Marx Engels Reader
Important Quote
"But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience"
Labor Power definition
"By labor power or capacity for labor is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description" -Pg 336
Ricardo's theory of excess supply in a market as described by Marx
"Could there be a more childish argument? It runs like this: more of a particular commodity may be produced than can be consumed of it; but this cannot apply to all commodities at the same time. What does Marx say is flawed in this: "If over-production could only occur when all the members of a nation had satisfied even their most urgent needs, there could never, in the history of bourgeois society up to now, have been a state of general over-production or even of partial overproduction"
More effects of the Bourgeoisie
"It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and has concentrated property into few hands"
What is the difference in value of the coat and the linen
"It is owing to the fact that the linen contains only half as much labor as the coat, and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labor power must have been expended during twice the time necessary for the production of the former" - Pg 311
"How is the magnitude of this 'value' to be measured?"
"Plainly, by the quantity of the value creating substance, THE LABOR, contained in the article. the quantity of labor is measured by its duration, and labor time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours" - Pg 306
Important: What was the immediate consequence of the division of labor between various towns
"Rise of manufacturers" - Pg 180
The composition of capital definition
"The composition of capital is to be understood in a twofold sense. On the side of value, it is determined by the proportion in which it is divided into constant capital or value of the means of production"
What is one of the starting points of the proletariat fighting the bourgeoisie
"The workers begin to form trade unions against the bourgeoisie; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages ... here and there the contest breaks out into riots" -Pg 480
What is the mission of the proletariats
"To destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property" - Pg 482
Very Important What does over-production of capital mean?
"Too great a part of the product is intented not for consumption as revenue, but FOR MAKING MORE MONEY (for accumulation): not to satisfy the personal needs of its owner but to give him money, abstract social riches and capital, more power over the labor of others" -Pg 464 Ricardo disagrees with this
What is the town
"administration, police, taxes, etc"
Important: What balances the relative surplus population
"an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e, on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital" - Pg 431
What is the relative surplus population
"every laborer belongs to it during the time when he is only partially employed or wholly unemployed"
Average amount of time to produce a commodity aka the
"socially necessary labor-time."
The Proletariat
"the modern working class, developed - a class of laborers who love only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital" - Pg 479
Alienation
"the process whereby people become foreign to the world they are living in"
Marx defines trade as
"the production of commodities and their circulation in its developed form."
Why can manufacturing not be sustainable without protection
"the slightest change takes place in other countries, it can lose its market and be ruined" Can easily be destroyed
"We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labor power. Like all others is has a value. How is that value determined?"
-"by the labor time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction of this specific article" -"value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the laborer"
The proletariat is a slave to the ____
-Bourgeoisie class -Bourgeoisie state -The machines -The individual Bourgeoisie manufacturer
Modern Work is insecure
-Capatilism makes people expendible (they can be let go when prices rise) -We fear of being let go -Communism offers us a constant place in the world
Communism and family
-Commies want to do away with present familial relations, to stop the exploitation (capital/private gain) of children by their parents
Negative Effects of the development of the Bourgeoise class (the class that owns the means of production)
-Eliminated the relationships that bound people to their superiors, and now all remaining relations between men are characterized by self-interest alone. -Religious fervor, chivalry and sentimentalism have all been sacrificed. -Personal worth is now measured by exchange value -Only freedom is that of Free Trade -Family relations have lost their veil of sentimentality and have been reduced to pure money relations
Immediate goal of the Proletariat
-Formation of the proletariat into a class -Overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy -Conquest of political power by the proletariat -Abolition of Private Property
Conditions for Labor-Power to be a commodity
-Individual must be selling his own labor as a commodity (must own his own person)
Very important context: Marx's theory should be understood in the context of the hardships suffered by 19th-century workers in England, France and Germany
-Industrial Revolution put many workers in the lower class -As a result many lived in poverty, had terrible working conditions, and had little political representation
What is Marx commenting on with the Bourgeoisie in his text
-It is deteriorating -Over production is threatening bourgeoisie's existence
Modern Work has been alienated
-Labor has made people externalize whats good inside of them -Modern jobs are highly specialized >>> no true sense of contribition to world -You feel alienated
The division of labor could lead to
-Less skillful workers -Repetitive Work -Lack of enthusiasm for work -Separation of commercial from industrial labor
Characteristics of the town
-Limited commerce/population = No higher division of labor because everyone had to be "versed in a whole round of tasks, had to be able to make everything that was to be made with his tools" -"Every man who wished to become a master had to be proficient in the whole of his craft" - Pg 178
Rebuttals to communism and counters to those arguments
-No one will work if private property is abolished >>>>>Marx says bourgeois society should have been overcome with laziness long ago then -Communism will destroy all intellectual products. >>>> The disappearance of "class culture" is not the same thing as the disappearance of all culture.
