EDUCATION | Part 2 | Reading Marx’s "Capital" Volume 1 with David Harvey
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- čas přidán 3. 05. 2024
- A close reading of the text of Volume I of Marx’s Capital with Professor David Harvey. - askdavidharvey@peoplesforum.org -
Documents:
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Starts at 5:33
Give this man the means of production
Regretting that i dint saw this comment earlier... ☹️
1:53:00 (bookmark: it's not about feeling guilty it's about having an analysis; it's not a matter of personal choice; you can't just decide to not follow the nature of capital)
Regarding simple and complex labour, I think Marx is talking about artisans being replaced by factory workers, who each perform simple tasks on a line, resulting in the complex product. Hence, complex labour is a multiple of simple labour.
You need to construe in terms of Hegelian dialectic.
I don’t see what everyone is on about here and in the previous video’s comments. The audio is fine. Even when you play it 2x speed, it’s perfectly intelligible!
Agree!
And opening my eyes …… thank you for your comment. Miss jenny
If you think this makes sense get a little closer to these people. They have a long and consistent history of shooting useful idiots like you in the head.
Just give it time, stupid. You’ll get Yezhoved yet, comrade!
Could I translate
Why waste your time? Of much greater use would be for you to read & translate Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.
@@stephaneg.8623 Lol no
@@shutdownexecute3936 You realize it's only interesting to read Marx for historical reasons right? Same reasons someone would read Mein Kampf... it's to understand why people read it and why it made them do the terrible things they did... there's no actual value or truth to be found in Marx's writings...all of his rambling theories have been completely debunked either by economists or history. You can't fault Marx for thinking what he did 100 years ago, but to not realize 100 years later with the information you have today that it was all wrong is being willfully ignorant.
@@stephaneg.8623 None of it has been debunked, absolutely none of it, and if anything the passage of time since his death has only proven him right, more undeniably so with every passing day under capitalism. You don’t even *know* what “debunked” concepts you’re specifically referring to, because let’s be honest, you’ve never read Capital, and you’ve never read any other Marxist theory. I doubt you could accurately define socialism, let alone historical and dialectical materialism or the difference (and relationship) between socialism and communism.
Before you compare Capital to Mein Kampf, try to actually read it. I don’t know a single working-class person who has managed to read through Capital and NOT see capitalism for what it truly is- inherently and fundamentally undemocratic. Socialism is democracy and democracy is socialism, but I’m sure you thought something more along the lines of “socialism is when the government does stuff,” “socialism is when welfare,” or “socialism is when no market.”
Actually read the book before confidently passing judgement on it. That’s got to be the definition of unearned confidence.
@@shutdownexecute3936 All of it has been proven wrong. There isn't a single chapter that isn't wrong. His theory of value is clearly wrong, economists have proven that. His basic premise is wrong, his idea of "society under a capitalist mode of production" implies that it's an option...capitalism isn't an option, it's reality, it's how people survive and thrive. What do you get in a communist country? A few privileged leaders, and a while mass of starting people who use capitalism to at least survive. There's no choice, either you embrace it and everyone benefits, or you restrict it so only the marxist leaders benefit.
starts at 5:35
Again thank you for making these available
Now that I'm reading capital vol 1 after years of it collecting dust, i'm so excited by these talks. I would love to see them live and re-read with Professor Harvey. Any chance of a 2021 Zoom rendition?
Thank you for this content
Do you know where I can find the dialectic handout referenced in the lecture? Thanks!
It is in the description
At 27:08 , is 'Absolute Surplus Value' the same thing as 'Abstract Surplus Value'?
1:05:50
*Drugi paradoks, że produkując złoto jako towar wykonany pracą konkretną zatraca się z widoku że jako ekwiwalent wartości złoto charakteryzuje pracę abstrakcyją*
I'm trying to understand the Dialectical Process of the image at 27:20 and I just can't go through the logic. I feel like I'm on the cusp of it, but it feels just too pared down, and I don't feel like I understand half of it because of that. Is there any explanatory writeup for it?
Think of the concept of emergence. Each concept at each stage is broken down into opposites. These seem to be in contradiction along the lines of quality and quantity. However, as a process they lead to a new form (a unity) of both of those previous elements. Like h2O. This then possesses its OWN ‘unique’ features. And these features continually provide a feedback into the system as a whole. These feedback loops over time are governed by certain ‘laws’ or inherent features which guide their movement.
