#grundrisse

[probablyasocialecologist]

Since the development of productive forces under capitalism only increases the alien power of capital by depriving workers of their subjective skills, knowledge and insights, it does not automatically open up the possibility of a clear bright future. Notwithstanding, contemporary utopian socialists focus solely on the Grundrisse, so they tend to marginalize Marx’s critique of productive forces. They too narrowly understand the concept of ‘productive forces’ as if they were equivalent to ‘productivity’ defined as the ratio of input and output. The concept of ‘productive forces of capital’ indicates that Marx’s concept of productive forces is actually broader. It also has to do with what humans can produce and how they do so. In other words, it includes human productive capacities such as skill, knowledge and strength as well as natural conditions. These capacities especially have to do with workers’ autonomy, freedom and independence, which are essential for overcoming alienation of labour. In this sense, the concept of productive forces is both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative increase in productivity through full automation, for example, can be accompanied by the qualitative degradation of working conditions as well as of the natural environment, hindering the full development of the individual. For Marx, that does not necessarily count as the real development of ‘productive forces’.

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

[dustedandsocial]

"Circulation is the movement in which the general alienation appears as general appropriation and general appropriation as general alienation. As much, then, as the whole of this movement appears as a social process, and as much as the individual moments of this movement arise from the conscious will and particular purposes of individuals, so much does the totality of the process appear as an objective interrelation, which arises spontaneously from nature; arising, it is true, from the mutual influence of conscious individuals on one another, but neither located in their consciousness, nor subsumed under them as a whole. Their own collisions with one another produce an alien social power standing above them, produce their mutual interaction as a process and power independent of them."

-Marx, Grundrisse

[howieabel]

"The truth of Marx’s theory does not lie in any one of the elements, or ‘moments’ as Marx liked to call them, in isolation. It lies in the interrelations between them, the way the elements and moments lock into each other to define tentatively the totality of capital. There are many more elements and moments to be built into this picture—for instance, the distinction between commercial credit and the circulation of interest-bearing capital, the roles of landed and merchant capitals alongside a more robust analysis of the capitalist state, international institutions, and so on. But even within the limits of the Grundrisse, Marx maps, as I hope to have shown, a way to interpret the world that is highly relevant to the struggle to combat this all-devouring beast, so that what is ‘adequate’ for capital is displaced by what is adequate for people." - David Harvey, on Marx

[yorgunherakles]

duyulara sahip olmak, acı çekmek anlamına gelir. bu nedenle insan, duyulur nesnel varlık olarak acı çeken bir varlıktır ve acısını duyan bir varlık olarak tutkulu bir var­lıktır.

karl marks - yabancılaşma

[yngwrthr]

Hi Folks,

So, I’m re-reading Carol Gould’s analysis of “Grundrisse” in her book “Marx’s Social Ontology”. On p. 64 Gould says about the pre-capitalist (Gould lumps slavery and feudalism together as “pre-capitalist”) stage of social development:

“Labor is not measured in terms of time, but rather in terms of its qualitative differentiation as expressed in the various use values of the goods produced. In these societies there is no clear distinction between necessary working time and superfluous working time, that is, laboring time beyond production for needs, since virtually all production is production for use or need”.

Moving on to capitalism, Gould says:

“The possibility of time as a measure for labor arises in this second stage (capitalism). Labor becomes qualitatively undifferentiated; any part of it is like any other part. The measure of this abstract labor is time, but time now conceived as itself a universal and homogeneous quantity”.

I think this reading of Marx supports the view that he did not set out to prove that labor underlies value — rather, he only set out to reveal the social construct of “abstract labor” as the basis for “exchange value” as it operates in capitalism.

Another way of posing the issue involved here might go something like this: Do capitalism and abstract labor emerge together? Or, if according to my position and Gould’s position, there was no abstract labor in pre-capitalist stages, what are the actual historical, political, economic, and social conditions in which capitalism and abstract labor arise? I am guessing that you guys may have some informed thoughts about this.

I feel it’s a helpful start to return to Marx’s comment that it was not possible for Aristotle to understand/ develop the concept of the law of value — that commodities are exchanged (for example five beds for a house) on the basis of embodied labor — because so much of production and distribution was based on slavery — where there is no exchange and thus no “value”? Consequently, the concept of abstract labor and value emerges during the capitalist mode of production with its foundation in exchange.

[edwad]

[W]hile circulation does not itself produce a moment of value-determination, for that lies exclusively in labour, its speed does determine the speed with which the production process is repeated, values are created — thus, if not values, at least to a certain extent the mass of values. Namely, the values and surplus values posited by the production process, multiplied by the number of repetitions of the production process in a given period of time. When we speak of the velocity of the circulation of capital, we postulate that delays in the transition from one phase to the next arise only from external barriers, not such as arise from the production process and circulation itself (such as crises, overproduction etc.). Thus, in addition to the labour time realized in production, the circulation time of capital enters in as a moment of value creation — of productive labour time itself. While labour time appears as value-positing activity, this circulation time of capital appears as the time of devaluation.

— Marx, Grundrisse: Notebook V (1858)

[xjmlm]

Money is therefore not only an object, but is the object of greed [Bereicherungssucht]. It is essentially auri sacra fames. Greed as such, as a particular form of the drive, i.e. as distinct from the craving for a particular kind of wealth, e.g. for clothes, weapons, jewels, women, wine etc., is possible only when general wealth, wealth as such, has become individualized in a particular thing, i.e. as soon as money is posited in its third quality. Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed. The mania for possessions is possible without money; but greed itself is the product of a definite social development, not natural, as opposed to historical. Hence the wailing of the ancients about money as the source of all evil.

Karl Marx, Grundrisse

[weil-weil-lautre]

I actually don’t think that the Grundrisse is infinitely malleable. I think a case can be made that in that manuscript Marx shows his hand. In the course of writing the Grundrisse, Marx comes to the conclusion that an adequate critical theory has to be completely immanent to its object. The critique cannot be undertaken from a standpoint external to the object but must emerge out of the immanent mode of presentation itself. Kapital is then structured in this immanent manner. However, precisely because of the tightly structured, immanent nature of Marx’s mode of presentation there, the object of Marx’s critique (for example, value, as well as the labor that constitutes it, analyzed as historically specific forms) has frequently been taken as the standpoint of that critique. The methodological sections of the Grundrisse not only clarify this mode of presentation, but other sections—such as the passages on machines you referred to—make explicit that the categories of Kapital such as value are historically specific, that the so-called labor theory of value is not a labor theory of (transhistorical) wealth. Precisely because it is not structured as immanently, the Grundrisse provides a key for reading Kapital. At the same time, there are differences between the Grundrisse and Kapital. The Marxologists who emphasize those differences are both right and, yet, wrong. They’re right that, for example, the full ramifications of the category of surplus value are not fully worked out in the Grundrisse. Nevertheless, focusing on such differences can frequently blur an essential point—that Marx makes clear the general nature of his critique of capitalism in the Grundrisse. The general thrust of his critique, which is different from that of traditional Marxism, remains the same in Kapital. Second of all, my main concern is not with what Marx may or may not have intended. I also don’t focus on working through the inner tensions that may or may not exist in Kapital. My Erkenntnisinteresse [intellectual interests], my interest, is to help reformulate a powerful critical theory of capitalism. To that end, I’m trying to make the critique of political economy as internally coherent as possible—for theoretical reasons, certainly not for hagiographic reasons.

Moishe Postone, Labor and the Logic of Abstraction: An Interview (with Timothy Brennan)