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With the recent revival of Karl Marx's theory, a general interest in reading Capital has also increased. But Capital—Marx’s foundational nineteenth-century work on political economy—is by no means considered an easily understood text. Central concepts, such as abstract labor, the value-form, or the fetishism of commodities, can seem opaque to us as first-time readers, and the prospect of comprehending Marx’s thought can be truly daunting. Until, that is, we pick up Michael Heinrich’s How to Read Marx's Capital.
Paragraph by paragraph, Heinrich provides extensive commentary and lucid explanations of questions and quandaries that arise when encountering Marx’s original text. Suddenly, such seemingly gnarly chapters as “The Labor Process and the Valorization Process” and “Money or the Circulation of Capital” become refreshingly clear, as Heinrich explains just what we need to keep in mind when reading such a complex text. Deploying multiple appendices referring to other pertinent writings by Marx, Heinrich reveals what is relevant about Capital, and why we need to engage with it today. How to Read Marx's Capital provides an illuminating and indispensable guide to sorting through cultural detritus of a world whose political and economic systems are simultaneously imploding and exploding.
Author(s): Michael Heinrich , Alexander Locascio
Edition: 1
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 408
City: New York
HOW TO READ MARX’S ›CAPITAL‹ : COMMENTARY & EXPLANATIONS ON THE BEGINNING CHAPTERS
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Why Read ›Capital‹ Today?
Difficulties in Reading ›Capital‹
How to Discuss ›Capital‹
Various Types of Commentary
Using the Commentary: An Initial Reading Plan
COMMENTARY ON THE BEGINNING OF ›CAPITAL‹
›Capital‹. A Critique of Political Economy
Preface to the First Edition (89–93)
a) The Difficulty of the Beginning, “Bourgeois Society,” Abstraction (89–91)
b) The Object of Investigation (90–91)
c) People as Personifications of Economic Categories (92)
d) Natural Laws of Capitalist Production (90–92)
e) Scientific Inquiry & Social Struggles (92–93)
f) The Three Volumes of ›Capital‹ (93)
Postface to the Second Edition (94–103)
Contents (5–10)
PART ONE: Commodities & Money
Chapter 1: The Commodity (125–177)
1. The Two Factors of the Commodity: Use-Value & Value (Substance of Value, Magnitude of Value) (125–131)
a) Introductory Paragraph: Wealth & the Commodity (Definition & Analysis) (125)
b) Use-Value (last paragraph 125 to penultimate paragraph 126)
c) Exchange-Value (Analysis & Construction) (last paragraph 126 to penultimate paragraph 127)
d) Value & Substance of Value (final paragraph 127 to last paragraph 128)
First Step of the Argument: The Common Element of the Commodities Is Not a Natural Property
Second Step of the Argument: Only the Property of Being a Product of Labor Remains
Third Step of the Argument: The Substance of Value Is Abstract Human Labor
e) Magnitude of Value & Productivity (first paragraph 128 to first paragraph 131)
f) Concluding Observation: Use-Value & Value (penultimate paragraph 131)
g) Comments on the First Subsection’s Arguments
The Commodity Character of Services
Supply and Demand
Conscious Action on the Part of Those Engaged in Exchange?
Labor and Appropriation
A Proof of Value Theory?
