Das Kapital: Original Piece of Classical Theory - Essay Example

Order 217489 Topic: Original Piece ical theory Das Kapital by Karl Marx, an Original Piece ical Theory In Das Kapital (Capital), the work to which he devoted the latter part of his life,Marx set out to identify the 'laws of motion' of capitalism. The capitalist system is there presented as a self-reproducing whole, governed by an underlying law, the 'law of value'. But this law and its consequences are not only not immediately apparent to the agents who participate in capitalism, they are actually concealed from them. Thus capitalism is a deceptive object, one in which there is a discrepancy between its 'essence' and its 'appearance'. (ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/cottrell/ecn265/rosen_on_marx.pdf - 81k - ) Das Kapital by Karl Marx was the result of nearly thirty years of work on the part of Karl Marx and his influences and protracted study of the nature of not only the capitalist economy, but also the social and historical forces that shape interactions among people both within and outside of trade. The first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867 at a time when the working conditions for industrial laborers were terrible and the division between the classes was growing increasingly more pronounced. It must not be forgotten that Das Kapital was a work born out of the industrial revolution. Marx begins the first chapter of Das Kapital with a statement concerning commodities. He defines a commodity as "an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of sort or another" (125). It is interesting that Marx begins the text with a discussion and definition of a commodity and after several successive chapters, it is clear to see that the commodity is one of the main driving forces behind capitalism. The commodity itself, however, is only valued according to demand or other more ethereal conditions and thus it is a perfect item for the capitalist as it presents no fixed "price" in itself, but its value is rather determined by desire and the potential for profit. To backtrack for a moment, however, a more concise definition of commodity is contained within the idea of "use value." This refers to a commodity's value in how it will be used and how it is desired but this value, according to Marx, has little to do with the actual labor that went into the production of the item. Again, while it is not immediately clear at this early point in the text, the use value versus the idea of labor are important issues because there is more distinction between the two than one might initially think. For instance, something might have a very high use-value and be greatly desired. This desire leads the capitalist to make it expensive and the laborer who made the desired commodity is not paid what the desired commodity is worth, but rather is paid living wages while the surplus profits go directly to the capitalist since he owns the means of production. While that was a very brief, concise, but altogether limited description of the process behind commodities and use value, it is useful background information to frame the discussion as this analysis continues. After this introduction to commodities and use values in Das Kapital , the idea of exchange value becomes of equal importance. As Marx puts it in one of the important quotations from "Das Kapital", "As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use value" (127). In other words, it is the proportion by which use values of one kind exchange for use values of another kind. This is a vital and fluctuating relationship and has less to do with the commodity than it might initially seem. In short, the common element in a commodity's exchange-value is simply the "value" of it. This means that it all comes down to labor. This is a common tactic Marx employs, at first there a number of daunting methods for scientifically extracting a conception of value but in the end, it all boils down to questions about work and laborer. What has not yet been mentioned, however, is that labor is not an issue when it comes to the natural resources that went into the final commodity since they did not require labor. Marx makes a strange shift in tone at the beginning of Chapter 2 of Das Kapital that should be noted and analyzed. He states, "persons exist for one another merely as representatives of, and, therefore, as owners of, commodities. In the course of our investigation we shall find, in general, that the characters who appear on the economic stage are but the personifications of the economic relationships that exist between them" (178). This is slightly disconcerting because this is one of the few moments in Das Kapital when Marx seems to be offering an explicit social as well as economic critique about the nature of capitalist interactions. What he is suggesting, in essence, is akin to saying that this system of capital and commodities has reduced everyone to acting based on economic decisions. There is not a hint of emotion, ethics, or other moral guidance at play here. Instead, human interactions are thus reduced to exchange and more importantly, capital itself. In the same section of Das Kapital he goes on to remark upon the commodity that, "the bodily form of this commodity becomes the form of the socially recognized universal equivalent. To be the universal equivalent, becomes, by this social process, the specific function of the commodity thus excluded by the rest. Thus it becomes-money" (180.This is one clear case in which he is examining the way society is changed as a result of capital and commodities. We are no longer simply working together to form a society, but we are all individuals with varying amounts of capital, thus we are reduced to having human interactions that are limited and impersonal as we are all "characters" and as such we appear only as the economic relationships that define us. Money is again a central issue in Chapter 4 of Das Kapital and while the slightly moral commentary is exchanged in favor of rational equations, it is never something free of the utmost scrutiny. Marx states, "The circulation of commodities is the starting point of capital. The production of commodities, their circulation, and that more developed form of their circulation called commerce, these form the historical groundwork from which it