What was Marx's prediction with the industrial revolution
-People would be set free and work less because machines would be more productive -Reality: -machines maximized profits and helped capitalist -Alienated people from their jobs
"By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life"
-Pg 150
"Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence...."
-Pg 150
"When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results"
-Pg 155
"With the division of labor ... [which] is based on the natural division of labor in the family and the separation of society into individual families opposed to one another, is given simultaneously the distribution and indeed the unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative, of labor and its products, hence property"
-Pg 159
Insanely important quote: "For as soon as the distribution of labor comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepard, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow"
-Pg 160
"Communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once: and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism"
-Pg 162
"whereas for the real communist it is a question of overthrowing the existing state of things"
-Pg 168
"Slavery cannot be abolished without the steam engine and the mule and the spinning jenny"
-Pg 169
Very important quote: "The fight is of local importance"
-Pg 169
"Incidentally, when we concevie things thus, as they really are and happened, every profound philosophical problem is resolved, as will be seen even more clearly later, quite simply into an empirical fact"
-Pg 170
VERY IMPORTANT QUOTE: "The class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force" "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production"
-Pg 172
"The greatest division of material and mental labor is the separation of town and country"
-Pg 176
"The expansion of trade and manufacture accelerated the accumulation of movable capital" movable capital = private property ???????
-Pg 182
"Competition soon compelled every country that wished to retain its historical role to protect its manufactures by renewed customs regulations"
-Pg 185
"In civil law the existing property relationships are declared to be the result of the general will"
-Pg 188
Important: "Whenever, through the development of industry and commerce, new forms of intercourse have been evolved (insurance companies etc) the law has always been compelled to admit them among the modes of acquiring property"
-Pg 188
"Private property was a necessity for certain industrial stages"
-Pg 189
"Communism differs from all previous movements in that ... it strips [men] of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals"
-Pg 193
"Taking is further determined by the object taken. A banker's fortune consisting of paper cannot be taken at all without the taker's submitting to the conditions of production and intercourse of the country taken."
-Pg 196
VERY IMPORTANT QUOTE: "In the real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association"
-Pg 197
"The division between the personal and the class individual ... appears only with the emergence of the class, which is itself a product of the bourgeoise"
-Pg 199
"In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State"
-Pg 200
"Use value become a reality only by use or consumption"
-Pg 303
"As use values, commodities are, above all, of different QUALITIES, but as exchange values they are merely different QUANTITIES"
-Pg 305
"We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labor SOCIALLY NECESSARY, or the labor time socially necessary for its production"
-Pg 306
"The greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labor time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labor crystallized in that article and the less is its value; and vice versa Second part: "The value of a commodity, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labor incorporated in it"
-Pg 307
Very important quote: "The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant, if the labor time required for its production also remained constant."
-Pg 307 This means that as production methods increase in efficiency, values of commodities should go down
"Lastly nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labor contained in it, the labor does not count as labor. and therefore creates no value"
-Pg 308
"An increase in the quantity of use values is an increase of material wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed, with one coat only one man. Nevertheless, an increased quantity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of its value"
-Pg 312
"The value of the linen is represented as relative value, or appears in relative form. The coat officiates as equivalent or appears in equivalent form"
-Pg 314
Important: "Human labor, creates value, but is not itself value. It becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in the form of some object. In order to express the value of the linen as a congelation of human labor, that value must be expressed as having objective existence, as being a something materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something common to the linen and all other commodities."
-Pg 316
"The value form must therefore not only express value generally, but also value in definite quality."
