Value, Price and Profit Please note the change to Thursday!!!!
We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. Next week’s session will be as follows: Date: 11 March (Thursday!!!!!) Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road. Topic: Value, Price and Profit (link to full text). See below for introduction. By 1865 Karl Marx (pictured) had solved the theoretical problems of his work, “Capital”, on Surplus Value, and in that year he gave the well-known address to a gathering of workers that afterwards became a popular publication under the name “Value, Price and Profit”, also sometimes called “Wages, Price and Profit”. The first volume of “Capital” was published two years later. This short book has served the labour movement well, down the years. Among other things, it debunks the argument, still attempted by employers and their apologists in South Africa today, that wage rises will cause unemployment. It shows how commodities, including commodity Labour-Power, are normally sold at their full value, yet how, at the same time, the worker is getting swindled every day. It explains this apparent paradox. It encourages workers to struggle for better wages and conditions, but it also (prefiguring Lenin’s argument against “Economism” forty years later in “What is to be Done?”) shows clearly why trade unionism, without political organisation, will never succeed in throwing off the yoke of capital. Karl Marx was not a syndicalist. He struggled against syndicalism relentlessly, throughout his life. The abridged version of “Value, Price and Profit”, linked below, can serve as the short, or “basic”, version of “Capital” that so many people long for. It will help us to get a better grip on some of the key concepts in “Capital, Volume 1” such as Labour, Value, Labour-Power, and above all, Surplus-Value. For this purpose we have put aside many of the sections of “Value, Price and Profit”. The work is available on the Internet for anyone who would like to read it in full. The best source for Marxist classics in general on the Internet is the Marxists Internet Archive (MIA). Download: Click here to download the text of Value, Price and Profit, Parts 6 to 10, Marx -- Posted By DomzaNet to Communist University on 3/04/2010 04:17:00 PM -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
