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

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
10-01-2009, 04:59 AM

To me the piece about measurement (and it is a rather deep commmentary on "measurement") is totally obvious and I remember thinking so the first time I encountered this idea ( which was not while reading Marx's Capital incidentally)

However, I think it is as not as straightforward as I think..perhaps not even for myself. I don't quite know why, but it proves vexing in practice.

As I said above, this is, IMO, where it gets to be tough sledding if only because the rest of section 3 is a whirlwind of blurbs similar to this one.

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
10-01-2009, 06:01 AM

setting us up to grasp money; to understand what money is and how it relates to value. We have to first understand that we cannot talk about the "value" of a commodity except in terms relative to something else. Once we get the hang of dealing with value as a "relative" attribute, we can begin to see how money works. This is what hit me fairly early in this particular reading...

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
10-01-2009, 06:26 AM

this is sort of where the rubber meets the road..he is taking "philsopy" and introducing it to reality(the whole discussion of measurement sort of harks back to You-Know-Who)

[blindpig]

blindpig
10-01-2009, 07:58 AM

as Pinko commented not too long ago. Been going over this stuff repeatedly, it is sinking in, at the least it no longer looks like Cyrillic to me.

Sometimes the 'why' of what Marx is talking about eludes me. Take the last paragraph of the section, at first it was 'wtf is he talking about?' but now if I read it slowly and thnk about it then it is perfectly sensible. Perhaps not the level of comprehension that I'd prefer but good enough.

[blindpig]

Two Americas
10-01-2009, 04:46 PM

The value of a commodity can not be expressed by itself, but only in relationship to another commodity. (That is the origin of all measurement.) Value is a property that exists in two things, it cannot exist in one thing. "My arm is as long as my arm" doesn't express a value for the arm. Two things, held in comparative relationship to one another allows us to express value.

One of the things has relative value according to its equivalent value in another thing. That thing can't have both forms at once, It doesn't matter which way we turn the relationship. If two widgets = one whatsit, we can say that as two widgets have the relative value of being equivalent to one whatsit, or one whatsit has the relative value of being equivalent to one half of a widget.

Standardized systems of measurement come later. (The names of some standardized measurements betray their origins - "foot" for example.)

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
10-02-2009, 10:56 AM

These issues will reappear once we get to Capital.

There are a few different things going on in this section. First, Marx is being unusually precise (even for him) because the political economy which preceded him made a number of very simple logical mistakes which were constantly being repeated (such as the assumption that commodities could serve as the equivalent form for each other, or as a measure of value for each other, at the same time).

An even bigger context worth noting is that Marx finished and published this weighty tome (Volume I) and then prepared Volumes II and III for publication, and then organized 3 prior volumes worth of notebooks which were a criticism of existing political economy (Theories of Surplus Value), and then he came back to significantly rework the first 4 sections of Volume I in a later edition. It was the only part of the whole which was so treated. Why? Partly, Marx said, that this initial section lent itself to a "dialectical presentation". Partly it is because it is "all there". In germinal form, what we find in the atomic categories of capitalism, and their contradictions, is what is also at play in the complexity of the real world system itself.

I once told Pinko that all we had to read together was the first 60 (70? 90? 150? pick a number) pages of Capital. After that, one was familiar enough with the logic, the style, and method of the old man, that they could proceed on their own. I'm sticking to that, though I was by no means the first to say it. There is more, though. This is a different kinda book. The riddle gets solved at the very beginning... but it is so simple and ordinary that it sort of escapes you at first.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
10-02-2009, 11:01 AM

We've got it all: "In the particular is the general", and alla that...

But, more, we are also watching the organic logic of the subject unfold, with each simple proposition also matching the actual historical evolution... in chronological order.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
10-02-2009, 11:10 AM

... an epiphany of sorts that was building up... either that or indigestion.

Kiddo, I owe you a big one... on the cause of capitalist "crisis", etc. You keep quoting me MR guys and French Filosophers on the "cause" being the "Tendency of the Rate of Profit to fall" or the changing organic composition of Capital or some shit about Marx "abandoning" the "over production of commodities" in the Manifesto for something far more technical. And I keep pushing back with some platitude about how markets are bounded but capital isn't. We are at a point at which I have to answer your question for real.

I just have to figure out how I do it (and let the Old Man speak for himself), and not divert this reading thread... stay tuned.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
10-02-2009, 11:33 AM

... restating each proposition.

One minor issue: "It doesn't matter which way we turn the relationship". True, if we don't try to use both sides of the relationship as the equivalent form at the same time. You actually illustrated why...

"two widgets = one whatsit" is true...

"two widgets = one whatsit= two widgets", gets us nowhere.

We are about to say "two widgets = one whatsit = four dopplegangs = 100 gazebs = 1 footstool"

"Ahh... a footstool, you say? Well, I know what that is."

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
10-02-2009, 11:35 AM