Reader's Guide To Marx's Capital , livre ebook

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142 pages

English

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The first volume of Marx's Capital was published 150 years ago. It continues to entice readers eager to grapple with the author's account of the 'laws of motion' of capitalism. Yet for many, Capital can seem a forbidding work. This book, by Joseph Choonara, author of Unravelling Capitalism, is aimed at both individual readers and Capital reading groups. It takes each chapter of the first volume of Capital in turn, leading the reader through Marx's key arguments and offering insights and contemporary examples that can provide further illumination.

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Economics

Political economy

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Publié par	Bookmarks
Date de parution	20 juillet 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781910885505
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Joseph Choonara s A Reader s Guide to Marx s Capital is a timely contribution to helping those new to Marx s analysis of capitalism, now 150 years since it was first published. Choonara clearly explains the context, method and purpose of Capital , before taking the reader steadily through each chapter of the book. Marx hoped that he would gain a readership among a working-class audience for his book. There have been a few past attempts at producing guides for readers to promote that objective: Choonara s is by far the best.
- M ICHAEL R OBERTS , author of The Long Depression
This book stands out as an accessible and lucid guide to Marx s Capital . It cuts to the chase in clarifying the essence of his ideas. At a time when there is a thirst for understanding the chaotic and crisis ridden nature of capitalism, Joseph Choonara makes an important contribution to the intellectual tool kit for activists.
- J ANE H ARDY , Professor of Political Economy, University of Hertfordshire
A Reader s Guide to Marx s Capital is a very valuable, clearly written and succinct aid to understanding Marx s most important work. Choonara adheres to the long unfashionable but true notions that Marx had a coherent approach that structured Capital and that his analysis reveals the fundamental logic of capitalism during his lifetime as today. In this it is vastly superior to other recent, competing introductions.
- R ICK K UHN , author of the Deutscher Prize winning Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism , Honorary Associate Professor in Sociology, Australian National University
About the author
Joseph Choonara is a columnist on Socialist Review and a frequent contributor to the journal International Socialism . His previous publications include Unravelling Capitalism: A Guide to Marxist Political Economy (second edition, Bookmarks 2017).
A Reader s Guide to Marx s Capital
Joseph Choonara
A Reader s Guide to Marx s Capital by Joseph Choonara
Published 2017 by Bookmarks Publications c/o 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE Bookmarks Publications Cover design and typesetting by Peter Robinson Printed by Short Run Press Ltd
ISBN 978-1-910885-48-2 PBK 978-1-910885-49-9 Kindle 978-1-910885-50-5 ePub 978-1-910885-51-2 PDF
Contents
Preface
A note for reading groups
Introduction
The production of Capital
Marx s method
1 The commodity
1. The two factors of the commodity
2. The dual character of the labour embodied in the commodities
3. The value-form or exchange-value
a. The simple, isolated or accidental form of value
b. The total or expanded form of value
c. The general form of value
d. The money form
4. The fetishism of the commodity and the secret thereof
2 The process of exchange
3 Money, or the circulation of commodities
1. The measure of value
2. The means of circulation
a. The metamorphosis of commodities
b. The circulation of money
c. Coin. The symbol of value
3. Money
a. Hoarding
b. Means of payment
c. World money
4 The general formula of capital
5 Contradictions in the general formula
6 The sale and purchase of labour-power
7 The labour process and the valorisation process
1. The labour process
2. The valorisation process
8 Constant capital and variable capital
9 The rate of surplus-value
10 The working day
11 The rate and mass of surplus-value
12 The concept of relative surplus-value
13 Cooperation
14 The division of labour and manufacture
1. The dual origin of manufacturing
2. The specialised worker and his tools
3. The two fundamental forms of manufacture-heterogeneous and organic
4. The division of labour in manufacture, and the division 106 of labour in society
5. The capitalist character of manufacture
15 Machinery and large-scale industry
1. The development of machinery
2. The value transferred by the machinery to the product
3. The most immediate effect of machine production on the worker
4. The factory
5. The struggle between worker and machine
6. The compensation theory, with regard to the workers displaced by machinery
7. Repulsion and attraction of workers through the development of machine production. Crises in the cotton industry
8. The revolutionary impact of large-scale industry on manufacture, handicrafts and domestic industry
9. The health and education clauses of the Factory Acts. 126 The general extension of factory legislation in England
10. Large-scale industry and agriculture
