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Wage Labour and Capital
Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economic historian, journalist and revolutionary socialist famous for developing Marxism, a socialist movement that has been incorporated by societies around the globe. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867–1894), many of which were co-written with his friend, the fellow German revolutionary socialist Friedrich Engels.
The text of Wage Labour and Capital came from lectures Marx delivered to the German Workmen's Club of Brussels in 1847, a time of great political upheaval. The relationship between wage-labour to capital is a core concept in Marx's analysis of political economy and its relationship with capitalism. This book is an essential for anyone attempting to understand the development of Marxist theory.
This edition of Wage Labour and Capital is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.
The text of Wage Labour and Capital came from lectures Marx delivered to the German Workmen's Club of Brussels in 1847, a time of great political upheaval. The relationship between wage-labour to capital is a core concept in Marx's analysis of political economy and its relationship with capitalism. This book is an essential for anyone attempting to understand the development of Marxist theory.
This edition of Wage Labour and Capital is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.
45 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1891
About the author
Karl Marx
2,996 books5,374 followersWith the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
(1848) and
Das Kapital
(1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
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July 23, 2008
I had lunch with a group of friends a month or so ago. It was the day that a speech was held at the Town Hall by the man our new government commissioned to write a report into climate change and what our response ought to be to it.
These lunch things can get quite heated at times, but not so much on this day. What we really needed was a climate change sceptic to stir things up a bit. As my friend Ian points out, our only hope is that the sceptics are right and there is nothing to worry about – because if even the most conservative climate change scientists are right we are doomed.
We were talking and the question came up as to whether Capitalism is capable of adjusting to such an extent that it does not continue to rely on ever expanding markets and exponential growth. Marx fully answered that question about 150 years ago. His answer was unequivocal, and it was no.
This book is based on a series of newspaper articles Marx wrote in 1849 which Engels turned into a pamphlet, after substantially editing the original, in 1891. I don’t normally go into so much detail on the genealogy of a book, but I find it fascinating that Engels spends so much time in his introduction worrying over this. He also made changes to the Manifesto at some time after Marx’s death and I think poked around that too. Given that Communists are supposed to be people who have only one absolute belief – that everything is, and always will be, in a state of flux – this desire to ensure the original words still exist (e.g. “Moreover, so many copies of the original text are in circulation, that these will suffice until I can publish it again unaltered in a complete edition of Marx’s works, to appear at some future time.” Engels’s introduction) strikes me as very strange.
This work is meant to be read by the uneducated masses – it is written in a style which would have been perhaps much more accessible then than it appears now. Even so, it is no harder to follow than a Jane Austen novel – although, much drier in content. If it suffers from anything it is that his explanation of surplus value here relies too heavily on numbers. He talks of six shillings of wages and twenty four shillings of machinery and after a while I am sure many people would have given up, lost in a haze of numbers. The idea is remarkably simple, really.
Many people who have studied any economics at all will tell you that the price of something is determined by the laws of demand and supply – and naturally, they are wrong. Demand and supply are not enough, on their own, to explain the price of anything. Classical economists claimed that the price of anything was the cost of labour that is expended in producing it. And that sounds good, but what is the price of labour itself? How is that determined? How can one work out a proper ‘wage’?
Marx’s key insight is that the Capitalist only needs to pay the labourer enough money for the labourer to be able to reproduce his labour. That is, to feed himself and his family and to bring up his children. The interesting implication of my use of ‘his’ here is the effect Marx predicted of women and children being brought into the workforce. If you can raise a family on $10 a day and only the husband is working then the man’s wage – on average across society – will need to be $10 a day. If women and children work the family wage will continue, on average, to be $10 per day. This is not an argument for keeping women out of the workforce – but I think it is an argument that is confirmed by the life experience of many people today in two income households who seem no better off today than they were years ago in a one income household.
I think Marx was much too concerned that people understand his theory of value and made the whole thing a bit too complicated. The idea is simply that the cost to reproduce the labour of the labourer is much less than the value the labourer can produce if put to work during the day – so the labourer’s wages are always less than the value produced in exercising that labour. The effect of this is to create a surplus of value which capitalists take for themselves.
This has many implications for capitalism in general. Firstly, it means that those producing stuff will, by definition, not be paid enough to be able to buy back what they produce. One of Marx’s great insights was to show that every crisis of Capitalism is – for the first time in the history of the world – a crisis of over-production. Every other epoch lived in dread that there would not be enough – only under capitalism does having too much lead to economic collapse. This is something Galbraith mentions in The Great Crash 1929 too.
As a society that is obsessed with competition (and one that can only see the positive side of competition at that) it is bracing to read Marx on the negative implications competition has for society. Mostly this is what gets referred to as Marx’s theory of the alienation of labour. What follows is the McCandless version:
Demand and supply mean that where there is more demand and less supply there is money to be made. Where there is money to be made capital will flow to seek to mop up that money. If there are two capitalists producing the same thing and if the price of each article of that thing depends solely on how much labour is embodied in each article, then the capitalist who can produce the thing with the least amount of labour contained in it will make the most profit.
So, capitalists, because of competition, are forever seeking to increase the productivity of labour (thereby reducing the quantity of labour in any single item and thereby reducing the cost of every single item). They do this by increasingly breaking down the tasks that need to be performed and by increasing the application of machinery to the productive process.
More skilled labour attracts a higher price – so capitalism seeks to make all labour unskilled labour, that is, cheap labour. If today you need specialist skills to work – then tomorrow capitalism will create a machine and then you will only need to turn a handle or do something else equally moronic. Marx saw this process of capitalist competition as being one that inevitably brings about the deskilling of labour. And unskilled or semi-skilled labour has no interest in what it produces. It is alienated from its own work. This labour literally sells its time to the capitalist – and as such does not see this ‘sold time’ as even part of the labourer’s ‘real’ life. (Think of those ‘working to live’ coffee cups)
There are those who thought Marx saw only the dignity of human labour – this really is a misreading of Marx. I guess what he was seeking was to bring some dignity back into human labour.
