Das Kapital by Karl Marx | Notes & Summary

Summary

Marx presents a labor theory of value which posits that value can only be generated by labor. This is largely rejected in academia today. Along with this rejection, his claim that capitalism is ipso facto exploitative falls apart. This is all supposed to be a purely descriptive work. Marx thought it a strength that just from a purely descriptive lens he could show how capitalism was inherently exploitative. 

His most interesting claim is regarding commodity fetishization based on our patterns of production rather than consumption. He believes that we attribute agential, magical powers to our commodities because they are the only form of social interaction at a time when production is so isolated and alienated. Thus, we see in these commodities a part of us: namely our social relationships in production. We attribute this fascination to some inherent power in the object rather in ourselves and begin to fetishize it.  

Marx's historical materialistic views are exemplified when he claims that the Gods we worship reflect the means of our economic production. He presents a teleology of the world that progresses in a dialectic manner but not by resolving contradictory ideas but contradictions in our methods of production.

Labor Theory of Value

Use Value: how much utility an object has.

Exchange Value: the nominal price on the market. How much it can be traded for for another good. 

Actual Value: this is the actual worth of an object, Marx is using this as a hidden variable, something to explain why exchange values are the way they are. He famously thinks that actual value is the amount of hours of labor spent on an object (measured in the hours of an average skilled laborer). Only labor can create value out of nothing, this is a more extreme version of a Lockean view. 

He thinks that exchange value isn’t effected by use value but by actual value. That is, the relative amount of labor used to produce two products determine their nominal prices on the market. 

The labor theory of value is now rejected, there are clear counter examples. Also the model of supply and demand just seem to capture more of the reality. If a house popped into existence it clearly would still have much value. Furthermore, the supply and demand model captures the value created by the entrepreneur who can identify asymmetries within markets. Low supply/high demand situations in the supply and demand model would be justified whereas in the labor theory of value could be seen as exploitative.

This is quite the blow for Marx’s theory sense his proof that capitalism was ipso facto exploitative is dependent on this theory. Although his discussion on alienation is still a very pertinent critique. 

Exploitation of Labor

Capitalism begins with the circulation of commodities. A person who is interested in use-value that is they are trading to gain access to the use of goods are characterized by economic loops like C-M-C that is they trade one of their capital (goods) for money which they buy other goods with. Capitalists however are characterized by the M-C-M loop. That is they trade money for capital in hopes that it will become more money:

Use-values must therefore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims at. This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value, is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending augmentation of exchange-value, which the miser strives after, by seek­ing to save his money from circulation, is attained by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into circulation.

The way to be profitable from this loop is by increasing the value of your product in the C stage. Since the only thing that generates surplus value is labor (this is why the labor theory of value is crucial for Marx claim that capitalism is necessarily exploitative) the capitalist must hire labor to work on his capital.

Now the price of labor just like everything is determined by the labor time necessary for the production. That is to say the price of labor is how much it takes for the worker to sustain himself, be healthy, and have children that can be laborers in the future. Subsistence isn’t the same as mere survival because the capitalist wants the laborer to be healthy and have kids. In industrial societies the price of labor is lower than the output of labor, that is to say people usually don’t need to work an entire workday before earning enough goods to sustain themselves. 

The capitalist exploits the laborer by paying him just enough for his substance and takes away all his other surplus in value as profit. If a laborer works 8 hours a day to generate 100 dollars surplus value on the capital but he only needs 50 dollars to survive, then the capitalist gets away with paying him just 4 hours a day for his just salary and walks away with the other half. Keep in mind that Marx isn’t critiquing the entrepreneur but the guy with handed down wealth who literally doesn’t work at all but merely owns the means to production. 

This critique loses a lot of footing once you throw away the labor theory of value. 

The Fetishization of Commodities

What is fascinating about Marx’s discussion about commodity fetishization, quite a popular topic today, surrounds fetishization from the side of the producer and not consumer. 

Marx believes that commodity fetishization is unique to capitalistic modes of production. First we are atomized and produce privately, both within factories we all do one narrow job as well as between factories each only produces a specific part. The only social aspect of production are when goods are exchanged — the exchange of goods represents an exchange in their value which is predicated upon an equivalence of our labor power. Since we are social creatures and the exchange of our products is the only social part of production, we see/project/make-sense of our social relationships in society within the relationships of our commodities. e.g. we can example a skilled craftsmen determining his social rank by the quality of his table as opposed to the norm. This is why commodities fascinate us: because we project onto them the social relationships between humans that is being exhausted in society. 

