This video on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/capital-vol-1-1-117266939?Link& This video on Soundcloud (audio only): soundcloud.com/socialismforall/capital-vol-1-chapter-1-1867-by-karl-marx-audiobook-discussion-of-marxist-theory-economics This video on Spotify: creators.spotify.com/pod/show/socialismforall/episodes/Capital-Vol--1-Chapter-1-1867-by-Karl-Marx--Audiobook--Discussion-of-Marxist-Theory--Economics-e2rsibl This video on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/socialismforall/p/capital-vol-1-chapter-1-1867-by-karl?r=2wwfgr&showWelcomeOnShare=true I mentioned in this video that this was longer than the original edition, but I misremembered; checking the other file, I see that the original is not that much shorter.
Your explanative comments really help tp regulate the flow of the text so that it doesn't just become a wall of speech. Its really helpful! Keep up the great work!
Done. Alot to take in. Thank you. For me, what makes it a bit of a challenge to process is when a certain word is used often in one paragraph. For instance, when I hear the word "value" as "exchange value," "use value," or simply "value," being interchanged rapidly, my wires get crossed. I had to listen to the final 30 mins on a slower speed, in order to give my brain more space to process. In spite of this, I enjoyed the chapter, an abundance of material that inspires ones thoughts. Thanks again.
So excited to get into this. I am considering joining DSA's Emergency Workplace Organizing Commitee and I'll definitely be bringing knowledge gained from this into my work there.
Chapter 1 is the one I have seen most people struggle with but it's one so densely packed with the most important aspects of the critic of capitalism. It's a chapter I keep thinking about when discussing political economy
50 mins in: "one of the core missions of Marxism, is to rescue the human spirit by recapturing the labor power back from the Capitalist and returning it to the worker". Great comment.
Listened last night (and overnight too … ) on Patreon. Thanks comrade! Here it is … the big one and the all-important first chapter where so many of Marx’s most important concepts get introduced, outlined, explained and proven. And you, comrade, deserve the Internet Order of Lenin for the work you’re doing! And Hero of the Socialists of TH-cam! And thank-you for the always insightful (and often entertaining) footnote comments you add to the readings!
Yes they are important concepts that I wished everyone would understand because they are important in raising class consciousness. Hats off for S4A for taking on this task in reading which includes the footnotes and the comments that make things easier to understand. Yes, S4A is a hero of the internet.
I got curious because of your avatar picture. As I understood you are a Portuguese speaker learning Romanian. It's a rare thing to see someone learning romanian and from one video I saw of you speaking it you seem to have a very good pronunciation! Bravo! I'm curious to know what pushed you to learn it? Eu sunt din republica Moldova. Îți doresc succese!
"20 yards of linen" needs to be made into an ML meme lol he writes those 4 words consecutively so many times in just this chapter alone. Thank you for your hard work, comrade S4A! ❤ Edit: apparently it is already a meme. I'm just not online much except for youtube lol
Yooo I did a literal cheer to see you working to record capital! Huge task thank you comrade and that you patrons. I am canceling audible to hopefully support you and your work!
Thanks again S4A for uploading this important writing done by Marx. I am going to do the reading a section at a time rather than consume the entire 2 + hour reading. The vast majority of people don't comprehend what labor time is or how labor time is crystalized in every commodity nor understand the cheaper labor is the more profits the capitalist receives. Marx is correct that labor time is what gives the commodity value in exchange if I read the text correctly. I have not read "Capital" before except for a few passages. I am going to present an editorial written by Daniel De Leon which is related. Even though his concepts of unifying labor into a single organization has yet to be realized he has written some very good editorials in which this is one of them: "The Social Character of Machinery" which can be found on the Marxist Internet Archive. The only manner in which man can act upon nature is by motion. In this respect John Stuart Mill observed: “Man moves a seed into the ground; he moves an axe through a tree; he moves a spark to fuel; he moves water into a boiler over a fire; the properties of matter do the rest.” In other words, “This one operation of putting things into fit places for being acted upon each other by their own internal forces is all that man does, or can do, with matter.” This is a statement of fundamental import, and John Stuart Mill so highly valued it that he claimed the credit of having first made it. Yet, with the usual shortsightedness of political economists, bounded in their views by their narrow, middle-class environment, he utterly fails to draw from it the only possible conclusion, viz., the social character of machinery and the stupendous wrong done to man, a social being, by the private ownership of the mechanical organs of motion. Confined to the use of his own physical power, man is one of the most helpless animals. In proportion to his size and requirements, he is unquestionably very weak and slow. But the superiority of his organism consists precisely in the aptitude of his brain and the fitness of his hands for the contrivance and use of mechanical devices, through which he may take from nature, by artifice, those forces in which he is naturally wanting. Every such contrivance is to him like a new organ by which his power of motion is increased. But the point is soon reached in the development of these artificial organs, where a single individual can {can not?