nto one enormous pot a
Why are we assuming that surplus value enters a giant pot from which it can be redistributed? Is this just a useful abstraction? I ask this, because I think about the legacies of colonial rule which have created specific pathways by which surplus value is currently extracted. That is, there are legacies of laws, institutions, and business relationships, which funnel the redistribution of value to particular places.
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It might be useful in the introduction to define exactly what the rate of profit is as well.
Labour-intensive industries thus subsidize capital-intensive industries employing few labourers. The greater the mass of capital advanced by an individual capitalist relative to the labour they employ, the greater their claim on the surplus valu
I appreciate this point, especially when it comes to the distribution of capital from labour-intensive spaces to capital intensive spaces. That being said, I think you could include 1-2 more sentences spelling out the logic much more simply about why this transfer occurs.
That is, maybe you could rework the following sentence from the previous paragraph to explain it better.
"Producers contribute to aggregate value and surplus value (profit) according to the labour they employ while they individually appropriate value and surplus value (profit) according to the mass of the capital they advance."
The sense I have is that if you advance a greater mass of capital, you receive a larger share aggregate value from labour. But I really need you to spell this out plainly for me. Why does the share of capital get an outsized amount of value from labour-intensive industries? Indeed, this is a question I've been confused about for some time even after reading the Limits to Capital, even after listening to the Anticapitalist Podcasts, and so on.
Open and free access to technology for all coupled with widespread knowledge education is a necessary precondition for a fairer trade regime. But the world is moving towards technological protectionism and centralization through the imposition of intellectual property rights, particularly when patents, impede the sharing of knowledge in free markets, with distinctive class effects. When human knowledge, which has traditionally been a part of the global commons available to all without restriction, is encased within private property rights, it solidifies a key distinction between manual and mental labour. This, it turns out, is a covert basis not only for class rule but also for class formation. If the “capitalist communism” that arises with the equalization of the rate of profit is to prevail, then this rests upon differential development of the global labour force into high-tech and highly skilled on the one hand and routine industrial and service labour on the other. As Sohn-Rethel puts it: “The division between head and hand, and particularly in relation to science and technology, has an importance for bourgeois class rule as vital as that of the private ownership of the means of production. It is only too evident in many of the socialist countries today that one can abolish property rights and still not be rid of class. The class antagonism of capital and labour is linked intrinsically with the division of head and hand. But the connection is hidden to consciousness. This was, almost certainly, one of the motivations behind Mao launching the cultural revolution: the educated and technologically sophisticated elites within the Communist Party were taking control over the manual workers and the peasantry in a way that looked dangerously close to the reinstatement of class rule. That threat has not gone away
At this point in the chapter, my interpretation is that you're making a comparison between the equalization of the rate of profit (from labour-intensive to capital intensive industries) to the current division between manual and mental labour.
I feel like the topic sentence introducing this paragraph needs to more deliberately attend to this argument.
Marx’s finding on the equalization of the rate of profit goes against the Ricardian theory of mutual gains from trade through comparative advantage. Ricardo well understood that the doctrine of comparative advantage would not apply if capital was highly mobile. Marx instead proposes a theory of lop-sided gains from trade under conditions of free movement of (money) capital, which explains why the insertion of an economy with low labour productivity (such as that of Greece) into a capital intensive free trade zone (such as the euro zone led by Germany) facilitates the transfer of value from the weaker to the stronger metropolitan regions. Ricardo discovered, says Marx, “that it is, in the final analysis, trade that destroys the inborn beauties and harmonies of the capitalist mode of production. A step further and he will perhaps discover that the one evil in capitalist production is capital itself.” Labour-intensive Greece in effect subsidizes capital-intensive Germany, which will come as a shock to the Germans who are perpetually being told and doubtless feel they are being exploited by all those feckless and lazy southern Europeans who cannot be bothered to pay off their unpayable (according to the IMF) debts. In fact OECD comparative data show that Greeks work much longer hours per week on average than do the Germans. Given the relative masses of the German and Greek economies, of course, the actual flow of value from Greece to Germany through the equalization of the profit rate will be relatively trivial for Germany even as it is highly significant for Greece. But the principle remains: free trade and profit equalization do not lead to convergence but to divergence in the accumulation of wealth. With the equalization of the rate of profit all manner of inter-firm, inter-sectoral, inter-state and inter-regional value transfers occur and the beauty of the whole system is this: that none of it is easiiy visible to the naked eye or even to the most sophisticated statistician
I feel like this section might fit better with your previous discussion of free trade on page 3. Alternatively, move your points about free trade from page 3 to here.
The most mobile form of capital is the money form (as opposed to the commodity or productive forms).
In other pieces you've written-you say the most mobile form of capital is credit money. I'm thinking about your section in Limits to Capital theorising money here. I vaguely remember you writing about how credit money enables the quick transfer of value between locations.
Perhaps you're trying to keep your theories of money simple in this ABC book...but I just want you to be aware of it.
Marxist economists believe that Marx, when he explored the equalization of the rate of profit and the re
Feel like this point on price formulations needs to be broken into its own paragraph and removed from the previous point about free trade. It confuses the issue. The consequent new paragraph needs a topic sentence which says something like "Many Marxist economists ignore this insight on how the equalization of the rate of profit has consideration for free trade because they misinterpret a key point."
e.
