Picking the good information from Das Kapital.

[n0thing]

I was just reading a Bertrand Russell book that said Marx based a lot of his economics on the old Machester school, which is now mostly defunct. I planned on starting the treck through Das Kapital sometime soon, but I don't want to end up taking in a load of bad, outdated economic information. Is there any accompaniment to Das Kapital available that corrects the things in it that have now been proven wrong?

[Invariance]

The Economics of Karl Marx - Analysis and Application by Samuel Hollander (Cambridge University Press, 2008), is quite a critical and extensive look at Marxist economics. In his own words "As for criticism, I shall focus on what Marx might have been expected in his day and age to uncover and avoid." It might be over your head though, as it jumps straight into pretty heavy theoretical topics straight away in the first chapter (e.g. 'transformation problem').

I would suggest Marx's Capital by Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho (Pluto Press, 4th Ed. 2004). It is quite short, about 180 pages, and covers most of the topics in a succinct and understandable manner. I've got both as PDFs - if you want them, just PM me and I'll send you the links.

[ZeroNowhere]

Well, Kliman's 'Reclaiming Marx's Capital' explains and refutes many of the charges of 'internal inconsistency' in Marx's works and such, including the apparent 'transformation problem', and so on. Otherwise, I can't really think of anything that can make 'Capital' a whole lot clearer, other than thinking clearly about what is being said. Then again, I don't see any 'bad, outdated economic information' in 'Capital', let alone a load of it, so perhaps I'm not the best one to give you advice on this. Other than that, I would suggest either skipping or browsing over the first three chapters initially, then reading the rest of the book and returning to those chapters, then reading them (or possibly re-reading them) until one gets them. Otherwise, they can be a bit hard to slog through without reading the rest.

[Die Neue Zeit]

perhaps I'm not the best one to give you advice on this. Other than that, I would suggest either skipping or browsing over the first three chapters initially, then reading the rest of the book and returning to those chapters, then reading them (or possibly re-reading them) until one gets them. Otherwise, they can be a bit hard to slog through without reading the rest.

I do that myself. I could not have appreciated Marx's comments on the working day (and the struggle for shorter hours) and its role in participatory democracy without skipping past the first three chapters (the difficulty then generalized to the whole book by bourgeois political correctness ) and relying on various works elsewhere to get the concepts there.

[Dave B]

I was just reading a Bertrand Russell book that said Marx based a lot of his economics on the old Manchester school, which is now mostly defunct

I don’t really know what that means.

I think the Manchester school were free trade, laissez faire anti protectionist capitalists. I think Marx and Engels had ambivalent views on Free trade and protectionism and there is something on it later below.


Another part of that I think was the ‘anti-feudal’ nature of the Manchester School which objected to the 'protection' provided to the landed class on the price of corn and thus elevated price of bread that the industrial capitalist’s wage workers had to pay for.


And that by reducing the price of bread/corn the capitalists hoped that, at the expense of the British land owning class, they could pay their workers less;

Thus or eg;


The Wages Theory of the Anti-Corn Law League

Moreover, there were plenty to be met who did not even try to disguise their opinion that cheap bread was wanted simply to bring down the money rate of wages, and thus knock foreign competition on the head.

And that this, in reality, was the end and aim of the bulk of the manufacturers and merchants forming the great body of the League, it was not so very difficult to make out for any one in the habit of dealing with commercial men, and therefore in the habit of not always taking their word for gospel.

This is what we said and we repeat it. Of the official doctrine of the League we did not say a word. It was economically a "fallacy", and practically a mere cloak for interested purposes, though some of the leaders may have repeated it often enough to believe it finally themselves.

[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/07/09.htm[/FONT][/FONT]



[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]Not exactly and endorsement of or following of the Manchester School I think. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Apart from perhaps the view that capitalism replacing and supplanting the land owning and feudal production etc as being progressive.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Also stuff other stuff below;[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]From this point of view, 40 years ago Marx pronounced, in principle, in favor of Free Trade as the more progressive plan, and therefore the plan which would soonest bring capitalist society to that deadlock. But if Marx declared in favor of Free Trade on that ground, is that not a reason for every supporter of the present order of society to declare against Free Trade? If Free Trade is stated to be revolutionary, must not all good citizens vote for Protection as a conservative plan?[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]If a country nowadays accepts Free Trade, it will certainly not do so to please the socialists. It will do so because Free trade has become a necessity for the industrial capitalists. But if it should reject Free Trade and stick to Protection, in order to cheat the socialists out of the expected social catastrophe, that will not hurt the prospects of socialism in the least. Protection is a plan for artificially manufacturing manufacturers, and therefore also a plan for artificially manufacturing wage laborers. You cannot breed the one without breeding the other.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The wage laborer everywhere follows in the footsteps of the manufacturer; he is like the "gloomy care" of Horace, that sits behind the rider, and that he cannot shake off wherever he go. You cannot escape fate; in other words, you cannot escape the necessary consequences of your own actions. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]A system of production based upon the exploitation of wage labor, in which wealth increases in proportion to the number of laborers employed and exploited, such a system is bound to increase the class of wage laborers, that is to say, the class which is fated one day to destroy the system itself. In the meantime, there is no help for it: you must go on developing the capitalist system, you must accelerate the production, accumulation, and centralization of capitalist wealth, and, along with it, the production of a revolutionary class of laborers. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Whether you try the Protectionist or the Free Trade will make no difference in the end, and hardly any in the length of the respite left to you until the day when that end will come. For long before that day will protection have become an unbearable shackle to any country aspiring, with a chance of success, to hold its own in the world market.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]etc etc blah blah[/FONT]

