Obtain Immediately Capital: Critique Of Political Economy, Vol 1: A Critical Analysis Of Capitalist Production Narrated By Karl Marx Available In PDF
you get the primitive accumulation then you get the Linen, Then you get the Coats, Then you get the Capital, Then you Get the Labour, Then you get The Surplus Value, then you get the mechanization, then you get more Surplus Value" Tony Montana Best way to start the year is finally reading the full text of Capital Vol.
. Previously read only bits and pieces of Marx's magnus opus eclectically notably the first chapter on commodities, the second part on the transformation of money into capital, the chapters on the labor process and the rate of surplus value, and the last part on primitive accumulation.
A great work that not only lays bare the workings of capitalism but also presents a forceful argument for the overthrow of such an exploitative and destructive mode of organizing social life.
A bit daunting, especially in the first three chapters but is fairly comprehensible once you get the hang of it, Features a wonderful variety of literary styles and means of exposition too from accountingmanner description to vampire metaphors to the statistical and the journalistic, It is a very rich text which I will be sure to read again and again in the future, A mustread for all wishing to build a better world! READ THE SHIT OUT OF THIS FKN DOORSTOP, LONG LIVE SOCIALISM. Quando ouço falar de política, não sei bem do que estão a falar, mas sei que sou contra quando ouço falar de economia, fujo.
Não tenho maneira de verificar se a análise de Marx é correcta, mas é interessante: tenta examinar como pura convenção passa a ser parte da Lei Natural.
O estilo varia entre o subtil e o incivil depois uma subtil análise hegeliana vem sempre uma nota de rodapé com vários pontos exclamação sarcásticos e citações com piadas parentéticas.
A erudição com citações de obras gregas, latinas, alemãs, inglesas, francesas, italianas remata um todo artístico competente, que é muito prejudicado pela minha falta de interesse no tópico.
This is the third time I've read this book, and I'm confident there will be a fourth, fifth, and even sixth reading, This is the quintessential text for explaining how capitalism is predicated upon the rapacious exploitation of the working class,
Although the review written below contains many errors, and was written during a state of extreme inebriation, I feel no compulsion to edit it,
Fair warning, Im writing this hung over,
The first time I read this, I gave the bookstars, knowing it was astar work, but withstar writing, I was wrong. Ohso wrong. Marxs writing merely reflects his dialectical and masterly way of contemplating, and few of us can dare to grow wings and fly up to such lofty heights of his genius and acumen! Read, reflect, and reread.
Wait, then read again! Perhaps every January, a fine way to start the new year! As Marx forewarns us: “There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.
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In order to fully understand capitalism, critically, one must dive into the dialectical water of Herr Doctor Marx, All subsequent critiques of capitalism, since the publication of Das Kapital, stand atop his lofty and rounded shoulders, All apologetic attempts in favor of capitalism stand under his heel!
In order to come to grips with the capitalist mode of production, Marx lets us in on a little secret the secret of the holy trinity/commodity.
What is at once, father, son and Holy Spirit, is in fact use vale, exchange value, and value! Value is the holy spirit of capitalism, where mans social relations are reified into a congealed and objective measurement of human labor in the abstract! At heart in Marxs ontology is man as a social being, but on an appearance level, a sensory level, it is one of perennial and staggering exchanges.
Marx is no vulgar materialist as most presume, but heavily invested in the tensions between idealism and materialism, and there antimatter/matter explosions,
After the commodity is understand in all its mystical and metaphysical glory, Marx guides the reader by the hand be careful his grip is very callused and bloody and shows us where profit or surplus value comes from.
He takes Say, Smith, and Ricardo to task, it is not from prudence, or spending abstinence, or merely some ripple in supply and demand, nor is it from labor in general, but a very rare and historically necessary commodity, unfathomed by all those who tread before Herr Marx! It is the commodity of labor power.
Humankinds ability to labor, and reproduce that labor, in an intertwined market, has its own value initially a subsistence value, capable of being raised through moral struggle the value of the reproduction of labor power itself.
A good portion of the working day is spent merely meeting subsistence levels of nourishment and daily reproduction, but then there comes along that dastardly moment of working beyond the means of subsistence.