Also, in terms of physical science. Physiology is not histology, histology is not anatomy, anatomy is not biology. Each has its own unit of analysis, but nevertheless a ‘common’ feature to all. However, they are not all governed by the same exact laws. They are context dependent. I don’t know if I helped you or confused you. Hahaha, sorry if I did
It's a form of analysis called dialectical materialism. The basic idea is that things are generally best understood in terms of their internal contradictions, as opposed to seeing them as something separate and static. What we see in this graph is how Marx exposes the internal contradiction of a concept, then he shows how that contradiction is resolved. What emerges from that is a new concept, which has internal contradictions of it's own. These are then exposed and resolved into a new concept again &c.
Red Menace did an episode on Mao's On Contradiction which really helped me grasp this idea:
czcams.com/video/H-M1yiPX3AA/video.html
34:05 wealth = amount of use-value you can command
1:37:37 Prof Harvey skips over the religious part a bit. (From the bottom of Pg. 172).
What Marx is saying here is that Protestant Christianity and its religious outlook is particularly suited to the social relation of commodity production. The Asiatic, and Classical-antique modes of production properly treated products as commodities only between polities rather than within them, and these modes of production were far more transparent.
This is concept further elucidated by Max Weber in _The Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism_ , and borne out in reality by J.D. Rockefeller and his involvement in the Interchurch Movement of 1919-1920.
This is another one of those 'doors' that Marx opens, as referred to by Prof. Harvey in the hallway-door analogy at around 30:34
Eric Fromm also has done good work on this.
7:30 Socially necesary labor time means nothing if...not use value and exchange value
42:00 i really don't know... wasn't the gift maily the low wages? not saying that a work culture and ethic didn't help, but was it really the main factor?
I mean sure, a specific type of labor (factory labor) is more valued in the US compared to china, hence more expensive and that sets the conditions. that's already a good insight. But isn't that value regime determined more by a lack of alternatives than a particular work ethic or history?
1:04:00
*Złoto jako występuje jako towar a jednocześnie reprezenutuje wartość. Jest to paradoks. Ale z drugiej strony jakby nie było towaru złota to wartość nie mogłaby by być zaprezentowana. Z trzeciej strony towar (złoto) ukrywa iż wartość jest realacją społeczną jaką jest wartość(społecznie niezbędny czas pracy)*
I always find to be more persuasive and authentic whenever a non-Marxist articulate the narrative of Marxism evident in Isaiah Berlin's writing on Marx's biography except, of course, in the exposition of Balibar. And yes, Harvey, yet I don't know what his political and ideological affiliations are.
57:00
*Wzrost produktywności paradoksalnie pomaga kapitalistom obniżać pensję pracowników a jednocześnie za tą pensję pracownicy mogą kupić więcej towarów - są więc better off. Wartość ich pracy jednak przeszła do kapitalisty a wyzysk się zwiększył. Wartość się zmniejsza a zwiększa się bogactwo ludzi. Osoby takie nie myślą o relacji wartości w stosunku do bogactwa*
38:00
*Odpowiedź dlaczego apple nie upadło - Foxkonn itd*
Very enlightening for social scientists working along the line of Marxian approach
1:23:00 bookmark
49:00 skilled labor market and non skilled
14:15
*Pieniądz jako uniwersalna forma wartości*
bookmark 39:33
Even gold can lose its value if circumstances change such as bejng stuck in a desert.
1:25:10 He spilled the tea. And I then I spilled mine. 😂
17:00
Deng definitely did read capital, and understood the risks of allowing private investment haha. He wrote about it
Deng took the risk because it was the only way for China to develop..
And he has been right so far.
@@annilator3000 Every socialist country allows private investment, no? China, DPRK, Vietnam, Cuba.. And didn't both Trotsky and Stalin advocate for foreign private investment in the USSR, in the mid to late 1920's?
@@neillholley5061 Kinda. Many socialist countries have. Marxism understands that capitalism is a stage of human societal development. Socialism is generally supposed to develop after a capitalist system has industrialised its society. Or, perhaps more broadly, transitioned the society away from a feudal system.