No sooner has the capitalist increased production, than the competition also increases production – and the price of the thing produced is once again brought down to the cost of production. To make a profit the capitalist must once again increase the productivity of labour – and thereby once again increase the deskilling of labour – and once again drive down the price of the goods produced.
The implication of this is that Capitalism, by its nature, is premised on ever increasing the rate of production – ever increasing the amount of stuff produced.
What does this mean in a world quickly running out of resources? Clearly, it means Capitalism is going to be the death of us after all.
This is a remarkably short book, and a remarkably easy book to read, even in a single night. It is available here http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/... and those wonderful people at Librivox have also recorded it as a talking book here http://librivox.org/wage-labour-and-c...
The fact that it is short and easy to read could be criticisms – but this is an excellent introduction to Marx’s ideas and by the man himself, well, more or less – remember, this is Engels’s redrafting.
These lunch things can get quite heated at times, but not so much on this day. What we really needed was a climate change sceptic to stir things up a bit. As my friend Ian points out, our only hope is that the sceptics are right and there is nothing to worry about – because if even the most conservative climate change scientists are right we are doomed.
We were talking and the question came up as to whether Capitalism is capable of adjusting to such an extent that it does not continue to rely on ever expanding markets and exponential growth. Marx fully answered that question about 150 years ago. His answer was unequivocal, and it was no.
This book is based on a series of newspaper articles Marx wrote in 1849 which Engels turned into a pamphlet, after substantially editing the original, in 1891. I don’t normally go into so much detail on the genealogy of a book, but I find it fascinating that Engels spends so much time in his introduction worrying over this. He also made changes to the Manifesto at some time after Marx’s death and I think poked around that too. Given that Communists are supposed to be people who have only one absolute belief – that everything is, and always will be, in a state of flux – this desire to ensure the original words still exist (e.g. “Moreover, so many copies of the original text are in circulation, that these will suffice until I can publish it again unaltered in a complete edition of Marx’s works, to appear at some future time.” Engels’s introduction) strikes me as very strange.
This work is meant to be read by the uneducated masses – it is written in a style which would have been perhaps much more accessible then than it appears now. Even so, it is no harder to follow than a Jane Austen novel – although, much drier in content. If it suffers from anything it is that his explanation of surplus value here relies too heavily on numbers. He talks of six shillings of wages and twenty four shillings of machinery and after a while I am sure many people would have given up, lost in a haze of numbers. The idea is remarkably simple, really.
Many people who have studied any economics at all will tell you that the price of something is determined by the laws of demand and supply – and naturally, they are wrong. Demand and supply are not enough, on their own, to explain the price of anything. Classical economists claimed that the price of anything was the cost of labour that is expended in producing it. And that sounds good, but what is the price of labour itself? How is that determined? How can one work out a proper ‘wage’?
Marx’s key insight is that the Capitalist only needs to pay the labourer enough money for the labourer to be able to reproduce his labour. That is, to feed himself and his family and to bring up his children. The interesting implication of my use of ‘his’ here is the effect Marx predicted of women and children being brought into the workforce. If you can raise a family on $10 a day and only the husband is working then the man’s wage – on average across society – will need to be $10 a day. If women and children work the family wage will continue, on average, to be $10 per day. This is not an argument for keeping women out of the workforce – but I think it is an argument that is confirmed by the life experience of many people today in two income households who seem no better off today than they were years ago in a one income household.
I think Marx was much too concerned that people understand his theory of value and made the whole thing a bit too complicated. The idea is simply that the cost to reproduce the labour of the labourer is much less than the value the labourer can produce if put to work during the day – so the labourer’s wages are always less than the value produced in exercising that labour. The effect of this is to create a surplus of value which capitalists take for themselves.
This has many implications for capitalism in general. Firstly, it means that those producing stuff will, by definition, not be paid enough to be able to buy back what they produce. One of Marx’s great insights was to show that every crisis of Capitalism is – for the first time in the history of the world – a crisis of over-production. Every other epoch lived in dread that there would not be enough – only under capitalism does having too much lead to economic collapse. This is something Galbraith mentions in The Great Crash 1929 too.
As a society that is obsessed with competition (and one that can only see the positive side of competition at that) it is bracing to read Marx on the negative implications competition has for society. Mostly this is what gets referred to as Marx’s theory of the alienation of labour. What follows is the McCandless version:
Demand and supply mean that where there is more demand and less supply there is money to be made. Where there is money to be made capital will flow to seek to mop up that money. If there are two capitalists producing the same thing and if the price of each article of that thing depends solely on how much labour is embodied in each article, then the capitalist who can produce the thing with the least amount of labour contained in it will make the most profit.
So, capitalists, because of competition, are forever seeking to increase the productivity of labour (thereby reducing the quantity of labour in any single item and thereby reducing the cost of every single item). They do this by increasingly breaking down the tasks that need to be performed and by increasing the application of machinery to the productive process.
More skilled labour attracts a higher price – so capitalism seeks to make all labour unskilled labour, that is, cheap labour. If today you need specialist skills to work – then tomorrow capitalism will create a machine and then you will only need to turn a handle or do something else equally moronic. Marx saw this process of capitalist competition as being one that inevitably brings about the deskilling of labour. And unskilled or semi-skilled labour has no interest in what it produces. It is alienated from its own work. This labour literally sells its time to the capitalist – and as such does not see this ‘sold time’ as even part of the labourer’s ‘real’ life. (Think of those ‘working to live’ coffee cups)
There are those who thought Marx saw only the dignity of human labour – this really is a misreading of Marx. I guess what he was seeking was to bring some dignity back into human labour.
No sooner has the capitalist increased production, than the competition also increases production – and the price of the thing produced is once again brought down to the cost of production. To make a profit the capitalist must once again increase the productivity of labour – and thereby once again increase the deskilling of labour – and once again drive down the price of the goods produced.
The implication of this is that Capitalism, by its nature, is premised on ever increasing the rate of production – ever increasing the amount of stuff produced.
What does this mean in a world quickly running out of resources? Clearly, it means Capitalism is going to be the death of us after all.
