Isn’t philosophy, at its best, distinguished from self-help by its deep and original insights, rather than, or as well as, by its arguments? — Jamal

I was thinking about this again. What you're saying should be true. And I think philosophy at its best is revelatory, inspiring, critical, creative and well argued. A philosophy book should force you to see the world differently, "relearning how to see". I think that's a major distinction between a philosophy book and a self help book. A self help book may change your perspective, a philosophy book may change how you form perspectives in the first place.

:lol:

This one is great for insiders. I never cared much about that unity to I read some Brandom, and the joke works perfectly in that context. I got to go patch up a contradiction in the claims I am responsible fon yet again. — green flag

Would love to hear about that. But I don't think it's on topic here and it's detailed. Make a thread? Pretty please?

Edit: to be clear this isn't a request as a mod, it's a request as someone who wants to see it.

Be Happy By Being Average - The Secret Is Temperance

How the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements Can Change Your Life. — Jamal

Lol. This could be a wellspring of nerd jokes. Title: "Become Whole Again", subtitle: "The Transcendental Unity Of Apperception".

Isn’t philosophy, at its best, distinguished from self-help by its deep and original insights, rather than, or as well as, by its arguments? — Jamal

Partial agreement. Largely because, I think, following the arguments changes how you think, and you get to internalise the ideas and their nuances and flaws. In something closer to its raw form.

Example: self help transcendental aesthetic - "How you judge what's happening depends on inherent parts of people's minds and contingent things about you".
Philosophy transcendental aesthetic - amazing methodology developments, which lets you see the above as a trite aphorism in the light of the original text.

On the other hand, Aristotle can be a chore to read, so there’s nothing wrong with making things more digestible. That’s why we read introductions and secondary literature. I think the crucial difference is that pop philosophy, unlike secondary literature, is often dumbed down, written to please people or to catch the attention or to sell books, not to enlighten or teach. — Jamal

Yes. And I believe there's more of an emphasis on making claims and associations in pop philosophy/psychology than in philosophy. Unfortunately the thing which distinguishes philosophy from self help and infotainment; argument and systems; is also something which makes philosophy unbearably dry.

Actually he didn't say he asked to be banned. He locked himself out of his own account several times then came back as a succesion of sockpuppets. He was then banned for multiple sockpuppetry. So, we didn't make a mistake but seeing as he wasn't banned for content and he explained the sockpuppetry in some detail, and also seems a very good poster, we're all happy for him to come back if he wants. — Baden

I misread, apologies.

This is a great question, and I'm sorry to say I can't even give you an example bare-bones answer. Absolutely no idea. — bert1

It is arrogant of me to suggest this. But I think self relation, or self modelling, is a good candidate for what would count as an answer. I'm not saying it's correct. I think it counts as an answer because it explains a few things:

( 1 ) It has an answer for where the "first person" aspect comes from; modelling of "internal state" variables. This is like proprioception ("this body is mine and here in space").

( 2 ) Prediction using previous projections ("what body's modelling expects a given action to do") gives a sense of progression and history in experience, rooting the experience of time and coupling it with the specificity of your actions. This counts as "mine" because your retrojections inform your predictions.

( 3 ) The role of intentions - they're explainable as a continuity between your past (as a model), your current needs (as internal states), and what you're going to do to satisfy them (as predictions of environmental effects of actions).

( 4 ) Memory and narrative - memory as informational summary of previous states. Narrative as the sequence of those informational summaries. Like I may remember "the time I saw a parasite crawl out of a slug", but I won't remember everything I experienced at the time, just a memory.

( 5 ) Reflexivity - model update procedures (current state -> new summary -> new summary as past state -> past state as informer of new predictions -> predictions -> new current state) act as a nexus of memory, narrative, time, intention, and render them perspectival to you.


( 1 ) demands an explanation of perspectivality, that experiences are mine.
( 2 ) demands an explanation for continuity in time, that I am ongoing.
( 3 ) demands an explanation for intentions, that I am an agent capable of recognising and realising goals.
( 4 ) demands an explanation for self narrative, that I am an agent capable of creating my history and future.
( 5 ) demands an explanation for the integration of my processes, that I count as a whole composed of parts which draw from and influence each other and the environments I find myself in.

If you take a less functional perspective, you might need there to be a ( 6 ):

( 6 ) What it feels like to be in a reflexive, ongoing, intentional, historicising, projective, story telling and unitary affective state. What is it like.

I imagine much of the dispute regarding whether neuroscience and its philosophical analysis suffices for an explanation concerns whether ( 6 ) should be included in the list.

@green flag was unbanned after a lovely email pointing out an error that we made. Allegedly they asked to be banned in the days of yore, and it would be strange to keep someone banned if they weren't banned for any misconduct.

We now have the "suspended" role, which can be used to stop someone posting. This can be imposed instead of banning the account, allowing someone to avoid asking to be banned to avoid posting.

We do need @green flag to stop creating sockpuppets though. We can use the "suspended" condition instead. Creation of sockpuppets remains against the rules.

Hey @Raef Kandil , welcome to the forum.

A pointer - state your points, and link them with argument. When you're writing a post, try to make the different parts of your position link up. There's more than a few themes in your post, like the Matrix, control, gods, gods' realities being entailed by people's needs for an explanation. You also reference a distinction between what it means for a corporation to exist, a logo to refer, and a god to exist, and seem to use all of them at once. Ranging over so many topics like this, without much explanation, makes your post very hard to follow.

In addition, please try to break up large paragraphs, like:

I think the problem is: religion. Anything that is dogmatic is dead and whatever turns into religion, becomes spoiled. Mindlessness is a state corruption. Take Islam for example, it has been highly misrepresented as there was no such a thing as Islam during the prophet Mohamed's life. Islam was not a religion, it was a cult. And in the Quraan, they would refer to it as such. It was so far away from dogmatic. Verses would reverse the meanings of other verses, based on a different situations in a a very short time. The Quraan doesn't deny it. By the meaning there is a verse in the Quraan that says: "we don't reverse verses or make it forgotten unless we come up with new better verses or a similar one." New verses, meant new ways of doing things and new rules and better techniques. Unfortunately, it was very easy to become a Muslim. All you had to say was a very short phrase, "there is no God but God and the prophet Mohamed is the prophet of Allah", and you are in. That made the quality of people who join this cult were not the kind that would argue. Because they got the kinds of people nobody else would accept and he or she would be grateful for any kind of belonging. I don't think any Muslim would be able to quickly state the names of 50 of the prophet's companions who they speak so highly of and there is a reason to that. They were essentially ,except for very few of them, nobodies. We find Umar Ibn El Khattab argues a lot and he is one of the most prominent prophet companion's figures, because he was actually someone and the prophet Mohamed before he joined he prayed that "the Islam would be strong with one of the two Omar's". When Omar ruled, he actually changed things that were actually stated in the Quraan when others didn't dare to do it. Long story short: the prophet Mohamed, because of this model, enjoyed supreme powers that I doubt anyone enjoyed on earth throughout history. He became the supreme, most powerful figure in his troop with a divine connection. He would be a judge and a commander and they would teach people how to sleep with their wives and how to purify themselves after going to the toilet. And this is why after he died, these nobodies had to turn everything he said or did as a must-do. They knew.they just lost the source of their power and had to retain it somehow and they had to turn Islam into a religion. This is why Muslims until now are one of the most close-minded people of all times. They used to believe and they still do believe that following the prophet's orders as the source of their power. Having said that, the prophet Mohamed was among the most consciences, humane man of all times. Would clearly see that from the way he never tried to abuse their powers, his fairness and the unparalleled rights that he gave to women. — Raef Kandil

into smaller ones. Where possible. Also, do try to make consecutive sentences talk about the topic, or what you're responding to. The ideal conduct here is to discuss issues.

Aye! I imagine we agree.

No. The historical-cultural-political context is, however, the most relevant context to the question of the degree to which Heidegger's political affilitation and activity are reflected in his major philosophical work which he had so recently published. Other contextual readings, in this case, may provide nuances which supplement our understanding of the text but they are too ancillary to exculpate SuZ of its ideological affordances. — 180 Proof

Seems fair enough to me. It strikes me as disingenuous to "rescue" Heidegger's philosophy from Naziism, by invoking its ability to be used to other ends. And for similar reasons, disingenuous to refute other uses of his ideas on that basis.

Needs a "universality of reason" and imperialism treatment I guess.

