Obie: "Hey, I got 10 goat hides."

Pootie: "Well I got 60 polished ax heads."

Obie: "I could use an ax head."

Pootie: "Well, lemme see, 10 goat hides are worth 5 yards of linen and a polished ax head is worth 5 yards of linen so I'll give you one of my ax heads for your 10 goat hides."

Obie: "Wtf? Your 1 for my 10, sez who?"

(To be continued)

It won't reproduce in a post correctly, but it is a ledger showing "The General Value Form". Probably easiest to just check the link

PS Have always kind of wondered how much Marx was drawing from the state of the art mathematics (infinite series, limits, calculus, etc) and also how much he was influenced by Hegel's thinking on the matter (false infinity)

I was just getting ready to test myself, you're killing me:

B. Total or Expanded Form of value

z Com. A = u Com. B or v Com. C or = w Com. D or = Com. E or = &c.
(20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 10 lbs tea or = 40 lbs. coffee or
= 1 quarter corn or = 2 ounces gold or = ½ ton iron or = &c.)

Did I go to the next section too quickly?

... thus the "...".

I figured I would split at 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D with each starting with the logical proposition. You could do it the other way...

Kiddo, I'm thinking about writing a short text on the Mesopotamians because they left behind evidence of all four forms, though the elementary form is very thin and the money thing, they only just get going (though it is fully developed by the time of Hammurabi). The problem is that they have "money" early on but mostly as "repository of value" which doesn't fit in here at all, logically. Their original "money form" is in these really large metallic rings which act as ingots - somewhere to park your value - and this well before it comes into usage as "universal equivalent" (and appears in "lighter" denominations: Shekels at .5 oz while Talents still weigh 10 pounds). In truth, the trade tables and big-money coexist for a spell. Interesting.

Can't comment on the math...

can't tell if thats a pun or not ;)

This stuff is very disarming, which makes it hard for me to know if I have grasped the proper historical context or not. On the one hand it seems so straightforward, on the other hand it seems to allude heavily in the direction of concepts that are not simple but at least understood/understandable. Meanwhile on a third hand..even mostly knowing where hes going with all of this its difficult to really anticipate how he gets there. And then, absent all of that, there's the "deep" component that is hard to get a grip on

I found it helpful to do a Cliff Notes style review, in question and answer form. I started from "What is use-value?" and went from there

I didn't make the questions up myself (might be kinda self-defeating I'm not sure), I found them somewhere online I think.

Don't overthink it..while a substantial amount of groundwork is being prepared, this material is not ineffable. Or, even if it is, we can take the Douglas Adams approach and see if we can't eff it after all..:)

And flashed back to Mrs. Hornbeck's 7th grade algebra class. Too many memories of my math deficiencies came to mind. Carry on.

But is anyone still not clear on the excerpted text? If not, let's move forward.

n/t

The matching of theory and history is where this 'lights up' for me.

Let's move...

Section 3C. The General Form of Value
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3b

Again, the entire text of the section is reproduced below (because it is short). In this section, the text is crying out to leap ahead. The next step, to the money form, is more than obvious. BUT, it is worth lingering for a moment.

For all its mystery, by the time we are done with Part C, the role of the money form is perfectly obvious. Once commodities in circulation have become a world of commodities, and once the limitations of the expanded form have become apparent (in ever bigger trade tables), the transformation of the whole to a general form is inevitable... and this, using the term of equivalence that was inherent in the elementary form. We now discover everything there is to know about the evolution of money... but without any mystery. No drama at all...


C. The General Form of Value

1 coat
10 lbs of tea
40 lbs of coffee
1 quarter of corn ================ 20 yards of linen
2 ounces of gold
½ a ton of iron
x Commodity A, etc.

1. The altered character of the form of value

All commodities now express their value (1) in an elementary form, because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, because in one and the same commodity. This form of value is elementary and the same for all, therefore general.

