Marx & Philosophy I & II (Session 6)

Hello everyone, this is Marxist philosophy led by Professor Ray Brassier, session 5. I'm going to pass the mic to Ray. Okay, thanks. Actually, this is session number 6. session. So we have this is a sixth of eight sessions. So we have we only have two more sessions left. And I sent an updated schedule by email. So the final two sessions will be devoted to next week we'll do

Lukash and the final week we'll do Althusser. So today's session is the final session on Marks. So, I'm actually, yeah, there's a lot of, I'm going to try to get to the, you know, the core of the argument of volume one of capital. I want to really just today focus on two things. One, what Marx calls the valorization process, which fuels, you know, which drives the accumulation of capital. And secondly, the link between this valorization process and the reproduction of capital and

the reproduction of labor and the relationship between the valorization process and the extraction of surplus value or because Marx's most important or most decisive claim is that what drives capital accumulation is the extraction of surplus value from labor power and this is what he calls exploitation. So in other words, capital accumulation is propelled by the exploitation of labor. This is what we have to try to understand. Now, last week, just to recapitulate, we also kind of covered a lot of ground last week.

Remember a number of key distinctions for Marx. First of all, the distinction between use value and exchange value. A commodity has both a use value and an exchange value, but one of Marx's key claims is that its usefulness is subordinated to its exchangeability. So in a society organized around commodity production, the creation of useful things is subordinated to the creation of exchangeable things. and things can only be exchanged if their value can be commensurated.

So, the exchange value of commodities, or what Marx would simply call the value of commodities, is in a way what has to be explained, what has to be accounted for. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay.

OK, let's wait for the rays and electricity to return. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hello? Hello Ray, can you hear me? Hello? Can you hear me? I cannot hear you. Can you please, can you perhaps turn mute yourself and then turn your microphone on? Okay, I've just muted and unmuted myself.

Okay, now I'm hearing you. You can hear me? Okay. Okay, can everyone else hear me? Yeah, so turn on your camera. OK, sorry. Actually, yes, as soon as the mic goes off again, just enter a message, type in a message and I'll see it. Now, so at what point did I cut out right from the very beginning? Or how much did people hear? I think, yeah, two or three minutes.

Exchange value. OK. Right, well, I'll begin. OK, so commodities. Money is the measure of the value of commodities. Both money and commodities are forms of appearance of value. And money is the measure, the quantitative measure of value. This is why commodities are exchanged on the basis of money. You exchange a commodity for money. So you sell a commodity for money or you have money and you use money to buy a commodity.

So just to go back to the first quotation on the handout, so money as Mark writes in quote number one, money is the form of manifestation of the value of commodities or as he puts it's the material in which the magnitudes of their values are socially expressed. Socially expressed is important. This is why, you know, for Marx, money has a, you know, an ineliminable social function. We'll return to this later. And then he continues, this is the second sentence in bold from number one. On the other hand, since the difference between the magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the money commodity must be susceptible of

merely quantitative differences, must therefore be divisible at will and equally capable of being reunited. Gold and silver possess these properties by nature. The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values or to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equal and quantitatively comparable. It does serve as a universal measure of value. So remember, any commodity, or in order for a commodity to function as the general equivalent, the general equivalent for the value of all other commodities, it must be as Marx puts

it, it must be a homogenous substance, which can be divided or reunited without any transformation in its quality. So if you think of gold and silver, if you measure value in terms of gold and silver, units of value are correlated with magnitudes of gold or silver, a weight. And the point is that the general equivalent must be qualitatively homogenous. It must be

something that has, that is not qualitatively variegated so that it can be divided on a purely quantitative basis. So just as you can, if you have, you know, kind of 10 kilos of gold, you can kind of, you know, parcel out this sum of gold into kind of you know greater or larger units and you can exchange these greater or larger units for other commodities. Money then becomes if once money is established as a general equivalent then Then money has a purely quantitative determination.

The only way in which money can be differentiated is in terms of quantity or magnitude. So it's monetary magnitude that becomes the eminent measure of value. So that every commodity, the value of a commodity then is measured in terms of its monetary worth. But remember, its monetary worth isn't indexed to anything concrete at all. And this is why the money as general equivalent can be decoupled from any concrete object such as gold. The decoupling of money from the gold standard is in a way is already kind of implicit in

the functioning of the general equivalent. So, now we move to number two. Commodity exchange consists of buying and selling. are bought and sold. And Marx writes in number two, the conversion of a commodity into money is the simultaneous conversion of money into a commodity. The apparently single process is in reality a double one. From the pole of the commodity owner, it is a sale. But But from the opposite pole of the money owner, it is a purchase.

In other words, a sale is a purchase. CM or commodity money is also MC, money commodity. I'll read the second segment here. It's important that when the so Marx now distinguishes between two circuits of exchange. The CMC circuit, commodity, money, commodity. In other words, you sell a commodity to acquire money to buy another commodity.

Okay? That's selling in order to buy. But the other circuit is MCM. MCM, okay, this is where you know you buy something in order to sell it and this is buying in order to sell. Now, it's because, in a way, an economy structured around commodity exchange involves both these things going on at once that the buying and selling of commodities differs, as Marx

which differs in substance from something like bartering, from a direct exchange of products. So let's say that bartering is the direct exchange of objects, of useful objects. So bartering would be exchanged, governed purely by use value. In a barter economy, you would exchange things purely purely on the basis of material need, or if not material need, some other kind of basic human need. But Marx says that this is, commodity exchange is fundamentally different from every other kind of exchange.

And actually, the truth is that for Marx, he thinks that in a way bartering is a kind of, The idea that you could have an economy coordinated around barters, a kind of retroactive fantasy or a myth. What we call, it's actually not possible to identify a mode of complex society coordinated around bartering as such. It's only because, it's only in a, with the absolutization of exchange and exchange value, that we can abstract from this,

the dominance of exchange and imagine this mythical, a mythical state in which exchange could somehow be coordinated on the basis of use. So number three Marx writes the circulation of commodities differs from the direct exchange of products or barter not only in form but in substance and here he gives the example he's saying because commodities are produced every commodity is something that is produced in order to be sold that means that every exchange exchange, every act of exchange, whether you're selling a commodity to get money or buying,

using money to buy a commodity, every circuit involves, every circuit CMC, commodity money commodity, which is selling in order to buy, is also intersects with a MCM circuit, which is buying in order to sell. So if you have a commodity that you sell in order to buy another commodity, remember the commodity that you are selling, what you've also, is also the result of a previous active exchange. produce that commodity and sold it to you okay so what the point that Marx is

making is that there is no you know every I see no as he puts it's every you know CM can also be you know converted into an MC because the commodity that is the starting point of an exchange governed by no consumption which is to say you know selling in order to buy CMC already at the starting points you know the commodity that is sold at the beginning of that circuit is also the result of a previous sale okay it was you know something was bought in order to

be sold. So this is why, as he writes in number three, this is the passage in bold in number three, we see here on the one hand how the exchange of commodities breaks through all local and personal bonds inseparable from their rank barter and develops a circulation of the products of social labor, and on the other hand how it develops a whole network of social relations, spontaneous in their growth and entirely beyond the control of the actors. In other words, the commodities, every commodity that is bought or sold has been produced and is itself, you know, has been acquired through a long series of acts

of exchange. And what Marx is saying is that the circuits, the circulation of commodities can no longer be tethered to private acts of exchange. In other words, there is no point at which the circulation of commodities can be nailed down to some kind of primal act of exchange between two individuals who are exchanging exclusively on the basis of use. In other words, there's no commodity that was produced solely in order to be used.

So this is why commodity production is socialized because a commodity is something that is produced in order to be exchanged and therefore every exchange of commodities is a social act, in a way is the node of a social circuit which connects you to the entire society. And we see now this with globalized capitalism, all the commodities that you buy or sell, they have all been kind of produced often in different parts of the world. So every act of buying and sell implicates a global structure of commodity exchange,

which is why the exchange is no longer subordinated to the interests, you know, the use interests of the individual exchangers. Okay, so now we come to what Marx will call the general formula for capital. Okay, so this is number four on the handout. So Marx writes here, the first distinction we notice between money that is money only and money that is capital is nothing more than a difference in their form of circulation. The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is CMC, commodity, money, commodity.

The transformation of commodities into money and the change of the money back again into commodities or selling in order to buy. This is money as a medium of exchange. This is money simply as a medium for exchanging things. But Marx's point is that this is precisely not the function of money in a capitalist society. So he continues, but alongside of this form we find another typically different form, MCM money commodity money the transformation of money into commodities and the change of commodities back again into money or buying in order to sell Money that circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into or becomes

Capital and is already potentially capital Now let us examine this the circuit MCM a little closer It consists like the other of two antithetical phases. In the first phase, MC, or the purchase, the money is changed into commodity. In the second phase, CM, or the sale, the commodity is changed back again into money. The combination of these two phases constitutes the single movement whereby money is exchanged for a commodity and the same commodity is again exchanged for money. Whereby a commodity is bought in order to be sold or neglecting the distinction in form between buying and selling whereby a commodity is bought with money and then money is bought

with a commodity. The results in which the phases of the process vanish is the exchange of money for money M, M. Okay. So then I'll just jump again to the final sentence in both. So we must therefore examine first the distinguishing characteristics of the forms of the circuits MCM and CMC. And in doing this, the real difference that underlies the mere difference of form will reveal itself. Okay, so now we focus on the distinction between selling in order to buy and buying in order to sell. So I'll read it. This is quite a useful section actually.