} produce or use them. Beyond the most primitive of hunting, fishing and cultivating implements, every tool, not to speak of the more complex machine, requires in its make {making?}, or in its handling, or in the purpose for which it is handled, the co-operation of several individuals. In other words, all the benefit of machinery lies in its social, co-operative use. Give a man all the knowledge and machinery of this age, and place him on the richest land in a country isolated from the rest of the world. Of what benefit will all that be to him, as compared with the welfare which he can obtain among his fellows in exchange for what he can produce with an infinitesimal part of that knowledge and of that machinery? Mark, furthermore, that every tool, like every form or product of knowledge, is, in fact, a social growth, requiring the co-operation of successive generations. Show me a machine to-day whose patentee can claim freedom of indebtedness to some predecessors. From Archimedes to Watt; nay, from the first man who made use of a stone axe to the most eminent of modern inventors, the social chain of observation, discovery and co-operation is unbroken. From the comparative physical impotency of man in his natural state, and from his inability to invent, make and use, unaided by his fellows, all the tools he needs to multiply his power of motion in the degree required for his safety and welfare, comes the social state, in which the tool is necessarily a social organ; social in its origin, social in its growth, social in its purpose, social in its incorporation of natural forces which of right belong to all; set in motion by human muscles, for the good of the social body, under the direction of the social will. Hence the tendency of society itself to develop into a constantly higher organism as the differentiation, power and socialization of tools becomes more complete; while the social will, enlightened by a better knowledge of the requirements of the body in all its parts, becomes less uncertain, less undecided, less erratic, and, therefore, less arbitrary or tyrannical. More evidence might be adduced to show the social character of machinery. Upon what precedes we may, however, safely rest the following generalization: “Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.”
As for section two, Marx described labor as creating use value and with every individual, labor power exist but not for their own use. Yes, every individual has to sell their labor power to an employer and has to sign a "contract of theft" in which the employer can use the individuals labor power in any way he/she wants at a certain pay grade. I have, over the years, become more aware that individual laborers, here in the US, cannot fathom not working for an employer. We are conditioned to think that way to no ones fault of their own. This is why we have to study Marx and Engels to lift ourselves out of that conditioning.
31:15 this hit me with sense that a thing with use value that was made by an individual to be used immediately, could also have an exchange value, as one who works in a deli must usually pay for that sandwich they're going to eat, and must also do it on their break. I cannot think of any other scenario where this happens, but I know they exist. The worker must interact in the process quantitatively only. (also something I can understand, as I know from direct experience that workers "steal" shit all the time, be it commodities, or time, and no doubt the ones at the "top of the food chain" know this, as it cuts into their profits, so they institute sometimes very draconian policy to combat the behavior)
For your example, the reason a sandwich made by a worker that is intended to be eaten by themselves immediately has an exchange value is because all output a wage laborer creates belongs to the capitalist enterprise and thus is created for the purpose of exchange. So in this case, the worker created a sandwich which had already been sold to the capitalist in exchange for his labor power that day and then immediately bought the sandwich back for themselves. Hopefully that was helpful.
Section three was a long one but thankfully S4A used the term "ratio" which made the section more understandable. Finish section four and now onto chapter two.
We definitely need a new vanguard party. with all the ways people can be connected around the world, surely there must be a way commies can improve on the international solidarity than in the past. maybe this excellent channel can and has already been contributing to building it.
One thing in section 2 which can give a faulty understanding (and that gets elaborate in the later volumes of capital iirc) is marx contrasting raw resources and manufacture commodities like the spit of an insect and silk. One thing that has to be considered and remember is that raw resources also have the potential to become commodities cause access requires labor as well. The wild mushroom does not get produced through human labor but still can manifest an exchange value cause there is a difference between a thing out and within reach and getting something out of reach within reach requires labor as well. Hence how water grows in value in areas plagued by drouth and how a natural monopoly increases the socially necessary labor time cause while the monopoly owner requires the same effort as before to gather the raw resources everyone else now has would require far more labor to gather and transport them from somewhere else.
Refuse all bourgeois wars! Land back free Palestine, workers stand with the oppressed peoples of the world, unite! !Bienvenidos camarada trabajadores del mundo!
1:08 in: Yes, agreed, Marx does beat it to death. What was clear via the first example becomes unclear as it's he beats it to a pulp with further examples.
