karl marx, capital (volume II)

chapter one: the circuit of money capital (109-144)

three main points:

1. (113) class relation is implicit in opposition of M-C-M', to C-M-C
2. (112) distinction between 'money' and 'money capital', defined with respect to the process of accumulation. so money capital can have the function of money--what makes it capital, though, is its presence in a circuit of accumulation. this implies something interesting, perhaps, about what it presupposes (115--can't have it until you have the relevant class relations)
   
3. (133) presentation of the phases alerts us to the problem of discontinuity

(120): problematic claim about universalization of capitalist production

chapter two: the circuit of productive capital (144-167)

(148-149): the vulgar economists, in the capitalist production process, see only the "simple production of commodities" -- 'use-values' destined for consumption.

(149): commodity vs. commodity capital (it is the latter as a moment of the circulation of capital)

(152): the insanity of the worker's position -- in the money with which his wage is paid, "the worker receives the transformed form of his own future labour or that of other workers. With one part of his past labour the capitalist gives him a draft on his own future labour."

(153): in the circuit of productive capital, money is 'evanescent' -- before, remember, it appeared as the purpose of the entire undertaking.

(154): addition to the class relation of M-C-M -- 'money' can simply outlast 'commodities' (capitalist can hoard it, put it in the bank, etc.)

(154): M-L is unlike all other exchanges, which is something unknowable to our vulgar friends

(156): capitalist does not care if his things are consumed--he cares only if they are bought (be it by wholesalers, merchants, what have you). this becomes important in considering crises.

(161): again, money vs. money capital, commodity vs. commodity capital, productive capital vs. mode of existence of mop as capital

(165): the reserve fund

chapter three: the circuit of commodity capital (167-180)

(172): again, our vulgar economists, focusing on P...P', could ignore the fact that all this was devoted to 'valorization'

(173): productive consumption and individual consumption (which it encompasses)

(175, 177, 178): key argument--this third form (the circuit of commodity capital) takes us immediately toward the social circuit, he's arguing. it twice presupposes 'c', from without. in other words, in the case of commodity capital, you require others outside the circuit who also have 'commodity capital'. however, this is not the case in 'money capital' circuit or 'productive capital' circuit.

chapter four, the three figures of the circuit (180-199)

(182): "each of these stages not only conditions the other, but at the same time excludes it..."

(183): "each delay... brings the coexistence into disarray"

(184): in sum--the particular circuits constitute simultaneous and successive moments of the overall process.

(185): the point emphasized throughout volume 1 -- looking at is this way, we see that capital is certainly not just money, but also not just a social relation. Capital is a movement, and not at all static.

(185-186): passages here to unpack about the 'independence' of value, as revealed by the circuit and experience of the individual capital.

(187): speaking of a tendency to monopoly?

(189): important--here writing about how capitalism can use means of production/labor, commodity capital, or money capital that have been acquired from other modes of production (i.e., that haven't themselves been commodified yet). the groundwork for notions of articulation is here. (see 190)

(190): but he goes one further, writing also about capital's definite tendency to transform pre-capitalist modes of production into capitalist, by drawing this production into its circulation process (how do we want to deal with this? kautsky/lenin)

(191): 'fractions of capital' -- since we're looking at the process from production to final consumption

(192): money--means of pruchase vs. means of payment (discussing 'velocity' of circulation, by means of this distinction)

(194): again, this is the earlier point -- the circuits need not be entwining circuits of capital, precisely because you don't need everything to be produced by capitalist social relations.

(196): a very Brenner-ish exposition of the social relation at capitalism's heart--"rests fundamentally on the social character of procution." denouncing the other view (the Smithian view) as "typical of the bourgeois horizon". mode of commerce is subordinate to the mode of production, in other words, whereas they see the mode of production wherever they see its mode of commerce.

(197): speaking, here, of the rising organic composition of cpaital.

(198): the demand for means of production must always be smaller in value that the commodity product of the capital. in other words, he produces more value than he took out of circulation. so is the question one of missing demand? (discuss this)

chapter 5: circulation time

(200): production time--duration of stay in the production sphere

(202-203): capitalist production exhibits a tendency to shorten as much as possible the excess of production time over working time (there will always be this excess, but the idea is to limit as much as possible)

(203): circulation time--wherein capital exists as commodity and money capital; "circulation time acts as a negative limit... on production time..."

(204): classical political economy stuck in the illusion that circulation time is productive--that it valorizes capital

(204): C-M is much more difficult than M-C, remember

(206): perishability of the commodity is a barrier to its becoming the purview of capitalist production (until you have a 'populous place' and concentration')--example of breweries and dairies

chapter 6: the costs of circulation

(208-210): those capitalists who only mediate a change in the form of value, do not produce surplus-value. they take a cut, and they help free up production time. thus wage-laborers engaged in these industries perform surplus labor for their capitalists, but this is not surplus time from the perspective of society--the capitalist will, of course, lose those two hours. [all of this needs to be discussed]

(212): important--the division of labor does not make things into surplus-value producing functions, unless the entire function being divided is already a product- or value- forming function to begin with [so the university? how do we talk about 'commodification', if this is the case?]

(214): the individual capitalist can make 'extra' profits if he keeps his 'costs of storage' down, but this is not the same thing as generating extra surplus-value from a social perspective [again, needs discussion]

(216): capital and labor-power is needed to maintain and store the commodity stock--these are expenses. (1) insofar as they arise from "time" demands, they can be thought of as circulation costs; (2) insofar as their purpose is to 'conserve' value (i.e. storage?), they do not add value but are critical all the same.

(217): stock exists in three forms:

1. productive capital
2. individual consumption fund
3. commodity stock/commodity capital

(219): the commodity stock can get smaller the more advanced the productive forces (in other words, the easier it is to acquire masses of raw materials at short notice)

(221): important--as capitalist production develops, scale of production is determined less by immediate demand for the product, and more by the scale of the capital at captialist' disposal and its drive for valorization... mass of capital tied up as commodity capital grows, and commodity stock grows [da da dum... foreshadowing of crisis]

(222): the commodity stock phase is scary for the capitalist--he is going to be throughly disciplined, in this stage and in general, by the pressures of competition (innovation by other capitalists is ongoing, remember)

(224-225): expense required to maintain commodity stock are merely 'deductions from social wealth'

(225): "commodity stock is not a condition of uninterrupted sale, but a consequence of the saleability of the commodities"

(225-226): crux, introducing 'transportation costs', but first a comment--"all circulation costs that arise from a change in form of the commodity cannot add any value to it." these costs will be paid for out of the surplus product.

(226-227): there can be 'productive transport', insofar as consumption requires a change of location--and, obviously, the transport that's involved within the production process [discuss--what counts, what doesn't]

chapter 7: turnover time and number of turnovers

(234): can't really see turnover from the perspective of the third circuit (C'...C'), but rather, from the perspective of the first two (M...M'), and (P...P)

(235): turnover is the name given to the circuit of capital, when it is understood not as an isolated act but as a "periodic process". it includes, of course, both the production time and circulation time of a given capital.

chapter 8: fixed capital and circulating capital

(237): the pecularity of 'fixed capital' (which is a part, but not all, of the constant capital) is that it maintains an independent use-shape in the production process (i.e., for a given period of time that is longer than one iteration of the process, itself)

(238): "as long as it continues to function," a part of its value will remain fixed in it. this is contrasted, of course, to 'fluid capital.'

(241): reminding us that 'capital' only exists with reference to social relations of production--so, too, then, the distinction between 'fixed capital' and 'circulating/fluid capital'. (presumably because the notion of 'fixity' presumes capitalist turnover)

(243): the value of 'fixed capital' has a dual existence--part of it remains attached to the original form, part of it ventures off into the commodity, eventually becoming money

(244): here the implication is about 'obstacles' to turnover/profitability, which is quite important--this is what's at stake, in other words, in this distinction: fluid capital transfers its entire value to the product, but the 'turnover' of fixed capital is interrupted (which has all sorts of consequences for the capitalist, of course).

(244-245): labor-power, with respect to this distinction, functions as 'fluid capital' (more precisely, he goes on to say, it is "the portion of the value of the productive capital that is spent" on the laborer's labor-power that is part of the fluid capital)

(246-248): here summarizing four conclusions

1. characteristics of fixed and fluid capital arise from the different turnovers of the productive capital that function in production (which is another way of seeing that they transfer their value to the product, in different ways)
2. turnover of the fixed components spans several turnovers of the fluid components
3. the capitalist has to advance capital for the fixed capital all at once, but the value is only realized bit by bit
4. elements of fluid capital are steadily renewed in kind, with every turnover; the fluid capital is not renewed until it has to be re-purchased

(250): opening up to the critical question of the revolutionization of the 'means of production', and what this means for the replacement/turnover of 'fixed capital'

(251): extensive and intensive reproduction: the former, if the field of production is extended; the latter, if the means of production are made more effective.

(252): in defence of socialist planning--there is a lot of needless horizontal expansion owing to the lack of a "social plan"

(255): the average expenditure for the maintenance of a machine, etc., will go into the price of the product (not, obviously, the price of repairing for individual or freak accidents, etc.)

(257): the replacement of the 'fixed capital', of course, demands expansion/accumulation (earlier, he spoke about this coming from a reserve fund, but here he's acknowledging that you can't have the latter without the former, in a sense)

(261): the big capitalist accumulates a hoard that can be thrown into the purchase of fixed capital. this is what will become, in a sense, the credit system--when this hoard begins to function as 'capital', in the hands of other capitalist at whose disposal it is put.

chapter 9: the overall turnover of the capital advanced. turnover cycles.