This is number five. In the circulation CMC, commodity, money, commodity, the money is in the end converted into a commodity that serves a use value. It's spent once and for all. But in the inverted form MCM, on the contrary, the buyer lays out money in order that as a seller he may recover money. By the purchase of his commodity, he throws money into circulation in order to withdraw it again by the sale of the same commodity. He lets the money go, but only with the sly intention of getting it back. The money, therefore, is not spent. It is nearly advanced. In the circuit CMC, the same piece of money changes its place twice. The seller gets it from the buyer and pays it to another seller.

The complete circulation, which begins with the receipt, concludes with the payment of money for commodities. But it's the very contrary in the circuit MCM. Here it's not the piece of money that changes its place twice, but the commodity. The buyer takes it from the hands of the seller and passes it into the hands of another buyer. Just as in the simple circulation of commodities, the double change of place of the same piece of money affects its passage from one hand into another, so here the double change of place of the same commodity brings about the reflux of the money to its point of departure.

Such reflux is not dependent on the commodity being sold for more than was paid for it. This circumstance influences only the amount of the money that comes back. The reflux itself takes place as soon as the purchased commodity is resold. In other words, so soon as the circuit MCM is completed. We have here therefore a palpable difference between the circulation of money as capital and its circulation as mere money. So capital circulation involves this reflux of money to its starting point.

With capital, this is why with capital, money is only ever invested to be, in other words, to be recuperated, but in a greater sum. money is never spent you know money as capital is constantly reinvested in order to you know to increase in magnitude so this is what the question is how this happens so okay marks continues no so again I'll just read the two sentences in bold at the end of passage number six. The circuit CMC commodity, money

commodity, starts with one commodity and finishes with another, which falls out of circulation and into consumption. Consumption, the satisfaction of wants, in one word, use value, is its end and aim. The circuit MCM on the contrary commences with money and ends with money. Its leading motive and the goal that attracts it is therefore mere exchange value. So CMC ends in the consumption of a use value. Whereas MCM is governed exclusively by exchange but an exchange is in a way which increases the sum of money invested at the beginning.

So this, what Marx calls the reflux, in the MCM circuit, the reflux of money is conditioned by the very motive of its expenditure. is spent, money is never truly expended. It's only invested in order to accumulate more money. So there's no point in a way at which money is consummated in use. It's merely constantly reinvested, something you keep selling in order to somehow increase the money,

the money with which you started. This is where, I'm just going to close the window. This increase or kind of amplification of the sum of money in the MCM circuits, you know or buying in order to sell is you know what's Marx calls surplus value okay so the question is that if capital circulation is about you know circulating

money in order to somehow to increase its magnitude and Marx's proposition is that the source of the surplus value that drives capital accumulation is labor or more precisely labor power so just here this is his Marx's general formula for capitalism this is number seven that this is these the section in bold in passage number seven this is on page four of the handout that character

and tendency of the process MCM is therefore not due to any qualitative difference between its extremes both being money but solely to their quantitative difference more money is withdrawn from circulation at the finish than was thrown into at the start. The cotton that was bought for £100 is perhaps resold for £100 plus £10 or £110. The exact form of this process is therefore MCM cent, where MCM cent equals M plus delta M, which is to say the original sum advanced plus an increment. This increment or excess over the original value I call surplus value. The value originally advanced therefore not only remains intact while in circulation,

but adds to itself a surplus value or expands itself. It is this movement that converts it into capital. And finally number eight, basically Marx's point is that, as he puts it, if the expansion of value is once aimed at, there is just the same inducement to augment the value of the £110 as that of the £100, for both are but limited expressions for exchange value, and therefore both have the same vocation to approach by quantitative increase as near as possible to absolute wealth. Or again, this is the final section in bold in passage 8, therefore the final result of

every separate circuit in which a purchase and consequent sale are completed, forms of itself the starting point of a new circuit. The simple circulation of commodities, selling in order to buy, is a means of carrying out a purpose unconnected with circulation, namely the appropriation of use values, the satisfaction of wants. The circulation of money as capital is on the contrary an end in itself for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The circulation of capital has therefore no limits."

So the claim is basically that what is propelling this circuit of capital accumulation, this constant expansion of money is value itself. And this is why Marx writes, value is the active factor in a process in which while constantly assuming the form in terms of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude or differentiates itself by throwing off surplus value from itself.

The original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement in the course of which it adds surplus value is its own movement. expansion therefore is an automatic expansion and you know or saying you know more even more succinctly in number 10 Marx writes it is under the form of money that value begins and ends and begins again every act of its own spontaneous generation or another so value is this this kind of self-generating or self-creating process, which is why in the general formula for capital,

Marx characterizes capital as self-valorizing value. By self-valorization, he means that the constant extraction of surplus value from commodity exchange. In other words, buying in order to sell, MCM, where the second M is an M prime. It's an M that represents a greater magnitude of value than the initial starting point. So this diagram now, just below, in the middle of page 5, is capital of self-valorizing value.

So the point here is that it's, remember, both money and commodities are merely forms of value. The substance of both is value. But what Marx is saying is that its value is the automatic subject of what he calls the valorization process. Value is there at the beginning in the form of money, and more specifically in the form of constant capital which is the capital invested in the means of production but also variable capital which is the capital that is invested in wages okay

so first you begin with so the whole kind of the circuits of commodity production begins with you know the means of production which are owned by the capitalist. So the capital or the money invested in the means of production can only generate more money if it's somehow converted into a commodity that can be sold for money. So in other words, labor then is required to convert the money invested in the means of production into commodities.

Okay? So Marx says, so labor is in a way solicited by capital to convert money into commodities. And this is what Marx will describe as living labor's activation of value. So there is a kind of a magnitude of value that is dormant in the means of production, but it must be activated and converted into commodity that can be sold for a greater magnitude of value. So the MC circuit here requires the conversion of capital into commodities through the intervention

of labor. And then these commodities, the commodities that have been produced by labor are then sold once again but they're sold you know at a profit. And this is M prime or the M prime represents the surplus value that has been extracted from the from labor's conversion of money into commodities.

So M prime is extraction of surplus value which in Marx's account requires the extraction of surplus labor from what he calls socially necessary labor. So now what we need to do is to understand what surplus value is and how capital is able to extract it in the MCM process. Because as yet we still have no explanation for this. Well Marx's claim is that labor power is a source of surplus value. Why? Because labor power is a commodity that the laborer, it's the only commodity that the the laborer has and is obliged to sell in order to purchase any other commodity.

So in other words, for Marx, Marx is not engaging in a sociological analysis. This is a structural analysis and he says that there's a fundamental structural difference between the owners of capital those who own the means of production and those who have to you know to sell their labor in order to purchase any other commodity this is no the laborers so the claim is that the there's an exchange at the hearts of the

MCM prime circuit which is the exchange of labor power for wages. So the capitalist has money that he wants to convert into commodities that he can sell to make more money but in order to do this he needs to buy the labor of the worker to affect this conversion of money into commodities. But now, so Marx writes, this is number 11 at the foot of page 5. So the change of value, the change from M to M' must therefore take place in the commodity bought by the first act, MC, but not in its value for equivalents are exchanged and the commodity is paid for at its full value.

We are therefore a force to the conclusion that the change originates in the use value as such of the commodity in its consumption. What Marx means here is this. The commodity bought by the first act MC is capital's purchase of the labor power of the worker. So there's an exchange here. You know, there's a, you know, money is converted into a commodity. Wages are exchanged for labor. But this is a fair exchange, okay? In other words, labor power is a commodity, okay, that the worker sells to the capitalist,

you know, at whatever, you know, at the price that has been established on the market, okay. You know, labor power is a commodity and it's a commodity that has, you know, a fixed price at a specific, you know, time and place. And Marx saying that the capitalist buys the worker's labor power at its full value, you You know, he pays for it, whatever the market dictates is the price of this labor. So it's not in the buying and selling of labor power that the conversion of M into M prime occurs,

but in the consumption, in the capitalist consumption of the worker's labor power. okay just so the change the change from m to m prime originates in the use value or the consumption of labor power okay so the capitalist consumes the worker's labor power in a way that you know creates surplus value for him for him so Marx continues in order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend moneybags must be so lucky as to find within the sphere of circulation a commodity whose use value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption therefore is itself an embodiment of labor

and constantly a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in the capacity for labor or labor power. By labor power, capacity for labor is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use value of any description. Now, note the distinction between labor and labor power. The point is that labor power is the potentiality, is a potentiality that can or cannot be actualized. And this is what the capitalist is buying. In other words, the capitalist is not buying the workers' labor.