Not without profoundly distorting the sense of this line of thought in BT. There are other writings of Heidegger where he specifically singles out the German volk, but this in not at all the point of these passages in BT. The relation between my Dasein and other Daseins here has nothing to do with choosing one group over another, but of how the intelligibility and sense of my engagement with the world moment to moment is guided by a pre-existing context of relevance. — Joshs

Yes. I am writing for people who have not read the book. No one who does not already understand Heidegger would understand a word of what you wrote.

It’s not a sense of community. The “they” can be thought as something like Freud’s superego— the sense of what “they” think and “they” believe. The masses, the mainstream, the general culture, this vague sense of “what one does.” — Mikie

Aye we both know what it is. I emphasised the normative belonging aspect, you emphasised the normative imposition aspect.

Again, the Dasein was Hitler-compatible ... And even after the war Heidi had to be "de-nazified". — 180 Proof

If someone's right about what it means to be a human being, it should apply to everyone - so a concept like Dasein should apply to people regardless of the ideology they believe in. We don't have any similar problems with the idea of "subjectivity" being Hitler-compatible, Mao-compatible or whatever. Though I do think it would be a massive coincidence if Heidegger wrote what he did without having the Nazis in mind.

As a matter of hermeneutic scruple, SuZ should be read in that cultural-ideological context; I don't think my characterization above is hyperbolic or uncharitable considering the Völkische Bewegung milieu. — 180 Proof

I agree that it should be read in that context, do you believe the ideas he had should only be read in that context? I've in mind Dreyfus. I don't think it would be fair at all to call his attack on representationalism in AI using Heidegger's ideas a "Nazi attack on representationalism" or "an attack on representationalism using Nazi ideology". Would you agree with that? That the ideas can be put to use at a distance from their birthplace?

Heidegger is using the terms 'they', 'those', and 'others' as terms of inclusion rather than exclusion. — Fooloso4

Also @Mikie.

You can certainly read it that way. The interesting question, at least for me, is whether you have to. You can also read it as something like "those with whom you have a sense of community", "those you have assumed social relations with". We know how that went for Heidegger. But there is a gap between being able to read him like that (and you should) and being only able to read the ideas like that. Those two things are being conflated.

Absolutely read him like a Nazi. Does that mean a phenomenological "sense of community", as Heidegger's described it, is a Nazi concept? Remains to be seen.

The tendency to lessen the socially necessary labour time per product decreases the living labour (time) required for its production for sale. When a good is produced for sale, capital "devalues" because it no longer has the money form of value with a distinct amount (investment into commodities), it takes on the form of a commodity which has a certain price. In that regard there is an inversion; in the first step M-C money stands as a potential for commodities which then becomes a commodity, in C-M commodities stand as a potential for money, which then becomes money. Initially M takes the form of an investment, then as a collection of commodity prices, but it must pass through a metamorphosis into a commodity, rather than a representation of a commodity's value. — fdrake

After Harvey's lecture yesterday evening, I realised there's an implication of devaluation that I missed. The same "devaluation" occurs when a product is not in circulation regardless of why. So when the EU's "butter mountain" accumulated, much of it couldn't be sold, it was thus out of circulation and therefore worthless.

Because capital's growth of production posits a corresponding growth of circulation to realise the value of produced goods, a break between circulation and capital is a disruption in realisation. Which is a potential for crisis.

When food is bought by a worker, is this not a devaluation? A commodity goes out of circulation to be consumed. I don't think this is a devaluation because the worker's consumption acts upon the use value, it does not zero the exchanged value through payment or remove the act of payment.

With capital itself, M-C-C-M, is the M-C-C transition a devaluation? Even when the commodities values are "maintained and renewed" by the workers? Marx has commented that the interaction of their work with the commodities, the capital flow it is part of, and that flow's relationship to circulation maintains and preserves the value; not the fact that workers assemble alone. The value added in their work is represented by the C-M relation, which requires a passage through circulation, and thus is a site for the relationship of capital and circulation to break down; a crisis of realisation.

Also thanks to @Moliere for highlighting something similar.

and for the next session's bookend.

Oooo listening -- I'm glad he mentioned "experiences" as a thing that's being produced! Super exciting. The reason for inventions of superfluity is the need for expanding consumption! (I mean... there are industries not only doing cruise lines, there are industries built on selling cruise lines!) — Moliere

Increasing the "rate of consumption" due to spectacles being transitory is a way of solving the "growth of consumption" required for the growth of capital - more consumption per unit time, and it's repeatable due to needing to buy access each time you see a spectacle. The same thing could be said about rentier capital maybe? It counts as self reproducing consumption of something transitory, an engagement. That might apply to software-as-as-service business models too...

“ecause it presupposes that, despite the doubled force of production, capital continued to operate with the same component parts, to employ the same quantity of necessary labour without spending more for raw material and instrument of labour; † then, therefore, productivity doubles, so that he now needs to spend only 20 thalers on labour, whereas he needed 40 before.”

A note that increasing productivity incurs new constant capital costs. Constant capital being production material and other fixed expenditures. Variable capital is what is spent to acquire labour power.

(investing in lots of fixed capital - me) is only really useful when it acts on great masses, when a single machine can assist the labours of thousands. It is accordingly in the most populous countries where there are most idle men that it is always most abundant.

A good note that unemployment is a necessary feature of the conditions of production becoming more efficient. You need less labourers to produce the same surplus value. Note - though you may be able to have a higher net profit per advanced unit of capital if more workers are cheaper than (less workers + efficient production). Like outsourcing productive labour to Bangladesh is a means of increasing the surplus value to variable capital ratio for a firm based elsewhere.

“It is a law of capital, as we saw, to create surplus labour, disposable time; it can do this only by setting necessary labour in motion – i.e. entering into exchange with the worker. It is its tendency, therefore, to create as much labour as possible; just as it is equally its tendency to reduce necessary labour to a minimum. It is therefore equally a tendency of capital to increase the labouring population, as well as constantly to posit a part of it as surplus population – population which is useless until such time as capital can utilize it. ”

That outsourcing would thus be a change in the composition of capital - less constant capital and less variable capital when outsourced, more constant capital at home; keeping the rate of surplus value extraction per unit variable capital expenditure constant.

In general, to maximise surplus value, lengthen the working day and lessen the socially necessary labour per product.

“It is merely to be noted here in order to indicate how later developments are already contained in the general concept of capital. Belongs in the doctrine of the concentration and competition of capitals. – The devaluation being dealt with here is this, that capital has made the transition from the form of money into the form of a commodity, of a product, which has a certain price, which is to be realized. In its money form it existed as value. It now exists as product, and only ideally as price; but not as value as such.”

The tendency to lessen the socially necessary labour time per product decreases the living labour (time) required for its production for sale. When a good is produced for sale, capital "devalues" because it no longer has the money form of value with a distinct amount (investment into commodities), it takes on the form of a commodity which has a certain price. In that regard there is an inversion; in the first step M-C money stands as a potential for commodities which then becomes a commodity, in C-M commodities stand as a potential for money, which then becomes money. Initially M takes the form of an investment, then as a collection of commodity prices, but it must pass through a metamorphosis into a commodity, rather than a representation of a commodity's value.

This mirrors the transformation of living labour into objectified labour the transition from C-C (the dash) is a transmogrification of living labour (in production) to objectified labour (the potential value of the product which will be realised into price).

The C-M step also drops C out of the advancement of industrial capital simpliciter and into the circulation of commodities.

“The creation by capital of absolute surplus value – more objectified labour – is conditional upon an expansion, specifically a constant expansion, of the sphere of circulation. The surplus value created at one point requires the creation of surplus value at another point, for which it may be exchanged; if only, initially, the production of more gold and silver, more money, so that, if surplus value cannot directly become capital again, it may exist in the form of money as the possibility of new capital.”

That circulation requires other means of producing surplus value; other capital advancements. The spiralling growth of capital thus also requires the the expansion of circulation; as greater surplus value is realised, there must be greater circulation of commodities to realise it. The same holds for capital - to expand it must also more expansively circulate.

The circulation of commodities is of the form C-M-M-C, which is a labourer's wage relation to capital. Obtaining fixed capital is also a form of consumption. Thus consumption must increase along with circulation, and thus along with the growth of capital.

On the other side, the production of relative surplus value, i.e. production of surplus value based on the increase and development of the productive forces, requires the production of new consumption; requires that the consuming circle within circulation expands as did the productive circle previously.

