the U.S. at the time). This developed concrete whole can only be realized through the most general abstractions, thus they are the point of departure. These abstractions arise as a result of history and function differently through history, sometimes dominant, sometimes subordinate to a developed or ill-developed concrete whole. The dilemma of the Bourgeoisie science takes history as a point of departure and not as a historic result, developing dialectically. Bourgeoisie science always begins with the living whole, according to Marx, and arrives at a linear ahistorical argument of the development of society along with history. The abstract determinations arrived at in bourgeoisie science and the relation of these determinations to the social forms of organization and order are a chaotic conception of the concrete. The historic specificity, order and place (subordinate or dominant) of these abstract determinations and relations to the whole are chaotic and one sided.
Please, any corrections and comments welcome.

What problem?

Passages contained in "The Chapter on Money"
such as
"Because price is not equal to value, therefore the value-determining element - labor time - cannot be the element in which prices are expressed, because labor time would have to express itself simultaneously as the determining and the non-determining element..."
brings me to question, what was (is) at stake in all the time and effort spent on the "transformation problem"?

For me this was never a point of big concern as prices and values are two separate things that do not exclusively determine each other. Value is in use or exchange (which can differ) and is loosely related to a starting point of examining price, but no mathematical correspondence seemed needed or possible.

Why then all the time spent? Is it a response to the neo-classical marginal products of capital and labor argument, or something beyond this. This would certainly add importance to the issue but I still do not understand the necessity of showing that one constitutes the other.

I do not argue that commodification, and the exchange value relationship as well as commodity (or non-com) money become very important from producers of commodities, but I what I am reaching for is what is at stake saying that price and exchange value are not the same thing, and there is no reason that price can not deviate based on factors outside of the direct exchange relationship.

I ask out of my own ignorance, because I know this has been a very important thread within certain currents of Marxism, and I have not taken the time to understand it up to this point.

Some comments on the first meeting of Grundrisse

Due to my poor understanding and memory, I don't think I'm able to summarize the first meeting. Instead, I'll just write what I said (or intended to say) to the questions raised in the discussion. Sorry for this, but please understand....


Q1: Does Marx prioritize production over distribution, circulaiton, and consumption? If so, why?

My answer to the first part is, yes. But I don't think he attempts to prove it or explain why. Rather, he seems to take it for granted without question as he did for the value concept (and labour as its substance) in relation to his theory of value in ch.1 Capital Vol.1. In his letter to Ludwig Kugelmman (11 July 1868, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_07_11.htm), Marx addresses the critique widely raised after the first publicaiton of Capital Vol.1 that he failed to prove the existence of value and labour substance of value. In this letter, Marx writes to the effect that those are so 'self-evident' facts, and thus require no proof.

In the similar vein, I think that Marx is taking for granted the priority of production which is the site of labour expansion; and that the detail explanations on the dialectical relations among production, distribution, circulation, and consumption are not to be read as proofs for the priority of produciton, but as premised upon the latter.


Q2: How should we understand Marx's method described with dichotomous sets of 'complex/simple' and 'concrete/abstract'?

I think we have to understand Marx's two-way categorial development in light of Hegel's Logic. In Science of Logic, Hegel distinguishes two methods of logic; i) analytical method ("Its activity therefore consists in analysing the given concrete, isolating its differences, and giving them the form of abstract generality.") ii) synthetical method ("It starting-point is given by the general, from which we proceed by particularizing to the individual [i.e. concrete].")

How I understand Hegel's Logic, very briefly: First of all, Hegel's Logic is the science of Idea, and has totality as its object. First facing with empirical facts of totality, Idea has very shallow understanding of totality; so moves to the abstract/simple stage through abstraction. (analytical method) Through the categorial development from the abstract/simple to the concrete/complex Idea reaches the full conception (or notion, begriff) of totality. (synthetical method)

Since capitalism (an object of Marx's theory) too is totality which cannot be immediately grasped, Marx thought Hegel's Logic a useful method in having a full notion of his totality object. (In this sense, I think Marx did not mindlessly take Hegel's method so as to apply it to his object of analysis, but critically appropriate it.) So I think there is a strong parallel; the first journey 'the chaotic concrete -> the abstract' and the second 'the abstract -> the concrete with many determinations' corresponding to analytical method and synthetical method, respectively. Returning back to where it started, i.e. sensically observed capitalism, but this time with a full grasp of it in its totality.

I think Marx applied this method in presenting his labour theory of value in ch.1 of Capital. He starts with commodity and exchange value as empirically observed, and abstracts to value and labour. (analytical method) From there he traces back to where he started. (synthetical method) But this time we have knowledge that commodity doubles into commodity and money, and exchange value as a form of appearance of value has different forms, i.e. money form and capital form.


Q3: Is Marx's method (of categorial development) purely logical, or do its categorial stages correspond to actual history?

As for this famous 'logical-historical vs. capital's logic' controversy, I side with the latter. As said, Marx's method starts with the observed reality in capitalism, and from there it conducts the categorial development in order to grasp the inner logic of capital. I think Marx's method is historical-material in two senses: i) It starts from nowhere but concrete historical facts in capitalist society, and problematizes them. ii) It's final aim is to acquire a full conception of those concrete historical facts in their totality. It doesn't seme to me that the historical-material aspect of it requires every categorial stage to correspond to a certain historical stage. Since the object of Marx's analysis is capitalism, his method deals with inner logical stages of capitalism not actual stages of the developmental history of capitalism. Marx's logic seems to be synchronic rather than diachronic.

1st meeting for Grundrisse

Hi all,
As some of you know I cannot make it tonight, so I am writing to ask that if anyone has the time please post a short summary of the main topics discussed tonight. It is not a huge deal, but would be appreciated in terms of informing my reading for next week.
Thanks