Capital Vol 1 Reading Group: Chapters 1-2

I did wonder, though, if there were exceptions to this general rule. But then I suppose depending on what you define as "labour" they can be explained. For example a certain type of old car could, due to some general trend, or it being in a film, or a celebrity driving it, could suddenly become much more in demand, and much more valuable.

Although of course the amount of labour congealed in the car would be the same.

Unless of course you include as abstract labour all various social processes, from things like marketing (which would clearly add value) to more generalised things like the spreading by word of mouth of spontaneous trends and fads.

III. COSTS OF TRANSPORTATION
It is not necessary to go here into all the details of the costs of circulation, such as packing, sorting, etc.
The general law is that all costs of circulation, which arise only from changes in the forms of
commodities do not add to their value. They are merely expenses incurred in the realisation of the value
or in its conversion from one form into another. The capital spent to meet those costs (including the
labour done under its control) belongs among the faux frais of capitalist production. They must be
replaced from the surplus-product and constitute, as far as the entire capitalist class is concerned, a
deduction from the surplus-value or surplus-product, just as the time a labourer needs for the purchase of
his means of subsistence is lost time. But the costs of transportation play a too important part to pass
them by without a few brief remarks.

Within the circuit of capital and the metamorphosis of commodities, which forms a part of the circuit, an
interchange of matter takes place in social labour. This interchange of matter may necessitate a change of
location of products, their real motion from one place to another. Still, circulation of commodities can
take place without physical motion by them, and there can be transportation of products without
circulation of commodities, and even without a direct exchange of products. A house sold by A to B does
not wander from one place to another, although it circulates as a commodity. Movable
commodity-values, such as cotton or pig iron, may lie in the same storage dump at a time when they are
passing through dozens of circulation processes, are bought and resold by speculators.[17] What really
does move here is the title of ownership in goods, not the goods themselves. On the other hand,
transportation played a prominent role in the land of the Incas, although the social product neither
circulated as a commodity nor was distributed by means of barter.

Consequently, although the transportation industry when based on capitalist production appears as a
cause of circulation costs, this special form of appearance does not alter the matter in the least.
Quantities of products are not increased by transportation. Nor, with a few exceptions, is the possible
alteration of their natural qualities, brought about by transportation, an intentional useful effect; it is
rather an unavoidable evil. But the use-value of things is materialised only in their consumption, and
their consumption may necessitate a change of location of these things, hence may require an additional
process of production, in the transport industry. The productive capital invested in this industry imparts
value to the transported products, partly by transferring value from the means of transportation, partly by
adding value through the labour performed in transport. This last-named increment of value consists, as it
does in all capitalist production, of a replacement of wages and of surplus-value.

Within each process of production, a great role is played by the change of location of the subject of
labour and the required instruments of labour and labour-power -- such as cotton trucked from the
carding to the spinning room or coal hoisted from the shaft to the surface. The transition of the finished
product as finished goods from one independent place of production to another located at a distance
shows the same phenomenon, only on a larger scale. The transport of products from one productive
establishment to another is furthermore followed by the passage of the finished products from the sphere
of production to that of consumption. The product is not ready for consumption until it has completed
these movements.

As was shown above, the general law of commodity production holds: The productivity of labour is
inversely proportional to the value created by it. This is true of the transport industry as well as of any
other. The smaller the amount of dead and living labour required for the transportation of commodities
over a certain distance, the greater the productive power of labour, and vice versa.[18]
The absolute magnitude of the value which transportation adds to the commodities stands in inverse
proportion to the productive power of the transport industry and in direct proportion to the distance
traveled, other conditions remaining the same.