The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a commodity as something distinct from its use value or material form.

The first form, A, furnishes such equations as the following: – 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, 10 lbs of tea = ½ a ton of iron. The value of the coat is equated to linen, that of the tea to iron. But to be equated to linen, and again to iron, is to be as different as are linen and iron. This form, it is plain, occurs practically only in the first beginning, when the products of labour are converted into commodities by accidental and occasional exchanges.

The second form, B, distinguishes, in a more adequate manner than the first, the value of a commodity from its use value, for the value of the coat is there placed in contrast under all possible shapes with the bodily form of the coat; it is equated to linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to itself, the coat. On the other hand, any general expression of value common to all is directly excluded; for, in the equation of value of each commodity, all other commodities now appear only under the form of equivalents. The expanded form of value comes into actual existence for the first time so soon as a particular product of labour, such as cattle, is no longer exceptionally, but habitually, exchanged for various other commodities.

The third and lastly developed form expresses the values of the whole world of commodities in terms of a single commodity set apart for the purpose, namely, the linen, and thus represents to us their values by means of their equality with linen. The value of every commodity is now, by being equated to linen, not only differentiated from its own use value, but from all other use values generally, and is, by that very fact, expressed as that which is common to all commodities. By this form, commodities are, for the first time, effectively brought into relation with one another as values, or made to appear as exchange values.

The two earlier forms either express the value of each commodity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or in a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is, so to say, the special business of each single commodity to find an expression for its value, and this it does without the help of the others. These others, with respect to the former, play the passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value, C, results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities, and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general expression of its value only by all other commodities, simultaneously with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent; and every new commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that since the existence of commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the totality of their social relations alone, and consequently that the form of their value must be a socially recognised form.

All commodities being equated to linen now appear not only as qualitatively equal as values generally, but also as values whose magnitudes are capable of comparison. By expressing the magnitudes of their values in one and the same material, the linen, those magnitudes are also compared with each other For instance, 10 lbs of tea = 20 yards of linen, and 40 lbs of coffee = 20 yards of linen. Therefore, 10 lbs of tea = 40 lbs of coffee. In other words, there is contained in 1 lb of coffee only one-fourth as much substance of value – labour – as is contained in 1 lb of tea.

The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent. The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power.

The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.


2. The Interdependent Development of the Relative Form of Value, and of the Equivalent Form

The degree of development of the relative form of value corresponds to that of the equivalent form. But we must bear in mind that the development of the latter is only the expression and result of the development of the former.

The primary or isolated relative form of value of one commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated equivalent. The expanded form of relative value, which is the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all other commodities, endows those other commodities with the character of particular equivalents differing in kind. And lastly, a particular kind of commodity acquires the character of universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the material in which they uniformly express their value.

The antagonism between the relative form of value and the equivalent form, the two poles of the value form, is developed concurrently with that form itself.

The first form, 20 yds of linen = one coat, already contains this antagonism, without as yet fixing it. According as we read this equation forwards or backwards, the parts played by the linen and the coat are different. In the one case the relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the other case the relative value of the coat is expressed in the linen. In this first form of value, therefore, it is difficult to grasp the polar contrast.

Form B shows that only one single commodity at a time can completely expand its relative value, and that it acquires this expanded form only because, and in so far as, all other commodities are, with respect to it, equivalents. Here we cannot reverse the equation, as we can the equation 20 yds of linen = 1 coat, without altering its general character, and converting it from the expanded form of value into the general form of value.

