29 June 2010

Commodities


Course on Marx's Capital: Week 4


Commodities

So far in this course, running exclusively on "CU Africa" we have had a general introduction, and then looked at Marx’s 1847 “Wage Labour and Capital”, then the “Communist Manifesto” of 1848, and last week Marx’s 1865 “Value, Price and Profit”. Links are to the “CU Africa” blog where the course will continue to run for the rest of the year, to be followed by “Capital” Volumes 2 and 3 in ten parts.

Now, and for the next twenty weeks, this course will use parts of Marx’s greatest single work, Capital, Volume 1. We will take nearly all of it, divided up into parts, taken in order, starting with Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 of Capital Volume 1 of Marx’s Capital (you may download the abridged version linked below) is a text that has been the material for many a political school. It begins with this great definition of commodities:

“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities,’ its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.

“A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.”

And it later says:

“A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it.”

The second section of the chapter explores this dual character of commodities.

The third section, which contains quite a lot of formulas, is omitted for the sake of brevity. Sections of the book that have been left out can be read on Marxists Internet Archive.

The fourth and last section of the chapter is on the Fetishism of Commodities, meaning that in a capitalist society the relations between commodities replace the relations between people.

In commodities, writes Marx, “the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour.”

If there is a single purpose for Marx’s book it is to re-make human relations so that they are relations between humans again, or in other words, Marx’s purpose is to restore human beings to themselves.

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Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]
Course Archive
Weeks
Posted
4/6
CU Africa [232]
3/33
CU [3011]
2/10

Courses completed in 2010 to date:
12
March - June

10
January - March
3 days
2-4 June
10
March - June

10
January – March


22 June 2010

Value, Price & Profit


Course on Marx's Capital: Week 3


Value, Price & Profit

This is a course on Marx’s “Capital”, Volume 1 (to be followed immediately by a course on Volumes 2 & 3). Next week we begin the book itself, with Chapter 1 of Volume 1. Maybe this is a good time to appeal for help in recruiting more people to this course.

For this “CU-Africa” group, we are looking for ten to twenty people from each of the countries in Africa. We are intending to more than double the present membership of this group, which is 228. We are looking to get more of the kind of people who will contribute to the discussion, by e-mail, of the great work “Capital”. Please send e-mail addresses for subscription to dominic.tweedie@gmail.com.

“Wage Labour and Capital” gave us notice of the “problematic” faced by Karl Marx in 1847. By 1863 Marx had drafted a sketch plan that was beginning to resemble the shape of the full work that was published four years later in 1867. By 1865 when he did “Value, Price and Profit” (see the download linked below), Marx had no doubt solved most of the theoretical as well as the literary problems of the work.

This short work has served various purposes. It debunks the argument, still used by employers today, that wage rises will cause unemployment. Hence “Value, Price and Profit” has been a mainstay for generations of shop stewards and union negotiators.

Secondly, and prefiguring Lenin’s argument against “Economism” four decades later in “What is to be Done?”, it states clearly that trade unionism, without political organisation, will never succeed in throwing off the yoke of capital (see the excerpt from Chapter 14 on the last page of our 8-page download).

This abridged 8-page version of “Value, Price and Profit” can occasionally serve as a “mini-Capital” or in other words as the short version of “Capital” that so many people crave. It will at least help us to get a better grip on some of the key concepts such as Labour, Value, Labour-Power, Surplus-Value and Profit.

The two quoted paragraphs that follow are particularly instructive. Hobbes’ 1651 book “Leviathan” was a tremendous groundbreaker; Karl Marx noticed that Hobbes had “instinctively hit upon this point overlooked by all his successors”, namely the distinction between Labour-Power and Labour, which Marx had worked so hard and so long to realise clearly (note the remarks about the hunt for surplus value in our earlier post on Wage Labour and Capital)

What the working man sells is not directly his labour, but his labouring power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Laws, but certainly by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed to sell his labouring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer.