The part of the value added to the prices of commodities by the costs of transportation, other conditions
remaining the same, is directly proportional to their cubic content and weight, and inversely proportional
to their value. But there are many modifying factors. Transportation requires, for instance, more or less
important precautionary measures, and therefore more or less expenditure of labour and instruments of
labour, depending on how fragile, perishable, explosive, etc., the articles are. Here the railway kings
show greater ingenuity in the invention of fantastic species than do botanists and zoologists. The
classification of gods on English railways, for example, fills volumes and, in principle, rests on the
general tendency to transform the diversified natural properties of goods into just as many ills of
transportation and routine pretexts for fraudulent charges. "Glass, which was formerly worth £11 per
crate, is now worth only £2 since the improvements which have taken place in manufactures, and since
the abolition of the duty; but the rate for carriage is the same as it was formerly, and higher than it was
previously, when carried by canal. Formerly, manufacturers inform me that they had glass and glass
wares for the plumbers' trade carried at about 10 s. per ton, within 50 miles of Birmingham. At the
present time, the rate to cover risk of breakage, amount ... The companies always resist any claim that is
made for breakages."[19] The fact that furthermore the part of the value added to an article by the costs
of transportation is inversely proportional to its value furnishes special grounds to the railway kings to
tax articles in direct proportion to their values. The complaints of the industrialists and merchants on this
score are found on every page of the testimony given in the report quoted.

The capitalist mode of production reduces the costs of transportation of the individual commodity by the
development of the means of transportation and communication, as well as by concentration -- increasing
scale -- of transportation. It increases that part of the living and materialised social labour which is
expended in the transport of commodities, firstly by converting the great majority of all products into
commodities, secondly, by substituting distant for local markets.

The circulation, i.e., the actual locomotion of commodities in space, resolves itself into the transport of
commodities. The transport industry forms on the one hand an independent branch of production and
thus a separate sphere of investment of productive capital. On the other hand its distinguishing feature is
that it appears as a continuation of a process of production within the process of circulation and for the
process of circulation.

Marketing does not embody any labor in a commodity. Diamonds are not expensive because they are in great demand, they are expensive because they contain vast amounts of labor in obtaining and perfecting them.

I did wonder, though, if there were exceptions to this general rule. But then I suppose depending on what you define as "labour" they can be explained. For example a certain type of old car could, due to some general trend, or it being in a film, or a celebrity driving it, could suddenly become much more in demand, and much more valuable.

Although of course the amount of labour congealed in the car would be the same. Unless of course you include as abstract labour all various social processes, from things like marketing (which would clearly add value) to more generalised things like the spreading by word of mouth of spontaneous trends and fads.

Any thoughts on this? Am I missing something?

i'm inclined to agree that marketing does add value, since it does change use-value so is useful labour. marx says that use-value is the ability to satisfy a human want, however that want arises, and surely the desire for say an unbranded or minor brand trainer is qualitively different from the desire for say a nike trainer. the first the desire is mostly for footwear of a specific type, the second is desire for that AND desire for being fashion or aesthetics or whatever you want to call it. let's put it into the elementary form: x brandless trainer = x brandless trainer or y nike trainer = y nike trainer clearly has no real use for us, but say 1 nike trainer = 2 brandless trainers does, and makes sense because the brandless trainer does not satisfy my want for a nike one, so i can exchange them, thus they must be of different values. or have i got things arse about face?

i'm inclined to agree that marketing does add value, since it does change use-value so is useful labour. marx says that use-value is the ability to satisfy a human want, however that want arises, and surely the desire for say an unbranded or minor brand trainer is qualitively different from the desire for say a nike trainer. the first the desire is mostly for footwear of a specific type, the second is desire for that AND desire for being fashion or aesthetics or whatever you want to call it. let's put it into the elementary form: x brandless trainer = x brandless trainer or y nike trainer = y nike trainer clearly has no real use for us, but say 1 nike trainer = 2 brandless trainers does, and makes sense because the brandless trainer does not satisfy my want for a nike one, so i can exchange them, thus they must be of different values. or have i got things arse about face?

i'm inclined to agree that marketing does add value, since it does change use-value so is useful labour. marx says that use-value is the ability to satisfy a human want, however that want arises, and surely the desire for say an unbranded or minor brand trainer is qualitively different from the desire for say a nike trainer. the first the desire is mostly for footwear of a specific type, the second is desire for that AND desire for being fashion or aesthetics or whatever you want to call it. let's put it into the elementary form: x brandless trainer = x brandless trainer or y nike trainer = y nike trainer clearly has no real use for us, but say 1 nike trainer = 2 brandless trainers does, and makes sense because the brandless trainer does not satisfy my want for a nike one, so i can exchange them, thus they must be of different values. or have i got things arse about face?

anyway, i was going to post up my summary of the rest of the chapter, but maybe i'll keep that for tomorrow as i'm hungry.

