Thread by @adnanahusain

#WeeklyMarx Instalment 6, #GoodMorningMarx Day 41 of Capital v. 1, pgs. 270-298, Chps 6 and most of 7. Crucial concepts of labour-power and surplus value and the valorization process. Follow @weeklymarx and @MorningMarx. Thanks to @PeoplesComic_ for original art! Follow him!

Last instalment 5, rushed chps 4 and 5, so back to the conclusion of chp 5... Marx shows that the surplus value required in capitalist circulation and classical political economic theory cannot be accounted for. He concludes that "surplus-value cannot arise from circulation, and

therefore that, for it to be formed, something must take place in the background which is not visible in the circulation itself." (i.e. not in the theory of market exchange itself). He poses a contradiction--capital cannot arise from circulation and equally cannot apart from it.

How does the capital butterfly emerge from the commodity/money larvae? Chp 6 provides the basis of the answer: one commodity form that can add value uniquely, remembering that value is socially necessary labour time. The capitalist needs a commodity on the market whose

"use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore itself an objectification of labour, hence a creation of value." Labour-Power! Note this is not labour itself but the capacity as a commodity offered freely in the market

as property that can be alienated. Moreover, another condition enabling this pertains: the labourer must not be able to sell commodities produced by their labour, must not have means control over means of production other than one's own labouring body. Marx can't help starting an

interesting historical digression here: how do these conditions arise? A key subject of socio-economic history worth discussing--how many volumes have been written on this subject! The crucial point is that other societies have produced goods, used money, and been socially

interdependent, but not the unique condition of the market for labour-power by free sellers to owners of the means of production and subsistence. "And this one historical pre-condition comprises a world's history. Capital, therefore, announces from the outset a new epoch in the

process of social production." Back to the main argument... The value of labour-power is like any commodity--the socially necessary labour-time of its production. In other words the subsistence of the worker is a given value. Can the worker give more socially necessary labour

time in the production of commodities than is necessary for sub? This is the crux of the matter. In a given context, "the average amount of the means of subsistence necessary for the worker is a known datum." What ever social labour is necessary to achieve that daily subsistence

is the value of a day's labour power. Beyond the halycon image of the labour relation as a free exchange of the commodity of labour-power in a free market of free individuals pursuing their selfish interests contractually to the mutual benefit of each, Marx says we must leave

the sphere of circulation to draw back the curtain on production. On this stage, the money-owner becomes a capitalist; the possessor of labour-power the worker. "The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back, like someone who has

brought his own hide to market and now has nothing else to expect but--a tanning." The stage is set and so Marx explores the drama in the third part of Capital: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value. But first chp 7, The Labour Process and the Valorization Process, provides a

more general backstory--the labour process more universally, independent of the specific social formation of the capitalist mode of production. Labour is a process by which humans transmute nature, and themselves, through the forces of their bodies and vision of mind in

intentional purpose that disciplines activity. He defines three elements of the labour process: 1) purposeful activity, the work itself, 2) the object on which that work is performed, its materials and 3) the instruments of that work, like tools or other mechanisms. He surveys

material history as an index of the form of social production. The product of the labour process is a use-value, nature transformed to meet human needs. In it labour is objectified--made into the changed object. "The worker has spun, and the product is a spinning." instruments

and the object of labour are means of production. Next week we complete examination of the labour process, and begin Chp 8 on constant and variable capital. Keep reading, comrades! #WeeklyMarx, follow @weeklymarx and @MorningMarx for #GoodMorningMarx.