[/FONT][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade/index.htm[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]And;[/FONT]


[/FONT][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/08/25.htm[/FONT][/FONT]


[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]On the Transformation problem, I don’t know what it is. Apart from probably the fact that people don’t understand what value is. [/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Coincidentally enough just over a week ago I had a little dry run on the transformation problem and posted it on a totally dead forum that no one reads.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Don’t ask me why as I don’t really know, I was practising a bit producing rows and columns etc on forums which isn’t easy for Luddites like me as everything always gets shifted around.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Anyway the result is below not quite ready for peer review yet; and there is a mathematical proof of the empirical worked example. I have it on paper and in pencil.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]However I don’t know how to do algebra language in ‘Word’ and capital greek sigma’s for summations with range limitations etc [/FONT]

[/FONT][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/classstruggle/message/344[/FONT][/FONT]

[mikelepore]

In the Marxian tendency that I grew out of, they have a tradition of advising people first to read Marx's pamphlets 'Wage-Labor and Capital' and 'Value, Price and Profit', and then go to "Capital', chapter 1. It is often asserted that the two pamphets are introductions that most people need so that 'Capital' will make more sense. I don't know if it's true or not. I have always thought that most of the important material in 'Capital' is in Chapter 1, and that most of chapter 1 is written in simple language.

As for "the things in it that have now been proven wrong", I would say that such a concept misses the point about what any analytical model is. No model is ever the objective reality itself. It explains something about reality with some range of agreement with observations. When someone else proposes a new model that is found to have greater agreement with observations, that's a part of the ongoing completion process. That doesn't mean that the previous model was necessarily "wrong." The application matters. To understand GPS satellites we have to use Einstein, but to understand rockets we still have to use Newton.

[ZeroNowhere]

In the Marxian tendency that I grew out of, they have a tradition of advising people first to read Marx's pamphlets 'Wage-Labor and Capital' and 'Value, Price and Profit', and then go to "Capital', chapter 1. It is often asserted that the two pamphets are introductions that most people need so that 'Capital' will make more sense.

While I wouldn't call them 'needed', they are certainly helpful, though Marx's views didn't stay exactly the same between them and 'Capital'.

As for "the things in it that have now been proven wrong", I would say that such a concept misses the point about what any analytical model is. No model is ever the objective reality itself. It explains something about reality with some range of agreement with observations. When someone else proposes a new model that is found to have greater agreement with observations, that's a part of the ongoing completion process. That doesn't mean that the previous model was necessarily "wrong." The application matters. To understand GPS satellites we have to use Einstein, but to understand rockets we still have to use Newton.

But isn't proving that a model does not match observations in areas where it is supposed to (thus 'proving it wrong') a potentially important step to finding something that either replaces it, or replaces it in certain areas? So for example, if, for example, Bohm-Bawerck, Bortkiewicz, the Austrians, Luxemburg, Sweezy and such were proven right, Marx's model would have been incorrect, or at least parts of it would have been proven wrong.

[mikelepore]

But isn't proving that a model does not match observations in areas where it is supposed to (thus 'proving it wrong') a potentially important step to finding something that either replaces it, or replaces it in certain areas? So for example, if, for example, Bohm-Bawerck, Bortkiewicz, the Austrians, Luxemburg, Sweezy and such were proven right, Marx's model would have been incorrect, or at least parts of it would have been proven wrong.

Sure, it may happen that Marx will be proven wrong, if it's a proof then that makes it a useful discovery. I just thought the words came out funny when the original poster requested "any accompaniment to Das Kapital available that corrects the things in it that have now been proven wrong", as if to say that the news is already out that Marx was proven wrong.

Actually, I think there is some content in Marxian economics that is circular, and some that is untestable, both of which are imperfections. But "proven wrong" I'm not aware of.

[spaßmaschine]

The best way to understand Marx's categories and method in my opinion is to read the first three chapters of Capital in order, then read through I.I. Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theories of Value, then continue on with the rest of Capital (including the chapter 'Results of the Immediate Process of Production', included as an appendix in the Penguin edition). It's best, with all of these, if you take it slow rather than skim through in the hope you'll pick something up, and pay particular attention to the use of terms like 'appearance' and 'form'.

As for the economic information being outdated, I don't see this as a huge problem, since we are more interested in the categories being developed, which if anything can be applied even more widely to the capitalism of today than that of 150 years ago.

[ZeroNowhere]

Hm, you remind me of somebody from Libcom. I, personally, don't see Rubin's essays as being especially helpful, but it's certainly far better than Cleaver, for example.