‘One of the oldest economists and most original philosophers of England — Thomas Hobbes — has already, in his “Leviathan”, instinctively hit upon this point overlooked by all his successors. He says: "the value or worth of a man is, as in all other things, his price: that is so much as would be given for the use of his power." Proceeding from this basis, we shall be able to determine the value of labour as that of all other commodities.’

“Value, Price and Profit” includes a counter-intuitive surprise in Marx’s statement that: “Profit is made by Selling a Commodity at its Value” (top of page 8 in our download version). Capitalism would still exist if it could shed its nasty price-gouging habits. It is not a simple swindle, but is a system and a class relationship.

Capitalism would also still exist if Labour Power was always paid for at its full value.

The source of the “self-increase of capital” is located in the workplace, and not in the marketplace.

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Previous main Communist University posts:
Channel [members]
Course Archive
Weeks
Posted
1/6
CU Africa [227]
1/33
CU [3140]
0/10

Courses completed in 2010 to date:
12
March - June

10
January - March
3 days
2-4 June
10
March - June

10
January – March

17 June 2010

Young revolutionaries to the front, Umsebenzi Online



Umsebenzi Online, Volume 9, No. 10, 17 June 2010


In this Issue:
  • Young revolutionaries to the front, to galvanise our youth around our Five Priorities


Red Alert:

Young revolutionaries to the front, to galvanise our youth around our Five Priorities


Blade Nzimande, General Secretary


This month we celebrate the 34thanniversary of the 1976 student and youth uprisings in our country. As our May SACP Central Committee said, this period calls for true revolutionaries to come to the front, to deepen and consolidate the national democratic revolution. So is the SACP also calling upon all of South African youth - young women, young workers, students and our unemployed youth - to rededicate themselves to the struggle for the total elimination of all forms of racism, exploitation, gender oppression and all other forms of discrimination in South African society.

The SACP May Central Committee called for true revolutionaries to come to the front mainly because in so many ways our revolution is at a crossroads. Amongst other things the Political Report to the May Central Committee observed that:

"Our national democratic revolution has entered a critical phase in which the many advances made in the run up to, and especially since, the Polokwane conference (and indeed our own SACP 12th Congress) can either be deepened or face the danger of being seriously rolled back"

The Central Committee argued in this way principally because despite the many advances made there are serious threats to our revolution.

Some of the major advances upon which we need to consolidate our democracy are the lessons of the unity of all the components of our democratic movement - the workers, youth women, former MK soldiers, communists and civic formations; a unity that saw the reclaiming of the ANC in Polokwane by its constituent components.

The ANC's overwhelming electoral victory in 2009 re-affirmed the confidence of our people in the ANC-led alliance, and that electoral victory also marked a defeat of a right-wing ANC breakway faction - Cope - whose aim was to try and steal our movement for narrow and selfish interests to accumulate wealth. It is that electoral victory that has also laid the basis for the very deep crisis that threatens to tear this right wing breakaway apart. Our youth has a responsibility to build on the achievements of this electoral victory.

We are commemorating the 34thanniversary of the 1976 uprisings just over a year after the inauguration of the administration led by President Zuma. It is a government founded upon, and focused on, the realization of the five key priorities of our ANC-led Alliance election manifesto - decent work, education, health, fighting against crime and corruption, and rural development. In order to achieve the above, government has also committed itself to the development of a new growth path in our country.

Between the Polokwane conference and the 2009 elections the Alliance held two successful summits, building upon the unity of all progressive forces under the leadership of the ANC.

However since the 2009 elections, despite very significant government plans and programmes and a better functioning alliance, a number of threats have emerged that threaten to undermine the advances we have made. The Central Committee highlighted three of these threats. The first one is that of an emerging, albeit small, white right wing trend that attempts to use our constitution and the courts to try and roll back and frustrate some of our programmes. This include the challenging of affirmative action in courts, the legal banning of revolutionary songs as part of an attempt to wipe out the history of our struggle, and a one-sided fight against crime directed at white farmers, whilst being completely silent about the daily brutalities (including those) faced by many black farm workers and farm dwellers in the hands of some racist white farmers.

