Notes on Capital

in which i do my best to understand Das Kapital, with the help of secondary sources, updated slowly according to my own pace of study

Section 1: The Commodity

A commodity is any object that satisfies human want/need/desire (Ex: iron, paper, corn...). Outside of the social-sphere, commodities have no intrinsic value. A commodity has two forms: (i) use-value and (ii) exchange-value.

Use-value is the utility of a commodity. In other words, how it is consumed or used by humans. The use-value of a burger is only activated when I eat that burger. The use-value of a bike is only activated when I ride that bike. Use-value is not impacted by the amount of labor that went into creating the commodity, nor how much the commodity goes for on the market. Use-value is expressed in quanities (1 barrel of hay, two ears of corn, etc).

Use-value implies that the commodity satisfies a social need. Some use-values are naturally occurring (air, water, etc). Some use-values need human labor to obtain (I harvest the grain, I bake the bread). People generally coordinate their labor around use-value in order to produce what they need/desire/want.

Exchange-value is the proportion in which one commodity is exchanged for another. For example, I give you 10 lbs of corn for 1 lb of iron. But what determines that 10 lbs corn = 1 lb of iron?? The use-value of both of these commodities is completely different. I eat corn and I craft with iron. These uses cannot be meaningfully compared. In comparing commodities, we can plug in an infinite number of combinations on either side of the equation. In order to set up an equation like this, however, commodities have to have some common property.... that common property is that both commodities are products of human labor.

On the topic of human labor, differences in labor types aren't really relevant in this theory of value. Some amount of labor is neccesary to produce every type of commodity. Labor is the common denominator that allows us to even compare values at all. You can be a mechanic or a seamstress-- all labor types kinda get smoshed together into the concept of abstract labor, which allows us to have commodity exchange-value. Exchange-value is only a thing in the context of trade or exchange (to contrast: a simple swap of books between friends is simply passing along use-values). Abstract labor is measured by quanity. You don't trade sewing for screwing-- you trade hour for hour. Commodities that take more labor to create have more value than ones that take less labor. However, this is not specific to the exact labor that went into the exact commodity you are examining -- for sake of simplicity, we use a "averaged" quanity of labor time in our comparison.

Labor time can also be layered. In industries where alot of background skill and training is required, an hour of labor is worth more than an hour of "unskilled" labor. This isn't because civil engineering is more noble than bussing tables. Rather, to be a civil engineer, dozens (if not thousands) of other workers had to contribute their labor to give you the tools to do your work. Someone had to program the graphing software you use. Someone else had to teach you how to use it. Someone further had to screw your work laptop together. All this labor gets factored into the commodity you produce.

Socially neccesary labor time is the average amount of time it takes to produce a commodity 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. It is a socially-defined concept and subject to change as the conditions of the society change. Socially neccesary labor time regulates value. If one producer is lagging behind all producers of similar goods, that producer will suffer when exchange-rates fall. Its basically the voice in our head that says "you took all that time...for that?" It both pressures shoddy employers to step up their quality control and profit hungry employers to employ faster and more dangerous techniques to shave off a couple minutes.

Exchange-value and use-value are inherently contradictory. Use-value is only realized if a commodity is consumed (thus not exchanged). Exchange-value is only realized if it not consumed (and thus exchanged instead). You cannot use something AND exchange it. Production in a capitalist society is production meant for exchange, not use.

helpful secondary sources:

Section 2: Fetishism

The main thrust of this section can be summed up by asking: "Why do we not think about human labor in exchange-value?"

To start answering this question, we have to first define what fetishism means. "Fetishism" is when we assign a mystical attribute to an object that that object does not actually inhernetly possess. Thes objects are perceived as having social value in some, generally mystical: "autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own". I automatically conjure sexual fetisism in my mind to illustrate: a person can have a sexual fetish for collarbones, even though collarbones have nothing inherently sexual about them (in a purely reproductive sense). To that person with the fetish, people with visible collarbones are valued highly.

To apply this concept to commodities, we then believe that the social value of commodities is inherent to them. We can see this concept play out concretely when we complain about "the market" or comment on "how the price of eggs has really gone up." What is important about these remarks is what is not included in them: mentions of people. This is strange, because, as we just determined, exchange-value is literally determined by human labor. It is as if commodities have a natural life of their own, disconnected from the workers who toil to create them...

Commodity fetishism hides the social relations among people. For example, a financial reporter may say "the price of eggs is impacted because chicken feed is hard to stockpile." In such a conversation, the social relations of the workers-- the people who raise chickens, the people who package the eggs, the people who process and transport the feed-- are missing. Instead of the reporter talking about the relationships between the workers, the reporter talks about the relationship between objects.

When we turn objects into commodities and then exchange them, we hide the labor. While exchange is no doubt goverened by the relationships human laborers have with each other, commodity fetishism shifts our focus to the mysterious relationships between objects.

helpful secondary sources:

Section 3: Money

We start from the proposition that every commodity can be exchanged for some other commodity in some proportion. Obviously, this creates logistical problems. Should every storekeeper keep a 400 page list on hand of the current exchange rates of every commodity? What if I bring a chicken to the store to swap for some soda, but the shopkeeper has never seen a customer try and pay with a chicken before and thus does not know how many sodas to get me in exchange. What if I want to exchange my chicken for multiple different commodities-- say, one chicken for two candy bars and one jar of peaches. Thats alot of mental math to keep track of.

The solution is to make one commodity the stand-in vessel for exchanges. So instead of keeping that 400 page swap list, the shopkeeper just uses chickens as the universal measure against sodas and candy bars and peaches. Enter: money.

"Money" is a mediator of trade that is separate and distinct from the forms of value that commodities have. In other words, Money, is a symbolic indicatior of exchange-value. The value of commodities determines the value of money, not vice-versa. So while we may say "Oh, that TV is worth $400 dollars," what we really mean to say is "those $400 can be swapped for approximatly one tv." Money is a useful thing to have for a couple reasons. (1) it eases the logistical difficulty of exchanging commodities on a large scale, (2) it measures and reflects the current value in circulation, and (3) it can be removed from circulation and serve as a store of value over time.

The form money takes doesn't really matter. It can be gold, paper, or beans. As long as its practical, durable, and doesn't "vanish" through circulation (either by use of by decay), its good. What makes money special is that value takes the physical form of money. ("Paris is certainly worth more than a mass") Thus, money is the price form of value.

helpful secondary sources