-Pg 318
"The circulation of commodities is the starting point of capital"
-Pg 329
"The simple circulation (C-M-C) of commodities begins with a sale and ends with a purchase, while the circulation of money as capital (M-C-M) begins with a purchase and ends with a sale"
-Pg 330
Example of M-C-M: "If I purchase 2,000 lbs of cotton for $100 and resell the 2,000 lbs of cotton for $110, I have in fact exchanged $100 for $110, money for money"
-Pg 330
"As the conscious representative of this movement, the possessor of money becomes a capitalist"
-Pg 334
"Capital is money: Capital is commodities"
-Pg 334
M-C-M' is therefore in reality the general formula of capital as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circulation"
-Pg 336
"In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other than labor power, he must of course have the means of production, as raw material, implements, etc. Not boots can be made without leather, He requires also the means of subsistence"
-Pg 337
Individual whose labor power is being sold as a commodity, he must "be the untrammeled owner of his capacity for labor i.e of his person"
-Pg 337
"The minimum limit of the value of labor power is determined by the value of the commodities"
-Pg 342
"Labor is a process in which both man and nature participate"
-Pg 346
"A machine which does not serve the purposes of labor is useless"
-Pg 348
"A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may yet serve as raw material for a further product, as grapes when they become the raw material for wine"
-Pg 348
"The process of production, considered on the one hand as the unity of the labor process and the process of creating value, is production of commodities; considered on the other hand as the unity of the labor process and the process of producing surplus value, it is the capitalist process of production"
-Pg 360
"We therefore save ourselves a superfluous operation and simplify our analysis by the assumption that the labor of the workman employed by the capitalist is unskilled average labor"
-Pg 361 The difference in surplus values results only from a quantitative excess of labor
"In this chapter we consider the influence of growth of capital on the lot of the laboring class"
-Pg 419
"The rise of wages therefore is confined within the limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalistic system but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale"
-Pg 421
Important quote: "As in religion man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand"
-Pg 422
Important quote: "With the growth of total capital, its variable constituent or the labor incorporated in it, also does increase, but in a constantly diminishing proportion"
-Pg 422
"Up to this point it has been assumed that the increase or diminution of the variable capital corresponds rigidly with the increase or diminution of the number of laborers employed"
-Pg 424
"It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labor out of a SMALLER, rather than a greater number of laborers, if the cost is about the same"
-Pg 425
VERY IMPORTANT QUOTE: "Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle"
-Pg 426
"The industrial reserve army, during periods of stagnation and average prosperity, weighs down the active labor army"
-Pg 427
"Pauperism is the hospital of the active labor army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army"
-Pg 429
"all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborer"
-Pg 430
"Everyone sells first of all in order to sell, that is to say in order to transform commodities into money"
-Pg 446
Important: "In the crises there arises the very situation in which he cannot sell or can only sell below the cost-price or must even sell at a positive loss"
-Pg 446
Important: "No crisis can exist unless the sale and purchase are separated from one another and come into conflict (C-M or M-C)"
-Pg 454
"The crisis occurs not only bc the commodity is unsaleable but bc it is not sale-able within a particular period of time... this is the characteristic form of money crisis"
-Pg 456
"Over-production of PRODUCTS and overproduction of COMMODITIES are two entirely different things"
-Pg 459
The creation of the bourgeoisie "... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'"
-Pg 475
"Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class."
-Pg 475 The bourgeoisie was climbing in rank
"The bourgeoisie cannot exist w/o constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production"
-Pg 476
"In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations"
-Pg 476 This means that nations will have to adapt to Bourgeoisie classes methods
"In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production"
-Pg 478
The bourgeoisie is like a sorcerer who can no longer "control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."
-Pg 478
"Now and then the workers (proletariat) are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers."
-Pg 481
"What the bourgeoisie produces above all is its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable"
-Pg 483
"In a sense the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property"
-Pg 484
"The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally but the abolition of bourgeoise property"
-Pg 484
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletariats have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!"
-Pg 500
MARX reserve army of labor
-Referred to unemployed and underemployed in workforce of capitalism -Necessary part of capitalism -It is referred to as an army because it is a type of hierarchy that puts capitalists at top and enlists everyone else
What has the Bourgeoise done in its short 100 year lifetime
-Subjection of nature's forces of man -Machinery -Application of chem to industry and agriculture -Cleared whole continents for cultivation
What happens to the proletariat with the development of industry
-They increase in number -Their strength grows
Crises in capatilsm
-We produce too much compared to our needs -Machines are so advanced that less people need to work
Context of the book
-Written by Engels and Marx (Communist League) -
C-M-C
-formula for direct form of circulation of commodities -money is the middle man -End goal = consumption/buy a use-value good and satisfy my needs and wants -Selling in order to buy
M-C-M'
-formula of capitalism -we buy in order to sell -money an end on itself -end goal is to make profit (more money than started with = M') >>>>>> "surplus value" -"buying in order to sell." -Driven by exchange value
Steps in the communist revolution
-the abolition of ownership of land; -the institution of a heavy progressive or graduated income tax; -the abolition of all inheritance rights; -the confiscation of emigrants' and rebels' property, making all people liable to labor; -State centralization of credit; -State centralization of communication and transportation; -State appropriation of factories, -the gradual combination of agriculture and manufacturing industries, -the elimination of the distinctions between town and country, -the establishment of free education for children.