The second threat identified by the Central Committee is the intensified exploitation and fragmentation of the working class, through casualisation, outsourcing, 'regionalisation' (increasing employment of more vulnerable workers from the SADC region at the direct expense of South African workers), and labour brokerage. This threatens to undermine the unity of the working class as the main motive force of the national democratic revolution. This is part of the capitalist class strategy to further cheapen and sow divisions within the black working class.

Another threat was identified by the Political Report to the May 2010 Central Committee thus:

"The emergence of a small tendency, both inside and outside the ranks of our movement, that seems to be in such a hurry to get rich quick such that it is even prepared to sacrifice the unity of the ANC and our alliance, if such unity stands in the way of its greed. 


'Tenderpreneurship' - the collusion between business elements in the private sector with those in the public sector to corruptly capture government tenders - is one such manifestation of this 'get rich quick' mentality. Whilst tenderpreneurship is not inherently counter-revolutionary, it is nevertheless the most susceptible to degenerating into counter-revolution through its temptation to turn South Africa into one big tender liable to be sold to, and bought by, the highest imperialist bidder"

It is the youth that is most affected by the intensified exploitation and marginalization of the working class, and is also a particular target of tenderpreneurs. It is for these reasons that the period calls for young and genuine revolutionaries to come to the front to defend our revolution against these threats.

The role of the Young Communist League of South Africa (YCL)

It is for the above reasons, amongst others, that the SACP has called upon our YCL to consciously strengthen itself and act as a glue that binds the Progressive Youth Alliance and the broader progressive youth movement behind the struggle to drive our five manifesto commitments. The SACP has committed itself to redouble its efforts to support the building of an even stronger YCL to attain these objectives, so that it gives leadership, direction and hope to our youth that still face many challenges today.

The SACP further calls upon the YCL not to be defocused by counter-revolutionary, populist demagoguery and tenderpreneurship diversions from its mission to mobilize our youth behind the key objectives of the national democratic revolution. Indeed our YCL is intensifying its efforts towards driving the key five priorities in our ANC-led election manifesto.

Last month, the YCL convened the first and historic summit of more than 80 youth organisations and youth NGOs, one of whose outcomes has been a resolution to launch the 'Jobs for Youth Coalition', and a Youth Charter, both to be launched this coming Saturday on 19 June 2010 in Sasolburg.

To this end the YCL is also commemorating this year's youth month under theme, 'Decent Jobs for Youth'. The focus is on education and skills development for youth, support for youth entrepeneurs and youth co-operatives, and campaigning for a new growth path that places at its centre youth development.

The SACP's call to the YCL during this 2010 Youth Month also include the following: 
  1. To earnestly work for the deepening of unity with the ANC Youth League and the broader Progressive Youth Alliance, not around personalities, but on a principled programme of action that addresses the many challenges facing our youth today; especially to takei forward the five priorities in our Manifesto. The resolutions of the YCL-convened jobs summit are also just such a platform for principled, and revolutionary youth activism South Africa requires today
  2. The YCL should continue with its objective of uniting youth formations and the youth in general behind genuine working class struggles, irrespective of race and gender;
  3. The YCL should be at the centre of mobilising white working class youth, as well as youth from other minorities, as part of the broad forces for deepening our democracy. Of particular importance for our YCL is to build upon the spirit of national unity generated by the FIFA World Cup, beyond just being a 'feel good' and a temporary phenomenon but into a permanent force for unity of our youth moving forward
  4. The YCL has a particular responsibility to organize young workers into its ranks, through a principled struggle against tenderpreneurship, casualisation, outsourcing and labour brokerage, and by pursuing the agenda for decent work for the youth.
  5. The YCL must be in the forefront of organizing unemployed youth through concrete struggles to fight unemployment
  6. The YCL must also expand its presence in institutions of higher education, and much more urgently in the Further Education and Training Colleges, as part of turning these latter institutions into major sites for skills development for our young people
  7. The YCL must intensify its efforts to root out all counter-revolutionary tendencies amongst our youth, and also be able to distinguish between revolutionary sounding rhetoric and genuine revolutionary action to transform South Africa to be a better country for our youth
  8. The YCL must also pay particular attention in building youth power in the countryside, as part of driving rural development for the benefit of rural youth in particular, and the rural population in general. This will require hard work in building YCL structures in the countryside, as part of implementing one of the SACP's major objective, that of building People's Land Committees (PLCs), both in the former Bantustans and the 'white' countryside.
  9. Much more importantly, whilst the YCL focuses its energies into building and strengthening its own structures, it must ensure that it expands its influence beyond its own internal structures. It must take out its message to be taken to all the youth of our country, in a non-sectarian, but principled way to represent the aspirations of especially the overwhelming majority of working class and poor youth
The YCL, just like the SACP, must conduct itself not as the only formation of revolutionaries, but must instead seek to mobilize other revolutionaries outside its ranks who are also committed to transform the conditions of our youth in this country. This is the clarion call from the struggle and sacrifices of the youth of June 1976!

