Global Financial Crisis 2008 – Article No 32
by Humphrey McQueen
Capital
One mark of the crisis in the accumulation of capital is that second-hand copies of Marx’s Capital are nowhere to be found . Those fortunate to have our own sets are taking them down, and opening them, perhaps for the first time. How many of those who start to read at the beginning are likely get to the end.
The dropout rate has little to do with the allegation that Marx is turgid. One obstacle is that Marx put his answers at the front. Hence, the hardest part comes before he leads us through the evidence. To make matters worse, the opening section seems straightforward. We are told about ‘use value’, ‘exchange value’ and then ‘surplus value’. Remembering those distinctions is not hard. The problem is that one-liners cannot define fluid interactions. The genius of Capital is Marx’s showing how the three forms of ‘value’ are in perpetual motion.
Think about approaching Capital in terms of learning to drive a car. The instructor points to the ignition, then to the brakes, and next to the accelerator. Nothing is easier than to identify each. Putting each device into action is not too hard either. Turn the key, shift into Drive, ease one foot onto a pedal. The trick is getting them, and several other components, to work simultaneously.
That is what Marx achieved throughout the three volumes of Capital. He takes us into the gear box, the axles and the computerised connections. He also explains how each of those devices was invented and then improved. He takes us driving beyond the suburbs, out onto the speedway and in the pits to effect repairs.
To do so, Marx proceeds laboriously, as if he were writing a manual to assemble a Ferrari from a crate of parts. Every combination and permutation is considered as he blocks in all the possibilities to make his principal points watertight. Before we reach the middle of Volume Two, such explanations can weary the spirit. Doubts about the pertinence of Marx’s account of exploitation to a financial crisis are compounded because even Marxists pay too little attention to that volume.
Volume Two is a stiffer climb than the others because it deals with money, the circulation of capitals and their expanded reproduction. Today, that plodding provides take-off points for investigating the current crisis. (The differing rates of the turnover of money capital are introduced in the next item in this series.)
Yet another barrier to understanding capitalist exploitation is built into the system. One way of illustrating this aspect is to continue with the car-driving analogy. Capitalism has automatic gears. Once capital is in ‘drive’, it can expand around the globe. Imagine that your vehicle has automatic transmission but also a manual gear-stick to give us the illusion - the fun - of changing gears.
Strange to say, that is how capitalism operates. The difference is that the pretend gears serve a vital purpose. They mislead workers about our place in the system. About forty pages in Volume One, Marx exposes this falsehood in a notorious passage on ‘commodity fetishism’.
So, where to begin? A good point of entry is the final chapter, 33, ‘On the modern theory of colonisation’. Its ten pages present Marx’s recognition of capital as a relationship of power:
A Mr Peel … took with him from England to the Swan River district of Western Australia means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. This Mr Peel even had the foresight to bring besides, 3,000 persons of the working class, men, women and children. Once he arrived at his destination, ‘Mr Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river.’ Unhappy Mr Peel, who provided for everything except the export of English relations of production to Swan River!
In contemporary terms, Peel’s mistake would be like Leighton’s opening a building site without reminding Gillard to send around her Construction Stasi.
Working through other historical chapters, for example, chapter 10 on ‘The Working Day’, will ease a newcomer into Marx’s way of writing and method of thinking. However, the lengths of his paragraphs and sentences slow progress. We do not need a fresh translation so much as an edition which breaks the material up to accord with contemporary reading habits. (Two examples of that re-editing are in the accompanying extracts from Marx’s Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy.)
Next: Marx on Crises