Post by Eugene Plawiuk.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Saturday, October 18, 2014
WE ARE CAPITALISM
It (Capitalism) is thus, despite itself , instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time,in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development.
The more this contradiction develops, the more does it become evident that the growth of the forces of production can no longer be bound up with the appropriation of alien labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse
Wir sind Kapitalismus
The Subversion of Politics
European Autonomous Social Movements
and the Decolonization of Everyday Life
Copyright Georgy Katiaficas 1997,2006
European Autonomous Social Movements
and the Decolonization of Everyday Life
150 years later
Edited by Marcello Musto
With a special foreword
by Eric Hobsbawm
Michael Heinrich teaches economics in Berlin and is managing editor of PROKLA: Journal for Critical Social Science. He is the author of The Science of
Value: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy between Scientific Revolution and
Classical Tradition, and editor, with Werner Bonefeld, of Capital and Critique:
After the “New Reading" of Marx.
Marx’s Dialectics of Value and Knowledge
By Guglielmo Carchedi
Capital in general and many Capitals
Written in 1857/58 – during the first great world crisis (affecting not only the few industrial / industrializing countries but also the “rest of the world”)
Marx’ ambition: refutation of Say’s law, overcoming the fallacies of the “general glut debate”
Discovering the law / inner necessity of crisis in modern capitalism
Discovering / explaining the long term tendencies of capitalism (its historical laws of development)
Credit and Crisis
What is the final goal of Marx’ analysis?
To explain why and how capitalism is a self-destructive social system – undermining itself, destroying necessary preconditions which it can not reproduce / replace
To explain the limits of credit (which is a device to overcome many of the restrictions imposed upon capital)
To explain how and why the credit system in the end accelerates and aggravates the crises of capitalism
Why Credit?
Credit as a social device – rising from the exchange process
Credit presupposes capital – Capital presupposes credit
Credit links together money as money and money as capital
Credit provides the base for new forms of associated capital (the highest form, according to Marx)
Credit facilitates / accelerates the process of accumulation
Credit provides the most sophisticated form of social regulation of relations of production and exchange which are compatibel with capitalism (and already point beyond the capitalist mode of production, according to Marx)
Why Crisis?
The double meaning of crisis – both a symptom of the obsolescence of capitalism / and an element that slows down the decay of capitalism (enables fresh starts again and again – just because of the destruction of large portions of value and capital)
The dynamics of crisis – as a crucial phase in a longer process / as a decisive period of the trade cycle, industrial cycle
The different “forms of crisis” (among others: monetary crisis, credit crisis, financial crisis, industrial crisis …)
The long term tendency of crisis – to become world-wide, to become more and more severe
The range and scope of Marx’ theory of crisis
Crisis means the “explosion” of all contradictions of the capitalist mode of production
Crises are inevitable / necessary in capitalism as a temporary means to create new opportunities for capitalist development
A multifaceted phenomenon – the general crisis comprises several particular crises
Explanation has to be complex as well
Accordingly, there seem to be several Marxian “theories” of crisis (in fact, there are several causal chains that Marx follows and combines)
General conclusion – the meaning of the Grundrisse
The Grundrisse are not the “better or richer version” of Capital
They are just one stage in the long learning process of its author (learning how to build the critical theory) – althoug a very important one
The Grundrisse are a first big step towards Capital, no more, no less
Conclusion – Lessons that Marx drew
Writing “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1858, published in 1859)
Two versions (fragmentary “Urtext” and text as published in 1859
Lesson A: “The dialectical mode of exposition / presentation is only right, if one is aware of its limits” (Urtext)
Lesson B: Analysis of the commodity (form) and the exchange relation (process) is indispensable to develop the concept of money
Michael R. Krätke
Changing Worlds of Labour - Karl Marx and Beyond
Marx' theory or theories of crisis
Capitalism and its crises
Finance Capital - 100 years after Hilferding
AND MY WORK TIME, IS I GET PAID A LITTLE FOR MY WORK TIME
THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE
IS FOR FREE TIME FOR ALL
AND THE ABOLITION OF THE WAGE SYSTEM
The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i.e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour. If it succeeds too well at the first, then it suffers from surplus production, and then necessary labour is interrupted, because no surplus labour can be realized by capital.The more this contradiction develops, the more does it become evident that the growth of the forces of production can no longer be bound up with the appropriation of alien labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all.
For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time.Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.
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