I feel like I need a pop quiz because I generally can’t tell if I understand it or if I am overwhelmed by having it rephrased 100 different ways by Marx lol
Can someone tell me why Marx makes a distinction between labor and work? Is it because we can do things that require effort, physical or mental, but classify these things as recreation. Cooking/ baking for fun, sports, games, writing, etc. These things require effort but we do for recreation, to pass the time, to stimulate ourselves physically and or mentally. These would be classified as work because they are not done for exchange but do require the individual to exert themselves. Hobbies require active effort and the individual might even be producing something that could be exchanged but is being done explicitly for the enjoyment of the work and not exchange. Do other people agree or am I missing something?
It's because Marx's fundamental idea of being human involves doing work, but work for ourselves and our people. Under capitalism, our capacity for work becomes exploited by parasites, twisted against us, and alienating.
Your work ain't going to helping someone else, but to make the guy on the piece of paper rich. You don't feel your work is contributing to everyone. I imagine that probably applies most to people who work in industries that deal exclusively in money, like the insurance industry, gambling/ betting companies, etc. It is nakedly obvious for those jobs. Thank you for the response, i hope you don't mind me posting these kinds of comments, I like to think through something I heard or found interesting or confusing in the text and figured it also helps with the algo and potentially posters discussion with other listeners.@@SocialismForAll
This video on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/capital-vol-1-1-117266939?Link&
This video on Soundcloud (audio only): soundcloud.com/socialismforall/capital-vol-1-chapter-1-1867-by-karl-marx-audiobook-discussion-of-marxist-theory-economics
This video on Spotify: creators.spotify.com/pod/show/socialismforall/episodes/Capital-Vol--1-Chapter-1-1867-by-Karl-Marx--Audiobook--Discussion-of-Marxist-Theory--Economics-e2rsibl
This video on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/socialismforall/p/capital-vol-1-chapter-1-1867-by-karl?r=2wwfgr&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I mentioned in this video that this was longer than the original edition, but I misremembered; checking the other file, I see that the original is not that much shorter.
Thank you for your hard work making these audiobooks, comrade!
Loving the explainitive comments so far. Ty for reading this.
1:17:00
Your explanative comments really help tp regulate the flow of the text so that it doesn't just become a wall of speech. Its really helpful! Keep up the great work!
Done. Alot to take in. Thank you. For me, what makes it a bit of a challenge to process is when a certain word is used often in one paragraph. For instance, when I hear the word "value" as "exchange value," "use value," or simply "value," being interchanged rapidly, my wires get crossed. I had to listen to the final 30 mins on a slower speed, in order to give my brain more space to process. In spite of this, I enjoyed the chapter, an abundance of material that inspires ones thoughts.
Thanks again.
So excited to get into this. I am considering joining DSA's Emergency Workplace Organizing Commitee and I'll definitely be bringing knowledge gained from this into my work there.
Chapter 1 is the one I have seen most people struggle with but it's one so densely packed with the most important aspects of the critic of capitalism. It's a chapter I keep thinking about when discussing political economy
50 mins in: "one of the core missions of Marxism, is to rescue the human spirit by recapturing the labor power back from the Capitalist and returning it to the worker". Great comment.
YES!
Listened last night (and overnight too … ) on Patreon. Thanks comrade! Here it is … the big one and the all-important first chapter where so many of Marx’s most important concepts get introduced, outlined, explained and proven. And you, comrade, deserve the Internet Order of Lenin for the work you’re doing! And Hero of the Socialists of TH-cam! And thank-you for the always insightful (and often entertaining) footnote comments you add to the readings!
Yes they are important concepts that I wished everyone would understand because they are important in raising class consciousness. Hats off for S4A for taking on this task in reading which includes the footnotes and the comments that make things easier to understand. Yes, S4A is a hero of the internet.
I'm very excited for this read along. Maybe this is what I needed to overcome my fear of that book's size
I got curious because of your avatar picture. As I understood you are a Portuguese speaker learning Romanian. It's a rare thing to see someone learning romanian and from one video I saw of you speaking it you seem to have a very good pronunciation! Bravo! I'm curious to know what pushed you to learn it?
Eu sunt din republica Moldova. Îți doresc succese!
"20 yards of linen" needs to be made into an ML meme lol he writes those 4 words consecutively so many times in just this chapter alone.
Thank you for your hard work, comrade S4A! ❤
Edit: apparently it is already a meme. I'm just not online much except for youtube lol
Class Struggle Intensifies! (Marx with laser eyes) ☭
Thank you so much for your work
Gjithmone gjej Shqiptaret ne cepat me te papritur te youtube
1:48:23 Marx was fucking savage holy shit
Yooo I did a literal cheer to see you working to record capital! Huge task thank you comrade and that you patrons. I am canceling audible to hopefully support you and your work!