This is a remarkably short book, and a remarkably easy book to read, even in a single night. It is available here http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/... and those wonderful people at Librivox have also recorded it as a talking book here http://librivox.org/wage-labour-and-c...
The fact that it is short and easy to read could be criticisms – but this is an excellent introduction to Marx’s ideas and by the man himself, well, more or less – remember, this is Engels’s redrafting.
September 12, 2023
A Prelude to Capital...
//2021 update after reading Capital Volume 1
--This pamphlet based on an 1847 speech is a breeze to read after wading through Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (1867), which I did with 3 separate reading groups.
--For a comparison, the following stood out:
1) Assumptions and Contradictions?:
--Obviously this essay is bare-bones compared to Volume 1, which makes it much more accessible. However, this means there is no room to go through the numerous assumptions and contradictions that Marx unravels in Volume 1 (as well as hints in the prefaces).
--Modern readers have the additional challenge of deciphering the historical context of Marx's writings. Ex. Harvey in A Companion to Marx's Capital.
--With these mostly stripped out, Marx’s theories can seem rigid and teleological, which is a shame because Volume 1 (at its best) is dynamic and multi-faceted (given its focus on the contradictions of the messy real world) as well as conditional on its assumptions (Volume 1 was focused on the process of capitalist production in the abstract; of course, much confusion has arisen from the Capital series being unfinished).
--We should also note that Marx struggled with this contradictory synthesis of:
a) being rigorously "scientific" in his process (observations, thought-experiments), while
b) recognizing the dynamic uncertainty in the social sciences
...To unpack this further, see this wonderful lecture: Yanis Varoufakis: Confessions of an Erratic Marxist /// 14th May 2013
2) Prelude to the Capital project:
--This essay seems like a bridge where Marx is transitioning from investigating vulgar mainstream economics (which seems to resemble today's mainstream economics; basically propaganda to normalize capitalism) to his deep dive in Volume 1.
--The essay starts with addressing supply/demand. In Volume 1, Marx bypasses this in his assumptions (i.e. move beneath everyday market fluctuations to consider the long-term cost of production).
--Volume 1 unpacks forms of commodity exchange (ex. C-M-C, M-C-M’). While the circulation of money (M) is not in this essay, the relationship between the labourer’s "unproductive" consumption (for subsistence) vs. capitalist’s "productive" accumulation (of capital investment) is highlighted.
--As this essay has “wage labour” in its title, it’s not a surprise the focus on distinguishing nominal vs. real vs. relative wages.
//Original review before reading Capital Volume 1
The Good:
--For those not ready for 1000+ pages of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (see link for summary), but want to read the words of “economic” Marx (edited by Engels), this pamphlet is quite helpful.
--The last chapter (Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class, Middle Class, and Working Class) is the climax. Of course, the 8 previous chapters of abstraction were necessary, but I always find application of theory to be its life and purpose (for which Marx surely agrees, and modern mainstream economists scorn).
--Key points of the climax:
1) Capitalism has a systemic contradiction that leads to crisis: capitalism is driven by profits, but this is achieved through competition, which lowers price to the cost of production (thus squeezing profits), all on an ever-greater scale…
...Note: this assumption of competition reveals the Classical lineage that Marx is building from/critiquing (think Adam Smith, who assumed markets would be freed from economic rent). Other interesting perspectives here include capitalism's failure to free the market from economic rent (The Bubble and Beyond), various transitions of capitalism (i.e. "monopoly capitalism") and other historical perspectives (ex. Fernand Braudel: on capitalism as monopoly guaranteed by the State)
2) A result of competition is greater division of labour, to save costs (by maximizing efficiency) and pay cheaper wages (from deskilling). This forces proletarianization, as workers must work more, and more are forced into the labour market.
...Note: if you can think of exceptions to this, esp. higher wages, see "imperialism" in the section below
3) Another result of competition is increased technology. Increased automation squeezes the labour market, while the increasing scale of technology squeezes capitalists with additional costs/credit(!) required.
4) The outcome of capitalist competition is overproduction (too many products to sell at a profit). This can be resolved by new markets (or by destruction, which Marx does not detail here). Think of WWII, which saved global capitalism from the Great Depression by its creative destruction of stagnant capital and invention of the US Military Industrial Complex. But the need for new and greater markets to satisfy the greater scale of production (and greater credit required) leads to “more frequent and more violent” capitalist crises.
The Missing:
--As you can see from the summary above, this is a brief glimpse of the “economic” Marx; plenty of critiques on politics and moral philosophy to be found elsewhere.
--I’ll have to play around with the abstract principles some more. Especially in social sciences, the more abstract one goes (i.e. the more sensory observations are stripped away in order to find core processes), the more I need to see observable experiments/examples to back up each step.
--Next steps:
1) More context:
-Marx's Capital project? Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography and A Companion to Marx's Capital
-"scientific socialism"? Engel's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
2) The next stage of Marx? He intended but never lived long enough to include in his political economy analysis: the state + trade + world market. Thus, imperialism is a crucial component to incorporate, i.e. what happens when costs of connectivity for the global division of labour significantly decreases, making the exploitation of foreign markets/labour/resources more affordable?
-Utsa Patnaik details this: https://youtu.be/HhjWT5W5c0Y
-intro: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-intro: The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
-dive: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
3) Finance/debt/banking:
-The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
-And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
4) A modern (and very accessible) examination of capitalism: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
5) Post-capitalism?
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism
//2021 update after reading Capital Volume 1
--This pamphlet based on an 1847 speech is a breeze to read after wading through Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (1867), which I did with 3 separate reading groups.
--For a comparison, the following stood out:
1) Assumptions and Contradictions?:
--Obviously this essay is bare-bones compared to Volume 1, which makes it much more accessible. However, this means there is no room to go through the numerous assumptions and contradictions that Marx unravels in Volume 1 (as well as hints in the prefaces).
--Modern readers have the additional challenge of deciphering the historical context of Marx's writings. Ex. Harvey in A Companion to Marx's Capital.