Finally, the form C gives to the world of commodities a general social relative form of value, because, and in so far as, thereby all commodities, with the exception of one, are excluded from the equivalent form. A single commodity, the linen, appears therefore to have acquired the character of direct exchangeability with every other commodity because, and in so far as, this character is denied to every other commodity.[26]

The commodity that figures as universal equivalent, is, on the other hand, excluded from the relative value form. If the linen, or any other commodity serving as universal equivalent, were, at the same time, to share in the relative form of value, it would have to serve as its own equivalent. We should then have 20 yds of linen = 20 yds of linen; this tautology expresses neither value, nor magnitude of value. In order to express the relative value of the universal equivalent, we must rather reverse the form C. This equivalent has no relative form of value in common with other commodities, but its value is relatively expressed by a never ending series of other commodities. Thus, the expanded form of relative value, or form B, now shows itself as the specific form of relative value for the equivalent commodity.


3. Transition from the General form of value to the Money form

The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can, therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act. And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only, the general form of relative value of the world of commodities obtains real consistence and general social validity.

The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and, in form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in particular – namely, gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by gold, we get...


Once we have many things to measure, it is certain that we will end up measuring them by one standard... and that standard itself will be transformed into a system that lends itself to becoming a standard of measure. The whole is almost anti-climactic, looking backwards.

Gold is only valuable as the commodity shown on the right-hand side of the equation, above. It only has value in this position not in and of itself or as a "stand alone" commodity. Gold (and silver) has always been foisted off on everyone as some sort of "mystical" substance with inherent value. It is ludicrous that at my advanced age, I only now am beginning to grasp what "value" is and how money works...

for two reasons, polemically speaking

1. Otherwise you fall into the trap of the "theorists" claiming that capitalism entered a "new stage" with the abolition of the gold standard (despite the absolute dearth of evidence to support this contention..a lack of evidence that does in this case prove exactly the opposite)

2. All kinds of mystified theories of money, including those professed by "Marxists" of every stripe. Most of which boils down to the question "Is money a commodity..?" (more than a commodity? something else entirely? etc etc)

Once you grapple with the above section of Capital, the fugue is (largely) dispelled.

Pretty cool huh?

EDIT: and all of the staples of Hegel fully come into play here. "Interpenetration of opposites", "determination by negation", and even "quanity into quality" in a certain sense

Why? Because it is rare and you can get a lot of value in a small size. Because it is easily divisible. Because it doesn't rot and retains its value without rapid deterioration (although it is a little soft). What about silver? That works too, though the coins get a little bigger. How about copper? Well, the coins are really big, but I suppose that this would just speed up the evolution of symbolic money - copper certificates...

Anything really will do and many things have.

Ain't nothin' special about money. Midas is wrong. Though Midas is Minoan and dates from the very beginning of money. That must have been a shocker.

http://jamesbond007.net/advers/Goldfinger1.jpg

"It is not the exchange of commodities which regulates the magnitude of their value; but, on the contrary, it is the magnitude of their value which controls their exchange proportions."

So much for "supply and demand" and "buy low, sell high" and "bull markets" and so forth?

It is a socially assigned role for the commodity (gold has some advantages that suit it for the role as you say, yes.)

if you don't count the fluctuations in supply owing to mining. You'd probably be surprised to see how much is taken anew from the earth year over year. And then there is that pesky wear down and, even peskier, coin shaving...

I don't find it hard at all to see why so-called fiat currency that all the Paultard hate came into existence in short order.

Of course I once had a boss whose good buddy owned what seemed to be every pool table and juke box in Fort Worth. He ran $25,000 a day in quarters through his shop. That was kinda a pain in the ass as you might imagine.

but it is awfully, awfully early in the presentation to begin to ponder things affecting price - itself a concept yet to be introduced.

Scarcity has a clear effect on prices, but we're just not there yet. You could however peruse some older commentary that is germane both to your earlier post about the money commodity being able to be anything and about "supply and demand" - this is interesting to ponder over bearing in mind our national currecy's lingering status as the world reserve currency and our staggering national debt. Ah for simpler times:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch02.htm

I wasn't necessarily talking about price. Apologists for Capitalism say that price - "whatever the traffic will bear" or "whatever people think something is worth" is the value of things.

The money commodity has been many things... including grain (despite its perishability).

