for a future article

Why read Karl Marx "as literature"? At first glance, this is not an especially promising pursuit--as literature, it's not much. There are large swaths of Capital's three volumes than which it is difficult to imagine anything more boring. And, from a Marxist perspective, subjecting Capital to close-readings seems like a death-knell for the book's political relevance, its furthest removal from practical engagement in the world. To declare Capital a "literary" artifact is to neutralize "the working man's Bible" by installing it in the same canon as "Pippa Passes" and "What Maisie Knew." Lastly, reading something "as literature" is very close to reading it as fiction, which Capital assuredly is not. In fact, I undertake these brief remarks rather to insist upon the vitality of Marx's economic writings than to bury them in a filigreed formalism. For one thing, to speak about the literary aspects of a work at least implies that one is discussing the entire work. No one would write about Anna Karenina without having read to the last page; nonetheless, very few people read Capital to its last page. I will make a case for doing so in this study. Secondly, any "return" to Capital seems apropos at this political moment, for this book is not just a toolbox for cultural critique in the sense fashionable after the Frankfurt School. Capital is a line drawn in the sand, asking: will capitalism overcome its internal contradictions and survive until the end of time, or (as Marx argues) is another world possible, and our historical task to make that world? These are implicitly questions of narrative, of temporality. Without this time-element, Capital would just be a piece of Hegelian muck-raking, a static and somewhat abstract picture of Victorian industry. But the nihilating force of time is at once our entry into academic "narratology" and the locus of Marx's explosively revolutionary thought: that capitalism has an expiration date. Needless to say, to abolish the factor of time, intellectually, then as now is to apotheosize capitalism in the eternal order of things, with all of its appalling brutalities and indecencies.

Sartre's existentialism is not now in vogue, but it is a truism from that philosophy that every project is constituted by its projection of a future state of affairs. What is projected in Capital is the overcoming of capitalism--a project which is not without temporal, futural significance for us today. And so it is in anything but the spirit of withdrawn aesthetic contemplation that one should attend to these narratological questions in reading Capital.

On Immediacy and Abstraction

The Grundrisse

In the Grundrisse, Marx explains how the commodity form contains in-itself all the elements necessary for advanced capitalist crisis: namely, 1) the separation of exchange into acts removed in time and space; 2) the possibility, in this gap, of reversing C-M-C (exchange) into M-C-M (capital accumulation), and 3) the parallax between the "fleeting moment" of money in C-M-C and its "hard form" as wealth, as the universal commodity (and not just the universal equivalent, as in exchange).

And certainly one can unfold everything from this simple to the complex (capitalist crisis) in this way. This, by the way, is the Grundrisse en résumé.

Capital

Das Kapital works rather differently. It's extremely important to coordinate the "real" from the conceptual, and one might say that the book alternates between these two.

For instance: the chapter on the working day. Obviously the working day itself could have been the starting point for an analysis of capitalism's exploitative nature, as in Engels' study of British labor conditions. But in Das Kapital, the immediate, really existing working day only follows from the (concept of) rate of surplus-value.

And this is true all along the line. Wages, which we all can point to in real life, follow from the (concept of) value of labor-power. Prices, which are by no means a rare phenomenon, follow from (the concept of) exchange-value.

The most important of these determinations is that of profit (in the bookkeeping sense) by surplus-value. So, for Marx, conceptual determinations have ontological priority over their reflected appearances--but at the same time, unlike Hegel (!), Marx always stresses that history is not *itself* the unfolding of these determinations; and, in turn, these abstractions are not intuited from nowhere (as "eternal laws") but are themselves arrived at from an analysis of real processes.

[As Lukács writes: On one hand, it is impossible to consider social being ontologically without beginning from the most basic facts of man's daily life... On the other hand, reality presents itself in a quite deformed character... It is necessary to start from quotidian life, but also to overcome it..."]

So, just as profit from the capitalist's perspective *precedes* the larger-scale "departments" of the reproduction of the aggregate social capital, CONCEPTUALLY it is the reverse: it is necessary to show how all of social capital turns over (volume 2) in order to establish the real existence of profit determined by the "average rate of profit" (volume 3). (And that is those volumes en résumé).

And I think this is why Das Kapital begins the way it does, with the commodity form: it is in the object of labor that value (the primordial concept) makes its first appearance, and in bourgeois society this object of labor is ONLY a commodity, QED.

Part 4: Chapter 12

One of the things most notable about any philosophical (or even scientific) system is the "constants" which appear initially as more-or-less unremarkable deductions, but that require a great effort to hold onto through further analysis. My favorite example is the constancy of the speed of light in Einstein's physics. Anyone can wrap their head around the simple idea that light has a constant speed. Most will not object either to the speed of light being the limit velocity--i.e. that nothing can be faster than light. However, this velocity, as regards which all other motions are relative has innumerable revolutionary effects in physics--as I understand it--as long as it is held as a constant.

The same could be said for Freud's dictum, "dreams are wish-fulfillments." Simple enough, and most would agree. It is almost a tautology (dreams being synonymous with wishes in everyday language). But if one sticks closely and makes no exceptions, the application of this constant is world-overturning.