--With these mostly stripped out, Marx’s theories can seem rigid and teleological, which is a shame because Volume 1 (at its best) is dynamic and multi-faceted (given its focus on the contradictions of the messy real world) as well as conditional on its assumptions (Volume 1 was focused on the process of capitalist production in the abstract; of course, much confusion has arisen from the Capital series being unfinished).
--We should also note that Marx struggled with this contradictory synthesis of:
a) being rigorously "scientific" in his process (observations, thought-experiments), while
b) recognizing the dynamic uncertainty in the social sciences
...To unpack this further, see this wonderful lecture: Yanis Varoufakis: Confessions of an Erratic Marxist /// 14th May 2013
2) Prelude to the Capital project:
--This essay seems like a bridge where Marx is transitioning from investigating vulgar mainstream economics (which seems to resemble today's mainstream economics; basically propaganda to normalize capitalism) to his deep dive in Volume 1.
--The essay starts with addressing supply/demand. In Volume 1, Marx bypasses this in his assumptions (i.e. move beneath everyday market fluctuations to consider the long-term cost of production).
--Volume 1 unpacks forms of commodity exchange (ex. C-M-C, M-C-M’). While the circulation of money (M) is not in this essay, the relationship between the labourer’s "unproductive" consumption (for subsistence) vs. capitalist’s "productive" accumulation (of capital investment) is highlighted.
--As this essay has “wage labour” in its title, it’s not a surprise the focus on distinguishing nominal vs. real vs. relative wages.
//Original review before reading Capital Volume 1
The Good:
--For those not ready for 1000+ pages of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (see link for summary), but want to read the words of “economic” Marx (edited by Engels), this pamphlet is quite helpful.
--The last chapter (Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class, Middle Class, and Working Class) is the climax. Of course, the 8 previous chapters of abstraction were necessary, but I always find application of theory to be its life and purpose (for which Marx surely agrees, and modern mainstream economists scorn).
--Key points of the climax:
1) Capitalism has a systemic contradiction that leads to crisis: capitalism is driven by profits, but this is achieved through competition, which lowers price to the cost of production (thus squeezing profits), all on an ever-greater scale…
...Note: this assumption of competition reveals the Classical lineage that Marx is building from/critiquing (think Adam Smith, who assumed markets would be freed from economic rent). Other interesting perspectives here include capitalism's failure to free the market from economic rent (The Bubble and Beyond), various transitions of capitalism (i.e. "monopoly capitalism") and other historical perspectives (ex. Fernand Braudel: on capitalism as monopoly guaranteed by the State)
2) A result of competition is greater division of labour, to save costs (by maximizing efficiency) and pay cheaper wages (from deskilling). This forces proletarianization, as workers must work more, and more are forced into the labour market.
...Note: if you can think of exceptions to this, esp. higher wages, see "imperialism" in the section below
3) Another result of competition is increased technology. Increased automation squeezes the labour market, while the increasing scale of technology squeezes capitalists with additional costs/credit(!) required.
4) The outcome of capitalist competition is overproduction (too many products to sell at a profit). This can be resolved by new markets (or by destruction, which Marx does not detail here). Think of WWII, which saved global capitalism from the Great Depression by its creative destruction of stagnant capital and invention of the US Military Industrial Complex. But the need for new and greater markets to satisfy the greater scale of production (and greater credit required) leads to “more frequent and more violent” capitalist crises.
The Missing:
--As you can see from the summary above, this is a brief glimpse of the “economic” Marx; plenty of critiques on politics and moral philosophy to be found elsewhere.
--I’ll have to play around with the abstract principles some more. Especially in social sciences, the more abstract one goes (i.e. the more sensory observations are stripped away in order to find core processes), the more I need to see observable experiments/examples to back up each step.
--Next steps:
1) More context:
-Marx's Capital project? Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography and A Companion to Marx's Capital
-"scientific socialism"? Engel's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
2) The next stage of Marx? He intended but never lived long enough to include in his political economy analysis: the state + trade + world market. Thus, imperialism is a crucial component to incorporate, i.e. what happens when costs of connectivity for the global division of labour significantly decreases, making the exploitation of foreign markets/labour/resources more affordable?
-Utsa Patnaik details this: https://youtu.be/HhjWT5W5c0Y
-intro: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-intro: The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
-dive: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
3) Finance/debt/banking:
The real force that pushed history to breakneck velocity […] was not the share market. Share markets were simply not liquid enough to bankroll Edison-sized ambitions. At the turn of the 20th century […] neither the banks nor the share markets could raise the kind of money needed to build all those power stations, grids, factories and distribution networks. To get those vast projects off the ground, what was required was an equivalently-sized network of credit. Hand-in-hand, shareholding and technology led to the creation of shareholder-owned mega banks, willing to lend to the new mega firms by generating a new kind of mega debt. This took the form of vast overdraft facilities for the Thomas Edisons and the Henry Fords of the world. Of course, the money they were lent did not actually exist… yet. Rather, it was as if they were borrowing the future profits of their mega firms in order to fund those mega firms’ construction....For historical application, see:
[emphases added; from Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present]
-The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
-And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
4) A modern (and very accessible) examination of capitalism: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
5) Post-capitalism?
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism
September 30, 2020
This essay actually brought me to tears. It's one thing to read about a phrase like "wage slavery" in passing, it's another to be explained exactly how the exploitation works. What a depressing yet eye opening read.
Man this is it. I've been grappling over the last few weeks about whether Leninism or Trotskyism or whatever other ism is right. I still haven't decided that. But an essay like this really does convince me. Capitalism is evil and a total dead end besides. I'm now a communist.
Ok. Read this book for an approachable yet detail explanation of the economics of capitalism. There's no fancy philosophy here. It's plain, dry and to the point. If you read this and don't think capitalism is wrong then you must be bourgeoise class and benefiting from it, that's the only way I could imagine.
Man this is it. I've been grappling over the last few weeks about whether Leninism or Trotskyism or whatever other ism is right. I still haven't decided that. But an essay like this really does convince me. Capitalism is evil and a total dead end besides. I'm now a communist.