"The value of a thing is just as much as it will bring.”

'Course, that just isn't true, or it doesn't explain why one thing brings X and another, Y.

Without ever defining "value" except to ascribe it as some nebulous unknown to various things

Section 3D. The Money-Form
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3b

The entire text of the section is reproduced below.

"The difficulty in forming a concept of the money form, consists in clearly comprehending the universal equivalent form, and as a necessary corollary, the general form of value, form C."

Having done that, the rest just follows:


D. The Money-Form

1 coat
10 lbs of tea
40 lbs of coffee
1 quarter of corn ================ 2 ounces of gold
2 ounces of gold
½ a ton of iron
x Commodity A

In passing from form A to form B, and from the latter to form C, the changes are fundamental. On the other hand, there is no difference between forms C and D, except that, in the latter, gold has assumed the equivalent form in the place of linen. Gold is in form D, what linen was in form C – the universal equivalent. The progress consists in this alone, that the character of direct and universal exchangeability – in other words, that the universal equivalent form – has now, by social custom, become finally identified with the substance, gold.

Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity. Like all other commodities, it was also capable of serving as an equivalent, either as simple equivalent in isolated exchanges, or as particular equivalent by the side of others. Gradually it began to serve, within varying limits, as universal equivalent. So soon as it monopolises this position in the expression of value for the world of commodities, it becomes the money commodity, and then, and not till then, does form D become distinct from form C, and the general form of value become changed into the money form.

The elementary expression of the relative value of a single commodity, such as linen, in terms of the commodity, such as gold, that plays the part of money, is the price form of that commodity. The price form of the linen is therefore

20 yards of linen = 2 ounces of gold, or, if 2 ounces of gold when
coined are £2, 20 yards of linen = £2.

The difficulty in forming a concept of the money form, consists in clearly comprehending the universal equivalent form, and as a necessary corollary, the general form of value, form C. The latter is deducible from form B, the expanded form of value, the essential component element of which, we saw, is form A, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or x commodity A = y commodity B. The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money form.

With the above, we finish Section 3. We will take a short break before resuming with Section 4, Fetishism. I owe KOBH an explanation of "crisis", which is related to the material we have just covered.

Section 3B. Total or Expanded Form of value
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3b

We leave our discussion of the elementary or accidental form to move on to the next step in our evolution - the "value chain" or Expanded Form. The entire text of the section is reproduced below:


B. Total or Expanded Form of value

z Com. A = u Com. B or v Com. C or = w Com. D or = Com. E or = &c.
(20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 10 lbs tea or = 40 lbs. coffee or
= 1 quarter corn or = 2 ounces gold or = ½ ton iron or = &c.)


1. The Expanded Relative form of value

The value of a single commodity, the linen, for example, is now expressed in terms of numberless other elements of the world of commodities. Every other commodity now becomes a mirror of the linen’s value.[25] It is thus, that for the first time, this value shows itself in its true light as a congelation of undifferentiated human labour. For the labour that creates it, now stands expressly revealed, as labour that ranks equally with every other sort of human labour, no matter what its form, whether tailoring, ploughing, mining, &c., and no matter, therefore, whether it is realised in coats, corn, iron, or gold. The linen, by virtue of the form of its value, now stands in a social relation, no longer with only one other kind of commodity, but with the whole world of commodities. As a commodity, it is a citizen of that world. At the same time, the interminable series of value equations implies, that as regards the value of a commodity, it is a matter of indifference under what particular form, or kind, of use value it appears.

In the first form, 20 yds of linen = 1 coat, it might, for ought that otherwise appears, be pure accident, that these two commodities are exchangeable in definite quantities. In the second form, on the contrary, we perceive at once the background that determines, and is essentially different from, this accidental appearance. The value of the linen remains unaltered in magnitude, whether expressed in coats, coffee, or iron, or in numberless different commodities, the property of as many different owners. The accidental relation between two individual commodity-owners disappears. It becomes plain, that it is not the exchange of commodities which regulates the magnitude of their value; but, on the contrary, that it is the magnitude of their value which controls their exchange proportions.