Insert a following sentence: because value is transferred from spaces which depend on labour-intensive industries such as (insert example) to capital intensive industries such as the financial services sector in New York.
Free trade is, by definition, therefore, unfair trade when coupled with the equalization of the rate of profit
Could you include a new topic sentence where you explain what you are responding to? That is, I feel like you can use this as an opportunity to juxtapose a Marxist reading for free trade with a neoclassical school. It's a way of offering readers a quick response to ongoing debates in economics. Give us speaking points!
For example, "Proponents of free trade argue that specialization results in X, Y, and Z. However, when taking the equalization of the rate of profit into consideration, free trade is, by definition, unfair trade."
In other words, the more laid out in the hiring of labour power (the greater the wage bill and the more labourers are hired) the greater the surplus value produced (assuming a constant rate of exploitation)
I think you need to simplify this sentence even further. Perhaps repeat the idea in a following, more plainly worded right-branching sentence (sentence subject at the start). For example "capitalists generate more value when they hire more workers and pay them better."
Also...what to you mean by "laid out"
But this poses a problem because “everyone knows that a cotton spinner” who “employs much constant capital” (means of production) “and little variable capital” (labour power) “does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus-value than a baker, who sets in motion relatively much variable capital (labour power) and little constant capital (means of production
I feel like you need to emphasize this problem even more plainly before introducing the quote. Insert a sentence explaining the quote before you introduce the conundrum. Or better yet, introduce the problem and then illustrate it with a current example where you replace a cotton spinner and a baker with comparable modern professions.
Alternatively, I think you could rework this entire introductory paragraph to articulate why we need to understand the equalization of the rate of profit. Why is it important to understand? What can be gained?
Plainly, since the 1970s capital in general has witnessed a shift in which the merchant and finance factions have expanded their power at the expense of industrial capital, though unevenly. One measure of this is to look closely at the sectors from which billionaires emanate today as opposed to yesteryear
Might be useful to include a sentence spelling this out with some basic stats about the shift from manufacturing to FIRE. Or perhaps just point to work on financialization a la Greta Krippner.
money flows
Wondering if it would be better to say either "credit money" , "money capital" or "interest-bearing capital here." Perhaps you're keeping it simple for the time being; however, there's other points in the prologue where you're much more careful about the use of the term money.
But from Bismarck’s Germany, Meiji Japan, the military dictatorship in South Korea, the state led revivals through the MITI organization in 1960s Japan, state centered development in de Gaulle’s post-war France and the ord-neoliberalism of the post-war West German State; in all of these instances and many more, state-led capital accumulation has been and in many respects still is in the vanguard
Wondering if you could clarify these examples somewhat. I think of one of your key arguments in the New Imperialism:
That is that the state can engage in competing responsibilities to 1) manage the circulation of capital; and 2) manage territorial control.
This distributed money power can be used in two ways. A part of it will go to purchase commodities to consume so that the workers along with the capitalist factions and the state employees can live. The other part is brought back together (often with the help of banks and other financial institutions) to reinvest as money capital which then goes back through the circulation process all over again.
Isn't there also a third part? The circulation of money capital as fictitious capital solely within the realm of distribution?
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I wonder if you could make this metaphor even more clear by including an additional sentence about economic determinism. Saying something like "the totality of capital is dismissed by critics for a so-called economic determinism--the overeliance on examining capital as the determinate of human life; however, I am instead suggesting that capital is....."
The significance of state-led accumulation has not been without its contradictions, of course, and processes of class formation, racialization and gender discriminations within the state have just as easily led to arrested development of capital rather than accelerating growth
If you're so inclined, you could also gesture to Karl Polanyi and his idea of the double movement: first, the creation of markets "marketization" for which the state is essential in the construction of commodities. Second, the pushback/countermovement by society for social protections.
through human action.
While human action is consequential to the making and maintenance of a totality. How would you respond to thinkers from the social studies of finance stream (who draw on actor network theory) to argue that non-human actors perpetuate the system. Put plainly, is the totality of capital also a result now of technologies, algorithms, devices, etc. which take on a life of their own outside of human action?
f the mission is to construct an adequate representation of capital, replete with all of its contradictions, then an elaborate theory must be constructed that captures how capital works and what it does on
Rather than relying on the quote from Marx to articulate why outlining the concept of capital is necessary, I think you should outline the stakes/problem in your own words. What stands to be gained from constructing a representation of capital? What is lost without an adequate representation of capital? What possibilities might this open up?
Said differently, I think you can do more to help get the reader invested in reading a text, which while an ABCs, will still prove challenging.
In practice, working persons typically relate differently to the different experiential worlds they encounter. Some workers might succumb to the temptation of a compensatory consumerism, in which they are offered access to a cornucopia of cheap consumer goods as compensation for horrific alienations at the point of production. Others may reluctantly consent to the alienation of their labour and general exploitation in the hope that they may be able to put sufficient money by to someday open a bodega or a coffee shop. Yet others may consent to everything in this circulation process provided they have time and money enough to create for themselves a meaningful family or household life. Taking the kids to little league soccer games or music classes or just romping with them in the backyard may afford enough pride and pleasure to mask the miserable alienating experience of working for capital and going to the shopping mall. 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.