(263): value turnover -- amount that comes back, each cycle

(264): speaking about the cycle of related turnovers as one of the 'material foundation' for business cycles. also noting, here, that crises precipitate large volumes of new investment [fruitful place to unpack things]

(267): credit system has the effect of speeding up consumption and production

chapter 10: theories of fixed and circulating capital, adam smith and the physiocrats [skipped]

chapter 11: theories of fixed and circulating capital, ricardo [skipped]

(304): summarizing, here, the confusion created by Adam Smith

1. fixed capital and fluid capital distinction is confused with the distinction between productive and commodity capital
2. circulating capital is identified with capital laid out on wages
3. because of this confusion, they are unable to understand the distinction between constant and variable capital properly
4. understood, incorrectly, as 'money at call' and 'money not at call', by those who look at this as bank clerks
   

chapter 12: the working period

(307): comparing the production of locomotives to the production of yarn, where in the latter capital circulates quickly and comes back, therefore, to assist the capitalist in the renewed purchase of labor-power, raw materials. in the former, not like this, so a much larger outlay of capital is required ("twelve times as much") (see also 310)

(308): definition of the working period, as contrasted to the working day

(311): at less developed stages of capitalism, production lines that require larger outlays of capital are often not pursued--they are done, instead, by the State. it is only with the credit system and the concentration of capital that this enables that these products are opened to capitalist production.

(312-313): here the example being given is the production of houses, where it is only in relatively developed capitalism that builders produce in large quantities for a market)

(314): example of the starving farmer and fat ox in India. hmm.

chapter 13: production time

(316): writing, here, about instances where all of the production time is not taken up by working time, but rather there is some time in which the product is left to be worked on by other forces (grapes in wine, agriculture, etc.)

(319): interesting reflection on the consequences of this for the worker -- where the production time does not require him, he has to find alternative sources of work (seasonal migration, etc.)

(320); this also has consequences for 'fixed capital', insofar as the disjuncture demands that it sid idle, at times.

(322): looking at forests, in particular -- the enormously small part of time taken up by working time, in this case, makes this more-or-less off-limits for capitalism (and has had, he's saying, the result of making forests completely irrational from the perspective of capitalism. can we expand this, perhaps, to say more about the environment? though it is a bit odd, because this presupposes their commodification? unpack)

(324): summary passage of the different permutations, and their consequences. worth reading through.

chapter 14: circulation time

(326): circulation time = selling time + purchasing time (see 329)

(327-328): selling time, of course, is affected by the geographical proximity of production to the market, which can be affected by technological revolutions in communication and transport

(329): introducing the 'world market' to hammer this point home--at a stretch, we could use this passage to speak about the impossibility of defining space/time outside of social relations

(330): the longer the circulation time, of course, the more the risk incurred by the capitalist that prices will fluctuate. this has the result, it's being noted, of predisposing different kinds of products to different levels of stock formation--owing to speculative considerations (see 331-332)

(333): the capitalist has some incentive to, every turnover cycle, retain some money and gradually add to his reserve fund. this has the effect of inuring him in the event of crisis.

chapter 15: effect of circulation time on the magnitude of the capital advanced [skipped]

chapter 16: the turnover of variable capital

(369): fixed capital/circulating capital distinction, once more

(371): definition of the annual rate of surplus value

(373): "it is only the capital actually operating in the labour process which creates surplus-value and to which all the laws given for surplus-value apply..."

(374, 378): the difference here, between capital A and B, is essentially one that hinges on a distinction between capital advanced vs. capital applied.

(379): summarizing, again, the problem being treated here (the value is presumably because this is something that the Ricardians had trouble with--see 373).

(381): important--here he is making the claim that the annual rate of surplus value is 'a comparison produced by the actual movement of capital itself' [need to cash this out through the examples of capital A, capital B, capital C. is he arguing that this is how it looks to the capitalists? an illusion, of sorts?]

(382): the mass of surplus value produced in ten turnover periods in the course of one year will be ten times that corresponding to one turnover period [the amount of capital being equal, it seems--cash out]

(386): important--distinction between capitalists A and capitalists B in terms of the source of the wages they pay--for the first (with turnover time of five weeks), every five weeks the source of wages paid for labor-power is produced by the working hours of the previous five weeks; this is not the case for capitalist B, who has to advance the wages without having it been renewed (here, the distinction is that the first capitalist sees the renewal of the 'form' of its value, whereas the second doesn't see this--both, of course, do see the replacement of its value in the object under production).

(388): important--considering the turnover of variable capital from the perspective of society, sees three things.

1. like this point on page 386, he is stressing that the money that workers under capital A put into circulation (in purchasing wage-goods) is not only the money form of the value of their own labor-power, but it is also the money form of their own value product (i.e., things that they have produced). this is not true for capital B--here the labor is not paid for with the value they themselves have produced, until the second year onwards [a question to ask, of course, is what makes this very important, if we acknowledge that there is no 'first' turnover period when we are looking at the world as it exists--or is there?]. at a given size of production, the annual rate of surplus-value will increase as the brevity of the turnover time increases (because the absolute size of capital advanced will be reduced]
   
2. workers in capital B, in this first year, do not supply any commodity to the market, though they take from it commodities. for communism, Marx is saying, this would not be a problem--society would simply have to decide how much of a 'wait' it can bear. for capitalism, however, where social rationality only asserts itself post festum, this is the source of major disturbances: "the money market is under pressure because large-scale advances of money capital are always needed..." [here, the question is relevant, especially once you introduce credit, of course]. he is noting also that this process puts pressure on society's productive capital, insofar as its being withdrawn without anything being put back--this causes a rise in 'effective demand:' demand rises without any increase in supply, causing an increase in price, people flock to sectors, bringing imports and whatnot where they can't increase production, expanding production where they can--this, ultimately, can cause over-suply and speculation. this has its effect on the labor market, too, bringing workers into new lines of business. "this lasts until the inevitable crash". (he is noting that turnover time can be socialyl determined, but also naturally determined, as in agriculture). an account, here, of british trade with india to cash out these points about money market credit and crisis, the key point being that, again: "what appears as a crisis on the money market in actual fact expresses anomalies in the production and reproduction process itself." [worth going through this example, to clarify everything]
   
3. a seemingly banal point about how workers, in industries with quick turnover time, can provide an element of the variable and constant capital with the very product that they're producing (coal or clothes, are the examples here).
   

(391): note the very interesting footnote on different forms 'contradiction', which hints at a kind of 'underconsumptionist' claim [though maybe not, cash it out]

chapter 17: the circulation of surplus-value

(394): again, summarizing Capitalist A vs. Capitalist B

(396): the pooling of accumulated money capital through the credit system--extra money capital as no more than legal titles to future production, in this sense [a concrete way to make sense of the claim about this form of wealth's 'fictitious' nature]

(398-399): Thompson's claim, cited approvingly [I think?], regarding the fact that all the wealth constantly re-produced is much more than the accumulated money capital. [this is true, I think--but how do we make sense of wealth held in derivatives (600 trillion, at one point), or total financial assets (167 trillion), etc., which both exceed total GDP? is Marx outdated, here? or am I misunderstanding the argument about 'assets', and he's only talking about hoarded 'money capital'? the message is important all the same--capitalists cannot rest on their laurels]

(400): money supply must be enough to cope with fluctuations, and enough must be produced to cope with wear and tear

(404-407): question of where the money that pays for 'surplus-value' comes from? the final answer is that this is not a legitimate problem, in the first place. it makes no different whether the mass contains surplus-value, or not [remember, we are dealing with simple reproduction here, so the nature of the question is different from what we might think--see also 410, below]

(408): there are only two starting-points (workers and capitalists)--all other must receive money from these two, or have co-proprietary rights in this relationship (rent, interest, etc.)

(410): important--the answer to the question, still, is that, assuming simple reproduction, the capitalist class as a whole puts in the money required for circulation of the surplus-value, for the purposes of its individual consumption. in other words, workers purchase everything short of surplus-value; and other capitalists purchase that sliver [this is where Rosa Luxemburg floundered, famously]

(414): rising wages, oscillating prices--none of this makes anything but temporary differences

(415): a Botwinick like opening--abnormally high profits allow producers to pass on increased wage costs

(416): important--circuit of money is very different from circulation of money (former refers to things coming back to origins; the second just means moving from one entity to another)

(418): question of the historical precondition being a sufficient supply of precious metals [a Brenner/w-system question, maybe? not really, though--the former can accommodate this, i would think]

(419): additional money, in the case of expanded reproduction, has to be created by an increase in money

(422): Rosa Luxemburg problem--worker buying power

Chapter 18: Introduction (Part III)

(427-430): useful summary of what has been argued thus far

(434): again, re: differential turnovers, the problem is one of withdrawing commodities from the market (i.e., labor-power, means of production) without giving anything back, for a time.

(434): explicit note about the society to come (paper tokens instead of money, which would cease to exist in the sense of something that circulates)

(438): Smith misses the reproduction of 'constant' capital -- instead, he borrows from the Physiocrats the notion that 'fixed' vs. 'circulating' capital is the fundamental distinction.

(441): very important distinction between means of production, and means of consumption (something which Smith 'stumbles onto')

(444-446): two observations, re: the two departments

1. even though social capital is the sum of individual capitals, the form of appearance that these components assume in the overall process of social reproduction is different (even though, just like individual capital, social capital breaks down into surplus value and 'reproduced' value)
2. at the social level, we see the reproduction of not just wages and surplus value, but also the reproduction of 'constant capital', which has to provide the means of production for re-starting the production process (this is something that can be ignored in the case of the individual capital, of course)

(446): for Smith, price resolves itself into wages, profit, rent. Marx will inveigh against this way of thinking about the problem.