He's buying the workers' labor power. This is what is being exchanged for money. But the point is that this, and it's from this labor power that the capitalist will extract surplus value because, Marx's point is that the actualization of labor power creates more value than the price of that labor power itself. So, okay, so this is what we have to understand. So I'll just skip over, you know, 12, 13 and 14, which is, you know, first, labour power

is a commodity. It's bought and sold. There's nothing, exploitation does not consist in the capitalist purchase of labour power. This is a fair exchange. This is not what Marx means by exploitation. Exploitation happens in the discrepancy between the value of labor power and the value of the actualization of labor power in the commodities that it produces. This is crucial to understand Marx's account. So now I'm going to skip to number 15 now, the value of labor power. This is at the foot of page 6. The value of labor power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity,

by the labor time necessary for the production and consequently also the reproduction of this special article. okay or again I'll just again they move into the final section in bold on in passage 15 the value of labor power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labor okay so the value of labor power is the cost of its reproduction. So number 16 now. Marx writes, the labor power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and death must be continually replaced

by, at the very least, an equal amount of fresh labor power. And hence, the sum of the means of subsistence necessary for the production of labor power must include the means necessary for the laborer's substitutes. i.e. his children, in order that this race of peculiar commodity owners may perpetuate its appearance in the market. So the claim is that the activation of the value or in a way or the actualization of the surplus value latent in commodity, in the MCM circuit requires a constant pool of

labour power. Okay? In a way because value, the valorization process requires labour power in order to be actualized. There's a potential surplus value latent in the conversion of money into commodities. But in order for this potential surplus value to be actualized, there must always be labor power available to affect this actualization. So labor power is valuable. It's a valuable commodity for the production process.

But its value, which is, it has a value that is measured in terms of socially necessary labor time, which is the time it takes to make the money required to purchase the commodities that labor requires to reproduce itself or to keep existing. In other words, you need money for food, clothing, and shelter, say minimally. The laborer must be able to feed himself, clothe himself, house himself, and also by implication his family and his children who will go on to become laborers.

But the price of the laborers, the price of this laborer is simply measured in terms of cost of purchasing these commodities food clothing and shelter no okay so this is before we number 17 is a kind of on a side of Marx where he writes the consumption of labor power is at one in the same time the production of commodities and of surplus value. So the capitalist buys the workers' labor power and

consumes it. And it's this consumption of labor power that gives rise to the production of commodities but also surplus value. Okay, now I'm going to skip over, you know, number, quotes 18 to 20. In fact, I'm going to skip over and go straight to 23, the production as the creation of value. So this is the core of Marx's arguments about surplus value.

And it's quite a technical argument, but it's important to understand the distinction between surplus value and profit. So Marx's claim is that surplus value is the source of profit, but it's not the same as profits. And I think we had this point came up a couple of weeks ago. It's very important to understand how the increase or decrease in the magnitude of surplus value is not kind of directly correlated with the increase or decrease of profit. There can be an increase in surplus value and a decrease in profit, just as there can

be a decrease in surplus value and an increase in profit. This is because the magnitude of surplus value does not directly determine the magnitude of the price for which the commodities in which it is embodied are sold. In other words, every commodity that the capitalist produces in order to sell embodies a magnitude of surplus value. But this in and of itself does not determine the magnitude of its price on the market.

So this is why, and there is a connection between surplus value and price, but it's actually very complicated and indirect. But conceptually, the point I want to emphasize is that although surplus value is ultimately at the roots of the possibility of capitalist profiteering, it's not the same as profits. And we'll return to this maybe in the discussion. But now sections 23 to 30 is Marx's account of surplus value. Okay, so number 23.

So Marx writes, the value of the means of production, i.e. the cotton and the spindle, which values are expressed in the price of 12 shillings, are therefore constituent parts of the value of the yarn, or in other words, of the value of the product. So in other words, the money invested in the means of production is also, you know, contributes to the value of what is produced of the product. The value of the means of production are also parts or components of the value of the product. Then, number 24. While the laborer is at work, his laborer constantly undergoes a transformation.

From being motion, it becomes an object without motion. From being the laborer working, it becomes a thing produced. at the end of one hour's spinning, that act is represented by a definite quantity of yarn. In other words, a definite quantity of labor, namely that of one hour. Namely, a definite quantity of labor, namely that of one hour, has become embodied in the cotton. If under normal average social conditions of production, A pounds of cotton ought to be made into B pounds of yarn by one hour's labor, then a day's labor does not count as 12 hours labor unless 12a pounds of cotton have been made into 12b pounds of yarn for in the creation of value the time

that is socially necessary alone counts so this is why Marx writes in 25 definite quantities of product, these quantities being determined by experience, now represent nothing but definite quantities of labor, definite masses of crystallized labor time. They are nothing more than the materialization of so many hours or so many days of social labor. So everything that the laborer produces, every product of labor, embodies a definite magnitude of labor time, it's crystallized labor time. However, Marx writes, the point

is that labor power, the value of the product of labor power is greater than the value of labor power as such. That means that the the value embodied in the product of labor is greater than the exchange value, or the wage for which labor is being paid. So this is number 26. So Marx writes, The value of a day's labor power amounts to three shillings because on our assumption

half a day's labor is embodied in that quantity of labor power. Because the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labor power cost half a day's labor. So in other words, half a day's labor allows you to make enough money to buy the food you need to pay your rent and to buy the clothes you need to be able to work the next day. But Marx continues, but the past labor that is embodied in labor power and the living labor 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 and 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 labor process are two entirely different magnitudes and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist had in view when he was purchasing labor power yeah no more gives the following example of what he means you know to

to illustrate this discrepancy between the value of labor power and the value of the product of labor, he gives us the following example. So I'm just paraphrasing Marx here. So let's say that the exchange value of labor is three shillings, and let's say it takes six, which means that it takes six hours to make three shillings, which is the cost of one day's food and lodging for the laborer, the cost of reproducing her labor. So she sells her labor at half a shilling per hour. If she works for 12 hours per day, she makes six shillings. but five working days go into producing 20 pounds of yarn, four on the cotton and the spindle, and one spinning the cotton into yarn.

Therefore, the total labor costs of these five days are 30 shillings. Therefore, 20 pounds of yarn are worth 30 shillings. But the cotton, the spindle, and the spinning cost only 27 shillings. So the capitalist has extracted a surplus value of three shillings from the workers' labour. So, 27 March, so 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 materialized and dead labour into

capital, into value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies. And again in 28 he summarizes his claim as follows. 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 the capitalist production of commodities. Okay, now just, okay, well I think, I know that people will want to ask about the distinction

between the value of labor power and the value of its products. So I think this is, you know, I assume that we'll be discussing this. So before saying anything else about this, I just want to point to the interdependence between the reproduction of capital and the reproduction of labor. So this is again, I think this is Marx's central claim. What he's saying, this is the diagram on page 10 is taken from Endnotes, from actually volume one of Endnotes and a footnote to the postscript to that collection of papers published in 2008.

And the quote is from another piece by EndNote called The Moving Contradiction, published in 2010. So what this diagram illustrates is a relationship between, in a way, the valorization process, the reproduction of capital. So remember, the reproduction of capital is connected to the valorization process. So this is, remember the diagram on page five, self-valorizing value, the MCM prime circuit. Capital self-valorization is the way in which is capital self-reproduction.

Marx's claim is that in order to reproduce itself, capital needs, must purchase labor power from the laborer. So the reproduction of capital, the valorization process, in a way, requires, solicits labor power and it solicits it needs it needs to consume the labor power of the worker in order to actualize the value of the commodities that it is you know hoping to sell okay but

Why does the worker need to sell her labor power? Well because she needs money to be able to buy the commodities she needs to live, which is to say she needs money for rent, she needs money for food and she needs money for, let's say for clothing. So in a way it's because the reproduction of labor feeds into the reproduction of capital and the reproduction of capital feeds into the reproduction of labor. But nevertheless, the labor self-reproduction, or the continued existence of labor power, is entirely subordinated to capital's valorization process and to capital's reproduction.

In other words, in a capitalist society, the worker, you need to work in order to live. You need to sell your labor to be able to get the money you need to buy the things you need to be able to live to keep on existing. So under capitalism, you have to work in order to live. And capitalism reproduces itself by compelling the workers to keep selling their labor so that they can afford to keep living, so that they can have the money to keep living. And it's obvious that because capitalism is responsible for producing all the commodities that are available,

capitalism is both the source of the commodities that the laborer needs in order to keep living, but is also the source of the commodification of labor. In a capitalist society, labor itself becomes a commodity, becomes labor power that is bought and sold, that is sold by the labor to the capitalist. The labor sells her labor power to the capitalist in order to survive, and the capitalist buys workers labor power in order to cons and consumes it in order to generate surplus

value so this that so in a way the the capitalist you know the capitalist purchases the workers labor power in order to know to actualize surplus value and the labor purchases the means of consumption that she needs in order to keep living. And both these exchanges, the exchange of labor power for wages and the exchange of wages for commodities fuel capital's valorization process.