This moment is no short period, its no final hour as bourgeoisie economist frequently claim, No its in fact many hours, which is how the capitalist extracts absolute surplus value, This is where the capitalist definitively EXPLOITS the worker, The worker has no right to raise contention, hes sold his labor power, to the highest of low bidders, and the law ensures he honor this social document.
Maybe the worker can go on strike, lower the working day, and reduce some of that exploitation,
But alas, relative surplus value increased productivity in the means of production, lessening the time duration needed to provide for subsistence labor would sneak up and clandestinely exploit the worker further, without the workers awareness.
Labor theories of value, in Lockes, and Smiths time, believed and argued that the worker had a right to what he labored over and on.
His product was his. This right was rational, it was divine, and it was human, Alas, what really ended up happening is the capitalist garnered the right to expropriate the labor of someone else, via the immaterial contract he generated, with the violence of the state enforcing it, in a manner that appropriates the value of the laborers product into the capitalist own coffers.
One no longer has a right to their product one is now free and rightless, under capitalism!
What is the capitalist to do with this surplus Try as he might, he cannot spend it all on his own luxury without imploding the capitalist structure.
No, he must reinvest: “Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! Reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplusvalue, or surplusproduct into capital! Accumulation for accumulations sake, production for productions sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie.
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Thus we are left, beholden to an irrational market order, where rational agents withdraw their rationality to the invisible hand of the market, Another abstract and reified notion that mask real material and social relations, contingent upon the exploitation of the many by the few!
Now its time to read Volume II!
ENGLISH
Karl Marxs Book I of “The Capital: Critique of Political Economy” is such an acclaimed, interpreted and reviewed book, object of so many controversies over the centuries, and has motivated so many revolutions around the world, that it is impossible to review it without feeling intimidated or thinking you are committing blasphemy.
The best strategy, in this case, is to be succinct, go straight to the point, avoid clichés and thirdparty interpretations, including analyzes of the author's philosophical background, and avoid controversy.
But is it feasible to deviate from polemics when it comes to Marx It is definitely not the case, Marx's ideas, presented vigorously in this work, touch on feelings that go far beyond indifference or neutrality, Marx gives these sentiments a scientific guise he conducts a rigorous investigation, relying on solid method which does not mean immune to wellfounded criticism, and exposes it in an amazingly and surprisingly clear way.
Living in a time of great development of the capitalist system in postIndustrial Revolution England, Marx observes the profound social transformations of society and presents an economic and social theory that seeks to take into account the great complexity of the new economic system and succeeds in giving it impressive cohesion and coherence even though it has been considered superseded by many.
The fact, however, that there are still followers of his theory around the world who consider it valid gives an idea of the power of his ideas.
Book I of The Capital deals with three major themes, in a very tight summary:commoditysurplus value andsocial denunciation,
Marx sees the commodity as the fundamental unit of the capitalist phenomenon, It is the starting point of his investigation, It is responsible for the way capitalist society moves, The commodity plays a fundamental role in the structuring and stratification of this society, determines people's lives, and translates economic power relations in society,
For Marx, people's permanent search for commodities determines the movement of capitalist society, The commodity is the object of desire of all people its idea represents the individual's ideal of achievement and determines her/his social position, Commodity, for Marx, is the product of human labor, although human labor itself is also a commodity, The functioning of society is motivated, therefore, by the desire to have commodities, This, then, is the “commodity fetishism”,
This is an idea that should be analyzed along with another concept previously developed by Marx, In his “Paris Manuscripts”, Marx had developed the idea of “estrangement” or “alienation” of the worker, According to my review of this work sitelink goodreads. com/review/show , in capitalist societies, people live according to their work, which is an activity carried out to produce for others, The worker lives to work, which is an activity not necessarily in correspondence with her/his essence, and which produces something that is not for her/himself an activity that is itself a commodity, and the worker does so to acquire commodities and thus realize this alienated essence.
Based on this idea, another fundamental concept in the work is that of “surplus value”, For Marx, the capitalist production system necessarily implies the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, Marx notes that work transforms different commodities into other commodities, and it is this work that makes the new commodity have a value greater than the sum of the values of the other commodities that entered into the composition of this new commodity.
This is where “surplus value” comes in: in the incessant quest to increase the value of the commodities sold, the capitalist seeks to make the worker work more than the value of the salary paid for the work.
The result is the appreciation of the commodity and the impoverishment of the worker,
This is an idea that is born directly from the observation of reality and especially the living conditions of workers in Europe at the time, particularly in England.
