Reading Capital, continued (thread #2)...

[blindpig]

curt_b
10-05-2009, 07:08 PM

Your contributions to all the boards are priceless. More your efforts to support poor and working people's right to health care are beyond admirable. Jeez, you are even involved in your union, and the need for public schools. Anybody that would give a shit about any questions or disagreements about Marx that you might have, would have to come through many of us.

[blindpig]

Two Americas
10-05-2009, 07:28 PM

I think you are saying that because both of your examples are coats, and coats are all used for the same thing, they are therefore identical in value. That is the opposite of what is being said. Check out this paragraph -

"That which starts out as qualitatively different, ends up being qualitatively identical and differing only in quantity. That which had no existence apart from its bodily form, is now nothing apart from its value form, and that expressed relatively, in another acting as its measure of value."

See what is being said there?

Qualitatively identical and differing only in quantity.

The linen and the coat are different - in their physical manifestation. Different qualitatively - different in their qualities. They had no other existence. But as commodities, they are qualitatively identical and only differ quantitatively - how much value each has, which can only be discovered (expressed) relatively - by comparing one to the other, as relative value, not by comparing their qualities.

The physical qualities of the coats, as commodities, becomes irrelevant. They have become abstractions, may as well just be entries on a ledger sheet - bodiless.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
10-05-2009, 07:59 PM

...may or may not have the same use-value. One may be much warmer, or more fashionable, or their use-values may be identical. But as values, none of that will matter. Their value will be based solely on the amount of labor which it took to produce each. In turn, this helps to explain how capital intensive cloth made in Birmingham, England displaces homespun cloth in India. Despite the miserable condition of Indian labor, the English cloth has less value because it contains less labor. If the use-values are the same, the commodity with less human labor in it tends to displace the one which has more. The co-existence of the linen coat and the wool jacket tends to suggest that their use-values are not strictly identical.

As to "fear", fear not sister. Curt is right again, as is his custom. I have done this class many times, including many times with those who had great trouble reading (we just read it aloud, again and again). Just slow us down until it clicks.

The only people who consistently fail to understand this material are tenured professors of the social sciences...

[blindpig]

BitterLittleFlower
10-06-2009, 03:43 AM

Labor involved in spinning wool, weaving wool, equal to labor involved in same with linen maybe? so labor value the same?

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
10-06-2009, 06:17 AM

of commodities being discussed (it threw me a bit). The commodities in question could be anything - ax-handles and shoes, anvils and shawls, wagons and railroad ties. I was kind of confused at first because I kept thinking about the linen being used to make the coat! (LOL). Karl is just picking two commodities at random - linen and coats, but it could have been anything. This at least was a problem early on for me, I kept thinking this relationship in the back of my mind - had to "purge" it (no totalitarianism involved...honest).

[blindpig]

blindpig
10-06-2009, 06:47 AM

It is our time on earth, it's all we got. Is one person's time on earth worth more than another's? For it to be stolen from us is no small crime. That it should be miserable, onerous, is insult to injury.

Capitalism takes the essence of our lives and gives it to others who have no need for it other than their self-aggrandizement.

Work we must, else we perish. But we work for ourselves, our brothers and sisters, not thieves.

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
10-06-2009, 07:23 AM

luckily I'm so dense I didn't even realize that so it'd didn't throw me

[blindpig]

Two Americas
10-06-2009, 07:40 AM

Is linen ever used to make coats, anyway? Wouldn't be very warm. I know Pat Nixon had a "cloth coat" LOL.

[blindpig]

Two Americas
10-06-2009, 07:42 AM

Well said.

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
10-06-2009, 08:11 AM

but this passage is just absolutely a killer!

"Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds, the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is – human labour.

There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The brilliancy of Aristotle’s genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, “in truth,” was at the bottom of this equality."

This is the STUFF, man! It pisses me off that this isn't taught in school from the earliest grades. Everyone should be walking around with the relationships spelled out in Capital as part of their everyday makeup. This is getting good...