The task of the SACP, as it rebuilds its voting district based branches, is to ensure that we incorporate into this work dedicated support to build a stronger YCL and also to fully support its programmes.

Young revolutionaries to the front, to wage principled struggles to advance the objectives of changing the conditions of our youth!

Asikhulume!

15 June 2010

Bourgeois, Proletarians and Communists

Course on Marx's Capital: Week 2


Bourgeois, Proletarians and Communists

The Communist Manifesto was written in London by Karl Marx when he was 29, with the help of his 27-year-old friend Frederick Engels, and was published in January or February, 1848. It has been a “best seller” ever since, constantly republished, and always in print.

Bourgeois and Proletarians

Marx and Engels were convinced that the new masters, the now-capitalist bourgeoisie, also known as burghers, or burgesses, that had grown up in the towns under feudal rule, and then taken over from the feudal lords by revolution, were themselves sooner or later going to be overthrown by the working proletariat (free citizens owning nothing but their Labour-Power) that the bourgeoisie had brought into existence.

Commissioned to write the Manifesto by the Communist League, Marx and Engels fell behind the agreed deadline, but came through with a magnificent text published just prior to the February, 1848 events in Paris, events which brought the proletariat as actors on to the stage of history to an extent that had never been seen before, thoroughly vindicating Engels and Marx.

The timing was great. The text turned out to be classic to such an extent that every line of it is memorable, especially in the first two parts (“Bourgeois and Proletarians”, and “Proletarians and Communists”) given in the downloadable file, linked below.

Short as it is, the Manifesto is so rich and so compressed as to be saturated with meaning, and practically impossible to summarise. Here are some of the most extraordinary sentences of the first section of the Manifesto:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other - bourgeoisie and proletariat.

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

Proletarians and Communists

The second part of the Communist Manifesto contains statements about the Communist Party, about the family, about religion, and frank statements about the bourgeoisie.

It is included here in this set of readings on Marx’s Capital, Volume 1, particularly because it shows, within the broad possible context, the centrality of the relations of production that create and sustain the effect known as capital, which then in turn defines everything else in bourgeois society.

It also looks forward to the way that society can be changed once again, and thus serves to remind us that Marx’s work is always intentional, and is never merely empirical, descriptive or disinterested.

“The average price of wage labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer,” wrote Marx and Engels, already making a major step forward from “Wage Labour and Capital”, published in the previous year, 1847 (see the previous post).  

“But does wage labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage labour, and which cannot increase except upon conditions of begetting a new supply of wage labour for fresh exploitation.”

“…a vast association of the whole nation… in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”



Last week’s main Communist University posts:
Channel
Course Archive
Weeks
Posted
1/6
0/10
1/33

Courses completed in 2010 to date:
12
March - June

10
January - March
3 days
2-4 June
10
March - June

10
January – March