Concrete labour is the labour different in kind, skill and intensity in every case, which gives to a commodity its specific qualities by which it satisfies human needs.

Abstract labour is the undifferentiated expenditure of human energy common to all forms of labour.

[..]

Before the development of the market, all labour is concrete labour; as the market develops, the abstract quantitative side of labour begins to develop and with the rise of manufacturing, predominates. This means that labour itself became more abstract, i.e., more uniform, lacking in skill or specific character, and the products of labour become increasingly uniform, what today is referred to as “MacDonalds culture”.

I think this is right but there's more to it. The Commodity which is a specific car immediately after it's material production, or when the car is actually formed, is a different commodity from the commodity later in time after marketing. Marketing is one form of abstract labour and is manifest in the commodity though it simply does not alter the bodily form (obviously, or it wouldn't be marketing). The first commodity, Car A (before marketing), represents less congealed labour than Car B (after marketing). I'm assuming this works based on the fact that regardless of the type of labour expended on a commodity, (in this case there are two different types) value is the manifestation of abstract labour. That's my two cents.

in the pharmaceutical industry, for example. But then again, this doesn't really affect the use-value.

I think you are confusing "value" with "price" here.

Marketing is not a part of the production of specific commodities but a commodity in itself. The capitalist is the one who purchases marketing commodities as I said before. "Price" is what the market can bear, or what consumers can be persuaded (through marketing) to pay. If a commodities "price" is more than it's "value" the capitalist makes a profit, if it is not then a loss is made.

Price, taken by itself, is nothing but the monetary expression of value. The values of all commodities of the country, for example, are expressed in gold prices, while on the Continent they are mainly expressed in silver prices. The value of gold or silver, like that of all other commodities is regulated by the quantity of labour necessary for getting them. [..]

So far the market price of a commodity coincides with its value. On the other hand, the oscillations of market prices, rising now over, sinking now under the value or natural price, depend upon the fluctuations of supply and demand. The deviations of market prices from values are continual, but as Adam Smith says:

"The natural price is the central price to which the prices of commodities are continually gravitating. Different accidents may sometimes keep them suspended a good deal above it, and sometimes force them down even somewhat below it. But whatever may be the obstacles which hinder them from settling in this center of repose and continuance, they are constantly tending towards it."

I cannot now sift this matter. It suffices to say the if supply and demand equilibrate each other, the market prices of commodities will correspond with their natural prices, that is to say with their values, as determined by the respective quantities of labour required for their production. But supply and demand must constantly tend to equilibrate each other, although they do so only by compensating one fluctuation by another, a rise by a fall, and vice versa. [..]

If the, speaking broadly, and embracing somewhat longer periods, all descriptions of commodities sell at their respective values, it is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases; but that the constant and usual profits of different trades spring from the prices of commodities, or selling them at a price over and above their value. The absurdity of this notion becomes evident if it is generalized. What a man would constantly win as a seller he would constantly lose as a purchaser. It would not do to say that there are men who are buyers without being sellers, or consumers without being producers. What these people pay to the producers, they must first get from them for nothing. If a man first takes your money and afterwards returns that money in buying your commodities, you will never enrich yourselves by selling your commodities too dear to that same man. This sort of transaction might diminish a loss, but would never help in realizing a profit. To explain, therefore, the general nature of profits, you must start from the theorem that, on an average, commodities are sold at their real values, and that profits are derived from selling them at their values, that is, in proportion to the quantity of labour realized in them. If you cannot explain profit upon this supposition, you cannot explain it at all. This seems paradox and contrary to every-day observation. It is also paradox that the earth moves round the sun, and that water consists of two highly inflammable gases. Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by every-day experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.

As others have said, I don't see how it can be said that marketing isn't part of the labour which goes into making commodities.

Okay so when you buy a commodity that has been marketed, you are buying both the commodity and the marketing time invested?