2. The particular Equivalent form

Each commodity, such as, coat, tea, corn, iron, &c., figures in the expression of value of the linen, as an equivalent, and, consequently, as a thing that is value. The bodily form of each of these commodities figures now as a particular equivalent form, one out of many. In the same way the manifold concrete useful kinds of labour, embodied in these different commodities, rank now as so many different forms of the realisation, or manifestation, of undifferentiated human labour.


3. Defects of the Total or Expanded form of value

In the first place, the relative expression of value is incomplete because the series representing it is interminable. The chain of which each equation of value is a link, is liable at any moment to be lengthened by each new kind of commodity that comes into existence and furnishes the material for a fresh expression of value. In the second place, it is a many-coloured mosaic of disparate and independent expressions of value. And lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value of each commodity in turn, becomes expressed in this expanded form, we get for each of them a relative value form, different in every case, and consisting of an interminable series of expressions of value. The defects of the expanded relative value form are reflected in the corresponding equivalent form. Since the bodily form of each single commodity is one particular equivalent form amongst numberless others, we have, on the whole, nothing but fragmentary equivalent forms, each excluding the others. In the same way, also, the special, concrete, useful kind of labour embodied in each particular equivalent, is presented only as a particular kind of labour, and therefore not as an exhaustive representative of human labour generally. The latter, indeed, gains adequate manifestation in the totality of its manifold, particular, concrete forms. But, in that case, its expression in an infinite series is ever incomplete and deficient in unity.

The expanded relative value form is, however, nothing but the sum of the elementary relative expressions or equations of the first kind, such as:

20 yards of linen = 1 coat
20 yards of linen = 10 lbs of tea, etc.

Each of these implies the corresponding inverted equation,

1 coat = 20 yards of linen
10 lbs of tea = 20 yards of linen, etc.

In fact, when a person exchanges his linen for many other commodities, and thus expresses its value in a series of other commodities, it necessarily follows, that the various owners of the latter exchange them for the linen, and consequently express the value of their various commodities in one and the same third commodity, the linen. If then, we reverse the series, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 10 lbs of tea, etc., that is to say, if we give expression to the converse relation already implied in the series, we get...



While the text above is straight forward, consider the historical implications. In truth, the "defects" of the expanded form lead to some of the earliest forms of writing: proto-cuneiform trade tables produced on clay tablets by Sumerian writing cylinders, in order to keep track of exchange values whose, "expression in an infinite series is ever incomplete and deficient in unity", while also increasingly complex and difficult to remember (Babylonian was the language of trade in western Asia from the time of Akhenaton).

http://www.astigan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/cil.jpg

"It may come as a surprise that the earliest instances of writing in Mesopotamia come not from public decrees, religious incantations, or other translates of the spoken word, but rather economic texts recording quantities of commercial goods. By the time Sumerians were composing poetry in the mid third millennium BC, writing had already been is use for over five hundred years (Michalowski). The earliest version of a writing system the Mesopotamians used did not originate out of attempts to find a durable phonetic representation of their spoken language. Nor did it arise out of the desire to preserve for posterity the wisdom or commandments of the ancients...

In economic transactions, numbers are the most important item to keep track of. Although the idea of using tokens to represent quantities of physical objects had been used in Mesopotamia long before the emergence of the first writing systems, by 3200 BC we find the first instances of clay tablets containing numeric and ideographic symbols on them. These documents are essentially numerical tables that indicate a certain quantity of a given commodity, using numerical symbols to indicate the quantity, and an ideographic symbol to indicate the kind of item being catalogued."

http://cdli.ucla.edu/wiki/doku.php/proto-cuneiform_version_ii

It is still kind of murky to me, especially how you are going to get all the way there using only the material we have covered so far.

