Wanted to make this post both as a summarization of what I've learned so far to myself and to provide a baby-level analysis into the Capital as well. Not only haven't I finished the first book (I just ended Chapter 8) I am not even reading it directly: that is, I'm watching a course. This is all to say I am no source. Thus I open myself to rebuttals. Please note that a tl;dr is impossible because the writing style of Marx assumes you've read everything previous to that paragraph, in its ENTIRETY.With that said...Marx starts his analysis of capitalist society by merchandise, that is, items which have been made negotiable in a market mechanism. He initially takes the point of view not of a historian but of an ordinary observer, and this is also what I will try to do. There, on an extremely superficial analysis, one may find many items with their respective uses. Cultural products such as art, means of production such as machinery and so on. The use of a thing is its use-value. Notice that if Marx attempted to analyse capitalism through a extensive compilation of use values, nothing would be learned about the social and historical organization of society that is capitalism, for use-value is ahistorical. An axe cuts wood in Ancient Greece, in Medieval France, in Colonial Brazil and in Imperial England, yet the means through which this axe is produced (and more importantly, the relations of power that constitute such production) in each of these societies is extremely distinct. Already a common argument by the apologists of capitalism, that the mode of production of capitalism has produced high-tech items such as Iphones, is disqualified as an Iphone can be produced by any kind of society which has achieved such a level of technological affluence.There is something more revealing about these products than their use-values: they are in a market mechanism, implying that they have different values (which will be more thoroughly categorized later) symbolized by price (also more thorougly categorized later). Potentially, a X quantity of cups can be equalized in value to a Y quantity of deodorant. This is called exchange value and is always determined by comparision with other merchandise.Yet this is a bizarre equivalence, for we have just mentioned the diversity of use-values that exist in a given society. Using the previously mentioned example, do we consider the health benefits of water in comparision to deodorant, while also taking into account the hazardous effects of alcohol; soda and other kinds of beverages and the overall effectiveness of deodorant considering different biotypes in order to establish some equivalence? The rhetorical question is meant to drive home the further point: deodorant and cups are so qualitatively distinct from each other in their use-value they could not possibly be compared quantitatively to each other through use-value.What all merchandise share that possibilitates their quantitative measure is human work. A deodorant is an industrial product, a merchandise such as wood requires extraction and a private school requires teachers and other administrative persons. Scarce things are deemed valuable because of the work necessary to extract them, for example, and the controversial concept of ''skilled'' labour is also similarly based on the scarcity of workers with that particular set of abilities.The problem is not solved, however, as not only is the use-value of such products extremely distinct, the ways through which they are manufactured are also hardly comparable. Does a teacher produce ''more'' value than an industrial worker responsible for deodorants? Is there a specific quantity of classes one must take into account in this relationship? Again, we run into absurdity.Capitalism does not have an answer for this question. The value of a product is measured by its labour, yet the diversity of existing labour obligates capitalism to rob labour of its peculiarities and melt it into a single, undifferianted jelly-mass of work. This is the concept of abstract labour. It is abstract because it is not actual, observable human labour; sweat and blood but a cold and nonsensical calculation that attempts to quantify concrete work. Yet it is not arbitrary. It does this by estimating the ammount of ''socially necessary work'' to produce a certain product, and this is given by the technological conditions of such a time; the skillset of the average worker and many other aspects. For example, I may have spent an entire year of my life in the production of a single ventilator, yet because the socially necessary labour time for such a product is obscenely lower, I will be obligated to price it the same as all other ventilators.Abstract labour is synonymous with ''value'', which is a distinct concept from exchange-value and use-value. Value is what determines exchange-value, that is, merchandise can only be compared through abstract labour. So for instance, a set of deodorant may be equal in value to a set of axes. Let us say that 20 deodorant equals 3 axes.The value of deodorant is apparently given by its relation to axes. The word apparently here is key, as we have just stated both have intrinsic abstract labour. In truth, what we are saying is that the abstract labour of producing 3 axes equals that of producing 20 deodorant. Though we obviously cannot see this, the equivalence is a pleonasm, a 2=2. Yet because the value of deodorant is apparently given in its relation to axes, axes appear not to HAVE value (which is not use-value, but abstract labour) but to BE value. The axe is deified and eclipses the deodorant in importance. It is the god Axe through which all gets its value: ventilators, courses, videogame consoles and so on. He who creates axes creates value almost magically, as if giving birth to energy out of nowhere.Obviously, the role axes take in this example is today taken by ''money'' and was previously assumed by gold. Not only does money obscure other merchandise, it obscures work and the relations of power which preceed it: it obscures everything that is social about value and how it is produced because it must assume the identity of value as itself. Abstract labour is represented through money, the merchandise which determines the value of all merchandise. Through price, money becomes metaphysical: we see 2,60 dollars in a specific product even though there are no dollars that are materially visible.Yet