(449): what Smith does is not problematic insofar as it is true that rent/profit/wages are portions of the total value of any commodity. the mistake he makes is to, having shown this, 'reverse' the framing of the issue and make rent/profit/wages the source of value. [i don't understand exactly what this means, but the charge is here]

(451): again, against Smith's understanding of the issue [and here, at the bottom, it does seem as if the 'reverse' understanding, however counterintuitive, is indeed Smith's--'worker adds a value equivalent to his wages]

(452): Smith misses the problem of constant capital, once you zoom out and look at the reproduction of social capital [and partly, it seems, this is because of the preceding problem]

(453): Smith's two errors, then:

1. to equate the value of the annual product (total value of current year's labor plus the value of everything used to produce it) with the annual value product (total product of current year's labor) -- missing, in effect, the reproduction of constant capital (i.e., the value that simply re-appears)
2. this is because he has not distinguished the two-fold character of labor -- labor that creates value, and concrete useful labor [cash out this connection]

(456-457): Smith says that 'wages' serve as capital for the worker. This is incorrect, Marx is noting. it is his labor-power that, as a commodity, functions twice in his hands: first, he sells it; then in the production process, where it functions as capital in the hands of the capitalist.

(458): again, Smith's reversal--for him, different forms of revenue form the 'component parts' of the commodity value annually produced, where in actual fact, it is the value annually produced (split into two, for the capitalist--variable capital and surplus value [and constant capital?]) that is split into revenue. [cash this out, why no constant capital, here? and what are the stakes of this confusion?]

(461-462): for those who care, a 'socio-property relations' definition of capitalism

(465): summary of Marx's critique of Smith's reversal

chapter 20: simple reproduction

(469): C' ... C' reveals the preconditions for social reproduction (i.e., when seen from the perspective of total social capital--need to produce both means of production and means of consumption)

(470): thus, when we are analyzing this process, we will need to look seriously at 'use-values' -- it is insufficient to consider the process in the abstract

(471-472): useful summary of the terms being employed

(476): first discussion of the phenomenon of 'flowing back' -- department I recovering the variable capital through department II (once deparatment II's capitalists have received payment for consumption goods from the workers of department I)

(477): relevant to remember, of course, that no one is getting 'richer' -- these are all exchanges of equivalents

(477): in short--it matters not whether this is advanced on account of the constant value portion of what they've produced or the surplus value. the money will flow back in this way.

(478, 483-4): we have gotten the result that, in the case of simple reproduction, I (variable + surplus) = II (constant) (because we have said, already, that II (surplus) can't be used to buy means of production).

(479-481): introducing the distinction between necessary means of subsistence (IIa) and luxury means of consumption (IIb)--and what follows is the attempt to show how they can balance, if capitalists buy in the correct proportions.

(484): the relationship between workers in luxury consumption and capitalists producing necessary means of subsistence parallels the relationship between workers in department I and capitalists in department II.

(486-487): key--the famous anti-underconsumptionist passage, where the theory is decried as pure tautology. worth thinking through how this fits in the prior analysis of the effects of crisis/inflation on luxury workers.

(487-488): good summary of the preceding

(490): important--we have seen from this that variable capital actually plays an important role in monetary circulation. and because workers live hand-to-mouth, it is required that it be advanced at "definite and short" intervals, irregardless of the turnover time.

(491-492): summary of the individual transactions involved in the 'balancing act'

(492): all this reproduces the relationship between wage-laborers and capitalists as well, don't forget

(495, 496, 497): key--we see that because of the phenomenon of 'flowing back', it is the money that department I itself cast into circulation that realizes its own surplus value (i.e., if we follow the chain of transactions) [question of whether this is under particular conditions--Dept I going first--or a general rule? a general rule, it would seem. the later passages would seem to confirm that this is true for all capitalists--particularly because of the point on p. 497 that the working-class could scarcely advance the money to realize the surplus-value.]

(497): all of this will be obscured by two circumstances: the appearance of money capital, and the sub-division of surplus-value

(504, 506, 508-509): the "riddle" being resolved--how can the value product be resolved into v+s, yet two thirds of the working day be spent on producing stuff that is going to function as constant capital? well, because from the perspective of value-creation, only v+s worth of 'new' value is created--whereas from the perspective of use-values, everything is new.

(512): response to Smith--the entire value of the annual product will not be consumed only by consumers (if it's meant by this, individual consumers), but by consumers (individual capitalists as consumers, and workers) and capitalists (as capitalists--or as 'productive' consumers) seeking new means of production.

(513): definition--value product (value newly created) vs. value of the product (total value of the mass of commodities)

(516): against Smith--labor power is not capital for the worker. it is a capacity (or a simple commodity that he sells). it only becomes capital in the hand of the capitalist.

(519): one big company store, of sorts

(523): variable capital always remains in the hands of the capitalist (in one form or another), so it can't be said to be 'revenue' for anyone. the money that workers get in wages are not conversions of variable capital, but just the value of their labor-power transformed into money.

(526): hoard formation has to be a part of the capitalist reproduction process, because capitalists will need to take money out of the production process to defray the costs of fixed capital

(535): key--introducing the two sections [here it becomes confusing]--section 1 pays for fixed capital with an extra 200 pounds, while section 2 gets the reflux from Department I, from section 1's purchase (which it then makes into a hoard--saving up for the day that it is capable of paying for its fixed capital costs)

(536): three different ways in which this can work (which are then developed over the next several pages)

(540): in sum--re: fixed capital and the two sections

(542): a law--if a greater portion of fixed capital is slated to be renewed, then the portion that is en route to its demise will be proportionately less

(543): important--this all will display a tendency towards disequilibrium/crisis (in other words, if you don't assume a constant proportion is not assumed between defunct fixed capital and fixed capital--remember this is all assuming simple reproduction)

(544-545): important--once you realize that the amount of fixed capital that needs to be replaced varies from year to year (and the production of other things remaining constant) you realize, also, that the problem can only be remedied by "perpetual relative over-production."

(546-548): for those who produce gold, department I does not appear as a seller, but only as a buyer [unpack, if necessary]

(552-553): repeating the example of production branches with long turnover times--withdrawing commodities without putting commodities back (thus a 'lag' created thanks to the money market)

(554): interesting discussion of slavery and the natural economy--a short history of all time, in a sense

(559): discussing the silliness of Destutt's theory of profit

(561): reference to the division of profit between capitalists (Destutt somehow thinks this is a source of profit)

(562): we see that this form of profit is parasitic, in one obvious sense, while also being a necessary "condition of production"

(564): self-laudatory Destutt as height of "bourgeois cretinism."

notes on capital
chapters 1: the commodity

(in general): terms one must be able to define--value (128), use-value (126), exchange-value (126), useful labor (133), simple average labor (or, abstract labor) (135), labor-power (136), relative form of value (139), equivalent form of value (139), universal equivalent (159)

(128): "exchange-value as the necessary mode of expression, or form of appearence, of value."

(129): pay attention to the critical point here. we are speaking, ostensibly, about commodities as "things", but Marx wants us to know that commodities are really processes. indeed, that is the essence of what makes a commodity (in that sense it is a definition embedded in the social relations that produce it).

(131): in the discussion of value, use-value is never absent. for if a thing that is produced is un-wanted, it cannot be realized as a commodity and therefore the labor contained in it is valueless.

(132): the divison of labor precedes commodity production, but the opposite cannot be true (i.e., you need a heterogeneity of use-values--you need a social division of labor, or different people producing different things).

(137): summary passage--"on the one hand, all labour is an expenditure of human labour-power, in the physiological sense, and it is in this quality of being equal, or abstract, human labour that it forms the value of commodities. on the other hand, all labour is an expenditure of human labour-power in a particular form and with a definite aim, and it is in this quality of being concrete useful labour that it produces use-values"

(140): the idea that you cannot understand a commodity's value except in relation to another commodity (a different use-value) is, on reflection, trivial. but, on further reflection, it is critical, because it foregrounds the necessarily social nature of commodities.

(144): summary passage--"by means of the value-relation, therefore, the natural form of commodity B becomes the value-form of comodity A, in other words the physical body of commodity B becomes a mirror for the value of commodity A. Commodity A, then, in entering into a relation with commodity B as an object of value, as a materialization of human labor, makes the use-value B into the material through which its own value is expressed. the value of commodity A, thus expressed int eh use-value of commodity B, has the form of relative value."

(145): changes in the value of the equivalent (the coat, or commodity B) are important, in light of the history of the goal standard.

(148): important: "use-value becomes the form of appearance of its opposite, value"--in other words, a particular commodity comes to stand in for abstract value. this is critical when considering the problems with the gold-standard. As Marx writes two pages later, "concrete labour therefore becomes the expression of abstract human labour." (what he calls the second particularity) This automatically begets the third particularity--useful labour, which is the work of private, specific individuals here is also representing labour in its directly social form (i.e., abstract human labour).

(159-160): in a sense, if this argument about the ascent of the universal equivalent is meant to be historical, then he is making a point relevant to historical materialism, as well--namely, this notion that the ascendancy of a universal equivalent begins to reveal, to observers, the fact that all commodities share the property of being a product of abstract human labor. in this sense, a la Aristotle, one could not arrive at this prior to this era.

(160): summary paragraph--"the simple or isolated relative form of value of one commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated equivalent. the expanded form of relative value, that expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all other commodities, imprints those other commodities with the form of particular equivalents of different kinds. finally, a particular kind of commodity acquires the form of universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the material embodiment of their uniform and universal form of value."

(162): It is important, what he is doing in this chapter, precisely because it demonstrates that the myriad contradictions (or, "particularities") of the money form begin earlier, at the level of the expression of one commodity (relative) in terms of another (equivalent). ("The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money-form"). And that can root monetary analysis in social analysis. It is perhaps too much to say that it frees us from the follies of the neo-classicals, but one can dream.

(167): space, here, to speak about Fields and the way in which these relations of production are ritualized to appear natural. in that sense there is also a distant connection to evangelical leninism--implicit in marx's exposition is the notion that a "scientific discovery" is necessary to unravel the fetishism that traps commodity producers. (but i think that "class consciousness", as a concept, is insufficient to discuss the "unveiling" being done here--of course, there is the basic notion that the bourgeois notion of equal exchange between worker and capitalist masks the deeper inequalities. but is this class consciousness? does every worker not live that reality? i'd like the leninists to make a list of what exactly one should teach a worker to make him/her "class conscious"? and how does one tell when it's been achieved?).

