Transcript “Ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je... Marxiste.” “If anything is certain, it is that I myself am...

“Ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas
Marxiste.”
“If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a
Marxist.“
(Marx to Lafargue in 1882)
The Capital by Karl Marx
A PRESENTATION BY TIBOR LOHMANN AND EMANUEL HAUSMANN
PART ONE: COMMODITIES AND MONEY
•“IS SOMETHING INDEPENDENT OF OURSELVES THAT
MEETS A HUMAN WANT OR NEED OF ANY KIND”
•“USE-VALUE”
•“EXCHANGE-VALUE”
•VALUE OF COMMODITY IS DETERMINED BY ITS SOCIALLY
NECESSARY LABOUR TIME
•SOCIALLY NECESSARY LABOR TIME IS DEFINED BY “THE
LABOR TIME REQUIRED TO PRODUCE ANY USE-VALUE
UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION NORMAL FOR A
GIVEN SOCIETY AND WITH THE AVERAGE DEGREE OF
SKILL AND INTENSITY OF LABOR PREVALENT IN THAT
SOCIETY.”
The Capital Volume I
The Process of Exchange
• "humans are made for each other to be holders or representatives
of commodities.“
• “Money necessarily crystallizes out of the process of exchange, in
which different products of labour are in fact equated with each
other, and thus converted into commodities.”
• "Men are henceforth related to each other in their social process of
production in a purely atomistic way. ... because the products of
men's labour universally take on the form of commodities."[
The Transformation of Money into
Capital
•
•
•
•
•
C-M-C is the simple form of circulation
“selling in order to buy”
M-C-M is the capital-generating form
“buying in order to sell”
“Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, creates no value”.
The Production of AbsoluteSurplus Value
Capitalism and the labor process
• The worker works under the control of the capitalist to whom his
labor belongs.
• The product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the
worker—the person who made the product.
Constant Capital and Variable Capital
• Constant Capital: “That part of capital, therefore, which is turned
into means of production, i.e. the raw material, the auxiliary
material and the instruments of labor, does not undergo any
quantitative alteration of value in the process of production.”
The Working Day
• A working day can never be reduced to necessary labor time only
• Factors that limit the maximum length of the working day: physical
limits
• Worker must rest, eat, sleep, etc.
• “The worker needs time in which to satisfy his intellectual and
social requirements, and the extent and the number of these
requirements is conditioned by the general level of civilization.”
Part 5
Chapters 16-18
• Absolute and Relative Surplus Value and their
relation to societies now and then
• Surplus value is the difference between the
value the worker creates and the wage he
earns
• Marx shows the necessity of Surplus value for
capitalism
Part 6
Chapters 19-21
• Transformation of working power into wage
• Possible exploitation of workers by capitalists
• Time-wage and Piece-wage
Part 7
Chapters 22-25
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•
•
•
•
Accumulation and inreasement rate of capital
Marx predicts financial crises!
Relation of consumption and production
Labor value and means of production
Risk of overproduction as a result
Part 8
Chapters 26-33
• Theory of ancient primitive accumulation
• History of capitalism
• The Genesis of the capitalist farmer and the
industrial capitalist
• Colonization as a form of capital accumulation
Volume 2 and 3
• Friedrich Engels published Marx‘s manuscripts
after he died