Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol 1: The Process of Production of Capital by Karl Marx
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What hasn’t been said about Capital before? The least interesting parts were the areas where Marx goes on about exploitation. This makes it very obvious that we are supposed to identify with the working class. After all, we all work for a living at something, don’t we? We all have bosses. Yet this does beg the question a little, as this sets up a self-fulfilling situation. Who is it that gets rich off of us? We don’t see them.
One of the angles that is often missed about Capital is that it is a book derived from economic principles. Marx takes it for granted that land and are production and value. He also points out that excess population will keep us poor. Land is always a problem, of course, and too many people does make a job more precious. What is happening now though, is that technology is making labor less and less important. The labor Marx spoke of is just one stage of capital. In “first world” countries we have moved mostly beyond the factory (and some farming) jobs so often cited in this book, into a different kind of economy.
It strikes me that a supplement to Capital would be to recognize that it is not capitalism that is the supreme model for civilization (producing class struggle) but it is in fact valorization and management of production/resources that produces struggle. There is also, the additional factor that class struggle is just one way to slice social antagonisms. The multitude of class and identity conflicts express themselves economically in a variety of ways that aren’t simply class, but also gender, race, religion, disability and so on. In a way, we need a more general account of social production, of which Marx showed us but only presented in a limited way.
He does however, largely through David Ricardo’s work, show us the impossible signifying bond: between exchange-value and use-value. He also is able to demonstrate how credit creates another impossible signifying bond to guarantee further exchange-value, making it a transcendental (pathological) signification. I thought that Capital would be a boring book to read. In a way, the ideas are so extended today throughout so many philosophers that, while rather long, was a snap to read.
I am told that Engels really changed the character of the book, from philosophy to a call for class uprising. I am curious as to how much this is true.
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