Of course this process is subconscious, but the commodity fascination is quite real. We fetishize the object when we attribute the power of the object, the source of this fascination, not from the relative social connections and labor it represents but from its inherent value. That is commodity fetishization is the reification of subjective/relative representations of labor as a quality objective and intrinsic to the object. The commodity fascinates us even more because its prices are indecipherably determined by the market, the objects and markets seem to take a life of its own that commands the producer. The market is seen as an agent instead of an emergent system determined by the producers. Another reification is happening here.

Fetishization means reification but also imbuing commodities with agential, magical powers. 

This is exclusive to capitalism because of its alienation and indecipherability in its production relations. In feudalism for example, your labors are still alienated as they are owned by your feudal lord, but the production relations are clear. How much you give to the lord, how much you keep for yourself, who else in your land you rely on for supplies. There is no indecipherability and you are not atomized, in fact you are highly dependent on everyone else thus you do not need to project social relations into the objects because your social relations are quite clear. 

There are many structural similarities between Marx description of religion and commodity fetishization. We project our best qualities onto God just as we project our social relations onto objects. We give both a part of ourselves (social part for commodities, best qualities for God) away and in some way lose it. We fetishize both by reifying their intrinsic existence, failing to recognize that their powers stem from us. Lastly, they all tyrannize us even though they are our creations.

Again, I don’t know how explanatory this is today of why we fetishize so much. It seems to be much more correlated with prestige than a projection of producer relations. But the intuition that we give a part of ourselves into the objects of our creation is quite fascinating. 

Key quotes:

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

…

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objec­tive character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between them­ selves, but between the products of their labour.

…

Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that con­verts every product into a social hieroglyphic… It is, however, just this ultimate money-form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of dis­ closing, the social character of private labour, and the social rela­tions between the individual producers.

…

To them, their own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them.

It’s interesting that Marx's critique on commodity fetishization lies on the production side and not the consuming side.

Historical Materialism 

Historical materialism is the view that the production of a society is the main (or only in a more extreme reading) determination of a society. Just like Hegel, he believed that there is a teleology to history. The engine of change however wasn’t abstract ideas but rather solid material economic activity. He believed that each stage progressed in a dialectic method by resolving the economic contradictions within that economic system. Feudalism necessarily created merchant classes which birthed capitalism; capitalism was contradictory because it overproduced goods and exploited workers. 

There are roughly three layers to a society, the economic (technology, means of production, etc.), the political (feudalism, monarchy, etc.), and cultural (ideas, art, etc.) He thinks that the arrow of causality “mostly” flows from the former to the latter.  

There is no better evidence for this when he said “The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.” And he said that the God’s we worshipped reflected our means of production. “Christianity with its cultus of abstract man and [individual dignity bestowed upon by God], more especially in its bourgeois develop­ments, Protestantism, Deism, is the most fitting form of religion” for Capitalism. Less developed economic societies that had to operate under agrarianism or feudalism worshipped Nature much more. Since their produce was so limited that slight changes in nature could spell the difference between life and death.

He thinks we can only “cure” society of religion when we become truly free economically. That is when our production relationships becomes more social, less exploitative, and less alienating. “The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.”

In this critique we truly see how the owl of minerva spreads its wings at the full of dusk. In his society, Marx could have no access to what a society without religion looked like. It's ironic how many scholars lament the "death of God" nowadays and call for a resurgence of religion.

Miscellaneous

• Marx takes himself to be doing purely descriptive work and he counts it as one of his strengths. That just through description alone he can show how capitalism is alienating and exploitative. 

• Marx never gives a fully fleshed out view of communism. But, he thinks that it necessarily has to be an extremely advanced technological society where most of production is taken care of by robots.

• He throws in snit bits of what life under communism is like “while in communist society where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

• To the individual who critiques communism for directing prestige away from productive capacities and into social ones, Marx would say, you only think about the world in this competitive manner because you have only lived under capitalism.

• Marx thinks that the abstract way a person relates to another in business is useful. It becomes problematic when it is the only way that we can relate to others. 

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