So here, this is the final quote by Endnotes, Proletariat and capital stand in a relation of reciprocal implication with each other. Each pole reproduces the other, such that the relation between the two is self-reproducing. The relation is asymmetric, however, in that it is capital which subsumes the labour of the proletariat. So Marx's crucial point is that the labor of the proletarian is entirely subsumed by... Because labor is compelled to produce commodities. Labor is compelled to produce commodities as opposed to producing the things that it needs.

why? Because it doesn't have access to the means of production. The means of production are owned by the capitalist, which means that labor is used to produce saleable commodities and labor power itself is nothing but a saleable commodity. So this is the sense in which in a way labor is subsumed by capital because the only labor that is socially validated is value-creating labor which is the labor that contributes to the actualization of surplus value and therefore

the you know labor which kind of fuels the valorization process okay right so i propose at this point i realize that you know i've gone through a lot quite quickly and i i know people have lots of questions so i propose that we have we can have maybe a kind of you know a five minute break and then we can you know go on into the discussion. For me it's okay. Does that sound okay? Okay so yeah let's have a break here and then start back yeah I'll just count

five minutes from now okay. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. you you um

The five minute breaks? The five minute breaks? Break. It's over. It's over. Okay. Okay. Let's continue. Yeah. Can you turn your camera on? Can you turn your camera on? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, so I think, yeah, we should just have a discussion now. And would anyone like to kind of kick things off with a question? I'm sure you have lots of questions.

you hey hunter hello sir hi hello i think hunter was is yes sure go on but i cannot hear him yes i can't hear either

no no can anyone else here answer or Okay, no. Hello? Hello? How about now? Hunter? Yeah, I can hear. I heard something there. Okay. Okay. Yep, no, I can hear. Yes, yes, I can hear you now. Okay, but am I echoing now?

Am I echoing now? It's okay. No, when you speak there, I can hear you now. Okay. Okay. So I wanted to ask about the consumer. So like in this circuit on the diagram, there's the reproduction of capital, reproduction of labor power. Seems like this sort of this third element that maybe, you know, Marx was writing too early to really get to talk about, which is, consumption in terms of using advertising or focus groups or more recently like data mining and psychometrics

to stoke consumer desire and to create products that are oriented towards like specific consumer desires or unconscious consumer desires. And I guess I'm wondering, like, no one can imagine maybe, but part of why capitalism hasn't destroyed itself yet is because of the sort of new category of sort of increasing consumer desire. And I'm wondering, would that be kind of like a third ring in a way that has sort of developed since Marx was writing? Or can you just sort of comment on that a little bit? Now we can't hear you because I think someone muted you so that I wouldn't echo.

Hi, okay, can you hear? Yep, okay. So commodities are consumed, okay. So Mark's point is that in a capitalist society, you know, everything that is produced as a commodity, which is produced in order to be exchanged, bought and sold, so that everything we consume is commodified. Actually, you have to qualify that claim. Marx's claim would be that

in terms of the things we use the things that we need in order to live are commodities and have been commodified so there's been a commodification of needs so like the food we eat the places we live in, the clothes we wear are all commodities So our material needs have been commodified. Also, I mean, now actually, with ecological devastation, more and more of the basic, like even things like air and water are becoming commodified now too, remember. So like even basic things that a century ago were common resources,

like air and water are now in the process of becoming commodified. But consumption so in that regard I think it's not clear to me how you need how consumption is an independent circuit here or an independent sphere because There's a question based on the idea of the need, like beyond the way to reproduce. So, okay, we have lots of other, I mean, there are pleasures, for instance, that, you know, there are lots of, you know, think of the things that we, you know, we seek, you know, we desire lots of things.

So what you're suggesting is that there are things that we desire that are, you know, things that we consume that are, you know, not commodities or not obviously commodified. I was maybe talking about capital desires, like sort of pre-formatting desires, sort of like Mark Fisher had that term, like pre-corporation. and like if in what ways that kind of if there's sort of like a new logic of capital that includes something like that you're muted again

I would say it's not a new logic I would say it's an intensification of the same logic In other words, the desires that animate us and the desires that shape our existence, I think the challenge would be to point to uncommodified desires. So in other words, if anyone who wants to point to a sphere of psychic reality that is immune, that is somehow kind of untainted by commodification,

I think, well, I think the challenge is to come up with a credible candidate. candidate and I think for the very reasons you just gave, it's not, you know, things like libido. In the 1920s and 30s, people thought that sexual desire could somehow kind of, was this force that could somehow resist the logic of commodification, where it's, I think now it's clear that capitalism commodifies and sells sex. So sexual desire is easily commodified and also because capitalism structures social existence. You know, what we desire and how we desire, the ways in which human beings relate sexually

is shaped by the machinery, by the valorization process and the conditions under which we are forced to keep reproducing our material existence. So I think consumption is something that happens. We're always consuming things, but I think it's very difficult to point to anything we consume that is somehow, is not either already commodified or in the process of gradually being commodified. And I mean you could say that, you know, 100 years ago there was much more, there were

many more spheres of existence that had not yet been commodified. But actually now I think it's more difficult to point. Think of what we do when we're not working. The reason, the distinction between work and leisure is structured by capitalism so that we seek recreation and entertainment as a kind of release, as a pleasurable kind of release from the stresses of work. But then think of how the ways in which we enjoy ourselves and distract ourselves also involve consuming commodities.

The question is very simple. When you ask about what commodification is, the criterion of commodification is very simple. Are you paying for it? okay are you paying for it how many things in your life are you not paying for okay if you're paying for it it's a commodity it's very very simply okay and you're consuming a commodity so i'm not saying that everything in our existence is being kind of you know you know bought in this sense but i think it's not at all obvious it's not at all obvious what we're not paying for in our day-to-day existence. Education, you know, recreation, entertainment,

most of the pleasures that we enjoy are we pay for. And even if you think of like, okay, there are degrees of mediation of this, but like even if you think of like if you want to get away from it all, go off into the wilderness, okay? But you're buying the time to take off work, okay? If you go off and spend time in the wild, just living off the land and so on, you can do that. Well, either you make that as a kind of definitive move, you exit from the capital social system. But if you're doing it, you have to be able to afford to do it.

And so time itself is a commodity that you're paying for, that you buy your leisure time. The time you can afford not to work is time that you've already paid for with work in one way or another. So I guess, you know, I'm saying so this is why, I mean so Baudrillard in the 60s, in the Society of Consumption, Baudrillard's whole critique of Marx is that Marx is kind of insults a productivist paradigm which has been superseded by the the precedence of consumption over production and in his 1973 book the mirror of production this is a basic argument but I think it's a very unconvincing argument I mean it's a very provocative I mean it's a it's a nice

provocation but it doesn't it just doesn't stand up to kind of serious scrutiny if you examine the details of Marx's actual arguments you know because it's the claim that you know commodities are not just I say a commodity is simply something that is bought and sold and it doesn't need to be you know it doesn't need to be kind of it can be a material experiential it It can be qualitative. I think people have had a very kind of superficial understanding of what Marx means by a commodity and what the consumption of commodities involves.

And the other part, of course, is that every commodity has a use value as well as an exchange value. And the use value, when you're using something, you're not exchanging it. In fact, you can't use an exchange at the same time. So there's a fundamental difference between using and exchanging. But the uses that you extract from commodities are themselves shaped by the characteristics of the field of commodities. Of course you can use something, you can use a commodity

in a way for which it wasn't intended to be used. So in a way you're kind of repurposing it. So that kind of repurposing would be a mode of consumption that isn't directly subordinated to commodity consumption, but it's still shaped by it in negative, because the space of possibilities for functional repurposing are still negatively shaped by the positive functional characteristics of commodities. So what is it about...

...that allows it to have a certain autonomy from the imminence of capitalist desire? Can you mute it again? Okay, so some Marxists insist that the structure of reasoning as such is in a way reiterates the exchange value structure. This is Son Rettel's argument about how logic itself, reasoning is, in a way, reiterates the structure of exchange value. The idea of

logical abstraction reiterates the exchange abstraction. This is Son Rettel's argument. I think that that is an implausible short circuit. I think there's a connection. I think that insofar as reasoning, anyone who isn't a metaphysical rationalist will accept that if reasoning is a social practice, it is shaped by social structures. So therefore, it's implausible to maintain that reasoning is entirely kind of uh you know uncontaminated by uh the the exchange abstraction

and the logic of uh but by the the forms that uh the form determinations uh that shape capitalist reality. But at the same time, I think it's foolish and it's unnecessarily reductive to say that that's all there is to reason, that reasoning is simply a symptom of the logic of capitalist exchange. And I think that that's a claim I'm interested and challenging in the work I'm doing now. I think if you understand reasoning as a practice, well, I think that there's a dimension of practice

in a way which conditions exchange, but which isn't itself exchangeable. And I think there's a distinction to be made there at the level of the actuality of the exchange abstraction and the act of exchange which conditions the existence of the exchange abstraction. And I think that conceptual abstraction is the resource for grasping this difference. So in a way, I think that capitalism is a system of real abstractions. It's precisely because it shapes thinking that it allows you to, it provides you with the instruments you need to be able to grasp it and defeat it.