2. The Dual Character of the Labor Embodied in Commodities (131–137)
a) Introductory Paragraph: “Crucial” for Understanding Political Economy (final paragraph 131)
b) Concrete, Useful Labor (first paragraph 132 to first paragraph 134)
c) Abstract Human Labor, Simple & Complex Labor (second paragraph 134 to first paragraph 136)
d) Final Remark, Physiology (last paragraph 137)
3. The Value-Form, or Exchange-Value (138–163)
Introduction: The Mystery of Money (138–139)
(a) The Simple, Isolated, or Accidental Form of Value (139–154)
1. The two poles of the expression of value: the relative form of value & the equivalent form
2. The relative form of value
(i) The content of the relative form of value
(ii) The quantitative determinacy of the relative form of value
3. The Equivalent Form
The First Peculiarity of the Equivalent Form
The Second Peculiarity of the Equivalent Form
The Third Peculiarity of the Equivalent Form
Excursus on Aristotle
4. The Simple Form of Value Considered as a Whole
The Independent Presentation of Value as Exchange-Value
Insufficiencies of the Simple Form of Value
Passing Over to the Expanded Form of Value (Characteristics of Conceptual Development)
(b) The Total or Expanded Form of Value (154–157)
(1) The expanded relative form of value
(2) The particular equivalent form
(3) Defects of the total or expanded form of value
(c) The General Form of Value (157–162)
(1) The changed character of the form of value
The Historical Appearance of the Forms of Value
The Changed Character of the Relative Form of Value
The Changed Character of the Equivalent Form
(2) The development of the relative & equivalent forms of value: their interdependence
(3) The transition from the general form of value to the money form
(d) The Money Form (162–163)
4. The Fetishism of the Commodity & Its Secret (163–177)
a) “Whence, then, arises the enigmatic character of the product of labour, as soon as it assumes the form of a commodity?” (163–165)
b) The “Peculiar Social Character of the Labour which Produces Commodities”—Retroactive Socialization (second paragraph 165 to second paragraph 166)
c) Knowledge of Value & “Objective Semblance” (third paragraph 166)
d) The Society’s Movement Taking on a Life of its Own, & Its Content (second paragraph 167)
e) “Objective Forms of Thought” (Objektive Gedankenformen) (second paragraph 168 to second paragraph 169)
f) Forms of Production Not Based on Commodity Production (third paragraph 169 to last paragraph 173)
g) Religion & Mode of Production (second paragraph 172 to first paragraph 173)
h) Commodity & Value in Political Economy: The Analysis of Fetishism as a Precondition for a Critique of Political Economy (second paragraph 173 to 177)
Chapter 2: The Process of Exchange (178–187)
a) The New Level of Abstraction in Chapter 2
b) The Process of Exchange & Commodity Owners (Private Owners) (178 to first paragraph 179)
c) The Contradictory Requirements of the Exchange Process and Its Solution: Money (179 to first paragraph 181)
d) The Historical Development of Commodity Exchange & Money (third paragraph 181 to third paragraph 184)
e) Money-Form & Money Fetish (last paragraph 184 to 187)
Chapter 3: Money, or the Circulation of Commodities (188–244)
1. The Measure of Values
a) Immanent Measure of Value & Money as Its Necessary Form of Appearance (188)
b) Price & Ideal Money (189–190)
c) Measure of Values & Standard of Prices (191 to second paragraph 195)
d) Price & Value (last sentence of 195 to 198)
2. Means of Circulation
a) The Metamorphosis of Commodities
The Social Metabolism & Its Form Aspect (198 to third paragraph 199)
Introduction to the Investigation of the Metamorphosis of the Commodity (last paragraph 199 to fourth paragraph 200)
C – M. The First Metamorphosis: Sale (Supply & Demand on the Market for Commodities, Realization of the Price of the Commodity, Realization of the Ideal Use-Value of Money) (last paragraph 200 to first paragraph 205)
M – C. Second Metamorphosis: Purchase (second paragraph 205 to first paragraph 206)
The Completed Metamorphosis as a Whole (second paragraph 206 to second paragraph 207)
The Difference Between the Circulation of Commodities & the Exchange of Products, “Social-natural Connections,” The Possibility of Crisis (third paragraph 207 to 209)
(b) The Circulation of Money
The Circulation of Commodities & the Semblance Generated by It (210 to third paragraph 212)
The Amount of the Means of Circulation, Critique of Quantity Theory (final paragraph 212 to 220)