I'll be very interested to see that too. I'm a bit surprised that just the information already covered is sufficient to even commence discussing crisis.

I didn't mean to imply that we could do "crisis" only with what we have learned in Capital, Vol. I. I meant that the germinal form of crisis is also present in the commodity as we just discussed it, and that the driving force of "overproduction" is based on the contradictions we just looked at... and this rather than being directly based on some later set of concepts such as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall or the change in the organic composition of Capital.

Yes, I will put up a warning to those whose eyes glaze over when we hit "econo-talk".

as someone else phrased it, capitalists are compelled to both aggrandize and expel wage labor at the same time.

I think that routes back into the "platitudes" that you mentioned earlier, but thats the general idea, right?

that this is a "...forced, line by line reading of Capital."

This, from the master-baiter hisself, HR.

The contradiction manifest in the complex world of Capitalist crisis is none other than the contradiction evident in the single commodity, between use-value and value. In truth, the trajectory of value, and of production for value, necessarily arcs away from its raison d'être - the "one is bounded and the other is not" issue presents itself as a practical and inescapable "problem".

I will post shortly.

I am ready to move on to more "forced line-by-line reading" myself.

this "line by line" reading? LOL. The lack of honesty is so obvious and blatant among the Progressive Liberal bunch - as is their fear of learning...

Yes, let us force some more education upon ourselves!

I think I have found some of the relevant material from Marx


The fact that bourgeois production is compelled by its own immanent laws, on the one hand, to develop the productive forces as if production did not take place on a narrow, restricted social foundation, while, on the other hand, it can develop these forces only within these narrow limits, is the deepest and most hidden cause of crises, of the crying contradictions within which bourgeois production is carried on and which, even at a cursory glance, reveal it only as a transitional, historical form.

Very interested to see how you put this all together. Does it involve Marx's denunciation of Say's law, the extension of credit and the separation/unity of purchase/sale?

So, how come all of these "Marxist" writers and "scholars" can't see the nose in front of their face?

To be fair, most who go on in this way usually have some sort of agenda.

I'm not going to put this one together. I am just going to reproduce Marx with my emphasis.

By 'narrow, restricted social foundation' he's talking about the bourgeoisie, yes?

as the "narrow, restricted social foundation" of production...

referring to something a bit larger in scope, ie commodity production and the society that necessarily emerges (ie one that both allows for and advances commodity production)

EDIT: Marx argues two things

1. supply does not create demand (Says Law which basically says "if you make it, they will consume it")

2. money as a mediator meant that you couldn't really consider each purchase as also a sale

In particular, Marx says that everything produced can't be consumed because you have to use some of that production TO produce (ie means of production)

But I'll let Anax take these questions rather than say any more

If you go purely by analysis of the quotation given, it is a different thing. But I will hold off until more discussion takes place and maybe look a little less dim...maybe...

;)

... in order to extract surplus value, in order to increase capital ("accumulation"). On the other hand, it expropriates the producers and restricts their consumption. The first grows without bounds, the other has very real limits (it is "restricted") and this, not because there is a limit on the consumption of use-values, but because there is a limit on who can afford to buy them. As all people become the paid wage-laborers of capital, accumulation itself comes into contradiction with this "narrow, restricted social foundation". There is no market for what they produce (or the continuous increase of what they produce).

The result is periodic crisis, "over-production", which is resolved only through the development of new markets and partly through the destruction of the existing capital (and not just that which is "excess", either). And then it happens again.

This is the wheel of capitalism which had been thought to have stopped for a short while. Turns out, not...

Thanks, very clear.

It seems that his stated goal of producing products that his workers could afford to buy was sort of a stab at resolving this dilemma. Of course, he was just one capitalist.

is pretty silly even on the face of it. By the very natuer of class society, producers can't/don't consume everything they produce..otherwise, whence a ruling class?

... the thread I have been promising. Marx deals with this in detail.