The final step of that circulation is consumption; thus the growth of capital requires a tandem growth of consumption. More commodities must "drop out" of circulation in order for realisation to increase in scope.

These expansions are part of the spiralling growth of capital's circuits. However they are in tension with the nature of capital itself. In the following ways:

“(1) Necessary labour as limit on the exchange value of living labour capacity or of the woes of the industrial population;
(2) Surplus value as limit on surplus labour time; and, in regard to relative surplus labour time, as barrier to the development of the forces of production;
(3) What is the same, the transformation into money, exchange value as such, as limit of production; or exchange founded on value, or value founded on exchange, as limit of production. This is:
(4) again the same as restriction of the production of use values by exchange value; or that real wealth has to take on a specific form distinct from itself, a form not absolutely identical with it, in order to become an object of production at all.”

We want to decrease necessary labour while maximising exchange value, but necessary labour time is a constraint on exchange value.

We want to maximise surplus value, but the things that let us do that induce diminishing returns on reducing the necessary portion of the working day toward 0 - which can never be reached.

The need for commodities to turn into money through circulation; you need more circulation for any given production increase, where does it come from? It's just assumed to be there in an amount adjusted for the increase in surplus value through productive innovation, but must also be a distinct capital with sufficient money to circulate the new basket of products. 3 means that overproduction is a general state; there's always more commodities produced than can have their value realised. This is constant waste.


These mean capital necessarily has unsteady foundations. Necessarily may collapse. Crisis is baked in. These contradictions act as barriers, impediments, to capital's growth. Thus it must deal with them, but cannot remove them from its nature.

Not caught up, but nearly.

“The surplus value which capital has at the end of the production process – a surplus value which, as a higher price of the product, is realized only in circulation, but, like all prices, is realized in it by already being ideally presupposed to it, determined before they enter into it – signifies, expressed in accord with the general concept of exchange value, that the labour time objectified in the product – or amount of labour (expressed passively, the magnitude of labour appears as an amount of space; but expressed in motion, it is measurable only in time) – is greater than that which was present in the original components of capital. This in turn is possible only if the labour objectified in the price of labour is smaller than the living labour time purchased with it. ”

M-C-C-M; You only get profit if the labour time in the product is bigger than the labour time of the input. The price for a given amount of labour time held fixed, and also determined by the aggregate conditions of labour. The input also retains its prior value, as an exchangeable basket of materials in circulation.

“If one day’s work were necessary in order to keep one worker alive for one day, then capital would not exist, because the working day would then exchange for its own product, so that capital could not realize itself and hence could not maintain itself as capital. The self-preservation of capital is its self-realization.”

The advancement of capital - its growth, profit, thus demands "more time" is squeezed out of the worker than "required". Those are scarequotes. The value of a working day is determined by the value of the produced products. If a labourer only laboured enough to satisfy their own needs, they would produce a basket of products equal in value to the value of their labour in that time. Since exchange realises value into price. The value, as price, of that day's labour would be equal to the value, as price, of the products. An equality of embodied time.

Thus the only way for profit to be produced would be if the value of a working day is less than the value of the products produced within it. Thus surplus labour. And surplus value.

“The great historic quality of capital is to create this surplus labour, superfluous labour from the standpoint of mere use value, mere subsistence; and its historic destiny [Bestimmung] is fulfilled as soon as, on one side, there has been such a development of needs that surplus labour above and beyond necessity has itself become a general need arising out of individual needs themselves – and, on the other side, when the severe discipline of capital, acting on succeeding generations [Geschlechter], has developed general industriousness as the general property of the new species [Geschlecht] – and, finally, when the development of the productive powers of labour, which capital incessantly whips onward with its unlimited mania for wealth, and of the sole conditions in which this mania can be realized, have flourished to the stage where the possession and preservation of general wealth require a lesser labour time of society as a whole, and where the labouring society relates scientifically to the process of its progressive reproduction, its reproduction in a constantly greater abundance; hence where labour in which a human being does what a thing could do has ceased. ”

The expansion of capital is thus a growth of surplus labour. More surplus labour, more growth. "General industriousness" as a moral value promotes and enables the creation of surplus labour by workers and capitalists. Workers will want to work longer, or accept it. Capitalists will want to make that work more efficient. If the aggregate conditions of production become more efficient, the average labour time for society as a whole decreases for an average product. That simultaneously means more surplus labour per unit time at any given time, but also a devaluation of surplus labour as the socially necessary time for an average product's production has markedly decreased. This sets up a dynamic of competition, which Marx says later, that he will discuss later.

“The unit in which surplus value is calculated is always a fraction, i.e. the given part of a day which exactly represents the price of labour.”

“Thus the absolute sum by which capital increases its value through a given increase of the productive force depends on the given fractional part of the working day, on the fractional part of the working day which represents necessary labour, and which therefore expresses the original relation of necessary labour to the living work day. The increase in productive force in a given relation can therefore increase the value of capital differently e.g. in the different countries. ”

If a worker could reproduce themselves for half a day's labour, then they work half a day of surplus.
New production comes in for that workplace, it doubles production, thus doubles value production all else held equal. That means the worker can now work a quarter of a day. and 3/4 of the day is surplus. More surplus labour, more value. But this is expressible as a fraction, because the proportion of the working day which goes to surplus is the determinant of how much value multiplies from input to product through production.

The uneven development of productive processes allows value of products in capital to diverge from their global average locally.

“the more developed capital already is, the more surplus labour it has created, the more terribly must it develop the productive force in order to realize itself in only smaller proportion, i.e. to add surplus value – because its barrier always remains the relation between the fractional part of the day which expresses necessary labour, and the entire working day. It can move only within these boundaries. The smaller already the fractional part falling to necessary labour, the greater the surplus labour, the less can any increase in productive force perceptibly diminish necessary labour; ”

The uneven development is a feature of productive innovation, however its development has severe diminishing returns. If a worker could reproduce themselves at 1/100 of the working day, that means the surplus labour is 99/100 of the working day. A given worker's labour for a specific product thus imparts it 99/100 parts of surplus value.

For reproduction at 1/2 of the working day, that means 1/2 of the working day is imparted as surplus value.

An increase of added surplus value by 0.5% in both cases would mean 0.99*1.005 and 0.5*1.005 respectively. Which are 0.99495 and 0.5025 respectively. The difference in required working days in from each starting workday on are thus at 0.00505 and 0.0025. Which correspond to a 0.505% reduction and a 0.25% reduction. You thus need to reduce the required working day more, proportionally, when it's already lower to gain the same % increase in surplus value.

These changes in the required working day are called changes in relative surplus labour, and thus relative surplus value. Relative surplus value increases when the length of the required working day decreases.

The absolute amount of surplus value for that production process has not changed, since the length of the working day has not changed. Just the amount of value which is surplus changes. Thus the absolute surplus value has not changed, only its distribution has. Conflicts over the length of the working day thus correspond to conflicts of the distribution of surplus value; and thus, the apportioning of wealth societally.

A highlight here is that copying this exchange process, which would increase supply, does not change the surplus value extracted per product while holding the working day fixed. There's simply more product.

“Labour does not reproduce the value of the material in which, and of the instrument with which, it works. It preserves their value simply by relating to them in the labour process as to their objective conditions. This animating and preserving force costs capital nothing; appears, rather, as its own force etc."

Because wages are apportioned per workday, and not per surplus value unit created, surplus value thus costs nothing to obtain given the expenditure on wages. Because the production of surplus is a productive rather than exchange relation, and the ascription of wages for the working day depends upon the aggregate conditions of capital. Thus the maintenance and growth of capital, through labour, is capital's animating force. All value is, ultimately, surplus value. All money is, ultimately, a claim on another worker's time.

This preservation and growth is amplified when the materials are assumed "on hand" for the worker, since no amount of workday needs be spent to replenish the materials and means of production. Just in their use and expenditure. Initial investments in productive machinery, thus, increase the rate of production without incurring any changes in the workday for the labourers which use them. It does not touch their workday length, just required labour. Maintenance and installation is done by other workers.

In this regard the form of work done does not change the nature of the value of its products. The form of value is fixed in the aggregate relations of circulation, production and exchange. In the totality of capital. Work thus only transforms use values, while preserving the use values of the inputs in that society.