Here comes the point of social denunciation, incessantly well illustrated especially after the first third of the book with reports of official investigations carried out at the time.
As I wrote in my review of the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” by Marx and Engels sitelink goodreads. com/review/show , given the way society was developing at the time, it seemed inevitable that some intellectual would begin to look at reality from the perspective of the poor and the worker.
The appalling living conditions of the poor and factoryworking population in England seem unimaginable by today's standards in the developed world although in many countries, notably in the socalled developing world, similar conditions still exist.
Is the idea of children betweenandyears old working forhours or more in filthy factories, very poorly fed and paid, often maimed by accidents at work and breathing toxic gases conceivable This was the shocking reality of early capitalism, which Marx denounces in detail.
Near the end of the book, Marx resorts to the origins of capitalism to point out that what he calls the process of “primitive accumulation” already began to exist at the moment when some appropriated public lands, and on the other hand small landowners or even slaves became wage workers.
Capitalist relations, thus, are necessarily based on the extraction of surplus value from the workers at its origins, which necessarily implies capital accumulation by capitalists by means of the exploitation and impoverishment of the worker.
Some authors defend that Marx is not properly a supporter or follower of the labor theory of value, like his predecessors Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
In fact, according to these authors, the predecessors start from the premise that all value originates from work while Marx analyzes every economic relation in the capitalist system to reach the conclusion that value originates from work.
This difference in “method” would lead to a superior explanation in Marx's theory of the relationship between money and work, since money sometimes seems to multiply without any base on work.
In my opinion, Marx nevertheless can still be considered an adept of the labor theory of value due to the centrality of the labor as the provider of value in his theory.
Although many criticisms have been made of Marx's economic theory, it seems indisputable that the book at least has great value in its social theory aspect.
Whatever side of the political spectrum the reader is on, it is impossible to remain indifferent to “The Capital”, It also seems impossible to come out of this experience the same way you entered it,
PORTUGUÊS
O Livro I de “O Capital: Crítica da Economia Política” de Karl Marx é uma obra tão aclamada, interpretada e resenhada, objeto de tantas polêmicas ao longo dos séculos, e motivou tantas revoluções mundo afora, que é impossível resenhala sem se sentir intimidado ou pensando se estar cometendo uma blasfêmia.
A melhor estratégia, nesse caso, é ser sucinto, ir direto ao ponto, evitar clichês e interpretações de terceiros, incluindo análises sobre o background filosófico do autor.
E evitar polêmicas.
Mas é factível evitar polêmicas quando se trata de Marx Definitivamente não é o caso, O ideário de Marx, apresentado de modo alentado nesta obra, toca em sentimentos que passam longe da indiferença ou neutralidade, Marx dá a esses sentimentos uma roupagem científica realiza uma investigação rigorosa, embasandose em método sólido o que não significa imune a críticas fundamentadas e exposta de uma maneira incrível e surpreendentemente clara.
Vivendo em uma época de grande desenvolvimento do sistema capitalista na Inglaterra, em sua fase pósRevolução Industrial, Marx observa as transformações sociais profundas da sociedade e apresenta uma teoria econômica e social que procura levar em conta a grande complexidade do novo sistema econômico e consegue conferir a ela coesão e coerência impressionantes ainda que considerada por muitos ultrapassada.
O fato, porém, de existirem seguidores de sua teoria até hoje mundo afora, reputandoa como válida, dá a noção do poder de suas ideias.
O Livro I de O Capital trata, em apertada síntese, de três grandes temas:mercadoriamaisvalor edenúncia social,
Marx vê na mercadoria a unidade fundamental do fenômeno capitalista, É o ponto de partida de sua investigação, É responsável pelo modo como a sociedade capitalista se move, A mercadoria marca presença fundamental na estruturação e estratificação dessa sociedade, determina a vida das pessoas e traduz as relações de poder econômico.
Para Marx, a busca permanente das pessoas por mercadorias determina o movimento da sociedade capitalista, A mercadoria é o objeto de desejo de todas as pessoas sua ideia representa o ideal de realização do indivíduo e determina sua posição social.