Because you can only fight abstraction with abstraction. I think the mistake is to think, is to denounce abstraction in the name of some original concretion that has been kind of, you know, occluded by abstraction. I think Marx's point is that capitalism is a system of real abstractions, but you need the resources of abstraction to identify and diagnose the functioning of these abstractions and to conjure up ways of overcoming them. This is why what's striking is if you read Capital, I mean, it's a ferociously abstract text and the level of analysis, it's not a work of sociology. The distinction between

capitalist and proletarian is a structural formal determination, it's not a sociological characterization, which is why it's the difference between the owners of the means of production and the owners of labor power. And Marx abstracts from every other positive, you know, kind of empirical determination. But that's what gives his analysis such power, you know, such you know, like incredible kind of, you know, diagnostic power. So I think Marx's own work is a testament to how the resources of conceptual abstraction can be used, can be deployed, as a way of understanding and eventually overcoming abstract domination or abstract domination by value.

Okay, there's a couple of comments in the... Okay, there's a... Shall I read out the questions and comments? Okay, the first one is from... Okay, the new central... This incorrect argument is endorsed by the Invisible Committee, among others. The argument that rationality itself is a symptom of capitalist domination. Yeah, this is a very popular argument among some sectors of the ultra-left. I think it's a lazy argument which actually misrepresents Marx's, you know, what is most

powerful Marx's own analysis. And if you just read Marx himself, he is deploying the resources of conceptual abstraction, including some mathematical, not in capital itself, but he He thinks, in a way, his diagnosis of the discrepancy between the value of labour and the value of the products of labour is an incredibly sharp analytical distinction, which testifies

to the power of abstraction. In other words, abstract domination can't be, it doesn't register empirically. So I think, yeah, but by the way, all these, this is against, so basically, I think, it seems to me that there's a bad philosophical reading of Marx, which aligns him with a kind of romantic reactionary kind of anti-modernism which says that modernism, modernity is the reign of abstraction and that we must somehow recover a lost immediacy or a lost concretion

or some kind of original kind of, you know, some stratum of experience that has been lost and, you know, because of, you know, the domination of the value form. And I think that, I think one can denounce, you know, the abstract domination of value and the way, acknowledge how it's a kind of, it's a dispensable, it's a contingent constraint on human practical and cognitive capacity without having to resort to some kind of, without, you know, essentializing

those capacities are without postulating some mythic sense all originally capacities that were somehow you know perverted by capitalism okay so yes so that's in response to the first claim and then the second claim is mean the one expressed by Baudrillard yeah that's when I was responding to Hunter The claim that consumption, in a way that what dominates in contemporary late capitalism is consumption, not production, and that in a way that consumption somehow, Baudrillard is famous for the claim that, you know,

in a way that the consumption itself becomes, you know, reaches a point of kind of extremity where it becomes a potential source of resistance to capitalism. When he talks about, you know, in the shadow of the silent majorities and all that stuff, about how the proverbial couch potato sitting in front of the TV is actually kind of slowly acquiring this inert but powerful opacity that renders Hemmerher immune to the blandishments of capitalist ideology. So that was Baudrillard's claim, except that the point is that he doesn't

understand how Marx is not a productivist. Marx, it's exchange that governs both production and consumption. Production and consumption are both subordinated to exchange, and it's It's exchange that regulates each. Commodity production is geared towards exchange and the maximization of surplus value and the consumption of commodities is already kind of beholden to the primacy of exchange. We can only consume things that are exchangeable.

So I think it's also a mistake to emphasize production or consumption. The logic of Marx's account is about the primacy of exchange, which is the primacy of value. Because what is exchange? It's exchange on the basis of value as embodied in commodities and money. Yeah, so this is why, and once again, just to reiterate this, so both the reading that

I'm endorsing here, it's the so-called the value form analysis, endnotes are also proponents of this reading and it's basically it says that in a way the labor, you know, the labor that creates value is already subsumed by value. No, it's not that labor is not this countervailing exterior force. Labor is not exterior to capital.

Labor is internal to the capital relation, which is why it can't be the affirmation of labor and the affirmation of the so-called power of labor does not suffice to challenge or subvert the logic of valorization and the domination of value. This is Heinrich's, and Michael Heinrich is one of the best exponents of this reading. So okay, there's another claim here.

Well, it's obviously true that circulation time has vastly expanded in most capitalist societies after the 70s. It still doesn't deny the fact that the primary moment of the capitalist commodity cycle is still production and the passage from M to M prime I'm not sure so what okay denied the fact the primary moment of the capitalist commodity cycle still production. What does it mean to say that the primary moments of the capitalist commodity cycle is still production? Yes, it's the production of commodities, but a

commodity is exchangeable. A commodity is something that is made to be exchanged for money. And in other words, so this is why you can't, you know, the... and in a way, as Marx's whole point, is that the means of production, the labor that creates the means of production, is itself commodity producing labor. Because the means of productions are themselves commodities. The instruments of production are commodities as well, which is to say that they're also exchangeable. So in other words, so the circuit begins with, well, actually, no.

If you actually follow the logic of this account, it doesn't begin with production. Production is the conversion of money into commodities, okay? But the money, you know, that is invested in the means of production, The means of production pre-exists the production process. Okay? So in other words, Marx's point is that every act of production already presupposes means of production that have been produced by, that are, you know, under the aegis of generalized commodity production. There is no production that is not always already commodified. That's Marx's point. This is why he's not something, and in fact, Marx's, the reading of Marx, which emphasizes the primacy of production, the productionist

reading is a metaphysical reading. Because it claims, what you end up doing is that you reify production as this kind of force, as this generative force, you know, that is, you know, in a way that conditions commodification. Whereas Marx's whole point is that it's the other way around. that commodification conditions production. And this is why this is an anti-romantic reading of Marx because Marx's whole point is that it's a mistake to align labor with production. And the reason why, when he says that, when he distinguishes between value creating labor and use creating labor, the point that it's value creating labor that is productive labor,

that's valorized, because productivity is valorized under capitalism, whereas useful labor is merely ancillary to valuable labor. The point, useful labor operating independently of value, or no longer subordinated to value, wouldn't be labor. That's part of what Marx is saying. And it wouldn't be production. It wouldn't be, it couldn't properly be characterized as production. The category of production is internal to the capitalist epoch. It's a kind of capitalist category, which is why fetishizing production is a mistake.

And retrospectively, kind of, you know, projecting production onto nature or kind of turning into this cosmological force is also a kind of, it's a reification. By the way, this is what's wrong with the Deleuze and Guattari reading. The Deleuze and Guattari, the emphasis on the primacy of production or the productive process, this is metaphysics. This is not. And it's taking to understand all of reality as a process of production is an act of ideological sub-reption. Because Marx's whole point is that there is no production

that is not subordinated to commodification. And if you think of nature as this realm of pure productivity, that's a kind of a mythic relapse. Nature is not this realm of pure productivity. It's a mistake to apply the category of production to nature. and because the category of nature is itself, you know, is itself a real abstraction, just as society is, which isn't to say that Marx denies that there's something, you know, that there's a kind of a material reality that exists independently of human social practices,

But he's saying that the ways in which we characterize that material domain are never entirely immune to kind of ideological contamination. So this is why he thinks science is a good way of describing and explaining nature, but science doesn't, in science you don't talk about nature as this realm of pure production. are romanticist paradigms you know which should simply obfuscate I can I just ask a question really quick sorry because it's on this it's on this point so I

don't and I don't mean this in like as a metaphysical reading either but if we to take exchange as being Marx's main point here, that exchange regulates both production and consumption. Exchange is then thought of as perhaps the telos of capitalism is exchange. And doesn't that then affect how we understand teleology? I mean, I don't want to just switch one word for the other but for example in the text here teleology i how we understand teleology how we understand the end or the concept of an end like on page 491 in our text he talks about

the owners of labor power he says the owner of labor power is mortal if then his appearance in the market is to be continuous and the continuous conversion of money into capital assumes this The seller of labor power must perpetuate himself in the way that every living individual perpetuates himself by procreation. The labor power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and death must be continually replaced, at the very least, by an equal amount of fresh labor power. And then, so then to think about that in the context of capitalism, and do we then have this idea of exchange as a telos in capitalism, meaning that capitalism is, I don't want to be jumping ahead of myself into just theories,

but as far as the temporality of it, does it then hold this sort of immortal principle that it's just like it's this continuum that must be kept up, even as the owners of labor power are also mortal. So, and it holds this either false idea or it satisfies this idea of some metaphysical need in the way that Schopenhauer would say man's need for metaphysics, etc. Am I on the right track here? Yes, that's a very good point. It's an excellent point.

I mean, so parts of self-valorizing values and end in itself in a way. And this is why it becomes, this is why the religion of everyday life for Marx is capitalism as a religion of everyday life. It's like when you buy and sell, you're kind of, you're engaging in the worship of, you know, of value and of capital and your existence as someone engaging in commodity exchange is, you know, every, you know, money itself. There's just like, you know, when he talks about kind of fetishism, the transposition of, you know, so that, you know, commodities acquire social relations.

and relations between the producers of commodities are replaced and subordinated to social relations between those commodities. Well, in a way, this is a kind of superstition. Capitalism is an elaborate kind of system of mystification, and it's a kind of superstition, and almost a kind of monotheistic animism where value, everything is animated by value, and value is the end in itself. Value is what propels the entire process and practice of exchange.

