The possibility of the “becoming” of the state was typically ruled out in the hierarchicalpolitical forms characteristic of the Ottoman and Mughal Empires and the Chinesedynasties.
It's unclear to me what this means - what is the "becoming of the state"?
While the capitalist state may be independent and autonomous, it is nevertheless subsumedwithin the overall logic and laws of motion of capital.
This sentence brings a lot of the questions and concepts from this chapter together, and also puts me in mind of earlier concepts from the first chapter regarding the totality of capital.
“is not that from feudalism to capitalism, but from scattered to concentratedcapitalist power. And the most important aspect of this much neglected transition is theunique fusion of state and capital, which was realized nowhere more favourably forcapitalism than in Europe.
I would be interested to know what era Arrighi sees this concentration occur in.
. In acrisis, however, it is critical that both sides come together
Why, when they come together in a crisis, is finance and capital protected and not populist concerns like jobs, housing, and welfare?
. Its main role is to manage the real rate of interest(nominal rate minus inflation) and to ensure the stability of the monetary system
By what mechanisms is it able to do this?
Its activity is based within the capitalistsocial formation
It is not clear to me what the "capitalist social formation" means in this context.
It also claims certain regulatory rights over the circulation of capital ingeneral while promoting investments in the built environment (both productive and non-productive) which, as the China case clearly shows, can be mobilized to counter the crisistendencies of capital
Was it China's Treasury Department that instituted the massive infrastructure projects that saved global capital after the financial crash? By what mechanisms can Treasury departments actually produce construction and production in a country?
sensitive department to the needs of the people and the most carefully attentivedepartment within the state apparatus when it comes to the needs and requirements ofcapital
If the Treasury department is in charge of circulation of tax revenues and national debt, why does that mean the department should be so aligned with the requirements of the capitalist class and unaligned with popular needs, relative to other state departments? What it is about tax revenues and debt that allows this department to get away with not serving the needs of the people, the basic premise of government, to a greater extent than other departments?
There is a purely physical barrier to exponentially expandingconsumption/realization of commodities (even with the shift into the production ofexperiences rather than things).
Is this also related to why experiencial commodities are becoming so important?
We are left with the image of a capitalist dystopia characterized by an ever-increasing massof value and fictitious value (immaterial and fictitious forms of capital proliferate)produced by less and less meaningful labour from which an avaricious and unempatheticcapitalist class along with its hangers-on and facilitators, suck up multiple mass tokens ofhuman wealth in monetized form. The overall circulation of capital is broken up into mini-circuits of capital flow (such as inter-bank lending or speculative exchanges of financiersand landlords in property markets) which by-pass valorization altogether but whichbolster the illusory accumulation of monetary wealth in the upper classes in general but inthe class of money capitalists in particular.
I really appriciate this description of a system with many moving parts, that is similar yet different than some of the 'totality of capital' descriptions you have described earlier in the book.
The assertion that diverting funds to them stimulates investment and that theycreate jobs is totally misleading.
This is a striking point because the idea that the ultra-rich capitalists create jobs and "raise all boats" is so central justifying the inequality of the neoliberal era. It is difficult for me to conceptuliaze how this concept is supposed to work, let alone how to argue the point.
The object of this circulation is to earn interest not to produceprofit.
This seems like a key distinction, one that starts to clarify some of my earlier questions about the distinctions of rentierism.
marginalistrevolution in economic theory in the latter half of the nineteenth century was a God-send.
I am not clear on what "marginalist" economic theory is. Does it have to do with the aforementioned example of how price is set by production costs under the LEAST favorable conditions?
Privateproperty in land meant the retention of a certain monopoly power of individuals as to whatto do with that land. Competition in this case meant monopolistic competition and thatmeant the attenuation of the coercive effects
The use of monopoloy here is difficult to understand. What makes ownership of land more of a monopoly than ownership of a car, a house, or a factory? Assuming many people own many parcels of land, why does land ownership attenuate the coercitve effects of competition?