Ok. Read this book for an approachable yet detail explanation of the economics of capitalism. There's no fancy philosophy here. It's plain, dry and to the point. If you read this and don't think capitalism is wrong then you must be bourgeoise class and benefiting from it, that's the only way I could imagine.
April 30, 2017
رغم شعورى بنقص الكتاب وتضايقى من تعديل أنجلز فيه سأقيمه .
تبدو القضية التى يتحدث عنها قضية إنسانية قبل أن تكون قضية إقتصادية ، يرى أن العمال يعاملون كطبقة أدنى من البشر لكونهم عمال وأصبحوا عبيدا للرأسماليين ، وانا أتفق معه فى ذلك حتى إن اعترضت معه فى أشياء أخرى .
لا أرى فى كون أجير يتسلم أجرة مقابل عمله مشكلة ولا حتى فى أن يكون الرأسمالى له جزء من المكسب....الخ ، من وجهة نظرى المشكلة تكمن فى التعامل بين الرأسماليين والعمال ، وليس فى وجود رأسمالى يمتلك بعض الأموال ، فالتعامل بينهم هو من يحدد هل الرأسمال والعمل المأجور مصالحهم متفقة أم متضادة ، قد يكون هذا الرأسمالى فى الاصل عامل اجتهد حتى اصبح فى هذه المكانة .
أعلم أنه يريد أن يقضى على الفروق الهائلة بين طبقتى العمال والرأسماليين ،ولكن الذى حيرنى هو إن كانت المشكلة من وجهة نظره هى وجود الرأسماليين أصلا، فماذا سيكون الحل الذى يطرحه يا ترى؟؟ هل هى إلغاء الطبقة الرأسمالية برمتها :/ !!!! ، أظن أن هناك دولا كالسويد إستطاعت أن تمحى الفوارق بين الطبقات إلى حد كبير ، لم تضطر للقضاء على الرأسماليين وفى ذات الوقت لم تسمح لهم بتداول أغلب الأموال وما يتبقى يكون لأغلب الشعب .
لقد اختنقت من تطرف الرأسمالية للرأسماليين ضد العمال ، ومن تطرف الإشتراكية للعمال ضد الرأسماليين .
تبدو القضية التى يتحدث عنها قضية إنسانية قبل أن تكون قضية إقتصادية ، يرى أن العمال يعاملون كطبقة أدنى من البشر لكونهم عمال وأصبحوا عبيدا للرأسماليين ، وانا أتفق معه فى ذلك حتى إن اعترضت معه فى أشياء أخرى .
لا أرى فى كون أجير يتسلم أجرة مقابل عمله مشكلة ولا حتى فى أن يكون الرأسمالى له جزء من المكسب....الخ ، من وجهة نظرى المشكلة تكمن فى التعامل بين الرأسماليين والعمال ، وليس فى وجود رأسمالى يمتلك بعض الأموال ، فالتعامل بينهم هو من يحدد هل الرأسمال والعمل المأجور مصالحهم متفقة أم متضادة ، قد يكون هذا الرأسمالى فى الاصل عامل اجتهد حتى اصبح فى هذه المكانة .
أعلم أنه يريد أن يقضى على الفروق الهائلة بين طبقتى العمال والرأسماليين ،ولكن الذى حيرنى هو إن كانت المشكلة من وجهة نظره هى وجود الرأسماليين أصلا، فماذا سيكون الحل الذى يطرحه يا ترى؟؟ هل هى إلغاء الطبقة الرأسمالية برمتها :/ !!!! ، أظن أن هناك دولا كالسويد إستطاعت أن تمحى الفوارق بين الطبقات إلى حد كبير ، لم تضطر للقضاء على الرأسماليين وفى ذات الوقت لم تسمح لهم بتداول أغلب الأموال وما يتبقى يكون لأغلب الشعب .
لقد اختنقت من تطرف الرأسمالية للرأسماليين ضد العمال ، ومن تطرف الإشتراكية للعمال ضد الرأسماليين .
April 16, 2024
Texto cortito pero muy potente que deja claros conceptos básicos y muy importantes. Crucial para toda persona que esté empezando su formación.
May 17, 2024
la cantidad de cosas que analizo y aprendo leyendo a este tío lo bien que se expresa y lo fácil que resulta lo bien que lo hizo todo!!!!!!!
May 15, 2021
"Thus the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow ever leaner.
Somewhat easier to comprehend relative to Capital Volume 1, without sacrificing the key concepts from that work, this is a great little pamphlet if you're interested in Marxist political economy.
Somewhat easier to comprehend relative to Capital Volume 1, without sacrificing the key concepts from that work, this is a great little pamphlet if you're interested in Marxist political economy.
December 20, 2021
A really great introductory book to the economics side of Marx’s thoughts by Marx himself, far better than any other secondary sources. The concepts are explained quite clearly and plainly although Engel’s translation is a bit difficult to read. It really encourages me to explore more of Marx’s original writings, more in-depth and complex than this pamphlet.
May 11, 2022
"فمن جهة ثروات لا عد لها وفائض من المنتجات لا يستطيع المستهلكون شراؤه. ومن جهة أخرى السواد الأعظم من أفراد المجتمع الذين تحولوا الي بروليتاريين، الي اُجراء وغدوا بالتالي عاجزين عن امتلاك هذا الفائض من المنتجات، وانقسم المجتمع الي طبقة صغيره لا حد لغناها والي طبقة كبيرة من الاُجراء غير المالكين يجعل هذا المجتمع يختنق في وفرته بالذات، في حين أن الاغلبيه الكبرى من أفراده تكاد تكون غير محمية، أو حتى هي غير محمية إطلاقاً من غائلة البؤس المدقع. وهذا الوضع إنما يشتد يوماً بعد يوم ما يتصف به من طابع أخرق لا فائدة منه ولذا فإن إزالته ضرورية وممكنه"
جزء من مقدمة الكتاب
يتحدث ماركس عن تحليل العلاقة بين الاجر والعامل من جهة والراسمال والبرجوازيين من جهة أخرى حيث يرى ماركس أن تلك العلاقة هي أساس تطور الاقتصاد ولكن مع ذلك يرى الظلم الواقع على العامل بشكل فادح حيث ينبغي على العامل أن يقوم بعمل اكبر من طاقته ليأخذ اجر أقل مما يستحق فقط لأنه لا بديل عن ذلك.