11 mins in: human resources: the resources that are human....i am just realizing the meaning here. Wow.
The commodity of labor power which every human has which is a resource.
Thank you.
Great to listen to while on the clock. Thanks for the new installment big guy can’t wait for the next one🔥💯
Oh damn, we doing the big one now. It's ramping up!
thanks for doing this comrade, i had a lot of trouble getting through the first couple chapters of capital when i tried to read it initially
Thanks again S4A for uploading this important writing done by Marx. I am going to do the reading a section at a time rather than consume the entire 2 + hour reading. The vast majority of people don't comprehend what labor time is or how labor time is crystalized in every commodity nor understand the cheaper labor is the more profits the capitalist receives. Marx is correct that labor time is what gives the commodity value in exchange if I read the text correctly. I have not read "Capital" before except for a few passages. I am going to present an editorial written by Daniel De Leon which is related. Even though his concepts of unifying labor into a single organization has yet to be realized he has written some very good editorials in which this is one of them: "The Social Character of Machinery" which can be found on the Marxist Internet Archive.
The only manner in which man can act upon nature is by motion. In this respect John Stuart Mill observed: “Man moves a seed into the ground; he moves an axe through a tree; he moves a spark to fuel; he moves water into a boiler over a fire; the properties of matter do the rest.” In other words, “This one operation of putting things into fit places for being acted upon each other by their own internal forces is all that man does, or can do, with matter.”
This is a statement of fundamental import, and John Stuart Mill so highly valued it that he claimed the credit of having first made it. Yet, with the usual shortsightedness of political economists, bounded in their views by their narrow, middle-class environment, he utterly fails to draw from it the only possible conclusion, viz., the social character of machinery and the stupendous wrong done to man, a social being, by the private ownership of the mechanical organs of motion.
Confined to the use of his own physical power, man is one of the most helpless animals. In proportion to his size and requirements, he is unquestionably very weak and slow. But the superiority of his organism consists precisely in the aptitude of his brain and the fitness of his hands for the contrivance and use of mechanical devices, through which he may take from nature, by artifice, those forces in which he is naturally wanting. Every such contrivance is to him like a new organ by which his power of motion is increased. But the point is soon reached in the development of these artificial organs, where a single individual can {can not?} produce or use them. Beyond the most primitive of hunting, fishing and cultivating implements, every tool, not to speak of the more complex machine, requires in its make {making?}, or in its handling, or in the purpose for which it is handled, the co-operation of several individuals. In other words, all the benefit of machinery lies in its social, co-operative use. Give a man all the knowledge and machinery of this age, and place him on the richest land in a country isolated from the rest of the world. Of what benefit will all that be to him, as compared with the welfare which he can obtain among his fellows in exchange for what he can produce with an infinitesimal part of that knowledge and of that machinery? Mark, furthermore, that every tool, like every form or product of knowledge, is, in fact, a social growth, requiring the co-operation of successive generations. Show me a machine to-day whose patentee can claim freedom of indebtedness to some predecessors. From Archimedes to Watt; nay, from the first man who made use of a stone axe to the most eminent of modern inventors, the social chain of observation, discovery and co-operation is unbroken.
From the comparative physical impotency of man in his natural state, and from his inability to invent, make and use, unaided by his fellows, all the tools he needs to multiply his power of motion in the degree required for his safety and welfare, comes the social state, in which the tool is necessarily a social organ; social in its origin, social in its growth, social in its purpose, social in its incorporation of natural forces which of right belong to all; set in motion by human muscles, for the good of the social body, under the direction of the social will. Hence the tendency of society itself to develop into a constantly higher organism as the differentiation, power and socialization of tools becomes more complete; while the social will, enlightened by a better knowledge of the requirements of the body in all its parts, becomes less uncertain, less undecided, less erratic, and, therefore, less arbitrary or tyrannical.
More evidence might be adduced to show the social character of machinery. Upon what precedes we may, however, safely rest the following generalization: “Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.”
As for section two, Marx described labor as creating use value and with every individual, labor power exist but not for their own use. Yes, every individual has to sell their labor power to an employer and has to sign a "contract of theft" in which the employer can use the individuals labor power in any way he/she wants at a certain pay grade. I have, over the years, become more aware that individual laborers, here in the US, cannot fathom not working for an employer. We are conditioned to think that way to no ones fault of their own. This is why we have to study Marx and Engels to lift ourselves out of that conditioning.