“t preserves the utility of cotton as yarn by weaving the yarn into fabric. (All this belongs already in the first chapter on production in general.) Preserves it by weaving it”

The production of fabric maintains the use value of cotton as yarn, all the while transforming cotton into yarn into fabric.

I think I understand and pretty much agree with all of your points, but I've run out of steam on this topic. — Jamal

Same. I read your post and thought of analysing the logical structure of agglomerating historical event series together under a narrative. All the thoughts I had were pedantic and added nothing besides a headache.

This is going to be a turbo long quote, but I think it's important for my understanding of Marx. I need to pick it apart. It is about what counts as productive labour.

“What is productive labour and what is not, a point very much disputed back and forth since Adam Smith made this distinction, [10] has to emerge from the dissection of the various aspects of capital itself. Productive labour is only that which produces capital. Is it not crazy, asks e.g. (or at least something similar) Mr Senior, that the piano maker is a productive worker, but not the piano player, although obviously the piano would be absurd without the piano player? [11] But this is exactly the case. The piano maker reproduces capital; the pianist only exchanges his labour for revenue. But doesn’t the pianist produce music and satisfy our musical ear, does he not even to a certain extent produce the latter? He does indeed: his labour produces something; but that does not make it productive labour in the economic sense; no more than the labour of the madman who produces delusions is productive. Labour becomes productive only by producing its own opposite. Other economists therefore allow the so-called unproductive worker to be productive indirectly. For example, the pianist stimulates production; partly by giving a more decisive, lively tone to our individuality, and also in the ordinary “sense of awakening a new need for the satisfaction of which additional energy becomes expended in direct material production. This already admits that only such labour is productive as produces capital; hence that labour which does not do this, regardless of how useful it may be – it may just as well be harmful – is not productive for capitalization, is hence unproductive labour. Other economists say that the difference between productive and unproductive applies not to production but to consumption. Quite the contrary. The producer of tobacco is productive, although the consumption of tobacco is unproductive. Production for unproductive consumption is quite as productive as that for productive consumption; always assuming that it produces or reproduces capital. ‘Productive labourer he that directly augments his master’s wealth,’ Malthus therefore says, quite correctly (IX,40); [12] correct at least in one aspect. The expression is too abstract, since in this formulation it holds also for the slave. The master’s wealth, in relation to the worker, is the form of wealth itself in its relation to labour, namely capital. Productive labourer he that directly augments capital."

It begins with the postulate:

Productive labour is only that which produces capital

There is then a contrast between labour which produces material use values and labour which does not, illustrated by piano and piano player:

Is it not crazy, Mr Senior, that the piano maker is a productive worker, but not the piano player, although obviously the piano would be absurd without the piano player? [11] But this is exactly the case. The piano maker reproduces capital; the pianist only exchanges his labour for revenue. But doesn’t the pianist produce music and satisfy our musical ear, does he not even to a certain extent produce the latter?

This seems to construe the productive labour as labour which produces material use values (pianos) rather than entertainment (pianist). Nevertheless the pianist's labour produces something, but does not therefore count as productive labour.

He does indeed: his labour produces something; but that does not make it productive labour in the economic sense; no more than the labour of the madman who produces delusions is productive. Labour becomes productive only by producing its own opposite.

Productive labour in the economic sense is only productive "by producing its own opposite", which is capital.

hence that labour which does not do this, regardless of how useful it may be – it may just as well be harmful – is not productive for capitalization, is hence unproductive labour. Other economists say that the difference between productive and unproductive applies not to production but to consumption. Quite the contrary. The producer of tobacco is productive, although the consumption of tobacco is unproductive. Production for unproductive consumption is quite as productive as that for productive consumption; always assuming that it produces or reproduces capital. ‘Productive labourer he that directly augments his master’s wealth,’ Malthus therefore says, quite correctly (IX,40); [12] correct at least in one aspect. The expression is too abstract, since in this formulation it holds also for the slave. The master’s wealth, in relation to the worker, is the form of wealth itself in its relation to labour, namely capital. Productive labourer he that directly augments capital.

If I've read this right, it says that the pianist's labour is not productive, but the piano maker's is. Why? I think it makes sense to look at this in terms of the advancement of capital M-C-C-M.

Transparently, a piano making business takes money, invests it in materials and labour, produces a piano, then sells it.

A pianist's labour, on the other hand starts with a commodity (labour power), which has a price (money) which the labourer gets for their service (money), which is used to get other commodities (foodstuff, etc).

The piano making business thus has M-C-C-M as a transition of stages, the pianist however has C-M-M-C as its transition of stages, only the former is an advancement of capital. Any material resources the pianist buys to continue playing reproduces their labour, rather than their money (tools, food, fuel, electricity).

A slave isn't a wage labourer, they don't receive a wage. So they can't have the M or M steps as part of their C-M-M-C labour transition. Perhaps slaves create wealth, which is converted to value through the circulation of the commodities' values constituting that wealth. I'm wondering, however, if it makes sense to consider slaves as "wage labourers with wage 0" from the perspective of capital. All of their labour is surplus labour, every moment of their labour is uncompensated work.

In that regard, you could still have slaves in M-C-C-M. You start off with money, you buy slaves and commodities, the slaves work with the commodities to produce more commodities, which are then sold for money. Then, the next time you want to make something, you don't have to buy the slaves, you just have to buy something to reproduce their labour. If Marx is construing the M-C step to necessarily to contain an exchange of wages, then he'd be right to exclude slavery from capital advancement on that basis.

Maybe generalising it is illuminating. If all workers were slaves, there'd be no wages and selling of labour, which would mean there'd be no C-M-M-C transition. If some workers were slaves and some were wage labourers, it seems you can have C-M-M-C active in the economy at large with slaves providing a competitive advantage over those capitalists which use wage labourers.

I'm not sure what to make of this.

Still, no economist will deny that if the workers generally, that is, as workers (what the individual worker does or can do, as distinct from his genus, can only exist just as exception, not as rule, because it is not inherent in the character of the relation itself), that is, if they acted according to this demand as a rule (apart from the damage they would do to general consumption – the loss would be enormous – and hence also to production, thus also to the amount and volume of the exchanges which they could make with capital, hence to themselves as workers) then the worker would be employing means which absolutely contradict their purpose, and which would directly degrade him to the level of the Irish, the level of wage labour where the most animal minimum of needs and subsistence appears to him as the sole object and purpose of his exchange with capital

If workers save too much, capital stops. Saving is also an effective crisis fund for capital. Why? Because people would starve, labourers would die and revolt, heads would role. So you save, and you need to, so you don't starve if your life gets disrupted. That also stabilises capital - since if you starve you can't work, since you can't reproduce your own labour.

A comment about labour and capital. Despite capital being an advancement, corralling and accumulation of labour (as value), labour itself cannot be considered as someone's capital.

This alters absolutely nothing in the nature of the thing and gives no grounds whatsoever for concluding that – because the worker has to sleep 10–12 hours before he becomes capable of repeating his labour and his exchange with capital – labour forms his capital”

Expending labour power doesn't make more of itself. It also has a limit, your body and its needs. In contrast, acquiring labour takes labour power and creates products with it - in that regard you make a claim on "future time" by buying labour's time.

Observation: in that regard the advancement of capital is separation of humans from their lifespans. An severance of (life as self creation) and (life as self maintenance). In other words, the advancement of capital has alienation as a core dynamic. As both a structural and psychological moment.

“However, regarded more precisely, it becomes clear that the worker who exchanges his commodity goes through the form C–M–M–C in the exchange process. If the point of departure in circulation is the commodity, use value, as the principle of exchange, then we necessarily arrive back at the commodity, since money appears only as coin and, as medium of exchange, is only a vanishing mediation; while the commodity as such, after having described its circle, is consumed as the direct object of need. On the other hand, capital represents M–C–C–M, the antithetical moment."

M-C-C-M = have money, buy stuff and labour, labour works to make new stuff, sell new stuff
acquisition, production, sale (for profit), That's capital.
C-M-M-C = have labour, exchange for money, use money to buy commodity ; sale, work, acquisition (for reproduction). That's labour.

“Separation of property from labour appears as the necessary law of this exchange between capital and labour. Labour posited as not-capital as such is: (1) not-objectified labour [nicht-vergegenständlichte Arbeit], conceived negatively (itself still objective; the not-objective itself in objective form). As such it is not-raw-material, not-instrument of labour, not-raw-product: labour separated from all means and objects of labour, from its entire objectivity. This living labour, existing as an abstraction from these moments of its actual reality (also, not-value); this complete denudation, purely subjective existence of labour, stripped of all objectivity. Labour as absolute poverty: poverty not as shortage, but as total exclusion of objective wealth. ”

“The substance of value is not at all the particular natural substance, but rather objectified labour. This latter itself appears again in connection with living labour as raw material and instrument of labour.”