وما أراه أن اليوم والوضع الاقتصادي الحالي قد تخطى ما ذكره ماركس لأن كل المراحل التي ذكرها قد تحققت سواء من اتساع الطبقية بين افرد المجتمع وزيادة تلك الفوارق، وأيضاً ظهور ظاهرة عمل المرأة والطفل لسد حاجات الأسرة لعدم قدرة الآباء على سد حاجات أسرته، وتلا ذلك ضعف الرواتب المستمر مقارنة بغلاء الاسعار والذي يزداد بسبب الزياده السكانيه في طبقة البروليتاريا وارتفاع الطلب على أساسيات المعيشة والتي تصب في مصلحه الطبقة الصغيره من البرجوازيين الجدد "أصحاب رؤوس الأموال" وإحلال الآلات محل الطبقة العامله مما تسبب في ضعف الرواتب أكثر وغيرها مما توقعه ماركس داخل الكتاب.
ولكن المشكلة الان أنه لا حلول لما طرحه فالكتاب هو عرض للمشكلات وتفصيل لشكل الاقتصاد وإظهار نتائجه لكن دون وضع حلول حقيقية على أرض الواقع والاكتفاء بالتأكيد على إزالة ذلك النظام الاقتصادي ولكن ما البديل.
أظن أن ذلك التساؤل قد أجاب عليه ماركس في كتب اخرى لم يحالفني الحظ لقراءتها حتى الآن.
جزء من مقدمة الكتاب
يتحدث ماركس عن تحليل العلاقة بين الاجر والعامل من جهة والراسمال والبرجوازيين من جهة أخرى حيث يرى ماركس أن تلك العلاقة هي أساس تطور الاقتصاد ولكن مع ذلك يرى الظلم الواقع على العامل بشكل فادح حيث ينبغي على العامل أن يقوم بعمل اكبر من طاقته ليأخذ اجر أقل مما يستحق فقط لأنه لا بديل عن ذلك.
وما أراه أن اليوم والوضع الاقتصادي الحالي قد تخطى ما ذكره ماركس لأن كل المراحل التي ذكرها قد تحققت سواء من اتساع الطبقية بين افرد المجتمع وزيادة تلك الفوارق، وأيضاً ظهور ظاهرة عمل المرأة والطفل لسد حاجات الأسرة لعدم قدرة الآباء على سد حاجات أسرته، وتلا ذلك ضعف الرواتب المستمر مقارنة بغلاء الاسعار والذي يزداد بسبب الزياده السكانيه في طبقة البروليتاريا وارتفاع الطلب على أساسيات المعيشة والتي تصب في مصلحه الطبقة الصغيره من البرجوازيين الجدد "أصحاب رؤوس الأموال" وإحلال الآلات محل الطبقة العامله مما تسبب في ضعف الرواتب أكثر وغيرها مما توقعه ماركس داخل الكتاب.
ولكن المشكلة الان أنه لا حلول لما طرحه فالكتاب هو عرض للمشكلات وتفصيل لشكل الاقتصاد وإظهار نتائجه لكن دون وضع حلول حقيقية على أرض الواقع والاكتفاء بالتأكيد على إزالة ذلك النظام الاقتصادي ولكن ما البديل.
أظن أن ذلك التساؤل قد أجاب عليه ماركس في كتب اخرى لم يحالفني الحظ لقراءتها حتى الآن.
June 26, 2022
sincerely wish this and principles of communism got as much attention as the communist manifesto, as this feels a lot more informative as well as it is a lot more digestible
March 11, 2024
idolo
March 9, 2024
leer esta obra de arte ha sido una experiencia mística. barra tras barra tras barra… limbo interminable de barras.
December 19, 2023
Mandatory read for anyone with serious politics.
December 14, 2021
Saw this on a theory reading list and couldn't remember if I've ever actually read it before. Might've. It's really the bare basics of Marxism and I've gleaned all of this elsewhere if not already directly. Good reading for n00bs.
February 3, 2019
If this doesn't describe modern America, I don't know what does...
"Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease.
The labourer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labour, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class"
"Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease.
The labourer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labour, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class"
May 29, 2016
عدة محاضرات ألقاها ماركس عام 1847 في رابطة العمال الألمان في بروكسل، توضح العلاقة بين الرأسمال والعمل المأجور، كيف يتكون الرأسمال؟ كيف يتحدد أجرة العمل؟ ما هي قيمة العمل؟
ويصل في النهاية إلى أن العلاقة بين الرأسمالي والعامل ليست كما يزعم الإقتصاديون الكلاسيكيون، من أنها علاقة تكامل، بل عبودية كاملة، فالرأسمالي يعطي العامل مقدار ما يبقيه على قيد الحياة، في المقابل يتعاظم رأسماله _العمل المكدس_ من فائض قيمة قوة عمل العامل.
وكلما تكدس العمل تحكم في العمل الحي، أي العامل، ومن ثم يصبح بؤس الطبقة العاملة ككل شرط رخاء الطبقة البرجوازية.
كتاب رائع وضع لغير المتخصصين.
ويصل في النهاية إلى أن العلاقة بين الرأسمالي والعامل ليست كما يزعم الإقتصاديون الكلاسيكيون، من أنها علاقة تكامل، بل عبودية كاملة، فالرأسمالي يعطي العامل مقدار ما يبقيه على قيد الحياة، في المقابل يتعاظم رأسماله _العمل المكدس_ من فائض قيمة قوة عمل العامل.
وكلما تكدس العمل تحكم في العمل الحي، أي العامل، ومن ثم يصبح بؤس الطبقة العاملة ككل شرط رخاء الطبقة البرجوازية.
كتاب رائع وضع لغير المتخصصين.
November 26, 2020
Marx reviews the links between capital wage labour, profit and wages. An important reading for understanding economic forces. The reading is also a quick read so go ahead and read through it!