Mercadoria, para Marx, é o produto do trabalho humano, embora o próprio trabalho humano também seja mercadoria, O funcionamento da sociedade é motivado, portanto, pelo desejo de se ter mercadorias, Esse, portanto, é o “fetiche da mercadoria”,
Essa é uma ideia que cabe ser analisada em conjunto com outro conceito desenvolvido anteriormente por Marx, Em seus “Manuscritos de Paris”, Marx havia desenvolvido a ideia de “estranhamento” ou “alienação” do trabalhador, Conforme minha resenha a essa obra sitelink goodreads. com/review/show , na sociedade capitalista, as pessoas vivem em função de seu trabalho, que é uma atividade realizada para produzir para outros, Assim, o trabalhador na sociedade capitalista vive para trabalhar, que é uma atividade não necessariamente em correspondência com sua essência humana, e que produz algo que não é para ele atividade essa ela própria uma mercadoria, e o trabalhador a realiza para adquirir mercadorias e assim realizar essa essência alienada.
Partindo dessa ideia, outro conceito fundamental na obra é o de “maisvalia”, ou “maisvalor”, Para Marx, o sistema de produção capitalista necessariamente implica a exploração do trabalhador pelo capitalista, Marx nota que o trabalho transforma mercadorias diversas em outras mercadorias, e é esse trabalho que faz com que a nova mercadoria tenha um valor superior à soma dos valores das mercadorias que entraram na composição dessa nova mercadoria.
É aí onde entra o “maisvalor”: na busca incessante por aumentar o valor das mercadorias vendidas, o capitalista procura fazer o trabalhador trabalhar mais do que o valor do salário pago pelo trabalho.
O resultado é a valorização da mercadoria e o empobrecimento do trabalhador,
Essa é uma ideia que nasce diretamente da observação da realidade e especialmente das condições de vida dos trabalhadores da Europa à época, particularmente da Inglaterra.
Aqui entra o ponto da denúncia social, incessantemente bem ilustrado especialmente após o primeiro terço do livro com relatórios de investigações oficiais realizados à época.
Como escrevi na minha resenha do “Manifesto do Partido Comunista” de Marx e Engels sitelink goodreads. com/review/show , do modo como a sociedade se desenvolvia na época, parecia inevitável que algum intelectual passasse a observar a realidade da perspectiva do pobre e do trabalhador.
As condições chocantes de vida da população pobre e que trabalhava nas fábricas inglesas parecem inimagináveis para os padrões de hoje do mundo desenvolvido embora em muitos países, notadamente do chamado mundo em desenvolvimento, ainda existam condições semelhantes.
É concebível a ideia de crianças entreeanos de idade trabalhando porhoras ou mais em fábricas imundas, com alimentação paupérrima e mal pagas, frequentemente mutiladas por acidentes de trabalho e respirando gases tóxicos Essa era a chocante realidade do capitalismo inicial, que Marx denuncia em detalhes.
Perto do final do livro, Marx recorre às origens do capitalismo para apontar que o que ele chama de processo de “acumulação primitiva” já começou a existir no momento em que alguns se apropriaram de terras públicas e, de outra parte, pequenos proprietários ou mesmo escravos se tornaram trabalhadores assalariados.
As relações capitalistas, portanto, são necessariamente baseadas na extração de maisvalia dos trabalhadores desde suas origens, o que implica necessariamente a acumulação de capital pelos capitalistas por meio da exploração e empobrecimento do trabalhador.
Alguns autores defendem que Marx não é propriamente um adepto da teoria do valortrabalho, como seus predecessores Adam Smith e David Ricardo, Na verdade, segundo tais autores, os predecessores partem da premissa de que todo valor originase do trabalho enquanto Marx analisa cada relação econômica no sistema capitalista para chegar na conclusão de que o valor se origina do trabalho.
Essa diferença de “método” levaria a uma explicação superior na teoria de Marx da relação entre dinheiro e trabalho, já que o dinheiro às vezes parece se multiplicar sem lastro no trabalho.
Na minha opinião, devido à centralidade do trabalho como provedor de valor na teoria de Marx, ele ainda pode ser considerado como um adepto da teoria do valor trabalho.
Ainda que muitas críticas tenham sido feitas à teoria econômica de Marx, parece indiscutível que o livro ao menos tem grande valor em seu aspecto de teoria social.
Seja de que lado do espectro político o leitor for, é impossível permanecer indiferente a “O Capital”, Parece impossível também se sair dessa experiência igual a como se entrou, .