M-C-C-M requires C-M-M-C to work. Acquisition (M-C) in capital requires sale (C-M) in labour. Thus the divestment of labour from capital is simultaneously an interdependence; capital necessitates workers have no ownership of productive mechanisms (their own power and tools). It also necessitates total dependence of capital upon labour. The growth of wealth without work and the repetition of work without wealth.

The indifference of capital's growth to the specificities of the labourer's work equate value to toil. Abstracted, undifferentiated, dehumanised labour. Served in workday sized chunks.

“ As the not-being of values in so far as they are objectified, labour is their being in so far as they are not-objectified; it is their ideal being; the possibility of values, and, as activity, the positing of value. As against capital, labour is the merely abstract form, the mere possibility of value-positing activity, which exists only as a capacity, as a resource in the bodiliness of the worker. But when it is made into a real activity through contact with capital – it cannot do this by itself, since it is without object – then it becomes a really value-positing, productive activity.”

And in that regard labour only takes this character if it is part of capital advancement. It can only serve as a creator and circulant of value insofar as it produces value in the abstract; which is the constraint capital uniquely places upon it.

“the process of capital coincides with the simple process of production as such, in which its character as capital is quite as extinguished in the form of the process, as money was extinguished as money in the form of value. To the extent to which we have examined the process so far, capital in its being-for-itself, i.e. the capitalist, does not enter at all. It is not the capitalist who is consumed by labour as raw material and instrument of labour. And it is not the capitalist who does this consuming but rather labour. Thus the process of the production of capital does not appear as the process of the production of capital, but as the process of production in general, and capital’s distinction from labour appears only in the material character of raw material and instrument of labour”

From the perspective of a capitalist - someone who goes through the circuit of capital in the for M-C-C-M, the process of production occurs as the hole C-C step where sellable commodities are produced and old ones consumed through fabrication. In that regard, if you look at production from the view of capital, you will see the advancement of value (M-M), and labour only enters into it as the first C step (labour commodity as productive instrument and raw materials). Taking that perspective and not realising it construes production in general with the production of value. All production, thus, would take the form of capital's advance.

Seems reasonable. Before I do it myself, can anyone see how to save my original analysis? — Jamal

It doesn't look like your argument construes things getting better as part of any narrative or ideology. Pinker's quote attributes the "successful way of thinking" to be "Enlightenment". You've left it unspecified. This maybe isn't quite Pinker's point. If I reformulate your argument with this in mind:

1. If something improves, e.g., the eradication of guinea worm disease, it happens in time, going from worse to better. The past condition is worse, closer to the beginning of a progressive development and thereby primitive.

2. If it gets worse again, this can rightfully be called a slide back to a primitive condition.

3. Many very important things have improved in tandem.

4. These things improved in tandem thanks to a way of thinking and a way of going about things.

5. If these things get worse again in the present and future, this can rightfully be called a general slide back to primitive conditions.

6. We have to maintain the successful way of thinking the styles of thought and practice of the Enlightenment to prevent such a general slide back.

If indeed that is Pinker's argument, there's at least three unstated premises.

6a: there is only one system of values which prevents such a general slide back.
6b: that system of values is "the styles of thought and practice of the Enlightenment".

6a could be undermined by finding another system of values which would work, 6b could be attacked by showing there isn't a coherent system of Enlightenment thought+action, or that such values don't in fact cause improvement.

This also similarly modifies premise 4 - gotta make it specific to "Enlightenment" rather than "a way of thinking and a way of doing things".

I'd also find it plausible to argue that the "linearity" of progress isn't really demonstrated in your argument, it's construed. This concerns the final suppressed premise.

To call a condition primitive, or improved, the declaration must aggregate a historical moment into a state where it can be judged in a unitary fashion. An improvement in a particular way, or many particular ways, isn't the same concept as history itself having an improving, progressive tendency. As an example, dental care may've improved over time, so has processor speed, but a historical composite of dental care and processor speed don't summarise the progression of history together. There'd need to be a sufficiently broad range of trajectories "in tandem" (as you said) but with a theoretical guarantee they're representative of historical development in the abstract.

Thus this might That's perhaps an attack on premise 5 - a sleight of hand which turns a judgement of a plurality ("many things") into a judgement of a unitary thing ("primitive conditions").

The transformation of land into landed property, and its dependence on capital and wage labour.

“In the money market, capital is posited in its totality; there it determines prices, gives work, regulates production, in a word, is the source of production; but capital, not only as something which produces itself (positing prices materially in industry etc., developing forces of production), but at the same time as a creator of values, has to posit a value or form of wealth specifically distinct from capital. This is ground rent. This is the only value created by capital which is distinct from itself, from its own production. By its nature as well as historically, capital is the creator of modern landed property, of ground rent; just as its action therefore appears also as the dissolution of the old form of property in land.

“This latter himself then ‘clears’, as Steuart says, [47] the land of its excess mouths, tears the children of the earth from the breast on which they were raised, and thus transforms labour on the soil itself, which appears by its nature as the direct wellspring of subsistence, into a mediated source of subsistence, a source purely dependent on social relations.”

“We therefore always find that, wherever landed property is transformed into money rent through the reaction of capital on the older forms of landed property (the same thing takes place in another way where the modern farmer is created) and where, therefore, at the same time agriculture, driven by capital, transforms itself into industrial agronomy, there the cottiers, serfs, bondsmen, tenants for life, cottagers etc. become day labourers, wage labourers, i.e. that wage labour in its totality is initially created by the action of capital on landed property, and then, as soon as the latter has been produced as a form, by the proprietor of the land himself.

(Marx I cannot forgive you for the length of that sentence)

“There can therefore be no doubt that wage labour in its classic form, as something permeating the entire expanse of society, which has replaced the very earth as the ground on which society stands, is initially created only by modern landed property, i.e. by landed property as a value created by capital itself.”

This describes a historical progression. And a development of concepts. Running at the same time.

There was land. People worked the land. People got stuff from it. That's pre-capitalist agrarian labour. The people use the land, there's not really a notion of legal property entitlement or power relations to enforce it. People also lay claim to what they make out of the land and control its use.

Then some fucker claimed ownership of the land, turned the people into serfs upon it, and demanded tribute/tax from the serfs. That's serfdom for a property owner. There's a notion of property entitlement, and power relations to enforce those entitlements. Crucially, the labourers produce for the lord, who is deemed to already own what they later take. They no longer have claim to the land, they simply work it. Owning the land means owning a portion of its created products.

Then there's capitalist agrarian labour. The serfs now work the land to produce its products for exchange. They receive a wage. Those two things together make them wage labourers - production for profit where their labour is payed for. The land turns from a bunch of useful stuff to consume for the people who work it, into a bunch of products to sell. Selling the products allows reinvestment into the land and labourers. That's now a type of capital advancement. Once this is a possibility for the organisation of agrarian labour, it can and will be enforced by the proprietors of the land.

Capitalist agrarian labour presupposes prior developments of agrarian labour - like the creation of serfs through violent acquisition. It also posits for-profit production of the goods the pre-serf agrarian labourers produced for personal/collective consumption.

This transformation of land from use value productive to value productive is essential to the development of industrial capital. Industrial capital is posited by, and contained in, money capital. Despite the land itself and the work done upon it being an interruption of the circuit of exchange. M-C-C-M, the first "C-" is the interruption of production.

If you become the proprietor of land and labour power, you can do the "C-C-M" part of the chain to start circulation. That internalises the worked land and labourers into the circuit of industrial capital.

To the extent that land remains outside of for-profit production, it is a barrier for the expansion of capital. It is a hole in totality which must be filled. All such barriers are business opportunities.

It must be kept in mind that the new forces of production and relations of production do not develop out of nothing, nor drop from the sky, nor from the womb of the self-positing Idea; but from within and in antithesis to the existing development of production and the inherited, traditional relations of property. While in the completed bourgeois system every economic relation presupposes every other in its bourgeois economic form, and everything posited is thus also a presupposition, this is the case with every organic system. This organic system itself, as a totality, has its presuppositions, and its development to its totality consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of it the organs which it still lacks. This is historically how it becomes a totality.