precisely because money is simply another merchandise (a merchandise whose use-value is the representation of the abstract labour of all other merchandise) and not abstract labour in itself, which is unchanging, it must fluctuate in order to effectively express the value of any given merchandise as it suffers cycles of scarcity and overabudance, as well given the velocity of consumption. These are the cycles of inflation and deflation, which are not relevant at the moment. They are only important insofar as they show that products do not take their value from money: on the contrary, money is merely a representative of the value intrinsic in these products. It is not the axe which determines the value of deodorant, using the previous example, but the deodorant which is quantitatively expressed in axes. If money was the absolute expression of value, bread could've not possibly have cost more than 1 trillion at the German Republic of Weimar which preceded Nazism, yet it did.Since the use-value of money is the representation of value, it is universally applicable value. For instance, while a set of deodorant may have the same value as a particular set of money, we all know it impossible to go to the supermarket using deodorant as currency. Thus the importance of the act of selling in a capitalist society: it is the means through which the ''inferior value'' of a merchandise becomes ''superior value'' in money, yet this money is not QUANTIATIVELY superior to the merchandise which has been sold (that is, such money represents the exact same ammount of value, otherwise the buyer would be wasting value expressed in money). It is superior only in regards to its application in a market mechanism.Though this is yet to be explained more thoroughly, as the concept of class hasn't yet been defined, it is obvious through the experience of all people reading this (as they are inserted in a capitalist society) that working class people will use their money towards the consumption of specific goods, such as food and entertainment, and not towards enrichment. Our value is thus converted to an ''inferior'' form: from currency to merchandise. We will call this circuit MCM: merchandise-currency-merchandise. The working class sells its disposition of labour to the capitalist class, gaining a salary which will be directed towards a merchandise. The merchandise will be consumed for its use-value and the process ends there.The peculiarty of the capitalist class is its circuit: CMC. Currency-merchandise-currency, that is, they will ''invest'' their money into specific merchandise so that they can obtain more money. Money is not the means for the purchase of products but an end in and of itself, o Lord Money. We have already gotten into this religious sort of thinking by using the example of axes.This is the crucial point through which Marxism diverges from liberal economics: we have seen that a merchandise of a certain value can only be exchanged for one of equal value. But then what is the purpose of CMC? Why would I invest 100 dollars into a merchandise that will give me a return of 100 dollars, gaining nothing in return (though not losing as well)? Somehow the capitalist has obtained more value than he previously had. A surplus-value. This mere circulation of merchandise cannot create those sweet profits, nor can production, as all production in a capitalist society takes place in the market mechanism of circulation.(It must be noted that value is constant. The merchandise of 100 dollars the capitalist has bought has as much value as 100 dollars. As such, value cannot ever be ''lost'').As we've seen, the only thing that can create value is work.A person in capitalist society cannot survive on their own, that is, without the commodity of money. They do not have land to be self-sufficient on, nor the possibility of gaining land, nor the tools through which hunting becomes viable. Historically, such things were stolen from the people in the enclosure of the commons in Europe and the colonization process through which Europeans robbed the natives of land.The workers must ''sell themselves''. They do not actually sell themselves as a slave and they do not have any kind of personal bond with the capitalist as serfs had with their feudal lords, to which they were geographically stuck. If the worker sold his work, the capitalist class would have no profits as all of surplus-value is created by work. The worker must sell instead his capacity to work, that is, he sells his labour power. He sells his skillset of abilities, his psychological makeup, his physical disposition and many others aspects that are intrinsic of him to the capitalist that translate to his disposition to work. Work creates value, which is partially used to pay for labour-power in the form of a salary as well as into production costs with machinery, but whatever else is left the capitalist will hold onto tightly. This is how the capitalist gains surplus-value. Nor simple production nor circulation produce surplus-value: it is rather the circulation of production.''Capital'' is that which produces surplus value. ''Variable'' capital is expressed in labour power, as the value that it can produce is variable. ''Constant'' capital refers to the means of productions which the workers use in their labour. My course treats capital as synonymous with surplus value but I have some problems with that understanding, so don't trust me on the definition of capital. I am confident in the dicothomy between variable and constant capital however.Class warfare in the capitalist form of society is thus expressed by capitalists seeking to parasite as much work as possible on the greatest intensity; efficiency and periods of time; at the expense of the working class, who will not accept such conditions with ease. Yet the power dynamics here are obvious, both directly as the worker depends on the capitalist for his subsistence and indirectly as surplus-value can (and WILL) be directed towards class warfare in the form of propaganda; corruption; violence and so on.A quote from Marx suffices for the ending. While these concepts cannot be summarized for someone who has not read them, they can for those who have. They are summarized by:Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. [...] the voice of the labourer [...] had been stiffled in the storm and stress of production.๐ท via /r/communism https://ift.tt/2JPHIlM