(173): more specific working out of historical materialism--nature of religion and relationship to commodity production, asiatic mode of production, etc. here, also, suggesting that the veil is only finally removed under socialist production, not once "it becomes production by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious and planned control."

notes on capital
chapters 26-33: primitive accumulation

(873-874): worth flagging this page, as it outlines the contrast between Marxist and liberal positions on force/conflict within capitalist production.

(874-875): "so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production."

(875): Marx making explicit the normative consequences of the transition toward the "double freedom" of the proletariat: at once free from serfdom and the "fetters of the guilds" ["and it is this aspect of the movement which alone exists for our bourgeois historians"], and at the same time "robbed of all of their own means of production." Quite clearly, here, we are speaking of the dialectics and contradictions of historical progress.

(876): The last sentence contains all that is regrettable about Marx's "universalizing" of the British experience--by making Britain the "classic form" of expropriation of rural areas, he, quite unwittingly and against his more explicit instructions, inspired failed attempts to read quite different histories through this classic, universal lens.

(877): Feudalism finished by the fourteenth century--the vast majority of the population as "small peasants."

(878): FN #3, fascinating. reflections on Japan and liberal attitudes toward the Middle Ages, possibly hinting at a contempt for Whiggish interpretations of history's march that ought to dampen the spirits of crude Marxist modernizers.

(879): here Marx, in the manner of this entire book, leaves the question of the state-society interface open to history, without compromising the thrust of his class analysis.

(880): implicit in this is an appraisal of legislation's utility in the face of history's march. and, to be honest, marx is not very generous, especially if we're speaking of big sweeps. what this implies for agency, i think, is less clear, since these are cosmetic laws authored and implemented largely by kings at the behest of tradition. (see also 885). at the same time, it is important to stress that the identity between legislation and ruling class interests is not trivially true, in that--as one sees with the reports on proletariat health after the corn laws--a class can be economically ascendant but politically (and temporarily) relatively impotent. yet of course these are exceptions that can be assimilated into the rule.

(884): the theft of state assets at "ridiculous" prices--where have we heard that before?

(886): "the identity between the wealth of the nation and the poverty of the people" -- a not-so-indirect rejoinder to liberal triumphalism.

(887-888): "'Upon the whole, the circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse.'" it should be clear, then, that we are not speaking of the Marx of the modernizers' imagination. or, at least, he does not share their totalizing fixation with the future, even if they would agree on policy forward. there is room, in other words, for a recognition of place.

(888): again, the non-identity between the "nation" and the "people" -- the bourgeois becomes the torch bearer for the "nation", a move which allows him to speak in the name of the people he dispossesses.

(889): dating enclosures: late 1400s to late 1700s

(892): hinting at the perpetual nature of primitive accumulation, much like harvey's position

(893): an interesting side-note to Marx on nature: here, in this portrayal of expropriation, the small farmer simply forms another part of the natural backdrop. he is dead to the bourgeois' history, precisely he--like all else that is "natural," precedes it. an alternative, very literal embedding of the "social" in the "natural."

(896): important passage, for two reasons: (a) prefigures the problems of the third world, in that the peasantry is being thrown onto a market that cannot properly absorb it (b) prefigures Foucault, in that the peasantry has to be disciplined into accepting an entirely new routine and set of values (cf. the listed punishments for vagabondage)--has to be "modernized." Lumpen activity is theorized in this context, and has to be done so in the contemporary Third World, as well (gangsterism, terrorism, etc.)

(899): "Even at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, the Ordinance of 13 July 1977 provided that every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, should be sent to the galleys."

(899-900): here Marx clearly seems to overstate his case, making normal a state of affairs that is highly idealized. against this passage, it is important to re-assert Harvey's reminder that primitive accumulation and the State are always important tools for the ruling class--in that sense, Marx's account is far too kind; the notion that this violence is transitional and particular to a specific epoch needs refutation.

(902): the first minimum wage, where before there were only maximum wages being proposed.

(903): the sordid history of bourgeois positions on trade unions, including the French Revolution's banning of them in 1791! liberty means, as it always has for the bourgeois, the liberty of a particular class. the timelessness of the worker's oppression, then, is here made clear.

(910): Marx's suggestion here, that observers are too ready to see the large-scale capitalist without also appreciating his dependence on a plethora of networks of smaller-scale production, resembles Arrighi's critique of the Euro-centrism of theories of the Big Corporation. We do have to ask what this means for theories of centralization/concentration--and it is not sufficient to say that it "opens them up to history", even if that is true and important.

(910-911): a further important point--expropriation is not simply important to the reconfiguration of structures of production, but it also is critical to reconfiguring consumption. it is only once the workers are divested from the right to produce their own means of subsistence that they become dependent on a market. (to this one can append Marx's Foucaultian moments--they have to be "taught" how to consume).

(915): "the author should have reminded himself that revolutions are not made with laws."

(916): Marx on violence, implicitly: "Force is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."

(916-917): Marx on the colonies, hardly an apologist for empire.

(918): Marx here makes a critical chronological intervention, in stressing that colonialism (as commercial supremacy) is coeval with manufacture, and that it helps mature industry. In other words, colonialism was critical for industrial predominance. By the late 19th century, this has changed--one can only sustain commercial supremacy if industrial forces are already sufficiently matured. This is important in better understanding the changing nature of colonialism, itself.

(920): Arrighi's narrative is here being prefigured, as Marx recounts the shifting centers of the international credit system. But, I think, there is a clear need to make it more systematic than what is presented here, as Arrighi does.

(920): Capital as "the capitalized blood of children"--unforgiving, and absolutely correct.

(921-922): These passages are key to any comprehensive Marxist theory of the state. Especially if we are going to argue that primitive accumulation is a continuous feature of life in modern capitalism, then the State--as provider of "original" capital--has a continuous, protective role to play (in other words, the bailouts can be represented as a kind of primitive accumulation).

(923): Marx's re-telling of the historical crimes of capitalism makes for important reading. Why do liberals never have to "own up" to these crimes when endorsing this system of production, the way that commies in the case of their own beliefs? There is something to be said here about Walter Benjamin and the stealthy cloaking of past crimes in the narrative of present progress.

(924): "Liverpool grew fat on the basis of the slave trade"

(926): "...capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt"

(928): Though my own obsession with the normative implications of Marx's dialectics is important, it is also moot. Because Marx is, of course, not suggesting that we stop (or try to stop) history at any given stage of its advance. It is not a case of deliberating on the principles we find superior, and working to embody them in a world of our making. Rather, history advances quite in spite of our best efforts. We can observe dialectics, amidst all this (and the implications of that attentiveness for the bourgeois historians are important), but we cannot intervene.

(929): Why the proletariat? "...with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production." Might a close-reading of this passage be in order, especially concentrating on those three words, "trained, united, organized."

(929): This is important (and was argued on preceding pages, as well): when Capital mobilizes to argue that it defends the cause of private property, it falls to us to remind the ideologues that this is one kind of private property--or, rather, the private property of one class, in particular. what's more, in the process of primitive accumulation, this system has little problem in obliterating the private property of millions of small producers and peasants. (see also 931)

(932): speaking of the colonial imperative to transform structures of production in the colony, Marx invokes the schematics of uneven development: "In the interest of the so-called wealth of the nation, he seeks for artificial means to ensure the poverty of the people."

(932): absolutely foundational to this entire process is this point that Capital is not simply a wad of cash ready to be deployed, but a wad of cash ready to be deployed in a particular social relation: "property in money, means of subsistence, machines and other means of production does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if the essential complement to these things is missing the wage-laborer, the other man, who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will... capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons which is mediated through things.

(938-939): excellent passages against which to develop a history of emigration--again, as always, this speaks of a Marx for whom theory is open to history, even if the framework's contours are established, as well.

notes on capital
chapter 25: the general law of capitalist accumulation

(763-764): a passage critically important to the question of marx's position on absolute immiseration. ceteris paribus, marx is suggesting that periods of buyoant capitalist growth will lead to increased wages, precisely because growth in capitalist demand for labor-power will outstrip the natural growth of its supply. KEY, again, to note that this explains the narrative of the apologists, without becoming it. for first, this eventuality is highly contingent, and can be combated by variegated tactics on the part of capital (in particular, agitating for artificial growth in labor supply through immigration). secondly, it is periodic--in other words, prone to the contradictions of capitalism, more generally. (note, it may make less sense to separate these two points theoretically, than it does in terms of the presentation. that question, perhaps, depends on how one wants to understand the relation of systemic ebbs and flows to class agency). perhaps most importantly, marx is also calling attention to the contradictions immanent in expansive capitalism--namely, that it cements more widely labor's "enslavement to capital... accumulation of capital is therefore multiplication of the proletariat" as oppressed soul.

(766): in passing, it needs to be made explicit that this discussion for the need of an ever-larger permanent "underclass" is a direct response to malthus' "principle of population." (see FN 6)

(769): on the golden chain in the golden age: "a rise in the price of labor, as a consequence of the accumulation of capital, only means in fact that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-laborer has already forged for himself [sic] is loosened somewhat."

(769): in essence, marx is demanding that we orient our analysis around "the absolute law" of capitalist production: the production of surplus-value. in this sense, the imperfections of the apologists' narrative can themselves be systematized and made coherent. the abiding question, of course, is how we retain this analysis in the face of the alleged success of Capital in the golden age. in other words, that question, again, of whether capitalism has proved more resilient than marx imagined. though i think 1968 often puts paid to those questions, no?

(770): constructing the rate of accumulation as always the independent variable--in this sense, while exploding malthus' principle, marx is, more generally, endeavoring to demonstrate the contingency of all dynamics putatively "natural."