rises. The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market" (247). . Chapter 4 of Das Kapital is one of the more complex but enriching chapters in the text. In short, Marx is suggesting that circulation is ground zero for capital. He introduces CMC, which are commodities that have been exchanged into money and then back into a commodity) and states that it is the most explicit form of circulation. With such a system, we continue selling commodities and perpetuating the system and the capital itself is the go-between. The other side he speaks of this MCM, which indicates how we make purchases only to sell them. In this case, money is first transformed into a commodity and then commodity itself is transformed into money. In either case, there is a consistent and repeated back and forth exchange of money. In such a system then, the person with the money becomes the capitalist and he is "capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will" and is endlessly seeking progressively more capital. Again, this is one of those areas where Marx is implicitly stating that there is something about the capitalist that is not quite right. When he states that a person can be "capital personified" and the only thing making him a person is "consciousness and will" (and even that is only used to create more wealth) he is making a criticism of the individual as well as the society that support this. Again, there is the distinct impression that through capitalism, especially when defined by Marx in such sharp and scientific terms, individuals begin to lose not only their own unique identity in the struggle for more capital, but become somehow less human in the process as well. The integration of more about the worker truly becomes a large factor of the text around the sixth chapter as Marx discusses "The Sale and Purchase of Labor-Power." In this chapter, Marx considers the social conditions surrounding the question of how labor-power are a commodity. He states that the individual that is selling himself to the capitalist, when doing so, is making himself a commodity and he explains this by stating, "labor-power can appear upon the market as a commodity, on if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labor-power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity" (270). In this sense, it is the individual's decision to enter him or herself into the market as a commodity. It is not until later that Marx fully explores this "decision" since for the most part, the average worker would not have enough capital to own the means of production, thus is forced to enter into an commodity relationship with the employer as a matter of personal economic necessity. What is most important about this section is that as Marx continues with his description of the laborer, he is suggesting that capitalism is part of old and harmful institutions such as property laws and other hindrances that keep capital centered in the state hands. The workers, even though they labor, do not even own the goods they produce and as we discover later, they are not even paid for their true value based on the commodity since the system of capitalism is based on creating a large amount of surplus profit at the expense of the worker. This is put by Marx as such: "By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material elements of a new product, and as factors in the labor-process, by incorporating living labor with their dead substance, the capitalist at the same time converts value, i.e. past, materialized, and dead labor into capital, into value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies" (293). If there was any doubt up until this point about Marx's views on the true self-perpetuating system of capitalism, it should be solved here. In calling it a "monster," even if one if a complete proponent of capitalism, this image must still make degree of sense. Everything about the system described until this point demonstrates how it is a self-regulating and multiplying system-every aspect being dependent on another, and another, until the cycle would seem impossible to break. Chapter Ten discusses how labor-power is purchased and old at its value, which is determined by the time it takes to produce it. The problem is, the amount of labor necessary to lend a sustainable way of life is often more than the time involved in a day of work. According to Marx, the working day fluctuates since the worker is not a machine, but a human with needs, wants, and desires beyond working. According to Marx in one of the important quotes from "Das Kapital", "Within the 24 hours of the natural day a man can expend only a definite quality of his vital force. A horse, in like matter, can only work from day to day, 8 hours. During part of the day this force must rest, sleep; during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs, to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physical limitations, the extension of the work day encounters moral ones" (340). He addresses not only that the worker will need time for social, spiritual, familial, and other tasks and thus the time in excess is surplus labor. For a capitalist to thrive there must be surplus labor but this is challenged because of the outside needs of the worker. Since the capitalist is the "soul of the capital" then he needs to create as much surplus labor as he can. For instance, if a worker takes some time for himself to attend a visit with his family, for the capitalist, this is akin to stealing from the capitalist because without surplus labor, he would not be able to continue. In a system based on surplus labor, this is an important point. In sum, when Marx begins to near his conclusion, he states, "The great beauty of capitalist production consists in this-that it not only constantly reproduces the wage-worker as wage-worker, but produces always, in production to the accumulation of capital, a relative surplus-population of wage-workers. Thus the law of supply and demand of labor is kept in the right rut, the oscillation of wages is penned within the limits satisfactory to capitalist exploitation, and lastly, the social dependence of the laborer on the capitalist" .(www.awerty.com/das2.html -) References: www.awerty.com/das2.html - ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/cottrell/ecn265/rosen_on_marx.pdf - 81k - View as html Read More