If Marketing is a commodity in itself, doesn't that imply that the person 'doing marketing' is 'labouring' too or can a purely social interaction not embody real labour?

"The same conditions exist in somewhat modified form in part of the
London handicraft furniture industry. It is practised notably in the
Tower Hamlets on a very large scale. The whole production is divided
into very numerous separate branches of business independent of one
another. One establishment makes only chairs, another only tables, a
third only bureaus, etc. But these establishments themselves are run
more or less like handicrafts by a single minor master and a few
journeymen.

Nevertheless, production is too large to work directly for private
persons. The buyers are the owners of furniture stores. On Saturdays
the master visits them and sells his product, the transaction being
closed with as much haggling as in a pawnshop over a loan. The
masters depend on this weekly sale, if for no other reason than to be
able to buy raw materials for the following week and to pay out
wages. Under these circumstances, they are really only middlemen
between the merchant and their own labourers. The merchant is the
actual capitalist who pockets the lion's share of the surplus-value."

I think the peculiarity of this situation just stems or is a reflex of the absurdity of paying for ‘image’.

I'm particularly interested in whether his theory of the development of erm... trading (right term to use?) is historically demonstrable. Will he make that clear later or should I look elsewhere? If elsewhere does anyone have any suggestions?

I think we need to have some faith in 'uncle Karl'. We first-time readers were warned, after all, to bear with it and more becomes clear later.

That being said I do want to ask a question for those having read Capital already. In places Marx is obviously being literal rather than figurative. I'm particularly interested in whether his theory of the development of erm... trading (right term to use?) is historically demonstrable. Will he make that clear later or should I look elsewhere? If elsewhere does anyone have any suggestions?

.

‘We all know that at the beginning of society, products are consumed by the producers themselves, and ‘

The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.

As I'm a visual learner I've drawn a nice diagram:

However the key to profit is NOT surplus value as we shall find out later..

Marketing is not a part of the production of specific commodities but a commodity in itself. The capitalist is the one who purchases marketing commodities as I said before. "Price" is what the market can bear, or what consumers can be persuaded (through marketing) to pay. If a commodities "price" is more than it's "value" the capitalist makes a profit, if it is not then a loss is made.

Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day's labour-power amounts to 3 shillings,
because on our assumption half a day's labour is embodied in that quantity of labour-power, i.e., because
the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour-power, cost half a day's
labour. But the past labour that is embodied in the labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into
action; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things.
The former determines the exchange-value of the labour-power, the latter is its use-value. The fact that
half a day's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent
him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that
labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two entirely different magnitudes; and this difference of
the two values was what the capitalist had in view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The useful
qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of which it makes yarn or boots, were to him nothing
more than a conditio sine qua non; for in order to create value, labour must be expended in a useful

manner. What really influenced him was the specific use-value which this commodity possesses of being
a source not only of value, but of more value than it has itself. This is the special service that the
capitalist expects from labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in accordance with the "eternal laws"
of the exchange of commodities. The seller of labour-power, like the seller of any other commodity,
realises its exchange-value, and parts with its use-value. He cannot take the one without giving the other.
The use-value of labour-power, or in other words, labour, belongs just as little to its seller, as the
use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it. The owner of the money has
paid the value of a day's labour-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day's labour belongs to
him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day's
labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that
consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this
circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the
seller.

Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore
finds, in the workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not only during six, but during
twelve hours. Just as during the six hours' process our 10 lbs. of cotton absorbed six hours' labour, and
became 10 lbs. of yarn, so now, 20 lbs. of cotton will absorb 12 hours' labour and be changed into 20 lbs.
of yarn. Let us now examine the product of this prolonged process. There is now materialised in this 20
lbs. of yarn the labour of five days, of which four days are due to the cotton and the lost steel of the
spindle, the remaining day having been absorbed by the cotton during the spinning process. Expressed in
gold, the labour of five days is thirty shillings. This is therefore the price of the 20 lbs. of yarn, giving, as
before, eighteenpence as the price of a pound. But the sum of the values of the commodities that entered
into the process amounts to 27 shillings. The value of the yarn is 30 shillings. Therefore the value of the
product is 1/9 greater than the value advanced for its production; 27 shillings have been transformed into
30 shillings; a surplus-value of 3 shillings has been created. The trick has at last succeeded; money has
been converted into capital.

Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities,
have been in no way violated. Equivalent has been exchanged for equivalent. For the capitalist as buyer
paid for each commodity, for the cotton, the spindle and the labour-power, its full value. He then did
what is done by every purchaser of commodities; he consumed their use-value. The consumption of the
labour-power, which was also the process of producing commodities, resulted in 20 lbs. of yarn, having a
value of 30 shillings. The capitalist, formerly a buyer, now returns to market as a seller, of commodities.
He sells his yarn at eighteenpence a pound, which is its exact value. Yet for all that he withdraws 3
shillings more from circulation than he originally threw into it. This metamorphosis, this conversion of
money into capital, takes place both within the sphere of circulation and also outside it; within the
circulation, because conditioned by the purchase of the labour-power in the market; outside the
circulation, because what is done within it is only a stepping-stone to the production of surplus-value, a
process which is entirely confined to the sphere of production. Thus "tout est pour le mieux dans le
meflleur des mondes possibles."

By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material elements of a new product, and as
factors in the labour-process, by incorporating living labour with their dead substance, the capitalist at
the same time converts value, i.e., past, materialised, and dead labour into capital, into value big with
value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies.

If we now compare the two processes of producing value and of creating surplus-value, we see that the
latter is nothing but the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If on the one hand the process
be not carried beyond the point, where the value paid by the capitalist for the labour-power is replaced by
an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of producing value; if, on the other hand, it be continued
beyond that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value.

If we proceed further, and compare the process of producing value with the labour-process, pure and
simple, we find that the latter consists of the useful labour, the work, that produces use-values. Here we
contemplate the labour as producing a particular article; we view it under its qualitative aspect alone,
with regard to its end and aim. But viewed as a value-creating process, the same labour-process presents
itself under its quantitative aspect alone. Here it is a question merely of the time occupied by the labourer
in doing the work; of the period during which the labour-power is usefully expended.

Here, the commodities that take part in the process, do not count any longer as necessary adjuncts of labour-power
in the production of a definite, useful object. They count merely as depositories of so much absorbed or
materialised labour; that labour, whether previously embodied in the means of production, or
incorporated in them for the first time during the process by the action of labour-power, counts in either
case only according to its duration; it amounts to so many hours or days as the case may be.
Moreover, only so much of the time spent in the production of any article is counted, as, under the given
social conditions, is necessary. The consequences of this are various. In the first place, it becomes
necessary that the labour should be carried on under normal conditions. If a self-acting mule is the
implement in general use for spinning, it would be absurd to supply the spinner with a distaff and
spinning wheel. The cotton too must not be such rubbish as to cause extra waste in being worked, but
must be of suitable quality. Otherwise the spinner would be found to spend more time in producing a
pound of yarn than is socially necessary, in which case the excess of time would create neither value nor
money.

But whether the material factors of the process are of normal quality or not, depends not upon the
labourer, but entirely upon the capitalist. Then again, the labour-power itself must be of average efficacy.
In the trade in which it is being employed, it must possess the average skill, handiness and quickness
prevalent in that trade, and our capitalist took good care to buy labour-power of such normal goodness.
This power must be applied with the average amount of exertion and with the usual degree of intensity;
and the capitalist is as careful to see that this is done, as that his workmen are not idle for a single
moment. He has bought, the use of the labour-power for a definite period, and he insists upon his rights.
He has no intention of being robbed. Lastly, and for this purpose our friend has a penal code of his own,
all wasteful consumption of raw material or instruments of labour is strictly forbidden, because what is
so wasted, represents labour superfluously expended, labour that does not count in the product or enter
into its value.

We now see, that the difference between labour, considered on the one hand as producing utilities, and
on the other hand, as creating value, a difference which we discovered by our analysis of a commodity,
resolves itself into a distinction between two aspects of the process of production.
The process of production, considered on the one hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process
of creating value, is production of commodities; considered on the other hand as the unity of the
labour-process and the process of producing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production, or
capitalist production of commodities.