And value is just an end in itself, and value just wants to kind of, it's eternal and immortal. It will, and the capitalist, remember for Marx, the capitalist is merely a representative of capital. He's a place where Marx says he's the bearer of this kind of social role. Both the, Marx is not interested in, well, this is a kind of a side point, But Marx, the desire of the capitalist in a way is the symptom of his, the social role that he's being compelled to play as a kind of, as a servant of capital.

The capitalist is just a puppet of capital as much as the worker is. And the capitalist desire for profit, for more and more money, is also kind of ultimately kind of irrational because he's not, its only value secures its own immortality and its own kind of perpetuation through the activities of human capitalists. So yes, value is in itself, it's both the first and final, like the Aristotelian

god, it's what keeps, you know, I think Marx is obviously a reader of Aristotle, these Aristotelian motifs in his thinking, capitalism, value is the first and final cause of the capitalist cosmology and it will just it has no beginning and no end okay and then this is why they accumulate capital accumulation there will never be enough there is no point at which you know there has been you know enough money has been made or the sum of value has reached it's infinite it's limitless it must keep on expanding, but the contradiction for Marx is that capitalism is, you know, the valorization

process is compelled to extract ever larger magnitudes of surplus value from an ever diminishing population of laborers because in a way the logic of valorization and of expansion means that the amount of surplus value that capitalism needs to keep on extracting must be derived from a smaller and smaller labor pool because that's how it minimizes its the cost of wages you know it has you know

capital is invested in the kind of machinery but also in wages but in order to keep wages to a minimum you have to restrict the the labor pool this is why it creates unemployment. It creates a surplus population of the unemployed and unemployable. And that's the contradiction for Marx is that the expansion of value, this automatic kind of expansion of value and automatic increase of surplus value requires diminishing and decreasing the population of laborers to the point where he thinks that the system where the

double mill breaks down because the reproduction of capital contradicts the reproduction of labor. Labor can no longer reproduce itself while reproducing capital. And that's the breaking point for Marx. That's where the kind of the double mill kind of crunches together. Because if you, on that diagram, in the endnotes diagram, the key in the little oblong in the middle, this is the point where labor and capital intersect. Okay, but, and this is a point made by endnotes actually, and they've been making this point for like 10 years, is that the point of intersection

between capital and labor, which is the kind of production process or the conversion of money into commodities entails, expels more and more labors from this process. So in other words, there are fewer and fewer people able to reproduce their existence while reproducing capital. And this is what will ultimately cause an explosion according to Marx. So then the question is, obviously capitalism wants to keep on expanding and augmenting

itself forever, so it needs a biological support system. what labor power is, it's a biological support system. But it needs laborers and it needs laborers who will enter into the wage relation. I think that's a limit to the automation of the production process because you can't, only labor power can be exploited, but you You can't exploit machinery. So capitalism, you know, so the question is whether capitalism will recognize this contradiction and try to kind of, you know, avoid the rupture by reincorporating segments of the population

into the production process or not. not. Right now it looks unlikely. If it doesn't happen then there is a kind of, you know, this is the internal contradiction that Marx talked about. So this is how, you know, this infinite kind of self-valorization is nevertheless contradictory. And this is where Marx is unlike is Hegelian not Aristotelian. He thinks that the infinite expansion of capital has a contradictory premise or a contradictory essence. The mechanism that fuels the expansion will also terminate it.

it. And I think that's a very kind of compelling, I think conceptually that's a kind of incredibly brilliant diagnosis. I'm not sure whether, well, the great debate is, you know, the kind the crisis predicted by Marx hasn't quite manifested, so the question is whether it will. But the point of teleology is crucial, but yes, the critique of capitalism and the critique of capitalism as an end in itself, as this kind of, you know, as this, you know, the

annihilation of purpose in this sublime, purposeless, quantitative expanse and accumulation, is not the reassertion of original purposes. It seems to me that there's a bad kind of, you know, left critique, which says that, oh, capitalism, you know, evacuates purpose from everything. It's just about kind of making more and more money. So therefore, you know, the overthrowing of capitalism will be the reestablishment of purposes commensurate with, you know, natural human needs and desires. I think that that is not, that is,

Once again, that involves an ideological mystification, because Marx's point is that there is no domain of purpose in itself. Human beings are social beings. All the purposes in terms of which we organize our existence are historically and socially contingent. And the point is, you know, any appeal to a set of immutable ends for human life would be a kind of metaphysical regression. So in a way, the very purposelessness, I think Marx's point is that the very purposelessness of capitalism, if determinately negated, can be reappropriated by human beings.

And then human beings can free themselves of all the biological and sociological purposes that constrained their existence. The point for Marx, or I think the right way to read Marx, is that the task, the revolutionary task is to appropriate the purposelessness of capitalism and resubordinate it to the expansion of human potentialities, so that we can start remaking ourselves in our world in a way which is unconstrained by any kind of natural horizon of need or some kind of

pre-established horizon of ultimate ends. But you just Technological How are you going to How you going to appropriate it if it's if it's undermining itself That makes sense Sorry, you mean how would we appropriate... I mean, in a way, capitalism creates... So capitalism has reshaped human existence. It has reshaped...

That's part of the point that Hunter was making was that it's reshaped human desires, human needs and desires, and in a way, and it has denaturalized human beings. of this denaturalization is willed, part of it is unwell, part of it a lot of it is out of our control. So the claim would be that is it possible for us to reappropriate the process of denaturalization begun by capitalism? And this is a question of understanding the kind of the manufacturing or the engineering of desire, the engineering of desire and in

connection with technological kind of transformation. And Marx, on the one hand, he's very clear all, you know, he distinctions tools from machines and he says well obviously kind of the machinery, capitalist machinery is basically, you know, whatever kind of, you know, interesting objects and kind of processes it manufactures, it's still subordinated to value, you know, to valorization and to capital accumulation. So there is no, so one can't expect machinery.

It's not as if like in the, you know, technology is enveloped and subordinated by the valorization process. However, that doesn't mean that there can't be repurposing of you know capitalist technologies for ends that would be that would be independent or that would be kind of you know it no longer be tethered to valorization and there's actually there's a quote I have it here from the Grundrisse where Marx yeah Marx writes

machinery does not lose its use value when it ceases to be capital from the fact that machinery is the most suitable form of the use value of fixed capital it does not follow its subordination to the social relations of capitalism is the most suitable and final social production relationship for the utilization of machinery. So this is, I think, Marx arguing against those kind of, again, some kind, some forms of kind of ultra leftists, people who say that technology is capitalist, therefore, the abolishing capitalism means abolishing technology. There's nothing to be salvaged from capitalist technology. And this is, I think, you know, Marx would, you know,

clearly doesn't think this, I mean it's a very foolish and kind of simplistic perspective. He clearly believes in the possibility of repurposing capitalist machinery. And that repurposing will be grabbed, but of course, just as the process of abolishing capitalism will be lengthy and protracted, the repurposing of capitalist technology will also be equally kind of complicated and protracted. But technology subordination to capitalist social relations is not essential and definitive. It doesn't mean that just because the use values of

you know, capitalist technologies are governed by, you know, the logic of value of, you know, valorization, it doesn't mean that, you know, they couldn't be, that those, the use values of these machines couldn't be transformed on the basis of non-capitalist social relations but it's clear that because machinery has a social function you can't count on machinery or technology alone to transform society yes it almost does seem to me like it almost does seem to you speak about capitalist technologies

but um it almost seems to me that with um with technologies that are coming out now like even like rooftop solar like there's a massive sort of resistance by energy companies and whatnot to to some so something like rooftop solar or um 3d printing um which is like at the moment just printing like trinkets or whatever but um you know hypothetically you can imagine a situation in which a 3d printer could um could print copies of itself and could print all the shoes and all the a lot of the crap that you buy now from factories in china or enough of a small percentage of them that those factories are like maybe less viable or something so it seems to me that like

some of the technologies that are coming out now, if you add up, say, the 3D printing and solar and some other things that are coming online that allow yourself to almost... It seems to me that the technologies themselves might have some intrinsic aspect to them that is sort of like post-capitalist or anti-capitalist or something other than capitalist. Because if you add them up, if you think, you know, it's not very easy to privatise, you know, cognitive sort of labour or whatever. It's not very easy to privatise information. And on the other hand, you've got sort of 3D printing.

So if you've got the open source layer of all the information and all the protocols and all the plans for printing things, and then you can print them all at low cost, then it adds up to a situation where you're not like, it's like a different sort of mechanism. It's not like trade or something. Does that make sense? Obviously, it's like it's not viable now, but it just seems to me there's something intrinsic to the technologies that are coming online that is almost not suitable to the capitalist economy or something possibly. No, that's a very good point, actually. This is where things get, you know, you're right that it's, I guess this is where things get, you know, things, you know, get complicated

and one really needs to kind of, you know, pay attention and do kind of empirical work to understand, you know, yes, to pay attention to these kinds of, you know, the specific features of these technologies. I think okay, I mean the point I was making would simply be against a kind of naive technological determinism that says that social evolution is technologically driven, that ultimately all kind of social systems are primar, are kind of you know, supervene on kind of technologies And I think that that's implausible. And I think Marx's point is not that, in a way, because he has a very kind of formal structural accounts of capital.