It isnow the turn of the industrial capitalist to be rendered subservient either to themonopsony power of the merchants, or to the monopoly power of the financiers, while thelanded interest (including command over the minerals under the land) is extracting itsounce of flesh (or grams of lithium) wherever it can.
This is an interesting turn of historical events, and this section helps me understand that in this chapter you will again be contrasting past practices of capital accumulation with modern ones.
But by the time Marx wrote notonly had usury been largely curbed, but merchant capital, landed capital and money(finance) capital had all become broadly subservient to the industrial interest, botheconomically and theoretically (at least within the orbit of Manchester industrialism armedwith a persuasive doctrine of the virtues of “his holiness free trade”).
Coming from a modern context, it is difficult to understand why there should be a conflict between free market trade and usurious finance. It seems that if someone owned an assett, like a house, it would be consistent with 'free market' practices to use that house to make as much money as possible, even if that meant renting at high rates of speculating on the land. Is it only "usurious" when a monopoly is involved?
hard times for the British landed aristocracy
I understand why a decline in the value of labor power results in rising profits for industrialists (Profit = surplus value/c+v), but why does it cause a problem for landed aristocracy? Because they own the land where the grain comes from, and the cost of grain has gone down?
productive enterprises
How can a rentier profit from productive enterprise? I thought the defintion of rentier profit is that nothing new is produced? What would be an example of a rentier collecting money passively on productive enterprise? Is it that a rentier does not do any productive work themselves (ie, they do not manage factory workers, nor do they work in the factory), they only buy/own the means of production (ie, they own the factory itself)?
To what ideas, therefore, do the material relations and practices described in the above examples give rise? To this I add a second methodological injunction: if there is indeed a compelling case for revising or even revolutionizing the concept and theory of capital so far advanced to take account of these cases, then the roots of these transformations should be discernible in earlier practices and theoretical formulations.
I feel at this point I have a clearer idea of what the aims of this book is, what argument is being constructed. My understanding is that earlier chapters focus on Marx's theory of value and the material conditions (Manchester) that influenced that theory were laying the groundwork to contrast major contemporary methods of capital growth and appropriation, that are not about production and effciency, but about the rising mass, and what kind of speculative accumulation is made possible when the mass of fixed capital has so overgrown production and labor needs.
At this point in the chapter, it is my understanding that the rest of the chapter (and book, I suppose) will deal with expanding the Marxist theory of value to bring in these more contemporary modes of capital accumulation.
The financial crisis of 2007-8 originated in the housing mortgage market (in the consumption fund no less)
I am still grappling with the meaning and use of the term "consumption fund" from the last chapter. Are you saying that the housing mortgage market itself is an example of the consumption fund?
consumption fund
It's not clear to me what the consumption fund is in this context. It was earlier defined as "long term assets created in support of daily consumption," and the example of this kind of asset was housing. I'm confused as to how that defintion connects to the consumption fund's role as a problematic investment that slows down capital circulation.
fixed capital of an independent kind
independent kind as opposed to a dependent kind of capital? indepdent of what, and dependent on what?
led to the use of that value in Britain to support consumption and state functions through the creation of assets that could later become fixed capital through change of use
This sounds like an important example but this statement is difficult to understand. The resources taken from other parts of the world by Britain created of assets that were NOT fixed capital at their inception (then what were they?), but DID support Britain's consumption rate (consumption of what?) and state functions? More concrete examples of what these resources and assets were and how they were used would be helpful here.
and strenuous efforts are made to reduce the “downtime” of capital’s motion and to minimize any loss of value due to fixation
This seems to me to be a different definition of "fixed" than on page 1 ("plant, machinery and equipment, all of which have to be purchased in the market place as commodities.") Is machinery only 'fixed" when it is not actively producing something (ie, turned off), or is always considered 'fixed capital', even when it's actively contributing to the circulation of capital by producing a product?
