That was a good read. Thanks for sharing
Parsani
joined 2 years ago
It was very funny
on the birthday of Stephan Bandera
Lol lmao
I finished part 1 and 2 of chapter 1 today. Thanks to the posters in the other thread. Helped me get my head around some key terms, like value, concrete and abstract abor, and importantly the dual character of labor and its implications which had eluded me before. This is my second reading, but like with any book like this, I retained little the first time around.
I put it down after getting to part 3 as I found it either much harder, it seems like it was written in a more obscure way than the first two. Will get back to it tomorrow.
Hoping to post some notes and questions before the end of the week.
I don't know if anyone else feels like way, but the first chapter so far is so strange compared to other books I've read more recently on political economy, etc., because it starts with the most embryonic forms and works outward.
I read the relevant parts of Harvey's companion afterwards and it was okay. Good to confirm my understanding, but there were some oddities like taking about Marx not following Hegel's "synthesis" and then the next sentence explaining Marxs dialectical method which was pretty much a more accurate version of what Hegel actually does. And he doesn't make as concrete how the Dual Character of Labour is important (Marx does this better) and differs from previous works in political economy.
A reminder to everyone reading. Read the footnotes, sometimes the criticism of previous economists like Smith are written in very clear terms which show what Marx is building from and at times subverting. Also they can be pretty funny.
Looking forward to reading this with all of you!
Here is a link to the Fowkes translation, pdf, with good quality and ocr: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D0
Marx oscillates between use-value being something commodities are and something commodities have as a property (being versus having). So depending on context, a commodity is a use-value, or it has use-value.
As a side note, we could extend this and say that something can gain a use-value as part of a historical process, right? For example, on the first page:
The discovery of these ways and hence of the manifold uses of things is the work of history3
3... The magnets property of attracting iron only became useful once it had led to the discovery of magnetic polarity.
The magnet never changed, but through scientific development became useful.
I got the other notification, but not this one. ~~But my name is spelled wrong so that may be why here~~
Edit: I'm on there twice actually, only one version is misspelled. So I don't think in post tags work.
Xi was pissed he wasn't going to get his daily rewards anymore