So it leaves all sorts of questions about the, in a way, the, I guess, the kind of the degree of slippage between, you know, use and exchange or between the kind of the degree to which technologies create new uses or, you know, generate new functions that in a way were not predetermined by their exchangeability. So this would be an agreement with your point that what some of these new technologies, the possibilities opened up by some of these

new technologies were maybe, you know, are kind of complicated or even compromised, you know, kind of capital accumulation or simply kind of, you know, profit as a kind of, as a goal in itself. And I think, you know, I think that's right. And I think it's silly I think, I wouldn't want to say that once you've understood the logic of valorization, you've understood everything, you've understood how technology works. That's absolutely not. I think that in a way it still leaves open the logic of valorization and the fact that

technology is in a way kind of enveloped by this process doesn't mean that it doesn't have all sorts of kind of unexpected and unanticipated functions that cannot be read off the valorization process. The valorization process doesn't determine what specific things can and cannot do, but it does set a limit to the things that are...

The question would be, you know, would capitalism generate a technology that had the part that would facilitate the expropriation of the means of production or something that would kind of or that would undermine or subvert. the status of private property, for instance. And I think, okay, that's a really, really interesting question. So you're saying that these things would subvert the social status of private property? I

It's just It's just I think it's possible but you know the yeah can capitalism produce a technology that undermines the sort of the means exactly like you said I mean that's yeah that's kind of the point I was trying to make but But I think that possibly it is producing that kind of thing now maybe. But the things that I can't fully reconcile is that you still need to maintain the technology. They still need to be fed things.

You still need something to put in a 3D printer or something so you have to get it from somewhere. You still need land, like the whole property relation. You still need somewhere to live or something. I think I had the idea. I was thinking about what happens, where does this process accelerate to? And you already see people working less and possibly it's going to get worse. and I was sort of thinking like could these people use some of these technologies to reproduce their own existence as in to cover their energy and food needs and then they would not necessarily have to sell their labor on the labor market.

Does that make sense? And then you would have, then capitalism would almost have like competition with another sort of system because they would be like, does that make sense? It's like, can this sort of, so it's like an alternative to the, because it strikes me that the model of like giving everyone universal payment or whatever, what is it? Universal. UBI, universal basic income. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Doesn't that rely on the capital system kind of going on and keeping churning sort of profits that can then be redistributed? I'm not entirely sure of the economics of it or something, But, like, if the process accelerates, you end up with a crisis in capitalism.

How are you going to distribute the UBI when that happens or something? I don't know. I'm not totally sure on it. So I think my idea was that, like, rather than rely on that, you would use these kind of, like, alternative technologies which would potentially undermine the capitalist relations to sort of, like, almost use... products produced by capitalism to sort of undermine it or something. I don't know. Can I quickly add something to that question before you respond? It's kind of on the same topic. There's this interesting quote that I noticed from the Gundressa, which I have in front of me, about what really free labor is.

It says, really free labor, the composition of music, for example, is at the same time damn serious and demands the greatest effort. the labor concerned with material production can only have this character if one, it is a social nature, and two, it has a scientific character, at the same time is general work, i.e. if it ceases to be human effort as a definite trained natural force. So like, I imagine he's saying that's not an eternal essence of free labor, that's something that you can only conceive of from the standpoint of capitalism, but that it's kind of like a, like that, that type of labor is sort of utopian horizon or something like that. And like in the Gundrissa, it's, yeah, he, he's, he seems very pro-technology in the

Gundrissa, like that, that, that it would depend on, yeah, I mean, basically, you know, the standard left accelerationist platform or something like full, full automation and, and a UBI or something, and then people can be really free and, you know, create and study, basically. And I guess I'm curious what your comments are on that kind of, that's an overly simplified account of that, I guess, but like what, what, to what degree you sort of endorse that, or what caveats you sort of, or concerns you have about that, you know, because there's certain brutality to it too in terms of sort of if you demand full automation that is you know ends

up hurting certain workers at the moment so it's kind of like taking a long view or something so it's kind of a weird kind of leftism in a way so yeah yeah curious so similar similar topic is the last question. Okay, that's, okay, as far as the UBI, I'm still unconvinced by the UBI proposition. I mean, I confess, I don't, you know, I haven't done enough kind of reading to really know the ins and outs of all the arguments. But I mean, superficially, the problem is that, well, it's two things.

Capitalism is a social totality for Marx. And his analysis reveals two fundamental features of this capitalist social totality. It's both what he calls the valorization process, the fact that the MCM Prime movement, so that value keeps on, value is the kind of the impersonal motor that drives, you know, to which all other kind of social dynamics are subordinated. So capital is a valorization process. It's also the class relation.

It's also the fundamental, the structural antagonism between the capitalists who own the means of production and the laborers who have to sell their labor in order to live, to exist. And very simply, the capitalists doesn't need to, although capitalists always boast about how much they work, the point is that capitalists don't need to work to live, whereas everyone else does need to work in order to live. That antagonism, both the process and the class relation, it's not clear to me how the UBI stuff, it seems to me that you'd have to abolish those. I mean, it seems if you're a communist, you want to abolish both those things, along

with, you want to abolish value, you want to abolish the commodity form, you want to abolish wage labour and private property as well as the state. So I think the problem with the UBI, it's not clear to me whether, you know, it seems to me that the UBI thing is, proposition is perfectly compatible with the maintenance of a lot of the fundamental kind of, you know, structural components of capitalism. So, but I haven't, I would need to be kind of, yeah, I remain to be kind of, I guess, convinced. But also, the automation, as far as the issue of automation goes, I mean, Marx distinguishes,

In a way, he thinks that automation is good. Well, I mean, Marx, no. Marx is one of the things, you know, his most kind of appealing characteristics is his lack of moralism. He doesn't, Marx, Marx's, his critique of capitalism is not, oh, capitalism is bad, you know, workers are good. capitalism is both you know as Jameson insists you know Marx thinks that capitalism is both the worst and the best thing to have happened to the human species. He thinks it's both it's appalling and terrible but also it opens up all sorts of like you know

heather to inconceivable possibilities. So you know automation obviously creates unemployment and destroys kind of traditional ways of life, but it also eliminates horrendous drudgery. I mean, you know, the automation of, you know, the washing machine, you know, my friend Mark said, you know, the washing machine is a fantastic kind of, you know, endorsement of the emancipatory power technology. I mean anyone who denies that washing machines are a good

thing in terms of the amount of the horrendous drudgery that they save to millions of women all over the world who have to engage in domestic labor I think would be very foolish. But the limits, but automation is still you know automation is there to kind of to intensify productivity where productivity is geared towards the extraction of surplus value which is why I think full automation or the automation of all production is implausible because you can't extract surplus value from machines. You can't exploit a machine

because you don't need to pay a machine. Marx's point about exploitation is that only labour can be exploited because of the discrepancy between the value of labour power and the value of the products of labor power and because the actualization of value by labor power in the production process creates more value than value that labor power is remunerated for. Labor generates more value than the cost of labor. That's exploitation. And you don't

get that with, it seems, or it's not, I don't see how you can have that, this discrepancy between labor power and the products of labor with a machine, because a machine doesn't enter into the wage relation. What about a machine that's more of a creative problem solving? So something like that the cost of maintaining the machine isn't a wage that you pay to the machine, but it's still the cost that sort of went into creating it and maintaining it. But then if it's capable of deep learning or whatever, problem solving, one could imagine that a machine like that would be able to create more value than the cost of maintaining it?

Like if it, you know, it's kind of a vague idea, I guess. But does AI change that in some ways, basically? Can't hear you. You're muted again. Sorry. I think it's important to remember the distinction between profits and surplus value. An intelligence, a machine capable of learning in a way can facilitate profit margins, can make it easier to maximize profits. But profit is

not surplus value. So Marx's claim is ultimately that there wouldn't be any profit without surplus value. So the real question is could machines, you know, can automation and the, you know, the automation of production, you know, ensure or guarantee the expansion of profits independently of surplus value. And I don't know. That's a very interesting question. I just don't know. I don't know what the answer is. But remember, the claim is not that it's not, there is no quality of human labour,

that it's not because human labour is special that it can be exploited. The whole point is that the labour that is exploited is abstract labour, which is labor which is evacuated of all the concrete qualitative characteristics, you know, that would make it, you know, that would allow you to kind of to say that this is, you know, this is clever, this is ingenious, this is, there's no skill involved in labor. and the exploitation of labor has got absolutely nothing to do with skill or expertise.

So an expert learning system, a machine by definition, intelligent machine is an expert. And expert systems play a part in the production system. But the point is that for Marx is that the labor in a way that activates the value, the potential value generated by expert system can be entirely unskilled. He says it can be, it's just this kind of average degree of skill or of competence. So I think that there's nothing, Marx's whole point is that it's not skill ingenuity are not themselves sources of surplus value.

Productivity for Marx has got nothing to do with the quality of the work. So when Marx talks about the capitalist seeks to make labor more productive, and there's two ways of making labor more productive, by lengthening the working day so that the worker works more hours and therefore produces more value than the value of their actual labor, or increasing productivity. And increasing productivity just means making more valuable commodities.