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=103035

It is sheer tautology to say that crises are caused by the scarcity of effective consumption, or of effective consumers. The capitalist system does not know any other modes of consumption than effective ones, except that of sub forma pauperis or of the swindler. That commodities are unsaleable means only that no effective purchasers have been found for them, i.e., consumers (since commodities are bought in the final analysis for productive or individual consumption). But if one were to attempt to give this tautology the semblance of a profounder justification by saying that the working-class receives too small a portion of its own product and the evil would be remedied as soon as it receives a larger share of it and its wages increase in consequence, one could only remark that crises are always prepared by precisely a period in which wages rise generally and the working-class actually gets a larger share of that part of the annual product which is intended for consumption. From the point of view of these advocates of sound and “simple” (!) common sense, such a period should rather remove the crisis. It appears, then, that capitalist production comprises conditions independent of good or bad will, conditions which permit the working-class to enjoy that relative prosperity only momentarily, and at that always only as the harbinger of a coming crisis.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch20_01.htm#4

There's a lot there but it doesn't seem too difficult on the face of it.

Coincidently, I posted a piece by Foster & Clark which touches on this topic, including Say's Law, in the Environment Forum:

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=220&topic_id=1501#4


More and more I see it as all of a piece.

from experience I know how long that can take.

I feel pretty caught up now. I just read through everything, slowly, sometimes twice. I'm gonna read through it one more time and may have to post a question or two...so I apologize if I cause any backtracking...

Also curious to dig into the crisis thread...

As always, thanks to anaxarchos for leading the class and to everyone else for participating. This is super helpful.

...already had been eeking into existence for sometime when around 700BC social relations grew sufficiently complex in the ancient Mediterranean and barter was, of necessity, giving way to this higher method of exchange. Most of the known history about Lydia comes from the work of Greek historian Herodotus (5th c. BC).

In the Anatolian region of Asia Minor, gold would wash down the mountains and had for quite sometime been collected by people in Lydia for use in making jewelry and the like. Gold, like myrrh and cedar, etc. had already been a prized material in many ancient societies even as it was being worked by the Lydians. But something else was about to happen at the height of the Lydian empire...

It was around this time that the discovery of basanite marked a key turning point in economic history; this mineral is more commonly known as touchstone - something so important to our lives that its name remains to this day a common metaphorical expression. It was touchstone that allowed for the ascendancy of gold as currency. Rubbing gold of varying purity on a touchstone leaves marks of varying color density, thus for the first time allowing a standardization of purity which was very swiftly followed by a standardization of coinage that pushed all prior/nascent money forms to the margins of the economic discourse. Even today, touchstone is sometime used in the modern process of chemical assay.

http://www.goldbroker.co.uk/images/touchstone-gold-test.jpg

Interestingly, as anaxarchos noted upthread, it is from this milieu that the historic Phrygian king Midas gave rise to the myth that, like the touchstone metaphor, remains embedded in popular consciousness to this day.

More (though there seems to be little out there that actually weaves together this narrative, economics being such a purposefully opaque matter- can't have the masses knowing too much about all that. Too dangerous to the parasitic class...):

http://books.google.com/books?id=3L09AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA504&ots=q8P-h6r38-&dq=agean%20lydia&pg=PA477#v=snippet&q=gold%20lydia&f=false

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lygo/hd_lygo.htm

I was reminded of this topic when re-watching the series "Connections."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4990510/James_Burke_-_Connections__%28BBC_-_Series_1__2_and_3%29

I searched to make sure a new thread hadn't been started that I forgot about..

So is it time for a new discussion thread?

:)

We need a clean stretch of a few weeks to do "Fetishism". After that, I'm done with the "line-by-line". We could certainly continue, in a looser fashion, if there is interest.

Glad you plan on going slowly, because I've been really stretched thin lately. Rehabbing my back has made me have more back pain than I had for the last 4 or 5 months wearing a soft brace.