The distinction between circulating and fixed capital rests, therefore, on some conception of a “normal turnover time” which if it is greatly exceeded differentiates fixed from circulating capital.
I still do not understand what circulating capital is at this point, or how the turnover time (turnover of what?) is different between circulating capital and fixed capital.
The transfer of the value of such forms of constant capital into the final product is therefore a matter of social calculation rather than physical material measurement, even though the physical properties of the fixed capital, its durability and lifetime, for example, have an important role to play in its circulation.
Interesting. I see that this is a similar process to human labor - the workers body is not physically sewn into the product, yet value is trasferred from the workers body to the product.
ixed capital. In the Grundrisse he depicted its distinctive form of circulation
Fixed capital has a circulation process? This strikes me as confusing right off the bat, because I assume something "fixed" should by definition not be able to "circulate."
Marx found the distinction between constant and variable capital far more useful. It revealed the true nature of capital by highlighting the class relation that anchored everything else. Conceptualizing capital accumulation in terms of fixed and circulating capital neatly concealed consideration of the class relation.
Is this because Marx's definition of "variable" capital specifically refers to labor power, and "circulating" capital does not? At this point in the book, it is still difficult for me to remember the disintctions between "variable capital," "constant captial," "fixed capital," and "circulating capital." I have to flip through earlier chapters to remind myself how these terms differ.
The increasing fungibility and fluidity of an unbridled money capital provides adequate means for rapid reallocations of surplus capital from one sector or region of the world to another. As a result, the world is now increasingly engulfed in an indigestible mass of physical output and of surplus value.
This is really interesting. In the Marxist reading groups I have attended, the problem of "overproduction" has always been challenging for me, but I had previously not understood the concept of the rising 'mass' you have explained over the last chapters. I am now starting to understand the economic contradictions.
ration access to higher education to the upper classes, subsume the content of that education within a corporatist, entrepreneurial and neoliberal ethic and ensure a supply of debt-encumbered and compliant supplicants for corporate jobs.
Very interesting. This relates to a heuristic I have heard in sociology circles that ties "middle class" status simply to whether one has attended college.
tates like California, New York and Massachusetts contribute far more in the way of tax revenues than they receive back from Federal expenditures. Those backward states dominated by a republican politics antagonistic to Federal state powers and interventions, get back far more than they contribute to the Federal budget.
This is a little confusing, in light of the example of how the less-prosperous Greek economy subsidizes the German economy. In the US case, this example makes it sound like the 'rich states' benefit less than the 'poor states', at least in terms of federal expenderature. But I gather this is a totally seperate phenomenon than the Greece/Germany example, which is driven not by state funding, but market forces?
rich regions get richer by investing in and building comparative advantages while poor regions either stagnate or decline under conditions of free trade and profit equalization.
At this point I am still trying to understand the basic premise of how capital intensive industry accumulates more profit - this point here about "rich get richer" because they have the means to invest is familar and makes sense to me. But I still don't understand why labor-intensive industry collects so little profit under Marx's value theory.
capital-intensive AI systems
I still don't quite understand WHY capital investments produce higher profits than labor investments.
When Singapore was cast adrift from Malaysia in the early 1960s, it decided not to pursue labour-intensive industrialization (of the sort that was developing in Hong Kong) even though it had access to plenty of low-wage labour. It constructed a capital-intensive rather than labour-intensive economy and the spectacularly favorable results in terms of subsequent wealth accumulation in Singapore are there for all to see. Conversely, Bangladesh remains an economic basket case, at least from the standpoint of the labouring population though not necessarily of its local capitalist class, because all it has to offer is labour-intensive and largely unregulated industrialization. It receives far less value from international trade than it contributes.
