Parsani

joined 2 years ago
[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago

The world if we had networked communism

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The way I understand the way Marx is using "qualitatively different" is both in its obvious form, gold and silver (as simple commodities) are different from one another, but importantly that it is about qualitatively different forms of private labor confronting each other in exchange. If I am spinning, weaving and tailoring my own coat, neither the wool, thread, linen, or coat confront each other as commodities in exchange even if they each have a use-value, but once you have a division of labour, those use-values can confront each other as commodities in exchange.

(I'm struggling to word a more specific example when considering gold and silver as commodity-money, so may be someone can jump in with that.)

The rest of the quote you posted seems to get into this.

In a society whose products generally assume the form of commodities, i.e. in a society of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour which are carried on independently and privately by individual producers develops into a complex system, a social division of labour.

and another in the paragraph before:

“The totality of heterogeneous use-values or physical commodities reflects a totality of similarly heterogeneous forms of useful labour, which differ in order, genus, species and variety: in short, a social division of labour. This division of labour is a necessary condition for commodity production, although the converse does not hold; commodity production is not a necessary condition for the social division of labour. [...] to take an example nearer home, labour is systematically divided in every factory, but the workers do not bring about this division by exchanging their individual products. Only the products of mutually independent acts of labour, performed in isolation, can confront each other as commodities.” p 132 (Fowkes)

This last part is interesting to me when you think about how large firms operate even today. If a single firm produces multiple of its own inputs and outputs, they do not actually confront eachother as commodities (in a market). As an aside, one of the more compelling arguments against the ECP has been its own critics inability to determine exactly where it becomes impossible to calculate production as one firm gobbles up another firm which produces its own input.

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 35 points 2 years ago

Puddy was just idlemaxxing

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

No that was someone else, ~~but I can not remember her name lmao~~

Tulsi Gabbard

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

hillgasm HER TIME IS NOW hillgasm

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

.li loads

Sometimes libgen urls go down, but they usually come back pretty quick.

Idk what libgen url Anna's-archive points to, but you could check it from there too

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 16 points 2 years ago

Yes, but was Bonzi Buddy ~~on the blockchain~~ AI-based?

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 2 points 2 years ago

"You must love the commodity like it is yourself"

  • Jesus
[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago

Having it turn over on the weekends is likely the best idea so people who were too busy to read during the week can catch up and discuss.

For next week, chapter two is pretty short so adding in the first two sections of chapter 3 like you suggest could keep up the pace while still giving people the weekend to discuss.

[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 2 points 2 years ago

It’s why I recommend reading volume 4 (theories of surplus value) after volume 1. It is Marx’s notes on all the major political economists, contextualizing their theories in terms of his own, in order to explain where they got stuck or went wrong. It’s invaluable for understanding the esoteric points in volume 1. Often they were born of arguments he had in the past, or realizations about subtle missteps that other economists made.

Yeah that makes sense, the footnotes where he directly critiques classical political economy are interesting. I'm not very well read on this, so seeing how Marx understand his own project as different from what came before is a bit obscure for me right now.

Also, volume 2 is far drier in tone, and has a lot more computation. So many people give up there. To be honest I mostly skimmed volume 2, it was too painful lol.

My only exposure to it are through secondary sources dealing with the different "circuits". Looking forward to it lol

Chapter 2 next week should be a breeze. It’s not too complicated and only a few pages. So that should give us all time to pause and let some questions percolate.

So so much shorter lol, I feel like we could have split chapter 1 into two parts

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