16 Absolute and relative surplus-value
17 Changes of magnitude in the price of labour-power and surplus-value
18 Different formulae for the rate of surplus-value
19 The transformation of the value (and respectively the price) of labour-power into wages
20 Time-wages
21 Piece-wages
22 National differences in wages
23 Simple reproduction
24 The transformation of surplus-value into capital
1. Capitalist production on a progressively increasing scale
2. The political economists erroneous conception of reproduction on an increasing scale
3. Division of surplus-value into capital and revenue. The abstinence theory
4. The circumstances which, independently of the proportional division of surplus-value into capital and revenue, determine the extent of accumulation
5. The so-called labour fund
25 The general law of capitalist accumulation
1. A growing demand for labour-power accompanies accumulation if composition of capital remains the same
2. A relative diminution of the variable part of capital occurs in the course of the further progress of accumulation and of the concentration accompanying it
3. The progressive production of a relative surplus population or industrial reserve army
4. Different forms of existence of the relative surplus population. The general law of capitalist accumulation
5. Illustrations of the general law of capitalist accumulation
26 The secret of primitive accumulation
27 The expropriation of the agricultural population from the land
28 Bloody legislation against the expropriated since the end of the 15th century. The forcing down of wages by Act of Parliament
29 The genesis of the capitalist farmer
30 Impact of the agricultural revolution on industry. The creation of a home market for industrial capital
31 The genesis of the industrial capitalist
32 The historical tendency of capitalist accumulation
33 The modern theory of colonisation
Conclusion
Index
Preface
T HIS BOOK is neither a general introduction to Karl Marx s political economy nor a treatise exploring the intricacies of Capital or its application to contemporary capitalism. 1 Instead it aims to assist those reading the first volume of Capital , whether as part of a reading group or through individual study. It assumes no prior knowledge of Capital or of economics more generally, merely a desire to grapple with this compelling and, for many readers, somewhat intimidating work. It is designed to be read in parallel with Capital itself, with each chapter of this book consulted either before or after digesting the relevant sections of Marx s work.
Experience shows that a competently run reading group, perhaps led by someone who is already acquainted with Capital , is the best way to gain an understanding of Marx s text. The growing interest in Marx s political economy means that it is easier to find people prepared to participate in such a group if one does not already exist. However, in the absence of this, it is certainly possible to read Marx alone. In either case, the problems tend to come quite early on, in the dense opening chapters of Marx s text. Here a reader s guide such as this may be especially helpful in providing assistance and reassurance in getting to grips with the intricacies contained in these important early sections.
I have tried to make this work quite brief. It is not helpful to re-explain each passage from Marx, as much of his writing is entirely self-explanatory and clear. I have instead dwelt on those areas that are the most vital to an overall understanding of the work and those that most often confuse, drawing on my own experience teaching Capital to left-wing audiences of students and workers over the past decade.
Explanation is inseparable from interpretation and without doubt my own particular foibles are on display in this work. I have, however, tried to make clear where my own interpretation is at odds with that of other Marxists, without becoming too embroiled in the mass of controversies that have emerged within Marxist political economy over the decades.
I have used the Penguin edition of Capital , translated by Ben Fowkes, and it is strongly recommended that readers obtain this version. It is now the standard English-language edition and offers the best translation. In my text, numbers in square brackets refer to pages in this version of Capital . References to other works that may aid comprehension are included in footnotes.
This work only covers the first volume of Capital . That is a genuine limitation as the three volumes form an interconnected whole and anyone who wishes to understand thoroughly Marx s account of the laws of motion of capitalism must delve into the second and third volumes, edited and published by Frederick Engels after Marx s death. Nonetheless, a thorough understanding of the first volume should provide an adequate basis for the later volumes to be explored independently.
Finally, this book developed out of a Capital reading group I ran at the Bookmarks bookshop in London in 2016-2017. I am grateful both to Bookmarks for letting me use their facilities and to attendees at those meetings for forcing me to reconsider my understanding of elements of Marx s work and for allowing me to test on them some of the explanations contained here. Thanks also to Lina Nicolli, Peter Robinson and Carol Williams for their work on the production.
A note for reading groups
In this work, each chapter after my introduction corresponds