(771): lambasting the currency school, but revealing, in the process, the contingency of his own analysis. for it is certain that monetary phenomenon have become more central to the dynamics of 21st century capitalism--how do we integrate that fact into his argument here? and still, i am tempted to suggest that his scorn here can show the way toward more holistic analyses of the monetary world.

(771-772): the critical passage: roughly, marx is suggesting that the process of capital accumulation, and the process of the growth of the working-class, cannot be theorized independently. rather, the latter follows the ebbs and flows of the former. in the sense that, if capital accumulation proceeds swimmingly, capital requires (by demanding) more laborers at factories (more hands needed to utilize additional capacity, to valorize the additional capital). if, however, profits are low and accumulation is stop-start or stagnant, capitalism corrects itself--a comparatively smaller amount of "paid" labor is needed as a consequence of the slow-down, and wages fall (because labor supply now exceeds demand). [reminder: this is all a "special case", in that marx has not introduced the notion of the decline in the composition of capital]

(772): "just as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand."

(773): this commitment to complicate the relationship between the extent of the means of production and the increasing productivity of labor--this assertion that the decreasing organic composition of capital is both the cause of as well as the consequence of the increasing productivity of labor--affirms harvey's attempts to foreground marx' refusal to theorize these dynamics in strictly causal terms. the dynamism of a dialectical framework, if invigorated by history and science, refutes the tired positivism of the liberals.

(776): the endlessness, the limitlessness: "every accumulation becomes the means of new accumulation."

(776-777): here, an exposition of the contingent relationship between the proccesses of accumulation and concentration. concentration, marx is arguing, is not a necessary result of the process of accumulation; rather, it can be interrupted and repelled by the intervention of alternative dynamics. though he admits the tendency to concentration (in the sense that these increases in individual capitals are the very bases of the corresponding capitalist enterprises), they meet with limits. here he names two: (1) "the degree of increase of [presumambly others'] social wealth," which i interpret to refer to the competition of other capitalists as well as, perhaps, the increasing demands made by a progressively better-fed, clamoring under-class. and (2) "the part of the social capital domiciled in each particular sphere of production"--in other words, the impact of laws of inheritance and intra-familial competition on individual capitals. none of this, it must be said, contradicts the general readiness to associate accumulation with concentration (see the succeeding paragraph), but, again, it opens up the general theoretical framework to challenges by specific histories (and, in a sense, immunizes it from the entrepreneurial sorts who, while seizing on these various opportunities (or 'moments), inveigh against the "awful universalisms" of marx' analysis). NB: it would be important, i think, to assess all this with more recent theories of monopoly capitalism in mind.

(777): in fact, here marx seems to suggest an alternative term, centralization, in order to refer to the "transformation of many small into few large capitals." while i have always understood this as concentration, this passage defines concentration, instead, as something akin to the consolidation of capitalist relations--i.e., the concentration of the means of production, which begin as scattered in a medley of capitalist and pre-capitalist relations of production (the intermediate forms, let's say), in the hands of individual capitalists. centralization refers to "the next stage", in a very definite sense, where "capital grows to a huge mass in a single hand in one place, because it has been lost by many in another place." needless to say, this triplet of accumulation, concentration, and centralization is critical (but also confusing, given the tendency to use the second to signify the third). (see 779, where engels clarifies the definitions: centralization as concentration in fewer hands, concentration as "another name for reproduction on an extended scale")

(777): barriers to entry, economies of scale--it's all here.

(778-779): further discussion of the triplet. important to complicate my primitive observations above.

(780): centralization as pooling of capitals, not simply cannibalization: "the world would still be without railways if it had had to wait until accumulation had got a few individual capitals far enough to be adequate for the construction of a railway"

(781-782): the dynamics underlying the creation of a "relatively redundant working population"--have to better understand what is necessary and what is contingent in this process. but it is all here, of course.

(782-783): marx here highlights how the pejorative consequences of capitalism's dynamism--the "violent fluctuations"--conspire to produce, "temporarily", a surplus population. importantly, though each of these moments is individually fleeting, their systemic origins means that the assemblage of redundancies they represent is emphatically permanent. it is in the failure to substantively theorize the latter fact, i think, that lies the rub.

(783): the tragedy of simple reproduction: "the working population therefore produces both the accumulation of capital and the means by which it is itself made relatively superfluous; and it does this to an extent which is always increasing"

(784): repudiating, again, malthusian attempts to pinpoint a 'natural' law of population increase. this is, of course, monumentally obvious--one cannot understand the relationship of man to nature (or, rather, humans to their reproduction) without history. but critical to re-assert against the population planners.

(784): the latent question, i suppose, remains: how does one understand the fact of this necessity of an industrial reserve army while also appreciating the fervent honesty of these ideologues fixated on population control? as always, i suspect this is not really a question for the economists, but rather a topic to be tackled by the theorists of conscoiusness. why do well-meaning people hold--really hold--patently mistaken beliefs?

(785-786): here marx mentions the relationship between the formation of this reserve army and the industrial cycle, but not in much detail. there is some confusion, i think, over what he identifies as the independent variable--though perhaps we're moving past causal-talk, in general? (there is much to close-read here, i think--especially in conjunction with volume III)

(786): clearly, these pages lay the groundwork for theorizing emigration in capitalism: while a source of bolstering this reserve army, of course, it interacts in complicated ways with the sanctitiy of identities which sustain capitalist hegemony by feeding forms of false-consciousness. indeed, in the latter dynamic, contradictory forces are at play: on the one hand, the immigration of non-nationals threatens the stability of that national identity (through diffusion, assimilation, cross-national solidarity)--this may be a boon for workers, in a long-term sense, but in the short-term it surely appears as any number of individual injustices ("they're stealing our jobs!"). in this way, it helps divide and rule. on the other hand, the restriction of immigration, marx is pointing out, threatens the very fabric of capitalist production--the existence of a reserve army is foundational to the healthy functioning of the system. this bewildering skein of competing considerations (along with whatever i have ommitted), of course, implies a masterful agency, the likes of which it would impossible to track, i suspect (this, in a sense, is the abiding impression of this section--there is an overriding logic to the system's operation which is at once rational and efficient yet also decidedly destructive and violent (NB: even the former is not at all the neoclassical narrative)).

(788): under capitalism's watch, the 'natural' limits to population growth are malleable, moulded to its aims.

(789-790): overwork and enforced idleness as twin symptoms of the same systemic patterns.

(791-792): an explicit critique of bourgeois analysis, arguing that the ideologues extrapolate from a local rise in wages to claim the infallibility of capitalist production, whereas the pattern really needs to be theorized and understood in the context of its place in the overall assemblage (i.e., its definitively local origins and ramifications--which sphere of production, etc.). in other words, "local oscillations" are mistaken for universal, timeless trends.

(793-794): there are here some interesting (though fragmentary) observations on the process of working-class 'awakening'--not chronologically, exactly, but more systemically. marx speaks also of the role that the iron, objective laws of capital play in stifling this tendency to subjective organization. and where these alliances can't be stifled objectively (and this industrial reserve army formed naturally), he alludes, Capital calls summons the Iron Fist ("forcible means"). (see also 808)

(796): Marx deploys these concepts in order to theorize the migration of masses from rural to urban areas, as "capitalist agriculture takes possession of agriculture." Needless to say, this is immensely relevant to the present plight of the Third World--in fact, the whole dialectics of technology (as presented in this and earlier chapters) presage the approach most suited to tackling the corporatization of rural areas today. We simply must be directly concerned with labor absorption.

(797): "along with the surplus population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth"--it is important to note here that Marx's theory of modern poverty (pauperism under capitalism) is inextricably linked to this fact of the necessity of a relative surplus population. Can our classless neoclassicals even compete?!

(798): a summary of "the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation"

(798): underlying all this is the uneasy question of what an "actually-existing" socialist society might do with the question of population.

(799): an explicit normative appraisal of the situation of the worker in capitalist society: "it follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse." the objections to this claim seem obvious. yet, in marx's defense, one has to (a) situate this in the context of the importance of dialectics to his general argument, and (b) clarify that he is here employing a much more holistic normative measures than GDP/capita allows. Yet perhaps it is important to complicate his observation, not simply empirically but also theoretically?

(799, FN 23): this prefigures the implications of development-of-underdevelopment analyses, insofar as Marx is here emphasizing the 'modernity' of misery and poverty--it is not that these are symptoms of backwardness waiting to be swept away, but rather that they are emphatically 'modern' phenomenon which are indelible features of a modern capitalist economy.

(800): some words from an apologist, who celebrates the parasitism of his ilk: "'it seems to be a law of Nature that the poor should be to a certain degree improvident... that there may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid, and the most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved from drudgery... but are left at liberty without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited to their various dispositions" (Rev. J. Townsend, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws. By a Well-Wisher of Mankind).

(812): prefiguring, in fragmentary form, the relationship between capital accumulation and space--between development and slum-dwelling. the "developing" city has no place for its poor. (in the pages that follow, he explores this in depth--needless to say, on the "planet of slums," the underlying theoretical framework and consequent empirical investigation are both immensely relevant.)

(815): this continues, as Marx substantiates again the claim that the liberal doctrine of equal rights masks the deep asymmetries at the heart of capitalist society: while the rich displaced by railways and industry receive comfort and compensation, the poor working-classes are indicted for crowding in alternate locations as a result!

(822): lest anyone need be reminded, Marx is under no illusions that the industrial working-class is uniform; here he speaks explicitly of an "aristocracy" of the working-class. though this isn't exactly the michael albert objection, this observation suffices, i think, to show that albert battles a straw-man.

(827): whole working families live worse than sailors, soldiers, and even prisoners (this is Belgium, where the State has not yet interfered with the freedom of Capital).

