M-TH: Capital and "Capital"

[Hugh Rodwell]

What else does Marx do in "Capital" besides offend Owzyerfather's
complacent notions of Common Sense?

Well, among other things he gives us the most adequate analysis yet
provided of capitalism in the form of a NATURAL HISTORY OF THE COMMODITY.

The transformation of the product of human labour into the commodity is
presented very briefly in Capital itself. Why? Because it's dealt with so
thoroughly in previous, preparatory works such as the Grundrisse and A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In this presentation it
is clear that the commodity form is historically bound up with certain
modes of production, before which it didn't exist, and after which it will
cease to exist. The mode of production which takes the commodity from being
an enclave in an alien form of society (such as the slave-owning or
serf-owning modes of production) to becoming the dominant and all-pervading
factor in society is capitalism. This is also the mode of production which
develops the commodity form as far as it can go, taking the forces of
production to the point at which they begin to tear apart the relations of
production, such as individual private property. Marx sees the historical
sweep of this process as early as the Communist Manifesto in 1848. He is
able to explain it adequately 20 years later in Capital, having in the
meantime discovered the key in the distinction between the labour that
produces value which is what is paid for the commodity in the market and
the labour-power that produces the labour, this labour-power being what the
worker gets paid for in the market rather than being paid for the labour he
produces.

The scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production is also the
natural history of the one key commodity just mentioned -- labour-power. In
Capital Book I in the section on Primitive Capitalist Accumulation, and in
the Grundrisse in the section on Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production Marx
shows how the necessary historical precondition for the emergence of
capitalism as a mode of production was the creation of a work force
consisting of free labour-power (free of the social constraints and ties of
slavery and feudalism, free of the ties to the land of the peasant or to
his means of production of the craftsman). In other words the creation of A
WORK-FORCE BRINGING ITSELF TO MARKET AS A COMMODITY.

And what does Marx show us as the secret of the natural history of the
commodity? Its transformations in the process of production. Forget the
surface egalitarianism of the sphere of circulation -- these can be dealt
with later in Book II and in the shenanigans of interest-bearing capital in
Book III, for instance.

In Book I he shows the way in which an initial commodity is transformed in
the production process by the application of unpaid labour (remember only
the workers' labour-power is paid for, not their labour) into a new
commodity with a greater value -- C' to C''. This transformation of the
commodity -- and everything in capitalism is a commodity, that's its
distinctive characteristic -- is the secret of the transformation that
everyone sees (except the Communist Think-Tank?) and is astounded by -- M'
to M'' -- money growing apparently magically into more than it was before,
taking on a life of its own, self-expanding capital.

That's it.

So either Pennyfogger doesn't know what he's saying, like Duehring, or he's
doing something really nasty like Vogt.

Or maybe he just had bad teachers.

It's OK to skim the tabloids for Think-Tank Factoids, but it's impossible
to skim Marx.

Now let me return to the miniscule world of semi-consumed and pretty
clapped-out commodities that represents my own share of the wealth of
society and mocks me and mine every day with our lack of social power and
prosperity.

Selling your own labour-power is not where power and prosperity is at.
Selling other people's labour is. To abolish one, you must abolish both.

For a world free of wage-slavery!

Hugh






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