Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...

[blindpig]

chlamor
02-09-2010, 07:14 AM

I've saved all the "Capital" threads as well as others related. So far I've copied most of the important threads on the first ten pages of GD. No pictures are saved just the discussions.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
02-09-2010, 07:29 AM

With the end of Section 4, we have covered the part of Capital that is the most difficult to begin reading on one's own. The rest is sometimes easy and sometimes hard, but it "follows".

How did we do? Did it work on the Web?

I should ask blindpig who was willing to try it and PinkoCommie who insisted that it had to be done... If nothing else, I think we have a partial template for anyone to repeat the series.

[blindpig]

blindpig
02-09-2010, 08:47 AM

My understanding of this material, while far from perfect, is vastly improved. Your dissection was very helpful and the comments by other participants allowed me to skirt asking quite so many dumb questions, thanks guys, hope I did the same for you.

A couple peripheral comments:

The first part of note #34 brought to mind the 'end of history' nonsense.

Your example of European birch firewood in South Florida is a fine example of the irrationality of capitalism and the operation of fetishism. No rational person would carry firewood across the Atlantic, only the peculiar logic of exchange value could make sense of such absurdity. In terms of the labor involved in the production and transportation it seems insane to me, yet some one is making money.

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
02-09-2010, 08:52 AM

Only half so because I wanted to make sure Marx was not in fact making some additional comment on use value.

However, the rhetorical side is to point out that the "qualitative aspect" actually IS FOUND in its quantity. This is more Hegel (which we have technically already covered) but it is Hegel cast in a much more illuminating light than some of his curent hangers-on (the "Marxists" you allude to below) would have him.

In fact, I'm not sure they'd recognize the guy. "You look like someone I know but..nah, can't be.."

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
02-09-2010, 09:00 AM

For me it is less than that. There is a guy called Chris Arthur who treads heavily on this topic and is much bandied about. Read the gobbledygook on the wikipedia page for the gist of how insane it is. It actually uses the word esoteric which is a welcome and candid surprise.

I think Arthur ends up talking about a "return" to the Paris Manuscripts. I don't think thats an all bad idea, but for him it becomes doctrinal. He especially focuses on "alienation" and the debate of how that later translates into the "division of labor" in "mature" Marx

[blindpig]

curt_b
02-09-2010, 11:02 AM

"Consider something as simple as "greed" (or "hierarchy" or "power"), for example. We see "greed", not as something that has evolved in a peculiar, historically determined stage of society, but as a part of "human nature"... something immutable and ever-lasting... and we begin the exploration of it from that impossible starting point. Nevertheless, this exploration immediately falls afoul of the contradiction inherent in it. To understand something, we must reduce it... simplify it to its most essential elements... and this reduction for social categories always arrives at their history. The assumption of immutability is not enough."

This eliminates the necessity to indulge in refuting so many of the liberal arguments.
If we were serious (and energetic enough) we would take on the human nature arguments through an historical analysis of what any of the Seven Deadly Sins mean/meant at a given point in time. This section seems doubly rich when considered with what's happened here over the past months.

Definitely have the start of a template. We could start by editing some more of the bullshit comments (I know you've done some of that) and re-posting the threads, comment by comment, either here or there. I'd be willing to work on it.

Any plans to move on?

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
02-09-2010, 11:15 AM

"internets" as much as I have with this study. I think that this was a terrific idea and is a great template. I am with curt on this. This has been a shining light, man, a shining light. I want more...

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
02-09-2010, 01:07 PM

If you want to keep going, I will be happy to (after a break). There is simply too much material for line-by-line or paragraph-by-paragraph, however. It would be more chapter-by-chapter.

We've tried to do the exact same thing with the Manifesto a few times. That is the one that should have popular resonance. Unfortunately, I don't think we have the method for that one licked yet.

On your point, how about envy/jealousy? "Well, as far as personal jealousy goes, that is something that is biologically coded and... yadda, yadda."

BUT, there was no such thing as pairing marriage for the first million years of human existence.

"Well, that may be but jealousy is so ingrained in humans that it must have had another outlet..." In other words, we shall reduce our immutable category to something so indistinct and meaningless that we ourselves don't even recognize it anymore... and then this indeterminate thing is declared to be transcendent precisely because nobody can now say otherwise...

...like "hierarchy".

People have always loved gold, doncha know? It is part of their nature.

[blindpig]

curt_b
02-11-2010, 07:29 PM

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... 1/ch02.htm

Whenever you and others want to continue, I'm ready.

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
02-13-2010, 02:53 PM

that I expected there to be quite a bit more commentary on the last section we just did. The material may be linear, but it is also extremely dense in that it is kind of a summation of all that we have already established.

Maybe Anax is right that we should repost this, work on summarizing and reviewing, or even simply revisit previous material in light of a more complete perspective on it.

I also think we should be thinking about how this ties in with the Manifesto which is the explicitly political document of the two.

I've been reading Kropotkin recently. His Mutual Aid is maybe a bit too loose but in The Great Revolution he is essentially extending the idea of cooperation within species to the societal level.

He also sees France and the fall of the ancien regime as a roadmap to Revolution in the most practical and considered sense. It is perhaps his Anarchist Manifesto in spite of itself (since it is explicitly not about that, and in some ways about the opposite -- the establishment of the Modern State) and in spite of himself (since it is a prescription of sorts issued from a staunch anti-prescriptivist).

The point that I've taken to heart recently -- as I was reviewing the opening chapters looking for one particularly elusive passage -- was that what motivated the peasant risings more than anything else was lack of bread or more accurately, want of bread since scarcity is entirely a social category.

Meanwhile, Louis XVI stood resolute that the only efficacy of his power was as the absolute weilder of power.

We've talked about nationalization on here recently. But nationalization is not simply a matter of a state takeover of finance, because that is exactly the threshold that requires the defeat of those who control global finances.

The question is whether we seriously believe that we have arrived at the point where the slaves who feed their masters must instead be fed BY the masters. And it is not a question of "belief" at all, but one of really and factually existing social conditions.

Is there any further foundation for reform of the capitalist system? Has the bourgeoisie social contract been unforged? If so then we may indeed say that the needs and demands of the immiserated for necessities -- in a word, bread -- represents the germ of a revolutionary movement, a CLASS poised for revolution. Exactly what banner we will march under is secondary to the inexorable fact that human social relations must be remade to meet these needs (which are politically expressed as demands)