(833): important section for exploring Marx and the agrarian question--other than the fact that he explicitly complicates the narrative of linear progress (not just by highlighting its non-linearity but also by demonstrating its space-less-ness), he here very directly excoriates the effects of 'labor-saving' technologies on the agricultural populations of 18th and 19th century England. (see particularly 848-849, where all this is tied directly to the concept of the relative surplus population--"there are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary needs of cultivation, and too few for exceptional and temporary requirements")

(840): reminder that the study of migration is not as simple as the study of the exodus from country to city, but also must theorize the changes occuring within rural areas (be it intra-rural migration or reconfiguration of rural areas)--again, this only re-emphasizes, against the lie of the modernists, the fact that everything is "modern" (backwardness, rurality, etc.).

(861-862): all this is applied specifically to Ireland and the mass emigrations of the mid-19th century--Marx is tracking the growth of the relative surplus population, and the consequences of this process for the average Irish laborer (much of this is the story of the transition, in Ireland, from arable to pasture land--to a less labor-intensive method of production. as Marx puts it, "the revolution in agriculture has kept pace with emigration").

(866): the comparative argument here (between the distinct roles of the surplus agricultural populations in industrial England and agricultural Ireland) begets a further comparison, for the contemporary third world. in Ireland, Marx argues, though the relative surplus population accumulates in the towns, it is constantly needed in the fields (at harvest time or boom time). crudely put, the story of the contemporary third world is not too distinct, with one exception--the agricultural revolution having proceeded farther (the corporatization of farming, etc.) in this day and age, we see instead a burgeoning informal sector (and mass under and un-employment). the similarities are striking, of course: as in 19th century ireland, the relative surplus population in towns across the third world plays a dual role, depresing urban wages while also filling shortages at harvest time (having said that, one needs to think about where, specifically, this labor comes from at harvest time--this can further complicate the schema, requiring a distinct appraisal of emigration to larger and smaller cities). in sum, i suppose, one again needs--as Marx has demonstrated throughout this chapter--a concrete assessment of hard data pertaining to a particular place and time.

notes on capital
part five: the production of absolute and relative surplus-value
chapter 16: absolute and relative surplus-value
chapter 17: changes of magnitude in the price of labor-power and in surplus-value
chapter 18: different formulae for the rate of surplus-value
part six: wages
chapter 19: the transformation of the value (and respectively the price) of labor-power into wages
chapter 20: time-wages
chapter 21: piece-wages
chapter 22: national differences in wages
part seven: the process of accumulation of capital
chapter 23: simple reproduction
chapter 24: the transformation of surplus-value into capital

(643): marx is tracking the "hostile antagonism" between mental and manual labor, which he suggests arises as the individual labor becomes replaced by the "collective"--in other words, the many become appendages, the few remain the brains. the question, of course, is simple (quite aside from raymond williams' attempts to complicate the binaries): how does a socialist society manage the collective divison of labor, such that the sovereignty of each individual's mental expression becomes a reality once more?

(647): here he clarifies that the productive base of human society has little to do with "nature," at least in the ahistorical sense (e.g., geoffery sachs, jared diamond). rather, it is again a question of interrogating (from the theses) "sensuous, real-practical life" as it unfolds through history; "the existing productivity of labour...is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries." again, a welcome rebuke to non-radical social science, which sees the barriers of nature where marxists recognize, instead, the relativity (and contingency) of limits. (and then, on 648, he immediately contradicts this with apparent nonsense on 'natural' impediments to advance--on england and india, of course; see though, FN 7 on 666, where marx addresses malthus and attempts to explain 'over-population' by recourse to the eternal laws of nature).

(651): i suppose the above can be reconciled, dialectically, through committing to incorporate 'natural' explanations into the dynamics of marxist explanations. in that sense, the putative invariance of 'nature' is impermissible, forcing a return to history of nature as a source of explanation. marx is doing this here, as he discusses the role of social compulsion in accounting for the division of working lives into necessary and surplus labor (i.e., he's clarifying that this disjuncture has its roots not in nature).

(659): "class struggle" over the spoils of productivity

(659): increasing productivity, marx seems to be suggesting, facilitates greater concentrations of wealth--as the value of labor-power falls, more time can be devoted to the production of surplus-value, all of which makes its way into the hands of capitalists. (imagine their glee at the last 30 years: rising productivity, static wages, cheap imports from china, and easy credit for workers!). there is room, in his analysis, for the place of class struggle in stemming this advance (and it's necessary, given observed patterns in the golden age. yet the fact of this "abyss" is indisputable to observers of the developed economies in the last thirty years.

(664): this attentiveness to time is critical, as it foregrounds an aspect of class conflict long since under-emphasized in analysis of american capitalism: namely, that, as workers are compelled to work longer and longer hours (with less vacation time, more intense work-days), the cost of reproducing them increases (i.e., the value of their labor-power goes up). in this sense, the flattening of the real wage is only part of the story of the assault on living standards in the US. (see also 683)

(667): here, in prefiguring what stands to follow the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, marx notes that not even socialism will limit the working day to necessary labor. the reasoning, i suggest, contains the seeds of the perversion that separates socialism, as aspiration, from socialism as it actually existed. on the one hand, he proceeds from the workers' aspirations to speak of an improvement in his conditions of life--in other words, an extension of what is considered necesary labor. and, on the other hand (and this is, of course, not any less desirable, but nonetheless telling), he speaks of the socialization of appropriation; in other words, surplus labor will exist insofar as some labor will be "necessary for the formation of a social fund." here, of course, we might remember the indignities of bureaucrats gleefully bleeding labor in the name of bold slogans of workers' liberation. again, none of this is intrinsic to the idea of taxation and government; it is simply to make, with hindsight, a point about the need to guard against co-option.

(667): more prefiguring, and no less interesting. capitalism, if defined by the ability of one social stratum to reproduce itself on the basis of another's labor, will only be eclipsed when labor--as in work itself--is universalized. if we accept this, we must confront also the fact of our own parasitism. the life of the university, as it exists under capitalism, could not be a better example of how one social stratum reserves, for itself, all possibilities for "free intellectual and social activity," while another squanders itself to reproduce these kings and queens. the anatomy of the university, in other words, is indistinguishable from the anatomy of the capitalist society which creates and sustains it. this is why, i suggest, battles over the living-wage (and, more ambitiously, visions of re-structuring the university, as workplace) have symbolic importance. until socialism demands that professors clean up their own shit (or, even better, others' shit), and janitors lead classes, we need to remember that we remain far from the world that we hold in our hearts.

(680): capitalism obscuring its mechanism of exploitation in the alleged "equality" of the wage-form; a perversion feudalism could not accomplish, as there surplus labor was "demarcated very clearly both in space and time." this suppression of the awareness of exploitation by folding both the spatial and temporal dimensions of surplus-value production into the factory (and into necessary labor)--the site where has interesting implications, again, for questions of the utility of bourgeois legality (and wars over it).

(680): this anger over bourgeois mystification via the notion of the value of labor (as against value of labor-power) is understandable; think of the behavior of the neoclassicals in living-wage debates, which seeks to naturalize (and de-historicize) a "fair" level of remuneration for labor--an endeavor which obfuscates the fundamental fact of surplus-value creation as a necessary feature of capitalist production. (there is, still, an uneasy question about how this plays out in the service sector--but i need to keep remembering that surplus-value has naught to do with the content of the labor process under consideration, but rather with the anatomy of the production process that mediates it).

(682): there is a latent question about what exactly "science" means for marx, especially as it corresponds to what it has meant for marxists. might we suggest that a critical genealogy of the word could help recover the marx of dynamism and dialectics, as against the vulgarization of his work by the positivists?

(703): this methodical investigation of differences in wages (in addition to the careful attempt to track the development of the "value of labor" in its various wage-forms) gives the lies to attempt to read, from the communist manifesto, a marxist position on "absolute immiseration." it is quite clear that marx was fully aware that this entire question is highly complicated, contingent, and impossible to resolve outside of history.

(709): in this introduction to the process of capital accumulation, two points stand out. first, marx seems to define the act of accumulation as something relentlessly productive--that is, as soon as a capitalist opts to take the fruits of accumulation outside of the cycle of capital circulation, he/she no longer "accumulates." in this sense, accumulation seems tied to the commitment to productively re-invest surplus. second, the fragmentation of the fruits of accumulation (into profit, interest, rent, etc.)--all this offers, perhaps, a good way to theorize the parasitic origins of financial capital. of course, there is more to the story, in the sense that finance, especially when disciplined, opens the circulation of capital, rather than just emerging as a consequence (in that sense, the temporality is reversed, perhaps). even still, at the most fundamental level, the fact of dependence on the real economy can hardly be disputed--ultimately, the accumulation of capital requires the production process.

(712): marx here, in his "accounting," lays the foundation for worker-control, insofar as it clarifies the contradiction immanent in the asymmetries of capitalist production--the worker is at once free from the capitalist (in that he is responsible for his own reproduction), and at once subordinate (in the morphologies of the factory floor). this surely qualifies as one of these "legendary" contradictions, whose resolution presents itself in the dreams of laborers everywhere: collective ownership of the means of production.

