Thread by @adnanahusain

#WeeklyMarx Instalment 2, #GoodMorningMarx Day 14 reading Capital v. 1, pgs. 153-180 (Part 1, Chp 1: Commodity, Sections 3-4 and start of Chp 2: Process of Exchange). The first two sections last week introduced the commodity as having use value and exchange value, but discovered

that exchange value is only a representation of value, which is actually rooted in socially necessary labor time, ever changing and variable according to historical conditions and is a social process. Wealth, all the material use-values, is different from value which is social.

So, as Harvey puts it: we have a situation in which objects have social relations between one another and people have material relations between themselves in the capitalist mode of production. Think about that! We see this revealed in the remainder of the chapter in secs 3-4.

Sec 3 explores exchange value and origin of its money form, to analyze its relative and equivalent forms of value within the exchange value. Surprise, surprise: another dual aspect revealed in Marxian dialectical analysis! Lots of examples and the tedious linen and coat,

repetitions and details for slow people like myself. But don't get lost in this. The consequence is that when exchange is generalized and systematic, a commodity (e.g. gold) emerges as a universal equivalent, the money form of a commodity, from the many acts of exchange.

As a historian, I think this is more logical "origin story" than an actual account of the development of money. The point is the relationship between commodity form and the necessary function of money in the capitalist mode of production that Marx reveals in exchange value.

As Marx unnervingly puts it, once he notes how fluid human labor creates value but isn't value until "congealed" and objectified in a coagulated state through a commodity (any and all commodities in their exchangeability): "the problem is already solved"! Wait, what!? Hang on...

Luckily, he elaborates all this analytically and with all these examples. He notices 3 "peculiarities" in this process: 1) examining the equivalent form he notes that "use value becomes the form of its opposite, value." 2) "concrete labour becomes the form of manifestation of its

opposite, abstract human labour." And 3) "private labour takes the form of its opposite, namely labour in its directly social form." He discusses these contradictions by discussing Aristotle's initial analysis of value form and money and its failure because of a lack of a concept

of value, namely the recognition that value results from human labour, which Marx has provided and Aristotle couldn't appreciate because of a different labour regime and social process in a non-capitalist mode of production. Money becomes the expression of value as a universal

equivalent. What of the commodity fetish and its "secret"? How does this fit into the overall theory? The way in which social relations and other relations are concealed, in this case in the commodity form. Sensuous things are transformed into supra-sensible or social elements.

This fetishism is inseparable from the production and exchange of commodities. "The labour of the private individual manifests itself as an element of the total labour of society only through the relations which the act of exchange establishes between the products and, through

their mediation, between the producers. To the producers, therefore, the social relations between their private labours appear as what they are, i.e. they do not appear as direct social relations between persons in their work but rather as material relations between persons and

social relations between things." Amazing--this is an encapsulation of a fundamental insight into social analysis of capitalism! Marx's theory understands how every commodity implicates us in social relations between us and innumerable others whose labour as a social process

produced and circulate these commodities. We are complicit in the systems of oppression that mediate and conceal this through the abstractions of the market in liberal/neo-liberal political economy. Value transforms every product of labour into a social hieroglyphic;

can we decipher them? The classical political economists theorized the significance of labour time for value, but missed the crucial element of the socially necessary condition of labour and theorized universally. That misses the whole game. It posits a whole new system of ideas

that mystify and conceal what is involved in the social relations. The chapter concludes with two imagined dialogues, of commodities speaking about their value contrasted with the ideologues of the hidden hand of the market. One is a real fiction, but with a purpose. To mystify

and naturalize the working of the market that conceals the (exploitative, we'll get there) social relations embedded in the money form. Since it is a philosophical fiction, the Robinson Crusoe story beautifully recapitulates this
fantasy operation... somehow this state of

nature allows Crusoe to have a watch, pens, and a ledger and to thereby construct a rational moral tale. Marx has a vicious wit! Some very interesting remarks on religious change as a reflection of commodity relations, a view Weber reversed, but another time...

So next comes Chp 2, the process of exchange, for next Sunday's #WeeklyMarx as #GoodMorningMarx continues. Apologies on what I got wrong, wrote unclearly, or left out. Take it up in the replies, discuss; form your own reading groups. Enjoy your Marx until next week, comrades!