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Reading Capital Politically Harry Cleaver Politically Capital Reading a a a a a a a a a a a aaa aa a a a a a a a a a a aa a a aaa a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a aa aa a a a a aaa a aa a a a aaa a a aa a a aa aa a a aaa a a a a aa a a a a a aa aaa a a a a a a a aa a aa a a a a a a a a aa a a a a a a a a a aa a a a a a a a a a a aaa a aa aa a a a aa aa a a a a a a a a aa a aa a aa a a a a a aa a a aaaa a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a aaaa a a aa a a a a a aa a a aa a a British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cleaver, Harry M Reading ‘Capital’ Politically 1. Marx, Karl. Kapital, Das I. Title 335.4'12 HB501.M37 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cleaver, Harry, 1944— Reading Capital Politically. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. Das Kapital. I. Title. HB501.M37C57 335.4'1 78-26330 ISBN 1 902593 29 4 pbk Originally published in 1979 by University of Texas Press, Austin, USA and Harvester Press, Brighton, UK. This edition published in 2000 by Anti/Theses, c/o Cardigan Centre, 145–149 Cardigan Road, Leeds, LS6 1LJ, UK [[email protected]] and AK Press, PO Box 12766, Edinburgh EH8 9YE, UK and PO Box 40682, San Francisco CA, 94140-0682, USA. Special thanks to: Chumbawamba, Dave Graham, David Watts and the author, who all helped make this project possible. — Anti/Theses. ✪ Anti-copyright 2000, Harry Cleaver, AK and Anti/Theses. Material may be freely reproduced for not-for-profit purposes. If you reprint material please say where it’s taken from and inform the author and publishers. Designed by David Watts. Printed by Calverts Press, London, UK (020 7739 1474; [email protected]) To Ondine and Alicia Contents Acknowledgements 7 Preface to 2nd Edition 9 I Introduction 23 Reading Capital as Political Economy 31 Reading Marx Philosophically 46 Reading Capital Politically 58 Reading Chapter One 77 II The Commodity-Form 81 III The Substance and Magnitude of Value (Chapter One, Section 1) 95 IV The Twofold Character of Labour (Chapter One, Section 2) 127 V The Form of Value (Chapter One, Section 3) 135 VI Conclusion 159 Bibliography 163 Internet resources 172 Index 175 5 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements I am grateful to a number of people for critical comments and moral support during the production of this work. My greatest debt is to Professor George Caffentzis of Brooklyn College, an old friend and one of the original founders of Zerowork. His support during the summer of 1975 when the first draft was written was invaluable, and the manuscript reflects, however imperfectly, a number of his brilliant insights into the meaning of Marx’s work. Among the people whose comments have helped me to clarify many of the ideas in this book, I would especially like to thank Amy Hirsch, Rayna Reiter, Rich Bethel, Rick McGahee, Bob Korstad, Phil Mattera, Peter Bell, and William Cleaver. To those who took time to read and make useful comments on parts of the manuscript, I am particularly grateful: Phil Mattera, Peter Linebaugh, Silvia Federici, Paolo Carpignano, John Merrington, Yann Moulier, Sergio Bologna, Martin Glaberman, and Mark Richie, Trudy Cooper, and Mariarosa Dalla Costa. I would like to thank the following people for helping me obtain materials from various groups of historical importance in the development the kind of analysis presented in this book: Bruno Cartosio and Martin Glaberman for materials from the Johnson-Forest Tendency, Correspondence, Facing Reality, and News and Letters; Peter Linebaugh for internal documents of the Offord Road Collective and published materials of Materiaux pour L’Intervention; Yann Moulier for materials from Materiaux pour L’Intervention and Camarades; Allain Guillerm for sharing his collection of Socialisme ou Barbarie with me as well as his knowledge of it; Bruno Cartosio, Yann Moulier, John Merrington, and Antonio Negri for helping me to sort out some of the history of the Italian New Left and to find important materials in its development. ADDENDUM: I would like to add my thanks to David Harvie for this second edition. It exists only because of his initiative and work. 7 Preface New prefaces to old works are problematical. What to say about something you wrote a quarter of a century ago? Instead of writing a preface, it’s tempting to simply rewrite the book in ways that would bring it up to date with your current ideas and formulations. However, books, as some have pointed out, take on a life of their own after they’ve been published and the generous leave them unmolested, not tinkered with, but allowed to follow their own course. About all you can do is introduce them, tell a bit of their story and then leave them to the mercy of their readers. This makes sense to me. So here I tell something of the genesis of this book, about how it came to be, and then something of the subsequent implications of its ideas for my own work since.1 Some books are intentionally crafted. Conceived and written as part of a political project with a particular purpose, an objective, they are designed from the start as a contribution. The first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital is such a book. He conceived and wrote Capital as one step in a larger project of laying out his analysis of the nature of capitalism. That laying out was, in turn, part of an even larger project of contributing to the overthrow and transcendence of capitalism. His writing was part of his contribution to the ongoing struggles of workers against their exploitation and alienation and for the crafting of better, alternative forms of social life. Other books are accidental by-products. Marx’s Grundrisse is such a book. Originally it was merely a series of notebooks written during the onset of the crisis of 1857 in a urgent attempt to gather his thoughts, to pull together his theoretical work and his studies of the evolution of the class struggle. The notebooks were never meant for publication; they were merely the formulations generated as he worked out his 1 In as much as this preface tells the story of this book by resituating it within a political and intellectual trajectory, the footnotes provide references to various relevant publications along the way. 9 Preface ideas. They were a moment of synthesis in years of work that would produce other manuscripts and eventually Capital in the 1860s. The notebooks only became a ‘book’ years after Marx’s death when scholars recognized their coherency and decided to publish them. The core of this book, Reading Capital Politically, had a genesis that makes it much more like the Grundrisse than Capital, much more an accidental by-product than an intentional product crafted as a conceptualized intervention in political life. Like the Grundrisse it originated as a set of notes written as part of a particular moment of intellectual work. In this case the project was an exploration of Marx’s writings on the labour theory of value to discover an interpretation which made sense to me — because all of those which had been handed down by earlier Marxist scholars had left me dissatisfied. The genesis of the book The motivation for this exploration lay partly in the changing terrain of class struggle in the early and mid 1970s and partly in a growing dissatisfaction with my understanding of Marxism in those years. I had begun studying Marx, and the Marxist tradition, in reaction to the inability of mainstream economics to usefully interpret either the war against Vietnam or the social engineering that made up a considerable component of the ‘nation building’ that the United States was undertaking in Southeast Asia to expand its influence in the 1950s and 1960s. As part of the anti-war movement, in the years that I was a graduate student at Stanford (1967–1971), I investigated the role of the university within the complexity of the whole US counterinsurgency effort. That investigation led me, along with a number of others to form a study group to focus on the introduction of new high- yielding rice to the area. That introduction was being done with the purpose of increasing food production in order to undercut peasant discontent and support for revolution against the neocolonialism of the time. In order to grasp theoretically this political use of technology to transform rural Asian society I was led to Marx and to Marxist analyses of the transformation of precapitalist modes of production by capitalism through processes of more or less primitive accumulation.2 Unfortunately, the more I studied the history, the more one-sided and narrow this analysis seemed to me. While it highlighted and made some sense of what US policy makers were doing, it virtually ignored the self-activity of the peasants in Southeast Asia against whose struggles the new technologies and ‘nation/elite building’ were aimed. During this same period of the early 1970s the cutting edge of capitalist strategy on a world level was also shifting.
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