The expansive spiral of capital advancement trends towards seizing all opportunities for its own growth. That includes starting new instances of the "C-C-M" chain through violence, imposition of land ownership, and forced production for profit using wage labourers.

On the other hand, if within one society the modern relations of production, i.e. capital, are developed to its totality, and this society then seizes hold of a new territory, as e.g. the colonies, then it finds, or rather its representative, the capitalist, finds, that his capital ceases to be capital without wage labour,

Creating a colony is thus a good business decision - if you're already a capitalist country, you can export your own country's total subordination to the circuit of capital into another. Changing their land into for-profit production opportunities. That requires alienating people from the land - by violence, eviction, imposing rent... . And turning them into wage labourers to, nevertheless, work the same land. The circuit of capital must alienate people from the land to tether them to it as wage labourers.

The paragraph continues:

“and that one of the presuppositions of the latter is not only landed property in general, but modern landed property; landed property which, as capitalized rent, is expensive, and which, as such, excludes the direct use of the soil by individuals. Hence Wakefield’s theory of colonies, followed in practice by the English government in Australia. [48] Landed property is here artificially made more expensive in order to transform the workers into wage workers, to make capital act as capital, and thus to make the new colony productive; to develop wealth in it, instead of using it, as in America, for the momentary deliverance of the wage labourers. ”

while different strategies can be used to produce this alienation of the colonised from their land, it nevertheless remains true that the expansion of industrial capital always requires more land. Which means it will devour any land not already part of its circuit. Which creates such a pressure for expansion it will devour the land of other societies. Colonisation is a necessary strategy for capital's development, and it can be achieved in more than one way.

This movement transforms production as an internal moment of the advancement of capital to an internalising moment of capital; its expansion posits more production. Production posits more owned land and more alienated labour. The "C-C-M" step is, precisely, an instance of the labourer's alienation from their land. And of course requires the initial "M-C" step of capital investment to be an instance of capital advancement. In that regard, violent imposition which severs workers from the land goes from a historical presupposition of capital into a posit for its continued expansion. And thus a necessity, for capital in its essence is a process of continuous expansion.

@Isaac

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed-1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points

I'm Scottish.

Is there being before becoming? Is there identity before difference? — Joshs

Is there egg before chicken?

This is an exceptionally arrogant statement, but is it really that hard a question?

Consciousness is a precondition for the conceptualisation of being. IE, consciousness is prior to being in the order of knowing.

Being is a precondition of consciousness in the order of events. There needs to be something at all before any being can be considered conscious. IE, being is prior to consciousness in the order of events. Or, if you will, being itself.

Same. Also thanks for suggesting this. It's been fun so far!

For thems following along and who have the companion and who want to chime in, that'd be the time to do so. — Moliere

Or, well -- "time to do so" -- sounds annoyed. — Moliere

I am annoyed with those who are following along without reading. Nyeeeer. We've got time to catch up now.

Yes. Then revise all starting assumptions. It's dialectical.

I think it gets really confusing because of the obvious conflict between "I drive things over here and back and don't make things, so what?", but then if they didn't do so the market wouldn't be expanded, and capital must expand. — Moliere

Yeah! I think Harvey referenced this too, that Marx towards the end of his life didn't find "productive labour" vs "unproductive labour" that useful a distinction. So the cleaners count as part of it, so do the logistics... I've not read all of Volume 3! Hardly any of it in fact.

But yup, I like this too. In a sense I've looked at the Labor Theory of Value, since it uses an SI unit, as being a possible conservation law. — Moliere

I wrote about this here actually. There's some issues regarding logistics. How does transport add to socially necessary labour time? Does it? But I think it behaves very much like a conservation law. I think it follows from socially necessary labour time being additive, as a time, but products being made stagewise - assembly and production. Given that the SNLT of all commodities is fixed at a time point, a commodity's SNLT will be equal to the SNLT of its components plus their assembly costs. You can keep going down to the raw materials ("gifts of nature") which are unworked, and thus have no value, and thus no socially necessary labour time for their production. You end up getting an expression of each constituent in terms of time. So decomposition behaves like a linear operator (adding items to a recipe is linear), and so does valuation.

One rejoinder though, SNLT is time varying. So whenever there'd be a productive innovation, the SNLT of the input commodities to a productive process would retroactively degrade. Assuming the innovation occurs at an appropriate time.

"The labourer is not only producing surplus value, they're maintaining past value" - another mindblower.

Though for me, I'd actually not want to de-emphasize the numbers as Harvey did. One of the things that would excite me is if I could utilize these to begin to understand a way of setting up formulas, make measurements, etc. -- that is, I'm interested in Marx, in addition to the many ways he's used, but in his original purpose: as a scientific project of economics. It's one of those questions that's always interested me. — Moliere

Same! We've got a shared interest in that. I did some work years ago on the value theory in Capital here! Lots of abstract algebra.

"Money is a claim on future labour" is mindblowing.

Nope! I agree that the raw materials are a commodity. The means of production (the factory, the spinner) are a commodity, the raw materials (wool) are, and so is the living labor purchased. In order for raw materials, like gold or iron or what have you, to enter into the economic relation, even though they are there beforehand, they must be worked, so they have labor time invested in them. — Moliere

Oh I see. You're interpreting the first C as a composite of raw materials and labour, the - as the expenditure of labour power, and the second C as the output commodity. I think that's actually more correct. Because you need to buy+renew the means of production and labour in the M-C step; which would also make it consistent with the Capital volume 2 analysis I think!

I have one but: I thought the first "C" in "M-C-C-M" was the purchase of the labor commodity. Fortunately, I think this doesn't really do much against your breakdown. Flip 'em around and it works. The commodity labor is purchased and then does work on raw materials with the instruments(means) to create a commodity to be sold on the market which then yields money, having been sold. — Moliere

That's interesting. M-C-C-M is given a directional connotation though right. A big deal's been made about money going the opposite way around the cycle than commodities. I agree with you that both make sense. Though maybe they should not.

Are the raw materials interpreted as commodities in your view? Are they there "before" this step of circulation?

This seems to be a relatively concise picture of of the relationship of exchange value to circulation and capital at this point in the book. It specifically regards how capital is distinct from, but reciprocally dependent on circulation and exchange. In particular, capital explicitly requires labour which produces for exchange as simultaneously a link in the circulation of capital and a break within it. This break is a generative tension - capital needs labour there to amplify produced values with each advancement.

“Differently expressed: Exchange value, as regards its content, was originally an objectified amount of labour or labour time; as such it passed through circulation, in its objectification, until it became money, tangible money. It must now again posit the point of departure of circulation, which lay outside circulation, was presupposed to it, and for which circulation appeared as an external, penetrating and internally transforming movement; this point was labour; but [it must do so] now no longer as a simple equivalent or as a simple objectification of labour, but rather as objectified exchange value, now become independent, which yields itself to labour, becomes its material, only so as to renew itself and to begin circulating again by itself. And with that it is no longer a simple positing of equivalents, a preservation of its identity, as in circulation; but rather multiplication of itself. Exchange value posits itself as exchange value only by realizing itself; i.e. increasing its value. Money (as returned to itself from circulation), as capital, has lost its rigidity, and from a tangible thing has become a process. But at the same time, labour has changed its relation to its objectivity; it, too, has returned to itself[…]”

This paragraph seems to be a break down of M-C-C-M circulation and what this circulation/money capital advancement does to the concept of exchange value.

An exchange value "was originally" (in simple circulation) an "objectified amount of labour, or labour time. As such it passed through circulation, as an {object representative of a given amount of labour time} until it became money, tangible money". It then gets transformed through the advancement of money capital. The progression M-C-C-M. Each letter and - is a distinct part.

M: "It must now again posit the point of departure of circulation" - exchange value came from objectified labour considered as a representative of value, it posits an item that will exchange for it. When exchanged, it realises the value assigned to it by the totality of the economy - through the conditions of labour and market forces. It was taken "out of circulation", from a previous M-C-C-M cycle, as a previous terminal point. This is exchange value as some store of money, which is entering the circulation again.

M-C: " ; but [it must do so] now no longer as a simple equivalent or as a simple objectification of labour, but rather as objectified exchange value, now become independent" - the money re-enters circulation, only to drop out of it again as a commodity, but the commodity considered as a repository of value. This will be grist for the mill of production, but that production is for exchange. Thus the commodity remains considered as a representative of its exchange value.