Four types of alienation
1) Alienation of laborers from products: people are paid less than the value of what they make (can't afford Gucci belt if you make it) 2) Alienation of laborers from laboring: laborers are not working on their own terms (forced) 3) Alienation of laborers from other laborers: competition between different ethnic groups 4) Alienation of laborers from their Gattungswesen: you produce value but you're prevented from sharing it (Marx said this not right)
"The more the division of labor develops and accumulation grows, the sharper are the forms that this process of differentiation assumes" - Pg 190 What is the differentiation referring to
1) Conditions of labor 2) Tools and materials 3) Accumulation of capital among different owners 4) Different forms of property
Reactionary socialism groups
1) Feudal Socialists 2) Petty-Bourgeois Socialists 3) The German, or "True" Socialists all of these groups fight against the rise of the bourgeoisie and modern Industry
What measures does the system of capitalism have to fight against falling profits
1) Marking up prices 2) Reduce wages 3) Outsource to foreign country 4) See monopolies 5) Price fixing
Two things needed to make a product
1) Means of production 2) Labor
Three subsets of communism in this section
1) Reactionary Socialism 2) Conservative, or Bourgeois, socialism 3) Critical-Utopian socialism and communism
The whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history is confined to the following three efforts - Pg 175
1) Separate the ideas of those ruling for empirical reasons (those based on a self evident truth or without proof) 2) Bring order to these rules 3) "Self-Consciousness"
What are the two types of division of labor
1) Social division 2) Economic division
"the possibility of crisis is indicated in the metamorphosis of the commodity like this:
1) The commodity must be transformed into money (C-M) >>>> if not done then crises can arise 2) Once passing the difficulty of being transformed into money it can be sold (M-C) >>>>> if not completed then crises can arise *****Crises results from the impossibility to sell*****
What is the first three historical acts
1. The "production of the means" to satisfy our needs of hunger and thirst 2. Satisfaction of our first needs for hunger and thirst create new needs
What are the various stages in the division of labor (different forms of ownership)
1st Stage is Tribal = underdeveloped society w fishing and hunting 2nd Stage is Ancient Communal and State ownership = society starts forming a city by agreement or conquest 3rd Form is feudal or estate property = lots of land w serf labor
What does Ricardo forget about selling?
A person may sell in order to pay
An expansion of a bourgeoisie class requires other nations to _____
Adapt to the methods of the bourgeoisie
Marx's expansion on Hegel (conscious of spirit)
As man becomes conscious of himself as spirit, the material world causes him to feel increasingly alienated from himself. Escape from this alienation requires a revolution
How is one's class determined
As they are related to the means of production
Why does no one criticize Hegel
Because everyone depends on him so much
"For Marx it is not enough to claim that people create their own images, ideologies and so forth... For Marx in "The German Ideology" people's ideas and ideologies are conditioned by the historical formation of powers of production and relations of production"
Blog
Selling to buy
C-M-C
Means of Production examples
Camera, mic, lighting, editing software etc
Marx was a critique of
Capitalism
What does surplus value have to do with the fall of capitalism
Capitalism exploits worker's surplus value and then the capitalist gets to keep the extra value, it cannot be sustainable
Workers get paid little while _____ get paid a lot
Capitalists -They are stealing from its working class
Valorization process
Creation of value
Over time labor will become more _____ & ______
Divided and specified
What do you need to sustain your labor power
Everyday essentials like shelter and food
What is the first premise of all human history
Existence of living human individuals >>>>> so we must observe how humans physically organize themselves and how they relate to the rest of nature
Profit leads to
Exploitation
What did the bourgeoisie stem out of
Feudal society not being able to keep up with increasing productive forces
Born in
Germany
The German Ideology consistently presents a vision of this struggle as a conflict that must eventually be resolved through the act of revolution.
GradeSaver
The German Ideology is an ideology of revolution through the unification of the workers of the world.
GradeSaver
World history has been a struggle between the classes of the haves and the have-nots.
