Table Of ContentThirty-Three Lessons on Capital
Thirty-Three Lessons on Capital
Reading Marx Politically
Harry Cleaver
First published 2019 by Pluto Press
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Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Sources and Citations vii
1 Introduction 1
2 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy 14
3 Part Eight: So-called Primitive Accumulation
Chapters 26–33 16
4 Part One: Commodities and Money
Chapters 1–3 98
5 Part Two: The Transformation of Money into Capital
Chapters 4–6 168
6 Part Three: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
Chapters 7–11 186
7 Part Four: The Production of Relative Surplus-Value
Chapters 12–15 272
8 Part Five: The Production of Absolute and Relative
Surplus-Value
Chapters 16–18 347
9 Part Six: Wages
Chapters 19–22 361
10 Part Seven: The Process of Accumulation of Capital
Chapters 23–25 406
11 Conclusion 477
Index 486
Acknowledgments
First, and most profoundly, to all of my students who truly engaged with
Marx’s Capital and with the interpretations I offered in lectures, my online
“study guide” and informal discussions. Their questions and challenges
helped both them and me think more clearly—especially when they turned
my attention to things I hadn’t thought about before.
Second, I also want to thank friends who read some of the material
in this book as it was being crafted and gave me constructive and useful
feedback, including ideas and editing, both of which improved the text
considerably. These included Brett Caraway, Robert Ovetz and especially
my brother William Cleaver.
Sources and Citations
The primary source materials for this book are Volume I of Capital, translated
by Ben Fowkes and published by Penguin Press and the now completed 50
volumes of Karl Marx Frederich Engels Collected Works (MECW), published
by Progress Publishers, Moscow, Lawrence & Wishart, London and Inter-
national Publishers in New York. The 33 analyses of the 33 chapters of
Volume I that I offer here only engage to a very limited degree with a
number of other important theoretical works now available in English: 1)
the prefaces written by Marx and Engels to various editions of Capital; 2)
the “unpublished 6th Chapter,” available in the Penguin edition of Volume
I as an appendix, titled “Results of the Immediate Process of Production”;
3) the second and third volumes of Capital; 4) the intended fourth volume,
edited and published by Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) after Marx’s death
as Theories of Surplus Value (1861–63); and 5) various other manuscripts
composed in the years before Volume I was prepared for publication, such
as the 1844 Manuscripts, the Grundrisse (1857), the Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy (1859) and the draft of Volume III included in
the Manuscript of 1864–1865.
Quoted and cited material from Capital, Volumes I–III and the Grundrisse
are all from the Penguin editions of those works, because I assume them
to be more readily available to most readers than the volumes of MECW.
Most other citations of writings by Marx and Engels are to MECW. Ref-
erences to the Penguin editions just give their title and page number, e.g.,
Capital, Vol. I, p. xxx, whereas MECW references provide volume and page
numbers. In some cases, references are given to both editions. Because the
translations in these two editions are different, fastidious readers—with
the time and inclination—might want to compare the two. They might
also check www.marxist.org for other translations from other sources.
Some of the difficulties in the various English translations have recently
been pointed out by Wolfgang Fritz Haug in his “On the Need for a New
English Translation of Marx’s Capital,” Socialism and Democracy, vol. 31,
no. 1, January 2017, pp. 60–86. Those who can read French might want
to study the translation in that language of Volume I of Capital, revised by
Marx from the German original. Those who can read German can consult
Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), the largest published collection of
Marx and Engels’s writings and one that reproduces them in their original
languages. The collection is still expanding under the stewardship of the
viii thirty-three lessons on capital
Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung (IMES) in Amsterdam. For more
information on MEGA, see its entry in Wikipedia.
Many of the songs cited herein are available on YouTube. Lyrics are
quoted from the following:
“The 6th Sense (Something You Feel),” by Albert Johnson, Lonnie Rashid
Lynn, Chris E. Martin, Kejuan W. Muchita and Bilal S. Oliver © 2000
Juvenile Hell Publ./Universal Music-MGB Songs.