Would it be useful here to make a gesture toward Gramsci and hegemony? That is, that compensatory consumerism goes hand in hand with a shift in the realm of ideas (ideology). These ideologies are not only the outcome of capital circulation, but also through the remaking of ideas to manipulate social consciousness to achieve "spontaneous consent"
he capitalist merely captures and appropriates the surplus
Again, I would love to hear your response to another critique of the LTV here. This is the critique where people suggest that the capitalist has created value with the creation of an idea for the firm. In short, that the business creator has contributed intellectual labour which contributes a larger germ of value than what workers commonly contribute. Furthermore, the firm's managing class continues to create value through the contribution of management, logistics, administration, and so on.
he labourer produces the new value. The values of the inputs (the raw materials, the instruments of labour used up, the partially finished products, etc.) are preserved and transferred into the new commodity (Marx designates these elements as c - constant capital). The labourer also adds value to the product by congealing their labour into the new commodity. How much value is added depends upon the hours worked. Capitalists know that they will
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to insert it or not; however, it would be great if you could take a few sentences at some point to respond to the typical counter-claims to the labour theory of value.
For example, I think of the post-Keynesian Steve Keen arguing that since wine gains value as it ages, value can be seen to come from non labour related sources. Would be great to offer students a way to refute this common critiques of the LTV
Class struggles over the standard of living of labour affect the value of labour power while as Marx points out, a “moral element” often enters into its determination: bourgeois reformers may seek to set up an adequate living standard for the working citizens of a particular state simply because living around chronic poverty is unpleasant and risky and because of the need also to build an adequate mass market for the commodities they produce.
Again, I think it's useful to illustrate these claims with current examples. Saying something like "while the campaign for a $15/hour wage has a seeming noble pursuit of elevating the quality of life for working people, and indeed may help workers survive in the short term, the long term consequences expose...."
mobilizing
clarify what you mean by mobilizing. Displacement? Enclosure? Forced labour?
unt
I'm wondering if you could bring this to the present moment to assist in clarity.
For example, saying something like "You might read about about the need for a flexible labour supply or the unemployment rate in the Wall Street Journal; however, these conditions depend on the the creation of a labour force that has no option but to......
stab
I feel at some point you need to deal with the contributions of recent work on racial capitalism as it relates to the circulation of labour capacity.
That is, those scholars like Robin D.G. Kelley who build on the work of Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism to argue that the circulation of value has always depended on the production of social difference.
The idea that European civilization was constructed based on social differences (linguistic, racial, tribal, regional). The bourgeois who led development of capitalism came from particular groups, peasant from others, proletariats from others. The evolution of capitalism did not homogenize these differences but exacerbated them. As capitalism expanded, it reproduced differences elsewhere.
I mean, both you and Neil Smith accept that the circulation of capital requires the making of uneven development/differentiated geographic space. It doesn't seem farfetched that you could grapple with Cedric Robinson's ideas that capital circulation--via the circulation of labour capacity--likewise depends on the production and circulation of social different (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and so on).
Anyways, I'm not sure the most appropriate point in this chapter to insert it; however, this may be one place to include a paragraph.
In other words, there had to be a labour force that had no option but to offer its capacity to labour to buyers in order to survive.
You could include a half-sentence following this about the creation of a surplus population - a reserve army of the poor - whose impoverishment continually depressed the price of labor (Marx, 2005).
alienated
Again, the sense I have—perhaps mistakenly—is that you're attempting to produce a shorter synthesis of Marxist theory. That is, it's a way to distill a lot of the work you began in the Limits to Capital and have since continued. If that is the case, perhaps it would be useful to include a glossary at the end of the book (or definitions on each page as could be found in a first year textbook) where you define key terms including alienation, labour power, abstract labour, bourgeois society, and so on. Definitions which are capped at 1-2 sentences.
“One of the historic presuppositions of capital is free labour” exchangeable for money and separated “from the means of labour and the material for labour.”
I feel like the second half of this sentence can be rephrased for clarity. If this is an introductory textbook to Marx can you expand this half sentence to explain what it means to separate the means of labour and the material for labour. That is, explain what this disconnect means in simple terms.
When living in Baltimore in the 1970s, I found African American gardeners believed that seeds would only germinate around full moon. I later inferred this was the universalization of a particular principle derived long ago from tidal rice production.
This passage is largely conjecture and should be removed unless substantiated by other sources. While I appreciate that you're trying to reveal the appropriation of proprietary knowledge, this comes off as a gross generalization of African American gardeners' knowledge. Said differently, a diverse array of groups plant by moon cycles. Including the statement that "I later inferred" distracts from your core argument in this paragraph.
.Some (mainly women) could not do so because of child-rearing obligations in which case the organization of household labour substitutes for the circulation of labour capacity.
Rephrase this sentence.
It is not because of child-rearing obligations per se. Rather, it is a result of a gendered division of social reproduction.