I really appriciate these real-world examples of the principal you previously explained.
ass of the capital they advance
What does "advance" mean in this context?
rise
This is basically a math question, but I did not understand what it means for a ratio to "rise." I googled it, but did not find a clear answer. I take from the context here that you mean in the ratio "c/v," V will fall and C will remain the same, meaning C's value will increase relative to V. Is there another way to describe this change that makes it more clear to people not used to dealing with economic formulas?
each individual labourer will be able to process more raw materials and means of production
Is this 'increase in productivity' considered inevitable due to technological innovations that increase productivity, innovations which can be attributed to capitalist competition?
The whole West Midlands region was dominated by a machine tools and metal working sector that was very different from the cotton mills of Lancashire or the woolen mills of Yorkshire. Above all, Birmingham was the center of gun making and specialized in the production of military equipment, munitions and artillery.
At this point I start to understand, in retrospect, why the example of Nassau Senior was used. He, like Marx, developed his perspective on economics in part on a material understanding of industry in Manchester. Observing industry in Birminham could have lead to conclusions about the future role of military spending.
And Marx was well aware of the distinctive influence of the Manchester industrial faction in the realm of ideology and politics as well as in their enormous (for that time) centralization of economic wealth and power. The results were, in a sense, predictable. “One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior.....a man famed for his economic science and his beautiful style, was summoned from Oxford to Manchester to learn in the latter place the political economy he taught in the former.” What Senior learned was that the capitalist’s profit was totally encompassed by the last hour of work in a twelve hour day and that any shortening of that day to, say, ten hours would spell ruination for the capitalist system because profit would disappear. This “so-called ‘analysis’,” prompted a fierce rebuttal, as much directed to the British Parliament as to Nassau Senior, by none other than Leonard Horner, who worked with the Factory Inspectors from 1833 to 1857, and “whose services to the English working class will never be forgotten” as Marx noted. And, of course, the ten hours act was finally passed.
I don't understand how the points in this paragraph relate to each other. When you say the results were predictable, the results of what, and why are the predictable? It is unclear to me how the example of Nassau W. Senior's analysis of the lack of profitability in a shorter working day relates to the ten hours act being passed. I am not familiar with Leonard Horner or Nassau Senior, so the only cotext I have is what is being provided in this chapter.
It was constituted through a historical materialist negation of all that was so dreadful on the ground at that time and in that place.
It is unclear to me what "negation" means in this context. Is it similar to critique or counter-proposal?
This is a central contradiction which we will take up in detail later.
This is a challenigng contradiction to understand from the context provided in this chapter. It is difficult to understand why having fewer employees should neccesarily result in a lower aggregate amount of surplus value, assuming the same capital inputs, the same number of units produced, and the same market value of the product.
new apps and organizational forms to supplement the efficiency not only of production but of circulation and consumption.
I understand an organizational form that supplments effciency of production might be something like just-in-time-prouction or flexible production, and an app that supplements efficieny of consumption might be something like Instacart, or Amazon. But what is an example of an app/organization form that supplments effciency of circulation? I am unclear on what circulation means in this context.
software innovation
What is 'software innovation' in the context of the 1800s era technology you mention? Or does 'software' here only refer to computer software, ie coded instructions for digital technology?
Innovations in one part of the industrial structure could not proceed without innovations elsewhere.
Is the American system of slave planatation labor also a relevant example of changes to industrial structure that enabled the profitability and scale of the cotton trade? It seems like a relevant thing to bring in, particularly becaus as a very loaded example, it challenges (at least in the mind of the contemporary reader) the idea that the way capitalism spurs on technological process is inherently good.
in emerging markets such as Bangladesh or Brazil is clear and unambiguous evidence of the super-exploitation of that labour power relative to that in the advanced capitalist countries
In this example, is the reason these low living standards might not indicate a high s/v ratio because the hypothetical capitalist that profits from the Bangladeshi/Brazilian workers labor is not making a particularly big profit, relatively to the value of the labor power? This example is confusing to me, because it seems that the point of a (again, hypothetical) anti-imperialist posistion would be that advanced capitalist countries outsource their labor to developing/underdeveloped countires, and are then able to reap higher profits than they would by hiring US workers - would this then be an example of "super-exploitation"?
