Welcome to Litsy!

Damn, this book was hard work! It‘s half as long as Vol. 1 but feels like twice the work. More economic theory, less history. More straightforward, less sassy/sarcastic Marx. The translation felt more English, whereas Vol. 1 kept the cadences of the original German (I studied German in college; the structure made sense to me). Also feel this vol feels less applicable to today‘s economy. Still a pick; describes the basic working of capitalism well.

“The withdrawal of this money from circulation for the formation of virtual additional money capital seems possible only in two ways. Firstly, one section of capitalists in department II might swindle the others and rob them of their money. As we know, no preliminary expansion of the medium in circulation is necessary for the formation of new money capital; all that is needed is for money to be withdrawn at certain points . . .”

“Voilà le crétinisme bourgeois dans toute sa béatitude!”*

*”Here you have bourgeois cretinism in its ultimate state of bliss!”

“The result is that Smith‘s confusion persists to this day, and his dogma forms an article of orthodox belief in political economy.”
#Adventathon Day 6

“The narrowness of this conception lies in Smith‘s failure to see what Quesnay had already seen, namely the reappearance of the value of constant capital in a renewed form.”
Read a bit more than a chapter tonight for #Adventathon because April was being extra snuggly (and when your cat is being so warm and snuggly, there is no good reason to put down your book!)

“Here we have disregarded the vicissitudes of circulation, in which one capitalist seizes for himself a piece of another‘s surplus-value, and even of his capital, and there is therefore a one-sided accumulation and centralization of both money capital and productive capital. A part of the extorted surplus-value that A stores up as money capital may thus be a fragment of B‘s surplus-value that has failed to return to him.” #Adventathon Day 4

“...in relation to the actual circulating capital applied (both variable and constant), the length of the turnover period, in so far as it derives from the length of the working period, leads to the distinction that, with a greater number of turnovers in the course of a year, an element of the variable or constant circulating capital can be supplied by way of its own product, as with the production of coal...” #Adventathon Day 3 - reading by the🎄

“Alternatively, the price rise might be only transitory. What one capitalist then needs as extra capital is precipitated out elsewhere to the extent that his product forms an element of production for other branches of business. What the one lost, the other has gained.” #Adventathon day 2 - I definitely spaced for a chunk of this, but don‘t feel that bad because there is a big note from Engels like Marx made this more complicated than necessary😆

“It should generally be noted, however, that the economists are much inclined to forget not only that a part of the capital needed in a business is constantly passing alternately through the three forms of money capital, productive capital and commodity capital, but that it is always different portions of this that possess these forms alongside each other, even if the relative magnitude of these portions are in constant flux.” #Adventathon Day 1

“The methods that shorten the working period differ greatly in the extent to which they can be applied in different branches of industry, and they do not cancel out the differences in length of the different working periods. To stick to our example, the application of new machine-tools may, in absolute terms, shorten the working period necessary for the production of a locomotive...”

“Because Adam Smith fixed in this way upon the characteristic of circulating capital as the decisive one for capital value laid out on labour-power - the Physiocratic definition without the premises of the Physiocrats - he managed to make it impossible for his successors to perceive that the part of capital laid out on labour-power was variable capital. The profound and correct explanation that he himself offered elsewhere did not prevail...”

“We have ignored credit here, and it pertains to credit if the capitalist deposits the money that he accumulates in a bank, for example, on current account bearing interest.”

“In both cases, the persistence of money capital in its money state appears as the result of interrupted movement, whether this is expedient or inexpedient, voluntary or involuntary, functional or dysfunctional.”

“Hence the capitalist production process is the basic pre-condition, it is prior to all else, if not within the first circuit of the money capital of a newly invested industrial capitalist, then outside it; the continued existence of this production process assumes the constantly repeated circuit of P...P...It presupposes, therefore, that C‘ is commodity capital, and therefore that the commodity itself is the result of capitalist production...”

“References and notes dating from the end of March 1877, taken from the above four manuscripts, form the basis for a new version of Volume 2, begun in Manuscript V (fifty-six folio pages). This covers the first four chapters...”

“Discontinuous renewal of fixed capital is, therefore, one of the key determinants of the trade cycle. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the productive capacity of the sub-branch of department I which produces means of production for the production of means of production, must normally be geared to the general demand for the renewal of fixed capital (at least in its social average).”