However, most of these countries were semi-feudal backwaters where capitalism hadn't established itself properly. The DPRK can be an exception as when it gained independence it got the industrial base built up by Imperial Japan in Korea.
To facilitate the transition to socialism, most of these countries attempted some form or another of capitalism, within a socialist framework, to build up the industrial/economic base. The Soviet Union, for example, established the New Economic Policy (NEP) after the devastation of the civil war. China accepted the Chinese domestic capitalists in the revolution, and later opened up the economy more but advocating that the market be contained like a bird in a cage.
It's not that every socialist country allows private investment. Socialist countries develop their socialist systems, and want to reach a stage where the capitalist system is abolished, both internally and externally. But since each socialist country doesn't exist in isolation, in a closed system, in its own universe, the external conditions the internal and vice versa. It cannot simply completely abolish any vestiges of capital internally whenever it wants to. Socialist countries can be pragmatic and work with capital, or work against it depending on the general conditions it faces. Remember, most of the world is capitalist, and even hostile at times, so working with them is sometimes necessary.
@@pashico7082 Thanks. So capitalism will be abolished when class is abolished?
And so abolishing class, creates socialism? And then abolishing exchange value, marks the end of socialism and the beginning of communism?
@@neillholley5061 Not exactly. First, "socialism" and "communism" should be defined.
Socialism is a society where the means of production are publicly owned and controlled. In what way? There are many ways. It can be the directly controlled by the workers via a cooperative, or elected councils, or through a state, or whatever else you can think of.
Generally, a country can be identified as socialist if it has established such an economy, but also probably more importantly a "dictatorship of the proletariat". No, it's not a literal dictatorship with a cartoon villain. Dictatorship in this sense simply means the class who controls the state. In a capitalist society, the state is controlled by the ruling class, the capitalist class, and is therefore called a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". In a socialist society, the working class, aka the proletariat, is the ruling class.
HOWEVER, as you can see, there still are class distinctions. Class struggle continues in a socialist society. The proletarian state has to protect itself from regressing to capitalism and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, like what happened with the dissolution of the USSR. It can be said that class struggle is aggravated in socialism
As for communism. It is a stateless, money-less, and classless society. Class is abolished in communism. As for exchange value, money is its common representation. It is important to note, however, that as socialism develops, the economy moves away from exchange value and puts greater emphasis on use value, therefore that transition starts in socialism, with its end likely being in communism, so you got that basically right.
Please note that I don't have all the answers, and there are people who can explain such things way better than me. If you have discord, I recommend joining the server of The Deprogram and asking questions there.
1:29:44 What a chad.
Excellent
48:00
can you guys normalize the audio on the video? They're awfully quiet which make it difficult to listen to. Subtitles would be great too
Hi! We have tried to fix the audio for our Podcast from this event. Please check us out on Spotify/Itunes or regular RSS feed.
Subtitles seem to work for me using the CZcams functionality
There can never be a definitive interpretation of Marx. The ocean of scholarly writings prove it although i believe he is merely second to Kant.
bm 55:12
55
Any representation of Marx is always Interpretation; hence, modification.
The people's forum NYC should find a real sound technician.
I still do not understand the calculation of abstract value
Nor the definition if there is to be one
I've only read chap1 so i maybe wrong.
What I understand is that you cannot really calculate abstract value. Smith and co devoted their study to calculating exchange value which Marx thought of as not worth it. Marx assigned "value" is something that is inherent in a commodity which comes into play in the exchange process as exchange value. Value is more fundamental than exchange value. Both are in the abstract
@@ppdashing what is ur age..
I just wanted to compare mine with of yours as we are reading first time the Capital...
@@ppdashingThat's because the value we attach to a commodity is relative.
It's not live couldn't you just cut the first 5 minutes
?
It was live when it was put up
Marx was a globohomo
It's crazy to realize now how poorly Marx's ideas map on to reality. Talented writter but sadly of only fiction.
😂 beleza mano
Sure sure, that is why you see in most capitalist countries the rise in state and household debt, rise in the inequality, rise in the conflicts around the world under different "premises", massive lay-offs, elimination of social securities of workers, increases on immigrations in search of work and cheap labor forces, etc.
Did I miss anything pal? All of that clearly indicates that his ideas do not map to reality, right....
what planet are you on