May 14, 2021
Na introdução de Engels: "Tal é a constituição económica da nossa actual sociedade: é somente a classe trabalhadora que produz todo os valores. Pois o valor é apenas uma outra expressão para trabalho, aquela expressão pela qual se designa, na sociedade capitalista dos nossos dias, a quantidade de trabalho socialmente necessário incorporada a uma determinada mercadoria. Estes valores produzidos pelos operários não pertencem, porém, aos operários."
June 28, 2024
se me habia olvidado porqué este textillo es tan bueno para empezar a leer a marx y engels
May 22, 2024
great start when you're beginning to read theory :3
August 29, 2023
super accessible and organized. not a lot of novel concepts, but the procession of ideas and the very thorough explanations of each stage made it very cool read.
November 23, 2023
"Capital is too long! Why didn't Marx write short summaries??? Didn't he want anyone to read Capital???"
He did, and it's Wage-Labour & Capital (and The Manifesto and Value, Price & Profit).
It's genuinely concise and gives you most of the foundational elements of Capital Vol 1.
General summary:
—Value is expended labour.
—Labour power is a commodity and labourers must sell their labour power for a set price in order to purchase the means of subsistence. This set price is wages.
—Capital is accumulated labour, it is value you can use to make more value by bringing it into contact with labour power.
—Capitalists buy labour power in order to increase the size of their capital.
—The exchange with the labourer is performed and the capitalist then sells the fruits of this labour for a higher price. The difference between this higher price and the price the capitalist bought the labour power for is profit, or surplus value.
—The value produced through the expending of labour power was greater than the wages paid to the labourer. Using basic calculations, there will always come a certain point in the working day where the labourer will have produced value equivalent to their wages, and from this point onwards they will work for free.
—In capitalism, wage labour and capital exist as a dialectic. One cannot exist without the other. The labourer has no way to produce the means of subsistence without selling labour power to the capitalist, and the capitalist has no way to increase their capital without labour power.
—Despite this relationship their interests are opposed and their unity produces conflict.
—Competition compels the capitalist to improve production through technological change, expand markets etc, but by doing so decreases labour time per unit and increases output.
—This puts the capitalist into conflict with the labourer who must continue to obtain a wage high enough to maintain subsistent consumption while producing greater and greater output in less time, while competing with others in the labour market.
—This process also forces more and more former capitalists into the ranks of the labourers and produces a contradiction between a world in which production is increasingly socialised (a global production system in which the vast vast majority must sell their labour power to survive) while its spoils are reaped by a fewer and fewer number of capitalists.
—This produces violent crises.
He did, and it's Wage-Labour & Capital (and The Manifesto and Value, Price & Profit).
It's genuinely concise and gives you most of the foundational elements of Capital Vol 1.
General summary:
—Value is expended labour.
—Labour power is a commodity and labourers must sell their labour power for a set price in order to purchase the means of subsistence. This set price is wages.
—Capital is accumulated labour, it is value you can use to make more value by bringing it into contact with labour power.
—Capitalists buy labour power in order to increase the size of their capital.
—The exchange with the labourer is performed and the capitalist then sells the fruits of this labour for a higher price. The difference between this higher price and the price the capitalist bought the labour power for is profit, or surplus value.
—The value produced through the expending of labour power was greater than the wages paid to the labourer. Using basic calculations, there will always come a certain point in the working day where the labourer will have produced value equivalent to their wages, and from this point onwards they will work for free.
—In capitalism, wage labour and capital exist as a dialectic. One cannot exist without the other. The labourer has no way to produce the means of subsistence without selling labour power to the capitalist, and the capitalist has no way to increase their capital without labour power.
—Despite this relationship their interests are opposed and their unity produces conflict.
—Competition compels the capitalist to improve production through technological change, expand markets etc, but by doing so decreases labour time per unit and increases output.
—This puts the capitalist into conflict with the labourer who must continue to obtain a wage high enough to maintain subsistent consumption while producing greater and greater output in less time, while competing with others in the labour market.
—This process also forces more and more former capitalists into the ranks of the labourers and produces a contradiction between a world in which production is increasingly socialised (a global production system in which the vast vast majority must sell their labour power to survive) while its spoils are reaped by a fewer and fewer number of capitalists.
—This produces violent crises.
July 27, 2021
لم يفشل كارل ماركس أبداً في إثارة إعجابي ولم تعجز الماركسية بتاتاً عن إشعال شغفي المعرفي وشرارات الجدل والفكر داخل عقلي
١٠ سنوات مرت علي لقاءي الأولي بالنظرية المعرفية الماركسية .. مرت السنون ولازلت كما أنا طفلاً صغيراً أمام بوابة عملاقة تفكك العالم الذي نعيشه وتعيد ترتيب وحداته بما لا ينطق به أحد
بعيدا عن محتوي الكتاب الثري والرائع من نقد وتفكيك لمقولات الإقتصاد السياسي الكلاسيكي وإعادة صياغة لعلاقة رأس المال بالأجر والطبقة البرجوازية بنظيرتها العاملة البروليتارية .. وهو إسهام نظري عظيم بالطبع .. فهنا أحب أن أشيد وأركز علي التطابق ما بين النسق الفلسفي للماركسية .. المادية الجدلية .. تفكيك ماركس وأنجلز للكلاسيكية في زيها الاقتصادي السياسي
لم ينحرف ماركس قيد انملة عن المنهج الجدلي وأصر علي تطبيقه في جميع أمثلته وتحليلاته بالذات المتعلق بالتأثير الإجتماعي لنمط الإنتاج الاقتصادي والعلاقة بين البضائع وبعضها وتأثير السعر علي باقي السوق .. تطبيق حي لمبدأ "ترابط الوحدات" ونفس لفكرة أن كل وحدة تسبح في فلك خاص بها وكذلك تأصيل لثنائية البني الفوقية والتحتية وصراع المتناقضات
لم ينفصل ماركس لا عن منهجه السياسي ولا الفلسفي طيلة كلامه أو ينحاز لأي طرف سوي الطبقة العاملة .. وهو من نقاط قوته العديدة كمفكر ومميزات منهجه ومدرسته المعرفية فهي علي عكس تخبطات الميتافيزيقا ودروب المثالية متكاملة منطقية ومترابطة لأبعد حد