(c) Coin. The Symbol of Value
Coin in the Process of Circulation (second paragraph 222 to second paragraph 224)
The “Law Peculiar to the Circulation of Paper Money” (third paragraph 224 to first paragraph 225)
The Symbol of Money (second paragraph 225 to 227)
3. Money
(a) Hoarding
The Hoard as a New Function of Money (227–228)
“The Lust for Gold,” “The Hoarding Drive” (229 to third paragraph 231)
The Function of Hoards for the Economy as a Whole, Consequences for the “Law Peculiar to the Circulation of Paper Money” (last paragraph 231)
(b) Means of Payment
Money’s New Function, New Economic Characteristics (232 to second paragraph 234)
Means of Payment & Monetary Crisis (last paragraph 234 to first paragraph 237)
The Total Amount of Money in Circulation (second paragraph 237 to 240)
(c) World Money
PART TWO: The Transformation of Money into Capital
Chapter 4: The General Formula for Capital
a) Historical Preconditions & Conceptual Point of Departure (first three paragraphs 247)
b) Differences in Form Between C – M – C & M – C – M (last paragraph 247 to third paragraph 250)
c) The Different Content of Each Form of Circuit: Capital as Valorized Value (last paragraph 250 to 253)
d) The Capitalist (254 to first paragraph 255)
e) Value as “Automatic Subject” & “Self-Moving Substance Which Passes Through a Process of Its Own” (second paragraph 255 to 257)
Chapter 5: Contradictions in the General Formula
a) Presentation of the Problem (258 to first paragraph 259)
b) The Circulation of Commodities “In Its Pure Form”: The Exchange of Equivalents (second paragraph 259 to first paragraph 262)
c) The Exchange of Non-Equivalents (third paragraph 262 to second paragraph 266)
d) “Antediluvian Forms” of Capital (third paragraph 266 to 267)
e) Valorization in Production? (first two paragraphs 268)
f) The Result: Paradoxical Requirements of the Presentation (second paragraph 268 to 269)
Chapter 6: The Sale & Purchase of Labor-Power
a) On the Way to Solving the Puzzle: The Specific Commodity Labor-Power (Free Will & Objective Compulsion) (270 to third paragraph 272)
b) The “Historical Imprint” of Economic Categories (second paragraph 273 to first paragraph 274)
c) The Value of the Commodity Labor-Power (Class Struggle) (second paragraph 274 to first paragraph 279)
d) Illustration & (Moral) Critique (footnote 14)
e) The Use-Value of the Commodity Labor-Power (second paragraph 279 to first paragraph 280)
f) The Sphere of Circulation & the Sphere of Production, Freedom, and Coercion (280)
PART THREE: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
Chapter 7: The Labor Process & the Valorization Process
1. The Labor Process
a) General Characteristics of the Human Labor Process, the “Nature” of Human Beings (second paragraph 283 to first paragraph 284)
b) The Object of Labor, Instruments of Labor, Objectified (Concrete) Labor (second paragraph 284 to second paragraph 287)
c) Product, Means of Production, Productive Labor, & (Concrete) Living Labor (third paragraph 287 to fourth paragraph 290)
d) Levels of Abstraction of the Presentation (last paragraph 290 to first paragraph 291)
e) The Labor Process as the Process by Which the Capitalist Consumes Labor-Power (the “Rebel” Workers) (second paragraph 291 to 292)
2. The Valorization Process
a) The Process of Creating Value (third paragraph 293 to second paragraph 298)
b) The “Secret of Profit-Making” Revealed (third paragraph 298 to second paragraph 302)
c) Conceptual Demarcations & Simple vs. Complex Labor (fourth paragraph 302 to 306)
d) Looking Ahead
Appendix 1: Marx’s Critical Economic Writings
Appendix 2: The Universality of Labor as a Social Characteristic of “Labor that Posits Exchange Value” (from the ›Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy‹ [1859], MECW 29: 273–275)
Appendix 3: A Paradoxical Form of Value (from ›Das Kapital‹, First Edition, [1867], MEGA II/5: 42–43, English: Dragstedt [1976, 32–34])
Appendix 4: Value-Objectivity as Objectivity Held in Common (from ›Ergänzungen & Veränderungen zum ersten Band des Kapitals‹ [1871–72], MEGA II/6: 29–32)
Appendix 5: The “Transition to Capital” (from “Original Text of ›A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy‹” (Urtext) [1858], MECW 29: 478–499)
Appendix 6: Levels of Abstraction & the Course of Argument in the First Seven Chapters of Capital
1. What Is Being Abstracted From
2. Value, Money, & Fetish at Different Levels of the Presentation
3. “Theoretical Developments” & Historical Process
Glossary
Commodity & Value
Labor
Bibliography