C-C: " but rather as objectified exchange value, now become independent, which yields itself to labour, becomes its material" - , the commodity, as a representative of exchange value, has its use value modified (work done on it), but the labour done to assemble and shape the product's use value simultaneously increases the "labour done in the past" to that product, and thus the advancement accumulates more labour, which increases value. The modification of the input use value turns to an amplification of the output exchange value. That modification, as production for profit, posits a final transformation to realise the amplified value in this step. A sale.

C-M: "only so as to renew itself and to begin circulating again by itself. And with that it is no longer a simple positing of equivalents, a preservation of its identity, as in circulation; but rather multiplication of itself." the C-M step is the realisation of what was posited in C-C - the transformation of the output value of C into a generic representative of value (like gold),

That returns the process to a generic representative of value which "must now again posit the point of departure of circulation". And the cycle repeats.

Exchange value posits itself as exchange value only by realizing itself; i.e. increasing its value. Money (as returned to itself from circulation), as capital, has lost its rigidity, and from a tangible thing has become a process. But at the same time, labour has changed its relation to its objectivity; it, too, has returned to itself

The transformation money capital has performed on exchange value is that, instead of exchange of equivalents - which occurs in the M-C and C-M steps - the middle link is no longer an equation of values, it's a production of value itself. In that regard, exchange value itself no longer can reasonably be seen to derive from a process which renders commodities equivalent, exchange value itself requires production and maintenance ; and the name of this process is capital.

M-C-C-M thus seems to be M-C-M' from Capital: — fdrake

Think this really holds in Grundrisse:

“Capital comes initially from circulation, and, moreover, its point of departure is money. We have seen that money which enters into circulation and at the same time returns from it to itself is the last requirement, in which money suspends itself. It is at the same time the first concept of capital, and the first form in which it appears. Money has negated itself as something which merely dissolves in circulation; but it has also equally negated itself as something which takes up an independent attitude towards circulation. This negation, as a single whole, in its positive aspects, contains the first elements of capital. Money is the first form in which capital as such appears. M–C–C–M; that money is exchanged for commodity and the commodity for money; this movement of buying in order to sell, which makes up the formal aspect of commerce, of capital as merchant capital, is found in the earliest conditions of economic development; it is the first movement in which exchange value as such forms the content – is not only the form but also its own content. This motion can take place within peoples, or between peoples for whose production exchange value[…]”[

“Commercial capital is only circulating capital, and circulating capital is the first form of capital; in which it has as yet by no means become the foundation of production. A more developed form is money capital and money interest, usury, whose independent appearance belongs in the same way to an earlier stage. ”
/quote]

M-C-C-M looks to be money capital of some kind. Labelled "merchant capital", but by the looks of it a "more developed form" of it is the "money capital" of the initial analysis of money capital in Vol 2 of Capital.

The C-C transition also seems to be construed as production:

“Circulation therefore does not carry within itself the principle of self-renewal. The moments of the latter are presupposed to it, not posited by it. Commodities constantly have to be thrown into it anew from the outside, like fuel into a fire. Otherwise it flickers out in indifference. It would die out with money, as the indifferent result which, in so far as it no longer stood in any connection with commodities, prices or circulation, would have ceased to be money, to express a relation of production; only its metallic existence would be left over, while its economic existence would be destroyed. Circulation, therefore, which appears as that which is immediately present on the surface of bourgeois society, exists only in so far as it is constantly mediated.

And in that regard mediates exchange, just as in M-C...P...C'-M'.

Finally Marx shows the reciprocal dependence of production and circulation.

“We have therefore reached the point of departure again, production which posits, creates exchange values; but this time, production which presupposes circulation as a developed moment and which appears as a constant process, which posits circulation and constantly returns from it into itself in order to posit it anew. The movement which creates exchange value thus appears here in a much more complex form, since it is no longer only the movement of presupposed exchange values, or the movement which posits them formally as prices, but which creates, brings them forth at the same time as presuppositions. Production itself is here no longer present in advance of its products, i.e. presupposed; it rather appears as simultaneously bringing forth these results; but it does not bring them forth, as in the first stage, as merely leading into circulation, but as simultaneously presupposing circulation, the developed process of circulation. (Circulation consists at bottom only of the formal process of positing exchange value, sometimes in the role of the commodity, at other times in the role of money.)

“This movement appears in different forms, not only historically, as leading towards value-producing labour, but also within the system of bourgeois production itself, i.e. production for exchange value. ”

Moreover, as part of the process of production - as production for exchange - production generates circulation. Presumably in the same manner as production generated exchange, distribution and so on in the first chapter.

Chapter on Capital

“Out of the act of exchange itself, the individual, each one of them, is reflected in himself as its exclusive and dominant (determinant) subject. With that, then, the complete freedom of the individual is posited: voluntary transaction; no force on either side; positing of the self as means, or as serving, only as means, in order to posit the self as end in itself, as dominant and primary [übergreifend]; finally, the self-seeking interest which brings nothing of a higher order to realization; the other is also recognized and acknowledged as one who likewise realizes his self-seeking interest, so that both know that the common interest exists only in the duality, many-sidedness, and autonomous development of the exchanges between self-seeking interests. The general interest is precisely the generality of self-seeking interests. Therefore, when the economic form, exchange, posits the all-sided equality of its subjects, then the content, the individual as well as the objective material which drives towards the exchange, is freedom. Equality and freedom are thus not only respected in exchange based on exchange values but, also, the exchange of exchange values is the productive, real basis of all equality and freedom.”

An amazingly concise set up of the bourgeoise conception of freedom and how it's rooted in exchange. Two people are equal in exchange, equal in need, and their volition alone seals the deal between equals. Equals as economic subjects ("reflected in himself as {exchange's} exclusive {determinant} subject").

“In Roman law, the servus is therefore correctly defined as one who may not enter into exchange for the purpose of acquiring anything for himself (see the Institutes). [22] It is, consequently, equally clear that although this legal system corresponds to a social state in which exchange was by no means developed, nevertheless, in so far as it was developed in a limited sphere, it was able to develop the attributes of the juridical person, precisely of the individual engaged in exchange, and thus anticipate (in its basic aspects) the legal relations of industrial society, and in particular the legal relations of industrial society, and in particular the right which rising bourgeois society had necessarily to assert against medieval society. But the development of this right itself coincides completely with the dissolution of the Roman community.”

The economic subject is further rooted in the concept of a "juridical person" "engaged in exchange". The juridical person is an abstraction of a person which nevertheless has social force - that's pretty similar to the generic worker considered as a value creator, and they are also situated in exchange; like selling their labour power. This seems to simultaneously argue that these concepts in Roman law prefigured and paved the way for subjectivities in exchange relations, and also that the mechanism which generate abstract kinds of people with a pre-specified relationship to exchange (the servus) came along with it. The legal subject of a worker and its subordinate status came from the same idea.

There were two "buts" I had while reading (I'm sticking to my no working on weekends commitment.;) ) — Moliere

Please show me your buts when you can be arsed. Assuming you haven't already laid them bare.

I can't tell if we're supposed to be able to derive how much money should be in circulation at a given time, or if it'd be better to somehow substitute, for M1, some function of the quantity of goods in a market, something like a supply-demand function. At times it seems like he's focused on a single commodity market, almost as literally as the market metaphor would have us think, and then he quickly expands to say "of course the banker pays the grocer pays the clerk pays the gas man and that would influence how much money is needed too". — Moliere

I also get that impression. There's a sleight of hand too, I think. The first example talks about exchanges only for quarters of wheat - and as if all the trades occur at once. Effectively multiplying the trade volume at any given time. The second example instead talks about consecutive trades involving the same thaler - independent of what commodity is traded. Like how much each thaler changes hands within a given time period.

for M1, some function of the quantity of goods in a market, something like a supply-demand function

Makes sense. I guess a rejoinder could be M1 is already a function of those things as Marx has construed? Though there's certainly not enough information presented, so far, to determine why the commodity has a price in particular. I think Marx is aware of the difficulty:

With circulation, the determined price is presupposed, and circulation as money posits it only formally. The determinateness of exchange value itself, or the measure of price, must now itself appear as an act of circulation. Posited in this way, exchange value is capital, and circulation is posited at the same time as an act of production. — Marx

exchange value itself, and now no longer exchange value in general, but measured exchange value, has to appear as a presupposition posited by circulation itself, and, as posited by it, its presupposition. The process of circulation must also and equally appear as the process of the production of exchange values. — Marx

If you took supply and demand as inputs into the process of circulation, in determining price, and each instance of commodity circulation was a trade, it would involve both shifts in supply and demand depending on the frequency of trade for the commodity (demand proxy?) and the volume of that commodity already in circulation (supply proxy?). In that regard determinants of price are also part of the circulation process. In that regard circulation "appear{s} as the process of production of exchange values".