(713): here, i think, there's room to explore (or, rather, to clarify) marx's admittedly complicated thoughts on the relationship between material relationships and the ideal forms that interpret the former. the argument is simple: in arguing that the "transaction is veiled by the commodity-form of the product and the money-form of the commmodity," he's quite clearly claiming that certain concepts serve to legitimize actually-existing social relations (in this case, the commodity-form, which prioritizes the process of selling over and above production, and the money-form, which empowers those seeking to transform M into C into M', the capitalist, at the expense of those who earn money only in order to consume). in sum, the heavenly, bourgeois mist that coheres around dirty earthy realities obfuscates the nature of capitalist exploitation. to extend his argument, we might add that his earlier stress on the incessant character of this process is critical, as it speaks to what barbara fields highlights, namely the importance of living and re-living these facts-of-life to the formation of ideal apparatuses that rationalize them. taken even further, against the dogmatists, i think we can recover an almost gramscian notion of hegemony in this presentation of "legitimation"--it is the fact that the laborer receives a wage, week-in, week-out (with which he purchases a "basket of goods"), that cements, ideally, his subjugation to capital, which appears here as his provider. (the abiding question, still, is whether emancipation from this subjugation is primarily ideal--as in, does the worker learn "marxist economic theory" in order to be free--or, primarily material--as in, it requires the overthrow of said material relationships). as with most questions, i think the anticipated answer is likely too simplistic. fields' argument lends itself to a more pessimistic reading (as in one needs to reject the source at which these ideas are reproduced), whereas the dogmatists and parties, of course, invest their faith in the notion of emancipation through "scientific education." we need not review the absurdities of the latter, though we might want to interrogate the limitations of the latter (particularly, in the diagnosis of "hegemony"--is anything so clean, after all? at the very least, we need to re-introduce fanon's notion of hegemony-never-consolidated)

(716): a mutual dependence between capitalist and wage-laborer (insofar as the worker constantly produces "objective wealth," in the form of capital; and insofar as the capitalist "just as constantly produces labour-power...produces the worker as a wage-laborer") obscures the sovereignty of labor (insofar as labor-power is the incessant (though not necessarily original) source of capital's valorization), even while the actual dynamics are inverted in order to crown the capitalist (insofar as the capitalist buys labor-power, and thus reserves the right to dispose of it as he will).

(718): this claim, that the individual consumption of the worker forms an indispensable part of the process of production, is critical, for at least two reasons: (1) it further highlights the myriad ways in which, even in those spheres which he/she might be considered "free" and "autonomous," capital seeps into the non-working life of the worker. in the fact that this "maintenance and reproduction of the working-class remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital," we again see the dialectics of mutual dependence and subjugation. (2) it is within this capillary form of domination, i think, that one must situate analysis of the more overt forms of capital's intrusions (advertising, the company store, credit cards, etc.).

(718-719): implicit in marx's unveiling of the notions of "productive" and "unproductive" consumption is the same claim about the "irrational character of capitalist rationality"--namely, the notion that productivity, efficiency, output, etc., all are measured in relation to the process of valorization. once we break with these limited metrics, however, the massive irrationalities become clearer. to put it more succinctly, the rhetoric of rationality is tied to class. none of this is very distinct from what weber, foucault, or the frankfurt schoool wanted to emphasize--the notion that a prodigiously productive, efficient apparatus was deployed to deplorable, irrational ends.

(720-721): the british cotton industry, calling for a bailout in the aftermath of the blockade of the american south--some things never change! (here, more importantly, marx is relating capital's awareness of its (and society's) dependence on labor.

(722): the desire to restrict freedom of movement of labor reveals, again, the sinister asymmetry at the heart of the dual freedom of the wage-laborer: 'free' to dispose of himself as he will (i.e., not work and starve), but simultaneously 'free' to be disposed of as the capitalist would like. here, as always, "between equal rights, force [is deciding]."

(725-726): i take this opportunity to stress what is argued throughout these sections on accumulation, namely that capital accumulation proceeds only insofar as capital is incessantly deployed and re-deployed--insofar as the cycle of capital's circulation is unbroken. in that sense, latin american elites buying second homes in the US represent the failure of that indigenous bourgeoisie to fulfill its historical vocation. in other words, the unproductive consumption of the capitalist class, though significant, in a historical sense, when assessing third world development, is not marx's concern. again, he takes bourgeois intellectual's at their word when critiquing their "creation." (to review: failed capital accumulation, in marx's terms, is described as "simple reproduction"). (see also 738-739).

(727): in tracing how simple reproduction becomes "a spiral," marx makes room for, within his analysis, the fact of the rising standard of living of the working-class. as he has established, capitalist's are invariably critically dependent on the existence of a laboring population--indeed, the "autonomous" reproduction of wage-labor is part of the cycle of capital's circulation. in this sense, quite apart from that theory of crisis which identifies the contradiction latent in capital's dual relationship to labor (as its workers, but also as its consumers), marx is suggesting that capital cannot avoid the imperative to provide an increasingly larger absolute social product to workers in order that they may reproduce themselves in ever greater numbers. note, he has dwelt carefully on the imperfections, and further contradictions in this process--how this is unsteady, unwilling, and often untrue. and that holistic analysis is really the lesson of this book.

(729-730): an excellent passage, requiring little explication: bourgeois legality mystifies the content of the capitalist's appropriation by presenting in the form of the equal exchange. in other words, the legal framework that regulates exchange enshrines a principle utterly hostile to the equality it purports--namely, the parasitism of capital and the subjugation of labor that ensues. (an interesting additional issue, which is evident from marx's presentation, is the fleeting legality of this relationship. rather than understanding bourgeois legality as incomplete, ideally, in other words, he seems to be presenting it as partial because it is temporary. when we confine ourselves to the act of exchange (the interaction between capital as buyer and wage-laborer as seller), all is well. it is when we move beyond this that we must also move beyond the mist of bourgeois social science).

(731): something also needs to be said about the curious character of labour-power as commodity. as marx notes, while the wage-laborer alienates it in his contract with the capitalist, this alienation is temporary (after the act of exchange, he's free(/condemned) to do this again). in a sense, the entire tragedy of the proletarian resides in his inability to detach himself from what he sells--he must follow his commodity to work, as that commodity is his body, his-self. with this in mind, one can even begin to argue that drugs, religion, whatever else, represent an alienation in response to this fundamental alienation--as he is alienated in following his body to work (ah, the dualists return!), he responds by leaving the factory in order to find god, football, or everything in between. "apathy," then, is only a feature of this underlying injustice.

(733): a need to think this through--"to the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own immanent laws, undergoes a further development into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production must undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become laws of capitalist appropriation."

(740-741): here, marx is telling a story about the capitalist class becoming progressively less "capitalist" (as vocation), as capitalism advances, insofar as they "accumulate" less and "splurge" more. this chronology of increasnig 'lax-ness', i think, seems resoundingly true--though what is needed to make the narrative more robust is specifics rooted in history (note, marx also complicates this significantly--speaking, for example, of the occasional necessity of capital representing itself through luxury). for example, in the US the recent story is well-known, hinging on the neoliberal revolution (de-industrialization, financialization, and macro- and micro-economic indebtedness).

(742): in this brief allusion to the notion that the capitalist, too, is merely a 'machine' means to the end of valorization, there's room to assert, with marcuse and the others, the more total undesirability of modern industrial society. indeed, it is precisely this process of means incessantly and permanently becoming ends-in-themselves that those thinkers foreground as the madness of modernity. of course, no one needs the zerzanite reaction.

(747): "in the chapters on the production of surplus-value we constantly assumed that wages were at least equal to the value of labor-power. but the forcible reduction of the wage of labor beneath its value plays too important a role in the practical movement of affairs for us not to stay with this phenomenon for a moment."

(748): again, in this essay on the english worker of the 18th century lamenting the cheapness of french labor, we confront again the morphological timelessness of the capitalist economy.

(756): here, the fetishism of the commodity re-appears in the fetishism of capital: "all the powers of labor project themselves as powers of capital, just as the value-forms of the commodity do as forms of money." to review, the productive forces of labor--both as it preserves the value of dead labor, and also adds new value to the product--appear as the features of capital's ability to self-valorize. in the case of money, though i need to clarify the argument, money (as universal equivalent) expresses individual properties of specific commodities as general qualities of itself (appropriating, in a sense, their functions to itself).

(758-759, fn 51): marx on bentham, that "soberly pedantic and heavy-footed oracle..."--priceless!

notes on capital
chapter 15: machinery and large-scale industry
sections 6-10

(566): nominibus mollire licet mala -- "it is proper to lighten evils with words" (ovid)

(568-569): in this critique of the bourgeois economists, marx alludes to an understanding of machinery as emancipatory, providing that its implementation is not overseen by capitalism. this does, though, leave open many questions about how a socialist society implements machinery. is it gradual? if it's gradual how does it remain competitive? how is it not alienating? etc., etc.

(571): the advent of cotton-spinning "promote[d], as if in a hot house, the growing of cotton in the United States, and with it the African Slave Trade." an example, if one was needed, of the way in which capitalism intensified slavery, rather than simply succeeding it. (in 1790, 697,000 slaves in US; in 1861, four million).

(571-572): a bit about the demands of the wool industry and the consequent conversion of arable land into pasture for sheep, which is critical precisely because, as sayre argued, it demonstrates that little is 'natural' (as in, outside of history). or, better put, nature has to be understood historically; in this case, the relation of man to land (in this case, the de-population of rural areas) cannot be understood outside of technological advance and new systems of production. in other words, man, in england and ireland, did not meet natural limits, but limits imposed upon nature by specific histories of 'progress'.

(574): in essence, section 6 responds to those apologists who see in machinery the means by which more and more employment will be made available to laboreres (as, in short, machinery stimulates general economic growth). marx's response is unequivocal: by and large, this stimulation is negligible. there will be further growth, he admits, but this will be insignificant in relation to the general impact of machinery on labor, as well as itself being prey to the later impact of machinery (as in, if machine implementation in one branch of industry stimulates another, we can still expect it to be a matter of time before machinery pervades the latter). he ends, then, with an interesting summary of recent, contemporary growth of the servant class in industrial britain, which has relevance for third world nations today, of course. for if it truly is the case that machinery requires a "larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively," (can we think of the service sector in these terms?) then it is impossible to understand the plight of the current servant classes of the third world without recourse to 'labor-saving' technology. in other words, marx's attentiveness to this question of the relationship between technology and labor absorption should make us critically aware in the present: is it possible to imagine a way to limit technological advance so as to deal with the far more relatively numerous masses in the homes and kitchens of the indigenous bourgeoisie in the third world? how will this be accomplished, while still being competitive to the extent of being sustainable? are these the right questions?