Plus I am finally off "light duty" in terms of working, but its still pretty taxing.

Ah well, can't complain :)

Glad you plan on going slowly, because I've been really stretched thin lately. Rehabbing my back has made me have more back pain than I had for the last 4 or 5 months wearing a soft brace.

Plus I am finally off "light duty" in terms of working, but its still pretty taxing.

Ah well, can't complain :)

.

Expect I'll be kinda busy but will hang tho' my participation might be spotty. (mebbe not a bad thing....)

If we do revive this discussion, it'd be good to have all hands on deck!

And maybe Hamfist will even stop by to "liberate" us from the tyranny of forced line-by-line readings of Marx..

I've just been lurking rather than posting. I'm busy with out of town work, but I always check in around here. With the labor and travel, I've simply not had much to say. Haven't even used my new DU handle more than once or twice...

In due time though.

And I *still* intend to finish scanning in the Pisarev essay on Voltaire. I just have other personal and bizness stuff pulling at me right now.

.On Edit: D'oh! Just re-read the post. After Thanksgiving! Well whenever, I am ready...

I did say Thanksgiving but all this "Democrats implode" shit is creating busy times for us non-Democrat/Repub/Paulist/Green types. Supply and Demand, ya know?

These are strange times

Along those lines, both November 22nd and December 7th passed with remarkably little comment anywhere, like no year before. I don't know what it is like in the rest of the country, but it is a depression here in Michigan and still getting worse and worse. I think that more than half of the people in the state are having a very difficult time now with food and rent, let alone medicine. Employed people are couch surfing and getting food stamps - everything is stacked in favor of the landlord and the boss after years and years of the destruction of any protections for workers and tenants, and in between stops to be raped and pillaged at work, at home, or in the stores, the cops are everywhewre waiting to pounce on the poor - the state is running out of money and the social service agencies are crushed under the weight of the need. We are getting very close to the point of no return here - people are desperate and no longer have anything to lose and couldn't play the game anymore if they wanted to.

because I know people who were freaking about not having their Christmas pictures done in mid-November. But I was kinda thinking the same thing -- holidays take a holiday..

At the risk of sounding stupid, what holiday was Dec 7?

n/t

I was thinking "holiday" holiday..'I was like which holiday is roughly 3 weeks long before Christmas?' I was about to go look up Kwanzaa..

I'd been thinking the same thing actually, not even sure JFK got covered on the nightly news this year. There was a piece on Pearl Harbor in the local paper since this is a retirement community, but very little national coverage. I don't always pay attention though, so I figured I'd simply not noticed the coverage due to my own inattentiveness

I was just saying that there is not much enthusiasm or interest in Christmas etc. here, and in addition to that I noticed that the anniversaries of Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination passed without much comment. Usually you can't escape hearing a lot of commentary about those. Don't know of the two are connected. I would say that in general people don't give a shit because they have so many other worries.

I have noticed a real drop off in any kind of "community" feeling beyond the very local. What I mean is that city-wide and county-wide drives for "Toys for Tots" and "Angel Trees" and such things have bottomed-out. I saw a report on the local news yesterday that was begging for donations and actually was trying to guilt the viewers into making donations. The wife said, "Everyone is either too poor or too job-scared to do anything but hunker down and try to make it to the next crisis." She is right. It is getting pretty grim out there and no relief in sight...

we've been somewhat protected in Houston (housing is cheaper than the coasts), but the big gas companies here are laying off in waves. Shell just announced "hundreds" of jobs are going to be displaced to India and the Philippines (at the same time that gas price is up because supplies are down). Which means someone is profiting somewhere. And it's not the workers.

Just in our immediate area the decorations are nearly non-existent this year and I don't see many people shopping. This is an area that hasn't been hit as hard yet, so I can't imagine how bad it is in Michigan.

Hard times, but no denial and delusion.

No one here lectures you about the need to "think positive."

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