is the nature of the argument?+
- Defining important terms regarding capitalism and
- Productivity (230)
- Use-Value (220), Exchange
Value, Labor Value
- Money (249)
- The natural form of this commodity thereby becomes
the socially recognized equivalent form. Through the agency of the
social process it becomes the specific social function of the
commodity which has been set apart to be the universal equivalent. It
thus becomes-money” (246).
- the wearing of one’s wealth/hoarding of value.
- Fetishzation of money (252).
- Capital (255)
- Labor Power (265)
- “treat his labour-power as his own property, his own
commodity, and he can do this only by placing it at the disposal of
the buyer” (265).
- labor uses someone up and a portion of their human
essence then there is something problematic that people work hard and
are alienated and worse off as they have contributed to the quality of
life of humanity and only get profit of what can get from the market.
- Value of subsistence (270)
- Nature (274)
- “He sets in motion the natural forces which belong
to is own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, appropriate the
materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs” (274).
- Capitalist Production (294)
- “The capital-relation presupposes a complete
separation between the workers and the ownership of the conditions for
the realization of their labor” (295).
- Private Property (297)
- “The private property of the woker
in his means of production is the foundation of small-scale industry,
small-scale industry is a necessary condition for the development of
social produciton and of the free invidiuality of the worker himself” (298).
- Surplus Value (293)
- not always same as the labor value-trying to make money
rather than working. Underestimates that administration and
advertising is a type of work, just focuses on labor.
- history: implementation of man using nature as an object of labor, like
the creation of stone implements and weapons (276).
- Dialectic: strong historical materialism, and is also
inductive in this section when he defines concepts and builds upon them.
- Both inductive and deductive. Deductive in his
theories that he uses to deconstruct history through the lense of historical materialism, inductive in his
affirmation of said theories through identification of examples. Each
chapter inductively proves historical materialism in different sectors
of the state and economy.
- Scholars, followers, players in the
is the argument?
- Commodification of human labor
- Value of labor and goods and how labor determines the
value of an item
- Use-value, Exchange-value, Labor-value
- Bourgeoisie v. Proletariat
- Wave Labor vs. Labor Power
- renting self out by working (Kant, don’t have a full civic personality
if are a “slave” to labor)
- treating self like an item: a means and a market place with labor and
people are commodifications
- Wage labor jobs: dehumanizing (Hegel: not consistent,
he performs the ideological justification of civil society and it is a
sham notion of equality. If own nothing and have to live, can only sell
- to show the effects of commodification on society and individuals
- People making the law wouldn’t have invested interest:
capitalist society will permeate policies
- labor power reduced to subsistence: the cost of labor is the cost of
production, then capitalism requires pay worker least possible so item
can sell more (270)
i. human nature: what theory is
developed, what assumptions are made?
- Humans fetishize commodities (230)
- “The mystical character of the commodity does not
therefore arise from its use-value” (231).
- “the money form-which
conceals the social character of private labour
and the social relations between the individual workers, by making
those relations appear as relations between material objects, instead
of revealing them plainly” (236).
ethics: how does ethics figure in the argument?
is the author engaging in moral condemnation
or moral prescription, if so, on the basis of what sort of ethical theory?
- Indignation surrounding worker’s sacrifice in creation
- un-equality of labor due to commodification does not engage the
individual in benefiting from their own products and labor.
- Individual workers are part of a social community
- World is shaped
politics: Politics is the reflection of the economic
structure in society
does the author regard as the distinctive problems and possibilities in the
- “But individuals are dealt with here only in so far as
they are the personifications of economic categories, the bearers of
particular class-relations and interests” (219). People are becoming
defined by their place in society and the means of production.
does the author address liberty, equality, and fraternity?
- Liberty: Humans are not free if they are forced to
work at subsistence level or die. This is slavery. Ch
6, Pg 265 - the commodification of labour-power, the worker as commodity
- Equality: Hence, equal right here is still in
principle— bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no
longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity
exchange only exists on the average and not in the individual case. In
spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly encumbered
by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to
the labour they supply; the equality consists
in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labour. But one man is superior to another
physically or mentally and so supplies more labour
in the same time, or can work for a longer time; and labour,
to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity,
otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is
an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognises no class distinctions, because everyone
is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises
the unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity of the
workers as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality,
in its content, like every right.
- Fraternity: Robinson Crusoe, family division of labor
means that there is no need for capital as people aren’t alienated from
the fruits of their labor because produce own goods. “All Robinson’s
products were exclusively the result of his own personal labour and they were therefore directly object so
utility for him personally” (75)
- “Being a seller and being a buyer are therefore not
fixed roles, but constantly attach themselves to different persons in
the course of the circulation of commodities” (253). Indivdiuals create capital by interacting.
does the author prioritize them.
4. what are the strengths of the author's argument?
- Yes, successfully explains the process of
commodification and labor in society and the effects to the role of the