“9 to 5,” by Dolly Parton, © 1980 Velvet Apple Music/Warner-Tamerlane
Pub.
“The Big Money,” by Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee © 1985
Core Music Publishing/Anthem Entertainment Group.
“Commercialization,” by Jimmy Cliff © 1973 Jimmy Cliff.
“Corrido de Delano,” by Lalo Guerrero © 1966 Lalo Guerrero.
“Factory,” by Bruce Springsteen © 1978 Bruce Springsteen.
“The Great Eel Robbery,” by Men of No Property © 1971 Men of No
Property.
“I Don’t Like Mondays,” by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers © 1979
Music Sales Corp.
“Machines,” by Lol Mason, Michael Chetwynd Slamer and Terence Roy
Ward © 1979 Atlantic Recording Corporation.
“Maggie’s Farm,” by Bob Dylan © 1965 Bob Dylan.
“Magnificent Seven,” by Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Topper Headon,
Norman Watt-Roy and Micky Gallagher © 1980 Nineden Ltd.
“Money,” by Roger Waters © 1973 Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd./
Hampshire House Publishing Corp.
“Money Machine,” by James Taylor © 1978 Country Road Music Inc.
“Nine to Five,” by Ray Davies © 1974/75 Sony/ATV Tunes LLC.
“Piss Factory,” by Patti Smith and Richard Sohl © 1974 Druse Music Inc.
“Rain on the Scarecrow,” by John Cougar Mellencamp © 1985 John
Mellencamp.
“Richard Cory,” by Paul Simon © 1965 Paul Simon Music.
“Rush Hour Blues,” by Ray Davies © 1974/75 Sony/ATV Tunes LLC.
“Seven Cent Cotton,” by Bob Miller and Emma Dermer © 1929 Bob
Miller and Emma Dermer.
“Step Right Up,” by Tom Waits © 1976 Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch
Records.
“Welcome to the Working Week,” by Elvis Costello © 1977 Universal
Music Publishing.
1
Introduction
Thirty-three lessons on the 33 chapters of Volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital.
What?! Yet another book on Capital? Why read this one, among so many?
Well, if you are looking for a scholarly text that interprets Capital as a
work of economics or philosophy, this one is probably not for you. If you
are seeking an interpretation designed to justify some partisan political
platform, skip this one. If you need a philological treatise that draws on all
editions and translations, look elsewhere. But, if you want to discover how
what Marx wrote 150 years ago can help us understand our struggles and
figure out what to do next, then this particular appropriation might provide
some of what you are looking for.
The basic premise behind this book is the notion that Marx wrote
Capital to put a political weapon into the hands of those of us opposed to
capitalism and struggling to get beyond it. What kind of weapon? Above
all, a theoretical one, designed to vivisect capitalism in ways that reveal how
it dominates, exploits and alienates us, but also its vulnerabilities. Although
committing surgery on living animals for research, testing or education
is vile, vivisecting capitalism theoretically to figure out how to disrupt it,
defeat it and create real alternatives, is all too necessary.1 Fortunately, Marx
has not only given us tools for just such a purpose but has also shown us
how to use them. This book aims to sharpen those tools—by demonstrat-
ing how even the most abstract concepts in Capital designate aspects of the
antagonistic social relationships of capitalism in ways that help us resist and
escape them. Capital was written as a political document; we do well to read
it as such and put it to use.
At the time of its publication in 1867, Marx’s long-time engagement in
the workers’ movements of the mid-nineteenth century made the political
character of Capital quite clear.2 Yet, unlike earlier works, such as the rel-
atively short and pithy Communist Manifesto of 1848, written with Engels
for the Communist League at the beginning of the Revolutions of 1848,
1. Visit the website of the US National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS).
2. Indeed, recognizing its subversive character, the French government sought to
impede the publication of Capital and eventually put the publisher out of business.
“Note des Éditeurs”, Karl Marx, Le Capital: critique de l’économie politique, Livre Premier,
Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1969, p. 8.