Thank you for this comrade
This is great, keep up the good work!
31:15 this hit me with sense that a thing with use value that was made by an individual to be used immediately, could also have an exchange value, as one who works in a deli must usually pay for that sandwich they're going to eat, and must also do it on their break. I cannot think of any other scenario where this happens, but I know they exist. The worker must interact in the process quantitatively only. (also something I can understand, as I know from direct experience that workers "steal" shit all the time, be it commodities, or time, and no doubt the ones at the "top of the food chain" know this, as it cuts into their profits, so they institute sometimes very draconian policy to combat the behavior)
For your example, the reason a sandwich made by a worker that is intended to be eaten by themselves immediately has an exchange value is because all output a wage laborer creates belongs to the capitalist enterprise and thus is created for the purpose of exchange. So in this case, the worker created a sandwich which had already been sold to the capitalist in exchange for his labor power that day and then immediately bought the sandwich back for themselves. Hopefully that was helpful.
Section three was a long one but thankfully S4A used the term "ratio" which made the section more understandable. Finish section four and now onto chapter two.
Thank you so much for this upload! You are doing (spinoza’s) god’s work my dude!
We definitely need a new vanguard party. with all the ways people can be connected around the world, surely there must be a way commies can improve on the international solidarity than in the past. maybe this excellent channel can and has already been contributing to building it.
Generational Yapper 😂 cant wait to get into this, thanks for the audiobook!
Let's goooo !
Marx was a pretty smart dude.
Holy moly, how long did it take you to make it?
52 in: the work vs labor distinction, helpful.
1:30:00 bookmark
One thing in section 2 which can give a faulty understanding (and that gets elaborate in the later volumes of capital iirc) is marx contrasting raw resources and manufacture commodities like the spit of an insect and silk. One thing that has to be considered and remember is that raw resources also have the potential to become commodities cause access requires labor as well. The wild mushroom does not get produced through human labor but still can manifest an exchange value cause there is a difference between a thing out and within reach and getting something out of reach within reach requires labor as well. Hence how water grows in value in areas plagued by drouth and how a natural monopoly increases the socially necessary labor time cause while the monopoly owner requires the same effort as before to gather the raw resources everyone else now has would require far more labor to gather and transport them from somewhere else.
Refuse all bourgeois wars! Land back free Palestine, workers stand with the oppressed peoples of the world, unite! !Bienvenidos camarada trabajadores del mundo!
The existence of commodities as values is purely social
1:08 in: Yes, agreed, Marx does beat it to death. What was clear via the first example becomes unclear as it's he beats it to a pulp with further examples.
I feel like I need a pop quiz because I generally can’t tell if I understand it or if I am overwhelmed by having it rephrased 100 different ways by Marx lol
what audiobooks did u feel were the most boring to record? completely off topic but just curious
@SocialismForAll will there ever be captions for this? They usually show up after an hour or two.
I didn't tell TH-cam not to do a transcript, if that's what you mean
Now I get the linen jokes.
Definitely going to listen to this a couple more times, but absolutely fantastic.
Sorry for the newb cuestión but how does this one differ from the other file "The Commodity"?
First German edition, 1867 ("The Commodity") vs. First English edition/Fourth German edition, 1887 (this one)
Thank you! 🙏
Can someone tell me why Marx makes a distinction between labor and work? Is it because we can do things that require effort, physical or mental, but classify these things as recreation. Cooking/ baking for fun, sports, games, writing, etc. These things require effort but we do for recreation, to pass the time, to stimulate ourselves physically and or mentally. These would be classified as work because they are not done for exchange but do require the individual to exert themselves. Hobbies require active effort and the individual might even be producing something that could be exchanged but is being done explicitly for the enjoyment of the work and not exchange. Do other people agree or am I missing something?
It's because Marx's fundamental idea of being human involves doing work, but work for ourselves and our people. Under capitalism, our capacity for work becomes exploited by parasites, twisted against us, and alienating.
Your work ain't going to helping someone else, but to make the guy on the piece of paper rich. You don't feel your work is contributing to everyone. I imagine that probably applies most to people who work in industries that deal exclusively in money, like the insurance industry, gambling/ betting companies, etc. It is nakedly obvious for those jobs. Thank you for the response, i hope you don't mind me posting these kinds of comments, I like to think through something I heard or found interesting or confusing in the text and figured it also helps with the algo and potentially posters discussion with other listeners.@@SocialismForAll
" i hope you don't mind me posting these kinds of comments"
Not at all. It is helpful.
This is gonna take quite a few relistens
Liberalism basic principle goes to die in chapter 1, lol