GradeSaver
Gattungswesen
Human are capable of making or shaping their own nature to some extent
Where is labor power exclusive to
Humans
How is labor measured
In time (minutes/hours)
Why is an industrial reserve army necessary
In times of overproduction the unemployed labor force is needed
Relative surplus population is equivalent to
Industrial reserve army
What usually precedes a crises
Inflation in prices of all articles of capitalist production
How is a crises general
It affects the principal commercial goods
Where is private property exist and where does it have the potential to NOT exist
It exists in: 1) In industrie extractive it coincides with labor 2) Small industry 3) Agricultural industry Potential to NOT exist in: 1) Big industry
What is the price of a commodity (also labor)
It is equal to the cost of production
How is surplus created
Labor
Where does Labor-Power's value come from?
Labor-power's value comes from the amount of labor-time needed to produce and reproduce itself.
Buying to Sell
M-C-M
IMPORTANT SPARKNOTES
Marx says that he must explain how someone can buy commodities at their value, sell them at their value, and also make a profit. The change in value cannot occur in the money itself, or in the resale of the commodity. Rather, the change must occur in the first act of circulation (Money to Commodity, or M-C). The commodity's use-value must be a source of value whose consumption is a creation of value. This occurs in the case of labor-power.
Ideas are products of the _____
Material World
In "The German Ideology" it is reality which creates the ______, and not the other way around.
Mind
Is money a commodity in itself
NO
Labor
Only thing that can increase the VALUE of what you have (lame piece of wood >>>> labor applied and you carve it and now you've increased its value)
Under-production in one field can lead to
Over-production in another
What develops faster than population and wealth
Pauperism
Civil law develops simultaneously with
Private property
Marx said the introduction of more machines would reduce _____
Profits
What are the two opposing classes
Proletariat (Working class) & the Bourgeoise (Owns the means of production)
"Marx thought society would follow an inevitable progress towards communism, as the relations of the working classes to the means of production changes"
Quote Also this is historical materialism
Capital Volume 1
STARTS NOW
Chapter 6: The Buying and Selling of Labor Power
STARTS NOW
Chapter IV of Capital: The General Formula for Capital
STARTS NOW
Manifesto of the Communist Party
STARTS NOW
Theories of Surplus: Crises Theory Pg 443-501
STARTS NOW
Town vs Country
Separation between production and commerce >>>>> leads to a rise in the significance of trade
How important is labor power to Marx
So important because it is the only commodity that can increase the value of what you have
What has been a result of increasing activity in world historical activity
Society has become "enslaved under a power alien"
Commercial crises, due, ironically, to over-production, are threatening the existence of bourgeois society. Productive forces are now fettered by bourgeois society, and these crises represent this tension. Yet in attempting to remedy these crises, the bourgeoisie simply cause new and more extensive crises to emerge, and diminish their ability to prevent future ones. Thus, the weapons by which the bourgeoisie overcame feudalism are now being turned on the bourgeoisie themselves.
Sparknotes
The total value of the product is equal to the total amount of labor put into it.
Sparknotes
The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor "materialized in its use-value." Thus, we must see how much labor-time is objectified in it.
Sparknotes
Chapter 25 - The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation
Starts Now
Ideology in General, German Ideology in Particular - Pg 148-200, 302-361, 419-431.
Starts Now
Section 3, Socialist and Communist Literature
Starts Now
The Labor Process and the Process and the Producing Surplus-Value
Starts Now
Youtube videos on Marx
Starts Now
Consequences of Capitalism Video
Starts now
Proletariats and Communists
Starts now
The German or "True" Socialist
The "true" socialists support the interests of the petty- bourgeoisie, and thus support the status quo. They even reject class struggle
Value and price relation
The "value" of something is directly how much labor that was put into it and Marx says Prices should generally follow value (this is very general)
Relation between ideas, the material world, and division of labor
The division of labor organizes the material world and then we gain our ideas through the material world
The division of labor is similar to the ruling material class being the strong intellectual force in what way
The division of mental and material labor makes it so that "... one part appears as the thinkers of the class ... while the others attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive" - Pg 174
Sustenance and labor
The fact that half a day's labor is necessary to keep a worker alive does not mean that he can't work more than this. The capitalist takes advantage of this distinction. The capitalist pays the value of a day's labor, and therefore has it for the day. However, let's say sustenance for the laborer only costs a half-day's labor. Here, the value of a day's labor- power is half a day's labor, and the capitalist can pay the worker at that value. The other half-day's labor goes beyond the value of labor-power, and is therefore surplus-value. Thus, the value the work created is double what the capitalist pays for it.
