For my sociology class, I am required to write a 5-page book review on something one of the people we are studying wrote. Since we are studying Marx, I chose the first volume of capital, since I recently finished it. Below is the incomplete preliminary of the work. I just wnat to put this out there to see if I am correct in my understanding. The numbers shown are for footnotes that explain 1) the value of labor and 2) how to determine the rate of exploitation for the entire firm. The formula for the rate of exploitation didn't show up as I hoped it would so I had to substitute "S/V" for the actual formula.
The work I have chosen to review is the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx, published in 1867. The overall idea behind the work was to provide a materialist explanation to Capitalism, as opposed to the many half-hearted and idealistic explanations, and, maintaining the air of science, predict the course of Capitalist development.
Marx meant the book to be a weapon for the working class, since the work described the under-workings of the capitalist mode of production and demonstrated that the work will eventually provide the seeds for its own destruction through its own actions. The work has gone on to be something scorned and praised by economists, since it was in part a thing that was written to refute their beliefs. Ultimately Marx achieves his goal to provide a scientific study of Capitalism, since we are presented with nearly irrefutable evidence of the workings of the mode of production. In the grand scheme of things, it fits in with his socialist beliefs like a round peg in a round whole; however, many interpretations and attempts to "bring the book into action" have turned that peg into a square one.
If one were to study the book first hand without any aid, he or she would perhaps find it best to have some knowledge of economics, since Marx was mainly critiquing contemporary economists of the so-called classical economics school. For the purposes of this review, we will only go into details over a few key points of the first volume that this author deems important: value, commodities, the characteristics of labor, the social quality of capitalist production, the creation and maintaining of surplus value, and the creation of the proletariat.
The first part of the first volume of Capital deals with commodities, and their duel nature: use-value and exchange value. A commodity is defined as "something outside us," particularly something that satisfies a particular want. The quality of the commodity that provides the utility is the use-value: it is the wearability of clothing, the eatibility of food, and the drinkability of water. The use-value is a part of the commodity and cannot be separated from it by any means and is realized upon consumption of the thing. In contrast to use-value we have exchange value. Exchange value is the value that is used upon exchanging one use-value for another, it is relative and ultimately immaterial, being inside our heads. This type of value is measured by the amount of socially necessary labor to produce the use-value. This is determined by the most skilled person using the most developed technology available at a particular stage of economic development.
It is important to note here that this is the materialist explanation for the way markets determine prices: generally, the least costly good will be bought, thus forcing the other producers to innovate in order to bring their costs down so that they can sell their use-values cheaper. The exchange-value is generally considered to be the anchor at which prices at the market tend toward, though it is understood that prices fluctuate above and below their exchange value. Exchange value is realized upon exchange.
Historically, people have always produced use-values alone, except in rare cases when they produced things to be exchanged in trade; however, the dominant production was use-value production. This happened because division of labor was nice as deeply entrenched as it is today. Because people were self-sustaining, there was no need to trade or exchange anything. When division of labor was introduced, and people had to depend more and more on other people for their necessities, people began to produce things to be exchanged, and thus exchange value became more and more important, and eventually proved more important than use-value alone. Things were now being produced for exchange, and not to be used.
But it was through this division that labor took on a social characteristic, thanks to the social characteristic of capitalism. Work is no longer confined to the individual or small family or tribe, but now is carried out over the entire society. For example to make a table, one person cuts the wood, another shapes it, another assembles the table itself, and another probably would paint it. The social characteristic of capitalism brings together individuals who would probably not have anything to do with one another together to produce under the gaze of the capitalist.
A key feature of capitalism is the creation of surplus value. Labor has a particularly strange quality: it is a commodity, but yet it is a commodity capable of generating value above and beyond it's actual value.1 Surplus value didn't exist until capitalism became the dominant mode of production because people generally produced for themselves, thus no surplus value was created. The creation of a surplus value is synonymous with exploitation, because this is value that the laborer is not receiving. Any relationship that entails the creation of a surplus value is to be considered a form of exploitation. To determine the degree of exploitation (or the rate of surplus value) per individual worker2 we have the following formula: S/V, where S is the surplus value and V is the value of the labor (otherwise known as "variable capital").
A capitalist can expand surplus value in two ways: he may increase the relative surplus value or the absolute surplus value. By simply expanding the length of the work day, he or she has obtained more absolute surplus value. By reducing the values of labor (or wages), increasing the intensity of the work day, and/or increasing the cost of the use-values produced. The need to obtain more surplus value is the key feature of the capitalist class, because while both classes have a material interest in simply staying alive, their methods of doing so differ and force each other into conflict.
The proletariat, the worker who operates but does not own the means of production, was created, he or she did not just happen. The formation of the antithesis to capitalism happened during the middle ages. Up until this point, the worker generally owned and operated the means of production, especially at his or her leisurely. Various land grabs instigated by the nobility, most notably the common lands that the peasants used, resulted in a landless peasant class that sought work in the towns and parts of the rural areas. This action, called primitive accumulation, resulted in the employment of those landless and property-less individuals who did not own their means of generating their sustenance, but rather was employed by those individuals who did. Thus, we have the genesis of the modern proletariat.
The core ideas that Capital addresses is the affects of capitalism on society and the individual. Marx provides us with a few reports filed by government inspectors, which show the debilitating affects the push for more surplus-value has on individuals. Another key idea is that the social classes, namely for our case the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, were always in conflict and had irreconcilable goals.
GLS/SS d- s-:- a- C+++ P+ L+++ W+++ w-- PS+++ PE t R+++ tv+ b+ D++ e+++ h+ r---
The admin-mod team lacks standards.
"[...]driving down the highway screaming 'Ploterait of the world, unite!'."