The same can be said of Marx's treatment of labor-power as a commodity. In terms of any other commodity, VALUE is the labor-time necessary to (re)produce the commodity. In "free labor," however, that value formula counts only as "necessary labor" where the rest of the time worked is "surplus labor." (Another idea that must be strictly kept-to is the distinction between labor and labor-power. The latter is what functions as a commodity.)

The dry distinction between "absolute" and "relative" surplus-value, from which this chapter takes its name, is important because absolute surplus value (brute extension of the working day) explains the previous chapter ("The Working Day") while positive change in relative surplus value (increases in productivity, mostly) is part of the endless and less-obviously-constrained accumulation of capital. (I.e. the day can only be prolonged so far, while technology and the division of labor can be continually improved upon.)

In Marx's words:
The objective of the development of the productivity of labour within the context of capitalist production is the shortening of that part of the working day in which the worker must work for himself, and the lengthening, thereby, of the other part of the day, in which he is free to work for nothing for the capitalist.

* * * *
"We treat [the] general result as if it were the direct result and the direct purpose in each individual case... The general and necessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from their forms of appearance."

"The real value of a commodity... is not its individual, but its social value."

It is not that Marx does not care about "the individual case"--in the first case, the immanent drive of capital as a whole is taken as though it were the individual capitalist's purpose as well. It is to be noted that the capitalist is no more "free" than the laborer who is compelled to work for demeaning wages--there is the unbearable force of the "coercive law of competition."

To explain the first quote I provide the second--the "real" is not the "individual," in a very Hegelian sense.

Part 3: Chapter 11

This chapter, "The Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value," is mostly of interest to us for this passage:

A certain stage of capitalist production necessitates that the capitalist be able to devote the whole of the time during which he functions as a capitalist, i.e. as capital personified, to the appropriation and therefore the control of that labour. The guild system of the Middle Ages therefore tried forcibly to prevent the transformation of the master of a craft into a capitalist, by limiting the number of workers a single master could employ to a very low maximum. Hence the possessor of money or commodities actually turns into a capitalist only where the minimum sum advanced for production greatly exceeds the known medieval maximum. Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel, in his Logic, that at a certain point merely quantitative differences pass over by a dialectical inversion into qualitative distinction. (423)

Gramsci's favorite example from Capital of quantity-becoming-quality is the chapter on cooperation in industry: masses accomplish "more than the sum of their parts." One can think of several others: the amount of time demanded from workers (quantity) altering the conditions of their existence (quality). In any case, the idea that quantity becomes quality is one of the best instances in which Marx gives concrete economic form to a "theoretical" Hegelian idea.

We see here:
- "Capital developed within the production process" [my emphasis, B.P.] It is not spontaneous nor a complete break from the previous (feudal/medieval) mode of production, but (as communism is contained within the "womb" of capitalism) arises *from* it.
- how the capitalist does not require "primitive accumulation" to come into existence, but arises from existent processes
- the "personification" of capital's historical (i.e. proceeding by stages) tendencies in the "spontaneous" actions of individuals
- that capitalism's genesis is not merely a product of "technical" advancements: "At first capital subordinates labour on the basis of the technical conditions within which labour has been carried on up to that point in history. It does not therefore directly change the mode of production."

Marx stresses the simple but difficult-to-keep-in-mind point that the means of production be thought of *as* capital themselves. That is, machines/tools are not just involved in producing commodities, but represent capital and are means of reproducing capital: "It is different as soon as we view the production process as a process of valorization. The means of production are at once changed into means for the absorption of labour of others. It is no longer the worker who employs the means of production, but the means of production which employ the labour" (425).

That is, the production process becomes organized around keeping MACHINES busy, of preventing their being idle, of instituting multiple shifts, of extending hours, etc.

"There is no text in which 'the technical instrument' is turned into the unique and supreme cause of economic development. [Marx] never reduces [stages of technical development] to the mere 'metamorphoses of the technical instrument."--Gramsci

"Philosophy of Praxis"

This is not Capital-related, strictly speaking, although one could certainly say a great deal about why *that* is.

In Gramsci's prison notebooks, most of the proper names of Bolsheviks as well as terms like "Marxism" and "proletariat" are suppressed, so that it is written in a kind of code. "Marxism" therefore becomes "the philosophy of praxis." Now, this is reasonable enough, and after a while you don't really notice, and just read (or translate in) the intended concept for the euphemism. 

My point is, of course it's *not* a euphemism, and it is almost the key concept of Gramsci that Marxism IS the philosophy of praxis.

This can be thought about in two ways. One is the Leninist sense: why in the Russian Revolution did the Bolsheviks, the most extreme and doctrinaire party, triumph over the more palatable and compromising Mensheviks and social democratic parties? The Bolshevik answer would be that the question is tautological. That is, "correct" doctrine BY DEFINITION aligns itself with the "winning" team of history, the proletariat. To be doctrinaire in a revolutionary situation is irreducibly tactical. 