(577): "finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact that everywhere, except in the metallurgical industries, young persons (under 18), women and children form by far the most preponderant element in the factory personnel"--this is the critical 'other side' of the story of the industrial revolution, and neglected, i think, in accounts of women's liberation that give explanatory power to WWII. what did this mean for women's liberation? specifically, why was it the case that this large-scale employment of women did not result, in england, in a consciousness of liberation in the way that it did in america during WW2? of course there's a lot of history that i have yet to learn about both... (namely, what is the story of the english women's movement and its relation to industrial capitalism? what was the role of women in the US industrial revolution (the mills in massachusetts, for example)?)

(578): once more, a martial metaphor to explain industrial competition.

(579): marx, again, was fully aware of the gutting of india's handicraft cotton production, and its conversion into a site for producing raw material (cotton, wool, hemp, jute, indigo).

(579-580): quite standard development of underdevelopment narrative; in other words, quite clearly a dialectical (not linear) narrative of how capitalism advances.

(582): here, marx draws a link between the global extension of capitalism and the frequency of crisis. in other words, there seems to be a link between the scope of the capitalist market--the space over which it has expanded--and the frequency (and clarity) of the crises that afflict it. this, no doubt, is properly theorized in harvey and others. but we can add that it is probably not so much the fact that space is a source of new contradictions (indeed, harvey suggests that expansion into as-yet virgin areas is often the 'fix'), but rather that it is a vehicle for the consolidation of market relations (which clarifies, in a real sense, the dynamics producing crisis).

(588, fn 67): something made clear throughout this chapter is that the fact that the decreasing rate of surplus value must be compensated by absolute increases in capitalist production (by increases in the mass of surplus value) gives capitalism its relentlessly expansive character. innovation must happen, but alongside expansion. both are, simultaneously, survival strategies for individual and system.

(588-589): marx comments here on the way in which specific technical innovations undo certain divisions of labor pioneered in the manufacturing/handicraft era. he uses the example of adam smith, and his example of ten men making sewing-needles. the general importance of this passage, i suggest, is that it raises again the question of how machinery imposes objective requirements on the organization of production, which are of a quite different nature from the divisions of labor that preceded them. in other words, it is wrong to see, as feldstein via smith implied, that the progressively more extensive division of labor is the driver of increased productivity--rather, machinery intervenes in a quite decisive way, disrupting what is a very alluring linear story to reveal contradictions (advances with retreats). (see also 590, where marx writes about how the 'new division of labor' requires exclusively 'cheap labor' (i.e., women and children), quite in contrast to the 'old division of labor' in the handicrafts and even manufacture).

(593): "they become rough, foulmouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that they are women"--i suppose this is excusable, given context and intent.

(596): again, an explicit critique of the linear liberal.

(597): here, in the employment of child labor, we remember the contingency of the definition of childhood. in other words, appraising the dialectical relationship of environment (i.e., the factory) to the underlying biology is crucial to understanding the mendacity of 'capitalist anthropology'. (see also 599, where sociobiology can make little sense of parents pushing their children into brutal forms of employment).

(601): marx's argument, derived from the calculus he establishes for deciding on the efficacy of machinery, is that, in any given industry, there comes a point when increasing productivity through cheating labor, employing women/children, etc., is no longer viable (largely because demand has become so extensive). instead, capitalists turn to the machine. one question, in response, is how does this match on to the argument that the machine itself facilitates the entrance of women/children (he later clarifies some complexity, in that young children are removed but "the new machine-minders are exclusively girls and young women"? but i think that is a historical question, which requires one only to look more carefully at the chronology of their entry, rather than a theoretical conundrum. secondly, there seems to be an underlying dynamic of capital accumulation involved; in other words, you need a certain amount of capital to be able to invest in whole-scale transformation of production; a amount of disposable capital that may not be available in immature industries.

(601): again, looking to the past to better understand the present: "the fearful increase in death from starvation during the last ten years in london runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing"

(604): an important passage on the unsteadiness governing the transition from pre-factory forms to the factory system. specifically, marx here is arguing that the uneven implementation of the factory system in various branches of industry, affects dramatically (in a way that makes more inhumane) the non-factory forms of production that are linked to this technical advance. in other words, much like capitalism seizes on pre-capitalist forms and transforms them, here the factory form of production exacerbates the madness of pre-factory forms. in this way, the ascent of the factory system is accompanied by "a totally changed and disorganized" series of non-factory forms of production, which themselves "overdo all the horrors of the factory system." there is a lingering question about how to judge this transition, as marx seems to be arguing that the transitional forms are "worst" (not unlike slavery under capitalism, i suppose).

(604-605): argument here is fairly straightforward, yet important for legislation to check the excesses of contemporary capitalisms in the third world. in essence, marx is suggesting that the factory acts hastened the mechanization of production, insofar as they prohibited manufacture/domestic industry from the quick fixes of "unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power." to compete, they had to raise productivity by the books. this has interesting consequences, when extrapolated to the case of child labor in the third world; insofar as it is true that more smaller factories/workplaces sustain these practices than larger ones (how true?), one can imagine proper legislation facilitating the concentration of capital in the hands of larger-scale industry (made explicit by marx in a passage on page 607). this dynamic, of course, has its own consequences. (anyway i think all this requires more empirical investigation, before it can be applied to explain today).

(607): a need to discipline the worker--to wean him from his "irregular habits"

(608): this is important, precisely because it prefigures what is done far too infrequently when studying "booms & busts"--namely, looking at crises from the eyes of labor, and assessing their consequences thusly.

(612): the earlier point about bourgeois legality being unable to regulate the internal order of a factory here resurfaces (and this quite aside from questions of autocracy at work). here marx offers an example of the impossibility of regulating the architecture of production: the factory acts could not re-organize the spatial structures of production, lest they "strike at the very roots of the capitalist mode of production," which is really it's freedom to purchase and consume labor-power in whatever way it pleases. put differently, the spatiality of this freedom here becomes important, insofar as it seems "impossible to impose [any] rule on capital" in this regard. in a sense, the contradiction immanent in the dual freedom of labor (the freedom to dispose of him/herself, but also the freeing of him/her from the means of production) here reappears as a contradiction in the legality of productive activity: the bourgeoisie claim the latter in the form of their property rights, yet thereby expose the fallacy of the former, insofar labor is revealed to be thoroughly subordinate to capital's will. "between equal rights, force decides."

(617): there's a dynamism to modern industry, marx is arguing, that is not present in all previous modes of production. whereas those were "essentially conservative," modern industry cannot survive without constantly "transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process." this is of course important to the chronological questions of early industrial britain (progressive de-skilling, for example), aside from being wholly true with respect to the madness of contemporary capitalism. again, dialectics, not linearity. BUT, critically, marx here, in one of those rare moments, hints at what socialist harnessing of large-scale industry would achieve. at the bottom, he writes of how capitalism channels the dynamism required by industry (the "fluidity of functions, the mobility of the worker") into a form that does away with "all fixity and security" for the worker. the challenge for socialism, then, is this: how to organize production in large-scale industry such that the mobility is emancipating, rather than exploitative (there is, of course, the ecological challenge, but that's quite separate). all this is made explicit on page 618, where marx writes directly (well, almost) of the "partially developed individual" being replaced by "the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions [required by large-scale industry] are different modes of activity he takes up in turn."

(619): more of the same attempt to prefigure socialist organization of production--and indeed, a making explicit of the dialectical approach: no necessary connection, in other words, between industry and alienation. in fact, it proves, on this account, a necessary condition for emancipation.

(620): quoting children's employment comission of 1866 (for the sociobiologists): "against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents."

(621): toward a "higher form of the family:" again, an excellent explication of a concrete issue in which we can both lament the loss of all that is "fixed and frozen" (as is critical) without fearing the future (as is necessary).

(621): "since here the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker."

(621): clarifying chronology: factory acts enable general transition to machine-system, simultaneously heightening (in a real sense) the misery of those branches of industry left unregulated (domestic industry, manufacture, handicrafts).

(625-626): of course, in noting the disjuncture between what's enshrined in the letter of the law and what applies, marx (or engels, in this case) registers the classic contradiction of battles over the integrity of laws. indeed, we need to look no further than the UN declaration of human rights.

(635): a key passage, especially as regards the question of the revolutionary potential of the informal working-class. because here marx is tracing the increasing revolutionary capacities of the industrial working-class to the obliteration of spatially isolated small-scale workshops (those "ancient and transitional forms"). as this concentration of workers replaces the prevailing "partially hidden dominion of capital" with an awareness of what exactly workers ought to hold against this world, it "generalizes the direct struggle." it should be clear, though, that none of these conditions exist in the contemporary third world in any significant capacity. in that sense, fanon's command to concentrate on the peasantry needs to be re-issued, today, in the form of a demand to understand and organize the informal sector (the lumpen sectors). what remains to be studied, of course, are the imperfections of this general narrative; are there any ways in which the modern conjuncture opens up as-yet-unforseen possibilities of revolt? or is it really true that davis' pessimism prevails? why not study this, for god's sake?

(637-638): marx's first systematic presentation of the industrialization of agricultural production is lacking, of course, but is interesting in ways that orthodox reproductions don't account for. for example, there is the emphasis on the spatial distribution of laborers as an explanation for the possibility of resistance--indeed, the way he traces the chronology of agglomeration, it might be argued that even the peasantry, if crowded appropriately, could be revolutionary. (yet, on second thought, there's much more to this issue than simply space--it is, of course, to marxism's credit that it has a more robust explanation for what makes the urban working-class revolutionary (i.e,. the utterly inhuman (and painfully clear) hierarchies of the factory floor, and the invariably collective character of the demands that follow)). yet, even still, there remains room for playing with this aspect of the passage. secondly, even more interestingly, marx here introduces the concept of the 'metabolic rift,' emphasized by bellamy-foster. he hints at its future resolution, but all that he writes otherwise clarifies his interest in ecology, and capitalism's unavoidable irrationality in this respect. all this, it scarcely needs to be said, is a critical rejoinder to soviet developmentalism.