"Man" - Pg 192 Who is man
The individuals who are no longer subject to the division of labor
IF a person brings a good to the market who sets the price
The person who brought the good to the market
Breaking down M-C-M C-M is equal to ________
The sale the commodity is changed back again into money
Use-Value
The usefulness of a commodity as it satisfies human needs
Surplus Value
The value that you work extra goes to the capitalist, then they can go and invest the extra value that YOU generated (exploitative)
What happens if you get machines to make items
Their value decreases because it takes less time to make things
Critical-Utopian socialism and communism
These socialists therefore looked for new social laws to create the material conditions necessary to free the proletariat.
What do history and materialism do under Feurabach
They diverge completely
What did the Conservative socialist (bourgeoisie) think of the proletariart
They want the proletariat to keep its weak role, but to stop hating the dominant bourgeoisie
Where does surplus value come from
This comes from the fact that the cost of maintaining labor-power is different than labor-power's expenditure in work. The first determines labor's exchange-value, the second determines its use-value.
Breaking down M-C-M M-C is equal to ________
This is the purchase Money is changed into a commodity
Conservative, or Bourgeois, socialism
This subset reflects the desires of a segment of the bourgeois to redress social grievances, in order to guarantee the continued existence of bourgeois society.
Meaning of this quote: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
Throughout history we see the oppressor and oppressed in constant opposition to each other.
What is the first form of property in the ancient world (middle ages)
Tribal Property
Variable capital definition
Value of labour-power (the sum total of wages)
How does capitalism usually get started
Violence or inheritance
Did Marx think we could predict class conflict
YES, we just need to study the cycles of history and we can predict future
Are laborers a commodity
Yes
Are the division of labor and private property the same thing?
Yes
Does the bourgeoisie increase politcal centralization
Yes
Are crises inevitable in capitalism
Yes they cannot be stopped
Capitalism was bad for Capitalists
Youtube
Capitalists may make us anxious or economic orientated
Youtube
Commodity
a good or service that's bought and sold Quote: "an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind."
Labor Power
a person's ability to work and produce commodities
What does Marx say about wages rising
a rise in real wages will not be sustained nor continuous
Concrete labor
a specific type of work, such as cooking
Conflict Theory
a theoretical framework in which society is viewed as composed of groups that are competing for scarce resources and classes are competing with one another
Exchange value
an assessment of the worth of something based on what it can be traded or sold for IMPORTANT: Created by people
Feudal socialists objected the bourgeoisie ...
because they were a threat to their way of life
Real private property
began with movable property (slavery an community)
Marx here addresses the problem of how money is transformed into ______
capital
When would M-C-M be absurd and pointless
exchanging "two equal sums of money, $100 for $100"
Laborers do not acquire any property through their labor. Rather, the "property" or capital they produce serves to _____
exploit them.
Marx details the idea behind the exchange-value of the coat and the linen:
he explains that because the coat requires extra labor of tailoring, "the linen contains only half as much labor as the coat." Thus, the linen requires more units to match the worth of the coat.
Diminution
lessening; reduction in size
Man's consciousness changes with the conditions of his ________ existence.
material
The composition of capital is both
material and social
According to Marx, various positions and beliefs held by people, be it religious, moral and so on, are created and conditioned by their _______
material circumstances
The value of a commodity
measured in the socially necessary (or average) amount of time it takes to produce it.
Summary Services from Shmoop/Sparknotes
starts now
Say's Law
supply creates its own demand
Historical Materialism
the assumption that material forces are the prime movers of history and politics; a key philosophical tenet of Marxism
Commodity Fetishism
the perception of the social relationships involved in production, not as relationships among people, but as economic relationships among the money and commodities exchanged in market trade
Abstract labor
the quantitative measurement of the amount of time any kind of work takes
Labor to Marx can also be defined as
the substance of value
Labor Theory of Value
the value of a good is determined solely by the amount of labor that goes into it under NORMAL CONDITIONS (if you slack off and take longer, it doesn't make product more valuable)
The first step in the working class' revolution is ________
to make the proletariat the ruling class. It will use its political power to seize all capital from the bourgeoisie and to centralize all instruments of production under the auspices of the State
The more labor it takes to make something then the more _____ this item will be
valuable
The Petty- Bourgeois Socialists
were a class that saw it would eventually lose its separate status and become part of the proletariat
When you go to work
you rent out your labor power