١٠ سنوات مرت علي لقاءي الأولي بالنظرية المعرفية الماركسية .. مرت السنون ولازلت كما أنا طفلاً صغيراً أمام بوابة عملاقة تفكك العالم الذي نعيشه وتعيد ترتيب وحداته بما لا ينطق به أحد
بعيدا عن محتوي الكتاب الثري والرائع من نقد وتفكيك لمقولات الإقتصاد السياسي الكلاسيكي وإعادة صياغة لعلاقة رأس المال بالأجر والطبقة البرجوازية بنظيرتها العاملة البروليتارية .. وهو إسهام نظري عظيم بالطبع .. فهنا أحب أن أشيد وأركز علي التطابق ما بين النسق الفلسفي للماركسية .. المادية الجدلية .. تفكيك ماركس وأنجلز للكلاسيكية في زيها الاقتصادي السياسي
لم ينحرف ماركس قيد انملة عن المنهج الجدلي وأصر علي تطبيقه في جميع أمثلته وتحليلاته بالذات المتعلق بالتأثير الإجتماعي لنمط الإنتاج الاقتصادي والعلاقة بين البضائع وبعضها وتأثير السعر علي باقي السوق .. تطبيق حي لمبدأ "ترابط الوحدات" ونفس لفكرة أن كل وحدة تسبح في فلك خاص بها وكذلك تأصيل لثنائية البني الفوقية والتحتية وصراع المتناقضات
لم ينفصل ماركس لا عن منهجه السياسي ولا الفلسفي طيلة كلامه أو ينحاز لأي طرف سوي الطبقة العاملة .. وهو من نقاط قوته العديدة كمفكر ومميزات منهجه ومدرسته المعرفية فهي علي عكس تخبطات الميتافيزيقا ودروب المثالية متكاملة منطقية ومترابطة لأبعد حد
September 16, 2019
An excellent introduction into the economic theories of Karl Marx. He would later go on to elaborate on everything proposed here in his 3 volume magnum opus, Das Kapital; however, here you will find, more or less, the fundamental essentials of his thought.
He writes at the beginning:
"We shall seek to portray this as simply and popularly as possible, and shall not presuppose a knowledge of even the most elementary notions of political economy. We wish to be understood by the workers."
In my view he lives up to this statement, and I can therefore highly recommend this work, although I do not necessarily agree with the whole of its content or a large portion of his thought in general.
He writes at the beginning:
"We shall seek to portray this as simply and popularly as possible, and shall not presuppose a knowledge of even the most elementary notions of political economy. We wish to be understood by the workers."
In my view he lives up to this statement, and I can therefore highly recommend this work, although I do not necessarily agree with the whole of its content or a large portion of his thought in general.
July 4, 2023
“The labourer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labour, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class.”
July 26, 2012
A good introduction but the last part where Marx puts forward his law of increasing misery of the working class is wrong and will put people off Marx
February 6, 2021
A short pamphlet that Marx wanted to get in workers' hands to understand the economy. The macro and even the micro economy is a complex dynamic system with many moving parts agents buying and selling commodities the most important commodity being labor. With such a complex system no description no matter how elaborate will capture all of its aspects. In cases of describing such a system, we have different levels of detail we can use to describe it with trade-offs. We can use very simple toy models to describe but miss many aspects and details or we can try for precision and get lost in minutiae and bore the reader to death. It depends on the time available and level of interest how long you are going to make your treatment. For people fascinated by flows of money, and power dynamics, and in-depth analysis of macro and micro economy I would obviously go to books like Das Capital or a modern treatment like Anwar Shaikh's Capitalism: competition, crisis, conflict. However, most people don't have that much interest in economic theory and want something quick and dirty to understand Marxian economics. If you are such a person and want to get the gist of Marxian ideas around the economy I would start with this book. It is free on Scribd in audiobook form it is short and covers the basic argument. If you really think this stuff is good, fascinating, and useful I would recommend the longer works I mentioned be warned Capital is a slog in the later two-thirds, and Shaikh while heavy going is pretty good for people who want to nerd out on this stuff.
November 13, 2023
Not worded as smoothly as Marx's later work but obviously still of extreme importance. The introduction to the internal contradictions of capital within political economy and the crises it will inevitably cause has still not gone out of fashion. This short pamphlet truly makes you feel that 'as long as capitalism exists, Marx will still be read.' Here is such a pertinent quote that still rings as freshly today as it did in 1849: "although the enjoyments of the worker have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature" (33).
March 16, 2023
Anyone looking to dip their toes into Marxisim for the first time cannot go wrong with this title.
" ...the labourer who for 12 hours long, weaves, spins, bores, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stone, carries hods, and so on – is this 12 hours' weaving, spinning, boring, turning, building, shovelling, stone-breaking, regarded by him as a manifestation of life, as life? Quite the contrary. Life for him begins where this activity ceases, at the table, at the tavern, in bed. The 12 hours' work, on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, boring, and so on, but only as earnings, which enable him to sit down at a table, to take his seat in the tavern, and to lie down in a bed. If the silk-worm's object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker. "
" ...the labourer who for 12 hours long, weaves, spins, bores, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stone, carries hods, and so on – is this 12 hours' weaving, spinning, boring, turning, building, shovelling, stone-breaking, regarded by him as a manifestation of life, as life? Quite the contrary. Life for him begins where this activity ceases, at the table, at the tavern, in bed. The 12 hours' work, on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, boring, and so on, but only as earnings, which enable him to sit down at a table, to take his seat in the tavern, and to lie down in a bed. If the silk-worm's object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker. "
January 27, 2021
I believe in listening to both sides of every story or debate. So I figured if I was an unapologenic capitalist, then I should at least hear what the other side had to say. Surprisingly, Marx has a very good understanding of how markets, wages, economics, inflation, deflation, and capital works. If you can look past the whole "capitalists shouldn't make money off of laborers" thing, this would be a great introduction to economics text.
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