Marx's Das Kapital for beginners

145 Pages·2012·8.93 MB·English

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MARX’S DAS KAPITAL MMAARRXX’’SS DDAASS KKAAPPIITTAALL
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F O R B E G I N N E R S F O R B E G I N N E R S
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MICHAEL WAYNE
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Marx’s DasKapitalcannot be put into a box marked “economics.” It is a P ILLUSTRATIONS BY
work of politics, history, economics, philosophy and even in places, I
T
SUNGYOON CHOI
literature (yes Marx’s style is that rich and evocative). Marx’s Das Kapital A
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For Beginners is an introduction to the Marxist critique of capitalist
production and its consequences for a whole range of social activities such
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as politics, media, education and religion. Das Kapitalis not a critique of
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a particular capitalist system in a particular country at a particular time.

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Rather, Marx’s aim was to identify the essential features that define
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capitalism, in whatever country it develops and in whatever historical G
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period. For this reason, Das Kapitalis necessarily a fairly general, abstract N
analysis. As a result, it can be fairly difficult to read and comprehend. At N
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the same time, understanding Das Kapitalis crucial for mastering Marx’s R
insights to capitalism. S®
Marx’s Das Kapital For Beginnersoffers an accessible path through Marx’s
arguments and his key questions: What is a commodity? Where does wealth
come from? What is ‘value’? What happens to work under capitalism? Why
is crisis part of capitalism’s DNA? And what happens to our consciousness,
our very perceptions of reality and our ways of thinking and feeling under
capitalism? Understanding and learning from Marx’s work has taken on a
fresh urgency as questions about the sustainability of the capitalist system
in today’s global economy intensify.
Michael Wayne is a Professor in Screen Media at Brunel University in London. He has
written widely on Marxist cultural theory, film, television and the media.
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HISTORY / ECONOMICS
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MARX’S DAS KAPITAL
F O R B E G I N N E R S
®
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MARX’S DAS KAPITAL
F O R B E G I N N E R S
®
MICHAEL WAYNE
BY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
SUNGYOON CHOI
®FOR BEGINNERS®
an imprint of Steerforth Press
Hanover, New Hampshire
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For Beginners LLC
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www.forbeginnersbooks.com
Text ©2012 Michael Wayne
Illustrations ©2012 Sungyoon Choi
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contents
introduction
1
chapter one The Commodity
3
chapter two The Exchange of Commodities
15
chapter three Circulation and the Buying of Labor-Power
25
chapter four Value
43
chapter five Work Under Capitalism
59
chapter six Reproduction and Crises
78
chapter seven Commodity Fetishism and Ideology
109
chapter eight After Capitalism?
130
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introduction
Karl Marx
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital,Volume I, was first published in 1867. It
brought together in an original way more than twenty years of think-
ing by Marx about capitalism.
Das Kapital is a critique of capitalism. It is not this or that par-
ticular example of capitalism that is his target. Instead Marx want-
ed to identify the essential features that make capitalism capitalism,
in whatever country it develops in and in whatever historical peri-
od. For this reason, Das Kapital is necessarily a fairly general, ab-
stract analysis – one of the reasons why it can be a difficult read.
Another reason is that its penetrating critique of capitalism is at-
tacking the very system that you, dear reader, and I, author of these
words, have grown up in, become socialized within. So it is some-
times a quite counterintuitive read in that it does not accept the many
commonsense assumptions we have and which the institutions sur-
rounding us usually reproduce.
Capitalism is a social and economic system that has been develop-
ing and maturing for approximately 400 years. Since the publication
of Das Kapital, capitalism has tried to prove Marx’s critique wrong
or irrelevant, but it continues to fashion tools for each new genera-
tion wanting to understand the world. Today, capitalism’s presence
around the globe is more or less complete, its dominance almost undis-
puted. So why do we need to read Marx’s book anymore?
Because most people have at least an inkling that all is not right with
the world. And many people have more than an inkling that there are
very large problems confronting the human race. Marx’s Das Kapital
provides the most systematic account for why that might be the case.
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Das Kapitalcannot be or should not be put in a box marked “eco-
nomics.” It is a work of politics, history, economics, sociology, phi-
losophy and even at times literature (yes, Marx’s style can be that rich
and evocative). It even contains early examples of Marxist literary crit-
icism. Marx often cites great authors such as Shakespeare, Goethe
and Balzac to illustrate issues to do with the nature of money.
For example, when he is considering how the bourgeoisie (and
the capitalist system more broadly) is torn between the passion to
accumulate money and the desire to enjoy the fruits of that wealth,
he cites the protagonist of Goethe’s tragic play Faustas the very im-
age of bourgeois man:
Two souls, alas, do dwell within his breast;
The one is ever parting from the other.
As we shall see, two souls forever parting from each other (the
divided human being split by conflicting imperatives) is a typical mo-
tif in Marx’s account of capitalism.
Marx’s approach here is revealing of his
method overall. He tends to read politics,
economics, religion, philosophy and in this
example literature for their HIDDEN
social content.
The main object of his inquiry in Das
Kapitalis why and how economic cat-
egories such as money, profit, capital
and so forth actively repress the social
content which determines them. How-
ever, because these categories refer to
things that form the very tissue of our
everyday life, Das Kapitalis a capacious proj-
ect, giving us insights that go far beyond
the usual parameters of “economics.”
Das Kapitalbegins a bit like a detective
story, reconstructing what is really happen-
ing from everyday clues that appear so inno-
cent of having any story to tell. When Inspector Marx arrives on the
scene it is not even clear a crime has been committed. But it has.
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the commodity
chapter one:
Marx began his critique of capitalism with something very ordinary
and everyday. The commodity. The first words of Das Kapitalare:
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist
mode of production prevails presents itself as an im-
mense accumulation of commodities, its unit being a sin-
gle commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin
with the analysis of a commodity.
— Marx, Das Kapital
Everyone knows that a commodity is something that is bought
and sold, or traded for something else thought to be of equal worth.
And it is plain that commodities are bought and sold because they
are useful for people.
So a commodity has two sides to it. It has a use value and an ex-
change value. An exchange value expresses itself as the price at which
the commodity exchanges.
This then is our opening definition of a commodity: It is something
that is bought and sold because it is useful for people. Expressed like
this, there does not seem to be a problem. The use-value side of the
commodity and the exchange-value side seem to fit snugly together.
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing,
and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in
reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical
subtleties and theological niceties.
— Marx, Das Kapital
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