The only way I can think of resolving this strangeness is thinking of Marx's analysis of "mass of commodities" and "velocity of money" as a formal determination rather than a concrete one. It says "given (whatever makes this commodity trade at this value), circulation behaves (thusly)". Maybe that's why "measured exchange values" must appear "as a presupposition posited" by circulation. Not only are determinate values of commodities presupposed as foundational for circulation, the fact that they are presupposed as foundational is maybe posited for the process's continuation.

An analogy; letting agent can fix a house's rent at $1000 dollars per month if they want and still turn a profit. The letting agent will also perceive that the house would have a market rate of $1200 per month rent. Maybe a "market rate" is like positing of a presupposition , there needs to be such a price for a valuation of the house to return a specific value (presupposed), but also that $1200 has been posited as the "going rate" for agreeing to that rent.

Still thinking about that.

Also, and this may be nothing I'll say up front -- I'm wondering about the differences between M-C-C-M/C-M-M-C and the latter, as you've broken it out. (EDIT: Just to be clear, "the latter" I mean M-C-M/C-M-C, "latter" as in coming from Capital) — Moliere

I'm not sure about this either. Thanks for pointing this out, I love the value theory in Marx!

When we now examine the original form more closely, the direct form in which circulation presents itself, C–M–M–C, then we see that money appears here as a pure medium of exchange. The commodity is exchanged for a commodity, and money appears merely as the medium of this exchange. The price of the first commodity is realized with money, in order to realize the price of the second commodity with the money, and thus to obtain it in exchange for the first. After the price of the first commodity is realized, the aim of the person who now has its price in money is not to obtain the price of the second commodity, but rather to pay its price in order to obtain the commodity. — Marx, Grundrisse

I'm reading this as a sequence of C-M into M-C, which is like a sale and then a purchase. Of two distinct commodities. So may as well write it C1-M, M-C2. I don't think it's clear that all of this process is really occurrent, some parts of it are abstract. The final M-C step seems to be "to pay the price {for C2} in order to obtain it". The first step seems to be "to turn C1 into the amount of value it represents as a price form/numerical magnitude". I think the M-M step in the middle is thus the connection of those two prices as equivalent - which employs the medium of exchange.

I say "employs" rather than "is" because this act fictive in the same way as squaring accounts would be. Unit of account as imaginary representative != money as a physical quantifier of value which may be used in exchange.

“Regarded as measure the material substance of money is essential, although its availability and even more its quantity, the amount of the portion of gold or silver which serves as unit, are entirely irrelevant for it in this quality, and it is employed in general only as an imaginary, non-existent unit. In this quality it is needed as a unit and not as an amount.

So maybe C1-M-M-C2 is a single "instance" of exchange which is part of circulation. It also begins with a commodity and ends with one; to "obtain" the commodity C2 might also make it drop out of circulation. Like if you buy food to eat it.

What about M-C-C-M? It's seen as "just as correct" as C-M-M-C. But it's treated differently.

“We now pass on to the third function of money; which initially results from the second form of circulation: M–C–C–M; in which money appears not only as medium, nor as measure, but as end-in-itself, and hence steps outside circulation just like a particular commodity which ceases to circulate for the time being and changes from marchandise to denrée.

“Money, then, has an independent existence outside circulation; it has stepped outside it. As a particular commodity it can be transformed out of its form of money into that of luxury articles, gold and silver jewellery (as long as craftsmanship is still very simple, as e.g. in the old English period, a constant transformation of silver money into plate and vice versa. See Taylor) [72] ; or, as money, it can be accumulated to form a treasure."

"“This comes from its independence as a result of M–C–C–M. In the case of money as capital, money itself is posited (1) as precondition of circulation as well as its result; (2) as having independence only in the form of a negative relation, but always a relation to circulation; (3) as itself an instrument of production, since circulation no longer appears in its primitive simplicity, as quantitative exchange, but as a process of production, as a real metabolism”

Thus this seems to be start with money M, get commodity C (purchase), use commodity C to get Commodity C', sell commodity C' to get M'. The C-C relationship in the middle seems to be construed as production.

But first it must be noted that, once the quality of money as an intrinsic relation of production generally founded on exchange value is presupposed, it is possible to demonstrate that in some particular cases it does service as an instrument of production. ‘The utility of gold and silver rests on this, that they replace labour.’ (Lauderdale, p. 11.) [71] Without money, a mass of swaps would be necessary before one obtained the desired article in exchange. Furthermore, in each particular exchange one would have to undertake an investigation into the relative value of commodities. Money spares us the first task in its role as instrument of exchange (instrument of commerce); the second task, as measure of value and representative of all commodities (idem, loc. cit.). The opposite assertion, that money is not productive, amounts only to saying that, apart from the functions in which it is productive, as measure, instrument of circulation and representative of value, it is unproductive; that its quantity is productive only in so far as it is necessary to fulfil these preconditions.

M-C-C-M thus seems to be M-C-M' from Capital:

Buying in order to sell, or, more accurately, buying in order to sell dearer, M—C—M′, appears certainly to be a form peculiar to one kind of capital alone, namely, merchants’ capital. But industrial capital too is money, that is changed into commodities, and by the sale of these commodities, is re-converted into more money. The events that take place outside the sphere of circulation, in the interval between the buying and selling, do not affect the form of this movement. Lastly, in the case of interest-bearing capital, the circulation M—C—M′ appears abridged. We have its result without the intermediate stage, in the form M—M′, “en style lapidaire” so to say, money that is worth more money, value that is greater than itself. — Marx, Capital Vol 1

Because the C-C aspect of circulation is seen as a productive relation, it's thus not necessarily exchange value preserving.

Furthermore, that also comes up in the discussion of money capital in Capital in Vol 2 . The general formula being:

M — C ... P ... C' — M'

investment -> stuff (less means of production and reproduction of workers) ... workers do stuff ... investors have new stuff -> sell the new stuff for more money than you started. To quote:

The circular movement [1] of capital takes place in three stages, which, according to the presentation in Volume I, form the following series:

First stage: The capitalist appears as a buyer on the commodity- and the labour-market; his money is transformed into commodities, or it goes through the circulation act M — C.

Second Stage: Productive consumption of the purchased commodities by the capitalist. He acts as a capitalist producer of commodities; his capital passes through the process of production. The result is a commodity of more value than that of the elements entering into its production.

Third Stage: The capitalist returns to the market as a seller; his commodities are turned into money; or they pass through the circulation act C — M.

Hence the formula for the circuit of money-capital is: M — C ... P ... C' — M', the dots indicating that the process of circulation is interrupted,and C' and M' designating C and M increased by surplus-value. — Marx, Capital Vol 2

M-C-C-M' is an abbreviation of that process too. C-M-M-C' may arise by sandwiching two circulations together:

M — C ... P ... C' — M' ; M' — C ... P ... C'' — M''

You have C'-M'-M'-C as a subprocess. That's reinvestment, which is also construed (here) to be taking the produced commodity basket C', selling it for M', which is alchemised through equivalent valuation (the medium of exchange) into a quantity of your inputs C. That's a "circulation of commodities" through capital. C-M-M-C thus seems to be equivalent to "simple exchange" in Capital Vol 1, with M-C-C-M equivalent to a (nonspecified) advancement of capital.

Hopefully this isn't too much of an asspull.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
More circulation stuff:

Couple of brief notes on circulation in general:

( 1 ) It takes the alienation and divestment that occur in production and embeds it in every social process. Every point of life marked by exchange becomes part of alienation and divestment. Thus, all points of life.
( 2 ) Circulation also thus appears as alien to those who are part of it. The mediation of circulation by the total social process, value for value - secretly labour for labour, takes the world a capitalist economy is supported by and presents it back to those within it as a social reality in which they determine no part. Circulation appears and behaves as if it were autonomous, independent of the agents which collectively maintain it through their actions and self sustaining, but in reality is not and cannot be that way.