The second sense is expressed by Rosa Luxembourg: academic debates about socialism are anything *but* academic; socialism is a weapon or tool of the proletariat. To water socialism down "in theory" is a real attack on the working class: "It is their skin which is being brought to market." 

In other words, Marxism does not have a set of aims distinct from the plan for accomplishing them; it does not say "We believe this, but we should settle for this." (i.e. we believe that capitalism is bad, but really we can work within it for improvement and leave it standing).

We should read the cliched criticism of leftist intellectuals backwards then: instead of "that's all well and good in theory, but what about practice," Marxism insists that we ask, "that's all well and good in practice, but what about in theory??

Cf. The German Ideology, Critique of the Gotha Programme, and the final section of the Communist Manifesto for Marx's vicious attacks on compromised versions of socialism.

Which brings us back to Capital, which is not at all a "tactical manual" for revolution. There is a great deal to say about this, and I will say it, in the posts covering the final 2/3 of the book.

Part 3: Chapter 10

This chapter, “The Working Day,” is probably the greatest in the book, because it depicts so thoroughly the workings of the capitalist system of production: the role of individuals therein, the opposition of the classes, the lack of autonomy of all parties, and the tendency of exploitation.

There are a few take-away additions to the system and the terminology in this chapter:

*The Capitalist*
The capitalist, we are told repeatedly, “is only capital personified.” Thus, the often-seen formation, “capital seizes upon…” The “driving force” of capital is “the drive to valorize itself,” and so the individual capitalist has no ability to reverse or mitigate this drive. Thus, “capital” itself becomes the subject of all these descriptions, rather than “the capitalist” or “industry.” The capitalist is a dead thing, which “vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor,” and who confronts the worker as a “thing…with no heart in its breast. What seems to throb there is [the worker’s] heartbeat.”

*The Length of the Working Day*
The length of the working day is a site of class struggle. "In the history of capitalist production, the establishment of a norm for the working day presents itself as a struggle over the limits of that day, a struggle between collective capital, i.e. the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e. the working class."

*Surplus labor*
Capital, Marx says, did not invent surplus labor: the Athenian aristocrat, the Etruscan theocrat, the civis romanus, the Norman baron, the American slave-owner, etc.--all of these exploit the worker beyond the amount of labor necessary for his maintenance. So there is a pre-history to surplus labor prior to capitalism.

***
This long chapter demonstrates a few things: 1) the mystification of the bourgeois economists as to the source of value, at the same time 2) as capital unconsciously perfects the extraction of that value from workers' labor, 3) an extended catalog of the worst horrors of this exploitation and the capitalists' success in evading legislation to restrict the work day, 4) the substitutions (of child labor, women's labor, machines) for the time lost to legislative restrictions, 5) the disregard of capital for the health of the worker, a dialectical inversion whereby productivity and vigor of labor change from beneficial to production into their opposite, something to be undermined by capital, 6) the helplessness of the "free" citizen-laborer under this system, i.e. his compulsion to sell his labor-power and inability to negotiate the price of this commodity, 7) the beginning of the organization of the class struggle and the need for protection of the workers as a class.

***
I have been thinking a lot about this (Das Kapital, dialectics) in the shower lately, and of course the "insight" I had one day was a mundane repetition of a gem from the Communist Manifesto, but here goes anyways. I have been trying to come up with a great example of Marxian dialectics. This is not the best one [which is, by the way, the self-consciousness of the worker *as* commodity], but it's nice and succinct. The idea of the left, of revolution, or even of liberal reformism, is everywhere opposed in vulgar thought to "conservatism" and the rule of the market. So, extreme fiscal conservatives are seen as "reactionary," as advocates of stability, etc. What Marxism teaches us is the complete folly of this picture. It is rather the case that the forces of capitalism, the necessities of the market, of technology, of the upheavals and crises of the world economy, of the denigration and exploitation of a global class, are the most radical and persistent change of all, in fact, the "static laws" of the free market, of finance, create a constant revolution of the forms of life.

Of course, I am not so original--what I think is clever while showering, Marx has already said much better (in the Communist Manifesto):

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Finished!

Hey gang,

I finished Volume One today, so it will now be possible for me to go back and "blog out" the remaining 700 pages. I should say, reading Capital was one of the most exhilarating intellectual tasks I have ever undertaken, and the 7 months of reading were--and I say this without embarrassment--transformative. I recommend the effort, without reserve, to anyone. Although no book could have a higher reputation, I have been endlessly impressed and persuaded while reading--if the gist and general aim are well known to everyone, the mass of evidence and clarity of argument Marx lends his argument are invaluable. Unlike, say, reading Nietzsche, an experience of finding an entirely-new person behind the familiar characterizations, reading Marx indeed finds the Marx we "already know"--his concerns are those we suspected, his insights are still active, etc.--but with the difference that this "set of concerns" and array of "Marxist" insights no longer seem like a knowledge to be filed under the heading, Philosophers; German; 19th Century; Marx & Engels, but insist on being taken up as our own, and still as deeply *his*. What can I say? I loved it.

"He is a necessary and integral part of our human spirit."- Gramsci, Our Marx