It either means making more valuable commodities or making a single more valuable commodity. So productivity is already measured in terms of value, which is abstract and homogenous and quantitative. But it's got nothing to do with skill or ingenuity or expertise. So I think this is also something you need to keep remembering is that the productivity of capital and the kind of maximizing productivity is, you know, there are technologies that can help maximize productivity and those technologies might be sort of like, involved like intelligent

machines. But in a way, the intelligence of the machine is entirely ancillary to the creation of value. So like they're very, I mean in a way automation has always involved ingenuity, it's always involved extraordinary, you know, in order to automate a process you need to kind of reduce it to a set of, decompose it into a set of algorithmic functions and you can mechanize it and that's, you know, usually involves abstract intelligence and the, you You know, the design and implementation of an automated system can be extraordinarily sophisticated. You know, you can give all sorts of examples of intelligent machines, even with, you know, the kinds of, you know, machines, you know, that are currently, you know, that are not so-called intelligent machines.

but they are not in a way they facilitate productivity but they are not themselves productive okay the machines that play a role in productivity are not themselves productive which is why you can't equate the complexity and the sophistication of a machine you know of a part of a component of of the mode of production with the degree of productivity those are two different things um so this is why i mean i think this is a complicated issue but i think that distinction is really important um because um yeah i mean that that's just you know all i would say so

i'm not sure what the answer to your question is but i think you need to bear that distinction in mind before you can answer you know properly i think i think that's so simply simply engaged in a process of figuring out how to complete its task more quickly you're muted again I think you always get muted when someone asks a question. If the result of that task was a commodity, so if this machine, if the result of this,

you know, the task executed by this intelligent machine is a commodity, okay, then the machine's intelligence would be valuable, would be value creating. But I guess I'm, you know, so that, yeah, maybe that would be, but but then I'm not sure that that would guarantee surplus value because there's no cost. I mean, the capital invested in the means of production

you know cannot generate surplus value no matter how efficient, or at least this is is Marx's basic claim, you know, and if that could be proved wrong, then his theory would be falsified. But the point is that no matter how sophisticated the means of production, you know, no matter how fantastically intelligent, you know, kind of, say, the systems that's, you know, that executes these productive sites might be, that would still not guarantee surplus value because you produce something but you haven't… because then you're just converting

money into money. Max's point is that in any exchange, it's always possible to make more money from the exchange of a commodity. But you cannot do it at a kind of systemic level or societal level. actually Heinrich has a good example in his book. Let me see if I can find it.

I mean, I don't know if this... I think this is relevant to this point. I hope it's not... Isn't that kind of... Isn't that kind of... ...that capital would eventually sort of leave the human market behind altogether and sort

of be a pure sort of conversion of money into more money oh yeah you need it again so remember what is money money is an imminent it's a measure of value and and And what is value? Value is, you know, there has to be, you know, value measures socially necessary labor time. So if you decouple value from labor altogether, what is value? And then what is money measuring? What is money if it's not a measure of value?

And what is value if it's not somehow related to labor? That's the conceptual point. So the idea is that money has a social function. You have to understand what money is. And money, if you abstract the function of money from a social system, it's not money anymore. It's just not money anymore. Part of the point that Marx is making is that money has a social function, which presupposes value, and those things can only be embodied in social systems.

Now, you can automate, you know, there are certain features or there are certain aspects of a social system that can be automated, but, you know, the idea of a kind of, you know, a fully automated social system is, I mean, that's just a machine. And it's just a conceptual point for Marx. A machine is, you know, the concept of a machine is something different from the concept of a society or a social system. A machine can only, he thinks a machine is only intelligible within a social system.

and social systems allow mechanization and automation only up to the point where, well, I mean, can it kind of destroy the social system entirely? I mean, yes, okay, if you're like an accelerationist, But then you're attributing to capital. First of all, it seems to me that then you're attributing either to automation some kind of original motive force, which I think is metaphysical. You're basically talking about, you're back to this kind of, this metaphorics of pure productivity.

or like what Nick Larn calls cunning or intelligence, which is this kind of generic problem-solving capability that finds expression in technology, and social evolution is driven by this kind of technological development, and ultimately the technology ultimately slows off its kind of social substrates and carries on kind of, you know, evolving, you know, independently. But that's metaphysics. The point is that if you can't attribute this self-moving, this agency,

to automation without some kind of more robust arguments. Otherwise, it's just kind of a mystification. It's very sexy and it's very glamorous but it's ultimately a kind of animism really which you know I think conceptually doesn't you know if you kind of really put pressure on it it doesn't really kind of you know withstand critical scrutiny.

Would you say that it's possible to draw a really concrete hard line somewhere between technological cunning in the sense you were just describing and like randoms sort of universal LX logic? Like where exactly is the line between reasoning that machines are capable of and reasoning that is a social practice? You're muted again. Sorry. For Brandon, okay, so the game of giving and asking for reasons is always socially embedded.

So it's a social practice. It's because we need to give and ask for reasons. And this practice, at some point it becomes an autonomous or self-regulating practice, according to Brandon. But it is still kind of socially embedded. The question is, Brandon adverts to an account of the link between the game of giving and asking for reasons and other human social practices, but he doesn't actually, you know, give one. He keeps on adverting to kind of, and I think this is the weakness of this kind of pragmatist, you know, pragmatist, I mean, I think it's incredibly powerful and sophisticated, but it

adverts to social practice without giving any kind of theoretical account of what social practices are, what social systems are. And I think that, I think it's clear, I think the problem with pragmatism assumes that practices are transparent to their practitioners. I think that Marx's great insight is that most of the time we're engaged in practices that we do not understand, that we're doing things without knowing what we're doing, because those practices are conditioned by incredibly complicated social totalities or structural totalities whose mechanisms transcend the comprehension of individual agents

or agents embedded within those systems. In other words, the functioning of the system is not transparent to an agent embedded in the system. So social systems are not transparent to social agents. As Mark says, we do it without knowing that we're doing it. When we exchange, we engage in exchange, commodity exchange, without knowing or understanding what we're actually doing. And his theory tells you this is what we're doing when we're doing this. But it involves abstracting from the perspective of the agent embedded within the system. So this is why, and I think that, as I say, it's a mistake to reduce the game of giving

and asking for reasons and to say that it's just a symptom of commodity exchange or that you know, that logic is really kind of, logic is reification. I think those are crude, you know, unconvincing kind of simplifications. It's also a mistake not to follow up on the connection between the game of giving and asking for reasons and the relationship between the social practices upon which they supervene and the social systems which are generated by those practices and which also condition those practices. It seems to me that the power of Marx's account is that he gives you an account of the relationship between those things.

and I think you know you know a theory and also I mean Marx's what's powerful about Marx's account of the social is that he distinguishes clearly his whole critique of Feuerbach Feuerbach grounds the sensuality of human practice in the interpersonal relation, the relationship between two individuals. And Marx's point is that this is still a residual mystification. The point is that the social relation can never be interpersonal

because it's grounded in production and reproduction, which operates behind the back of the social agents themselves. So this is why Marx understands that you can only understand social systems as totalities, as these functional totalities, which involve, and he insists on the primacy of the mode of production. And I think he's right. I think he's right that, you know, by... He gives you an explanation of social systems where attempts to...

where other attempts to kind of... to characterize them are ultimately hermeneutic and presuppose social self-understanding. And Marx describes and explains society from a vantage point in a way that is external to both, you know, in a way it's not just external, it's both inside and outside that society. but it doesn't assume a horizon of understanding. His whole point is that social agents can systematically misunderstand and misrepresent their own social practices and the social structures generated by those practices.

And I think that this is a really philosophically compelling insight. And it's also, it's basically Marx's claim about socially necessary false consciousness. And it means that he's able to kind of give an account of social practice, which is post-Cantin and post-Hagin because it doesn't buy into what I'd like to call the myth of the practical given. The idea that practices, the nature of practices are transparent to their own practitioners. So this is why

in a way Brandon Brandon thinks that you could understand you can't understand social structures exclusively from the vantage point of the game of giving and asking for reasons you need the resources of reason to understand social systems but you can't understand a social system from the vantage point of an embedded agent, of an embedded rational practitioner. And this is Marx's point. Marx is not saying, oh, reason is bad, reason is really an epiphenomenon or a symptom.

He's just saying that, you know, once if you've understood Kant and Hegel properly, you've understood that rationality doesn't have privileged access to its own social conditions. Of course, rationality can have access, but only by abstracting from, in a way, the embedded perspective of the game of giving and asking for reasons. So once again, rationality needs to abstract from its own kind of, from what it characterizes as its own functional infrastructure to be able to understand the relationship between that infrastructure and the social structure in which it's embedded. So I think this is

the work that needs to be done. So in a way this is a way of articulating Marx with someone like sellers. I think Marx tells you about the nature of the social systems in a way in which the game of giving and asking for reasons is embedded. Okay, yes, it's true. We're running. I think we have to stop now. Okay. Yes, okay.

Thanks for your patience. And we'll end. So, yeah, next week we're going to do Lukács and reification of the consciousness of a proletariat, which is I think the most important piece of Marxist philosophy in the 20th century. I think it's a really amazing text. Okay, so I'll see you next week. Okay, bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.