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How to Read Marx's Capital How to Read Marx’s Capital Shapiro 00 pre i 5/2/08 08:25:27 How to Read Theory Series Editors: Stephen Shapiro, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick Ed White, Department of English, University of Florida ‘How to Read Theory’ is a new series of clear, introductory guides to critical theory and cultural studies classics designed to encourage readers to think independently. Each title focuses on a single, key text and concisely explains its arguments and signifi cance, showing the contemporary relevance of theory and presenting diffi cult theoretical concepts in clear, jargon-free prose. Presented in a compact, user- friendly format, the ‘How to Read Theory’ series is designed to appeal to students and to interested readers everywhere who are coming to these key texts for the fi rst time. Never before have the classic texts of theory and cultural studies been made so accessible. Shapiro 00 pre ii 5/2/08 08:25:27 How to Read Marx’s Capital Stephen Shapiro Pluto P Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI Shapiro 00 pre iii 5/2/08 08:25:27 First published 2008 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Stephen Shapiro 2008 The right of Stephen Shapiro to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 2562 0 hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2561 3 paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed and bound in India Shapiro 00 pre iv 5/2/08 08:25:27 Contents Preface viii PART ONE: COMMODITIES AND MONEY 1. The Commodity 1 2. The Process of Exchange 40 3. Money, or the Circulation of Commodities 43 PART TWO: THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL 4. The General Formula for Capital 55 5. Contradictions in the General Formula 60 6. The Sale and Purchase of Labour-Power 63 PART THREE: THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-VALUE 7. The Labour Process and the Valorization Process 72 8. Constant Capital and Variable Capital 78 9. The Rate of Surplus-Value 79 10. The Working Day 82 11. The Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value 92 PART FOUR: THE PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE 12. The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value 96 13. Co-operation 98 14. The Division of Labour and Manufacture 105 15. Machinery and Large-Scale Industry 117 Shapiro 00 pre v 5/2/08 08:25:27 PART FIVE: THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE 16. Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value 140 17. Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in Surplus-Value 141 18. Different Formulae for the Rate of Surplus-Value 141 PART SIX: WAGES 19. The Transformation of the Value (and Respectively the Price) of Labour-Power into Wages 142 20. Time-Wages 142 21. Piece-Wages 142 22. National Differences in Wages 142 PART SEVEN: THE PROCESS OF ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL 23. Simple Reproduction 145 24. The Transformation of Surplus-Value into Capital 147 25. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation 150 PART EIGHT: SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE [‘ORIGINATING’] ACCUMULATION 26. The Secret of Primitive Accumulation 159 27. The Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land 162 28. Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated Since the End of the Fifteenth Century. The Forcing Down of Wages by Act of Parliament 166 vi How to Read Marx’s Capital Shapiro 00 pre vi 5/2/08 08:25:28 29. The Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer 167 30. Impact of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. The Creation of a Home Market for Industrial Capital 167 31. The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist 168 32. The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation 171 33. The Modern Theory of Colonization 172 Suggestions for Further Reading 174 Index 176 Contents vii Shapiro 00 pre vii 5/2/08 08:25:28 Preface For a writer like Marx, who glories in contradictions, here’s one: the length and complexity of the fi rst volume of Capital pose a daunting challenge to fi rst-time readers. Yet few other works in the modern age have been so important to such a widely international audience, especially those with little formal education or literacy. Marx himself was acutely aware of the tension between the diffi culty of Capital’s early passages and his desire that the book should be meaningful to the working class. While encouraging readers to persevere, he also, at times, suggested that they might skip the fi rst, more theoretical, parts and asked his life-long collaborator, Friedrich Engels, to summarize Capital’s arguments in a shorter book. What Marx could assume, though, was that his contemporaries would have some familiarity with the terminology and basic outline of his argument, since they belonged to a widespread left-wing culture and community. Today is a different story. Many of you will be reading Marx in isolation from any supportive environment. Even those lucky enough to be in a classroom that discusses Marx will fi nd that the pressures of modern education often do not allow time to see the full panorama of Capital’s arguments. You may fi nd that you will be told what Marx claims, but not have the space to process Marx’s construction of his claims in ways that allow you to think these through for yourself. viii How to Read Marx’s Capital Shapiro 00 pre viii 5/2/08 08:25:28 How to Read Marx’s Capital attempts to support readers in their early steps towards a self-reliant understanding of Marx. Just as no printed map can replace the personal experience of learning the way to a destination, this book should enable, but not replace, your own reading of Capital. No abbreviated version can convey the richness of Marx’s writing or even pretend at completeness, but it may, hopefully, give you the confi dence to discover these for yourself. To help ease your way, I follow Capital’s chapter-by-chapter structure and often quote Marx’s own words so they will seem less strange or incomprehensible when you next read them. Ideally this method will equip you to read further in Marx and all those later writers who take his claims as their starting point. In short, this guide should be a starting point, not a conclusion. There are two standard English translations of the fi rst volume of Capital from the German, a nineteenth- century one by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and a twentieth-century one by Ben Fowkes, which is easily available in a Penguin Books edition (fi rst published 1976). There are good reasons to prefer either version, but the translation referenced here is Fowkes’s. All quotations will be parenthetically indexed to this later edition. A few words about words. In Capital, Marx refers to ‘capital’ but never to ‘capitalism’, since the style of ‘ism-ing’ a social or cultural movement was less common in his day. Here I use ‘capital’ and ‘capitalism’ as interchangeable, often preferring the latter as less awkward for contemporary English readers. In his translator’s note, Fowkes explains that he renders the German word Arbeiter as ‘worker’, rather than ‘labourer’, which Moore and Aveling used. Fowkes did so because, in 1976, he felt that ‘worker’ had Preface ix Shapiro 00 pre ix 5/2/08 08:25:28 less of a negative connotation than ‘labourer’. Today, the reverse might be true. Rather than be held hostage to momentary tastes, I use both without prejudice. One feature of capitalist-defi ned modernity is that an author, as a producer of text, is distanced from her or his readers, the consumers of that text, by the interference of the price-setting market place. A book, after all, is also a commodity and thus subject to the same rules of capitalist commodifi cation that Marx brilliantly describes in Capital. Though we may be anonymous to each other, I do not write in isolation. For the possibility of these pages has been made not only by Marx, but as well by the many who have struggled to achieve a better life than the one that capitalism has on offer. Similarly, my intention is not just that you read this simply to understand Marx, but to use your comprehension to carry on with the unfi nished project of repairing the damage that capital has wreaked on human life and aspirations. Für Anne x How to Read Marx’s Capital Shapiro 00 pre x 5/2/08 08:25:28 Part One: Commodities and Money Chapter 1. The Commodity Section 1. The Two Factors of the Commodity: Use-Value and Value (Substance of Value, Magnitude of Value) Marx begins Capital by saying that ‘[t]he wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an “immense collection of commodities”; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our analysis therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity’ (125).
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