The creation of a solidarious and amicable neighborhood life has been, for many working class populations, a compensatory though not unproblematic joy that makes class struggles against capital in production seem a remote and even unnecessary engagement
Why in this case does proximity and solidarious relationships between members of a working class not result in shared concerns over working and social conditions, and then colalition forming for better conditions? Do these working populations really have it so good that amicability with one's neighbors is enough to compensate for an alienated existence in work and society at large?
The labourer’s experience of capital is not confined to the work-place and it is here that the circulation of labour capacity calls for broader examination.
By the end of the paragraph, I have a better grip on why in the previous chapter the concept of capital as a 'totality' was emphasized. The distinction of a worker as separate from an employer/capitalist becomes muddled by all of these different ways in which they circulate their labour power through the overall system of capitalist growth and reproduction. A worker (arguably) benefits from their ability to buy cheap commodities with their wages, but they at no point collect surplus profit from the value of their work - only those who control capital do.
The extraction of absolute surplus value in China
Again, I am trying to understand the meaning of absolute surplus value from the context. It is simply the number of hours (after the 'break even' point) that a employer has an employee work?
The struggles over the length of the working day, what Marx calls “absolute surplus value,”
If I am correct in my reading of the text, surplus value begins to accumulate once the value of what a worker has produced in a shift matches how much they have earned in that time. After they exceed that amount of work, it is all surplus value for the capitalist, as the costs of the capital inputs have already been covered.
However, I am unclear what "absolute surplus value" refers to. The highlighted sentence seems to say that absolute surplus value refers to the the struggle over the length of the working day, but that doesn't make sense to me. What is a definition or example of absolute surplus value?
It passes through the different moments of money, commodity, production, consumption and distribution before once again appearing as money capital.
Challenging to understand this, due to the aforementioned tendency to want capital to be a "thing" and not a "process." But I grasp that this conceptualization of capital is central to the work. I am not sure if I should be picturing capital as something that ignites, produces motion, or incentivizes action in the way that wind, electricity, or other physical forces do.
It constantly finds itself straining to break the bonds and barriers that it itself creates. This is the foundational contradiction within the capitalist mode of production.
This foundational contradiction of capitalist production has to do with it's rigidity, and humanity's rejection of rigidity? I am struggling to understand this central point (but perhaps it's just too early for me to grasp it).
crystallization (objectification)
Can this use of "crystallization/objectifcation" be understood as comprable to institutionalization in a society or culture? I wonder if I am misunderstanding the meaning.
Indeed, the evidence suggests that the openness and the indeterminacy within the ecosystemic totality that is capital contributes mightily to its reproduction capacity and long-term survival.
Is this another example of the contradictory nature of what capital produces, as established by the Marx quote at the beginning? The ecosystemic nature of capital's totality produces mutation and change, but this results in fortifying the totality as a whole.
Marx’s concept of totality is, therefore, open, evolving, self-replicating but in no sense self-sustaining, given its internal contradictions and its penchant for breakdowns.
I gather that part of the point of sharing this text with a general audiance is to see whether the material strikes people as too difficult, too simplified, or assumes too much prior knowledge.
With respect to that project, it seems relevant to mention that as a reader, I am not familiar with the concept of totality, either in the work of Marx or Hegel.
I have read some short texts by Marx & Engles (Communist Manifesto, The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, Socialism: Utopian and Scientic) but I have not read Capital, the Grundrisse, or any Hegel. Thus, this prologue will be my introduction to the concept of totality and I will try to keep up!
contradictions,
This reference to contradictions, in context of the previous quote by Marx, leads me as a reader to expect that this work will explore why the seemingly good things brought about by capitalism produce their own antithesis. Wealth results in want. Freedom results in slavery. Knowledge results in ingnorance. Why does this happen? It's an interesting question.