Thread by @adnanahusain

#WeeklyMarx Instalment 5, continued in Part 2. 25 tweets in a thread the limit--I'm too wordy! So we will complete Chp 3, 3:c on "World Money" and stop here. Despite nation state monetary systems, these markets are responsive to a world market, so Marx addresses the world

monetary system. Value actually requires the world market for money to realize its function. Marx has set up the structures necessary to understand now in an M-C-M form of circulation how money will be transformed into Capital. He starts this as a new section of v. 1 and chp 4

lays out "the General Formula for Capital." He recapitulates that the circulation of commodities is the starting point of capital, that the production and circulation of them in trade forms the historical conditions in which capital arises from the 16th century, when he dates the

modern history of Capital. We could argue for a longer trajectory as historians or a different origin and trajectory, but the temporal frame is less important, I think, than the logical argument. That's a debatable perspective. Money is not necessarily capital; it has to be

transformed into it by definite processes. It lies in the difference in the form of circulation--rehearsing C-M, M-C and so forth. M-C-M would be absurd if M was the same. Exchange of use-values is one intention of circulation but another is to gain surplus value in M-C-M form

of circulation. This is what makes money capital. What is capital? It is a process of value in motion. "The circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is

therefore limitless." p.253 Capitalism survives through its constant expansion toward limitless growth as a social necessity. He takes up the role of the capitalist in this drama. The capitalist cannot aim at use-values principally but of profit-making. "The capitalist is a

rational miser." Capital is money, capital is commodities as it circulates through the transformations and exchanges, but Marx suggests value is actually the subject (or agent) of a process that valorizes itself independently and can apparently add value to itself. The capitalist

is the bearer of this process, this system or form. This happens in M-C-M that "value becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital." How does money beget money? Is this only through finance capital? No, Marx wants to argue that the process describes

industrial capital systemically. So where does the surplus value arise from? Chp 5 takes up the start of this problem by refuting various political economy theorists as well as Malthus. If exchange is based on equivalence, as the classical theorists had suggested, where does

profit come from in the capitalist mode of production? Next wk Marx provides his answer in Chp 6! Keep up your reading, comrades. Your efforts will be repaid with insight as we enter central components of his analysis. Retweet the two threads of #WeeklyMarx, discuss in replies.