Talk:Das Kapital, Volume I

message: I just wanted to make a general suggestion for anyone who is interested in contributing to this article that we should adapt a more consistent use of "labor" or "labour" throughout the article. Same applies to the references although this is more difficult because there are different versions of the book. --Henrik.petaisto (talk) 22:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: General Suggestions

message: This is Sarah French.  I just added the Chapter 1 Section 2 outline to the Part One subheading. FrenchFrieG 00:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Part One Discussion

message: Suggestions for Chapter 27:
Delete the page numbers in the chapter title -- there are too many different editions in print to tie the article to any one specific edition. 
"The last third of the 15th Century marked the beginning of an era that provided for the rise of capitalist modes of production, changing the shape of modern industry, economics as well as the role of private ownership in the contemporary world." -- mode, not modes, of production -- and instead of "changing the shape..." perhaps the second half of this sentence should highlight that the particular change this chapter is tracing is the initial creation of the working class. 
"Most classically illustrated in England, and then spreading to Scotland, Germany and across Europe, the process of primitive accumulation takes root in the transition from communal land ownership by peasants and feudal lords alike, to the private ownership of a select few." -- This is the history in England. The claim that it is most classically or that it then spread geographically elsewhere seems somewhat contentious. 
"The manufacture of wool and its accompanying high prices serve as motivation for the feudal lords to drive peasantry from communal property." -- perhaps the expansion of the manufacture of wool... and higher prices. 
Some mention of "sheep-walks" and "deer-forests" are usual in discussions of this chapter, as is some mention of the "dissolution of of the bands of feudal retainers" (878) and the "colossal spoliation of church property" (881). 
"Bills" plural for the Inclosure of Commons. 
"The parliament later declares a ‘genreal Act of Parliament for the enclosure of Commons,’ claiming that a parliamentary 'coup d’etat' is necessary for the transformation into private property." -- perhaps strike this sentence. This is Marx's gloss on the events, and not an actual act of Parliament.
Wage-laborers instead of labourers. -- use the American spelling. 
(first form of capitalist production) -- perhaps delete this parenthetical remark. It seems out of place here and is likely to be somewhat contentious as well. 
"free and rightless proletarians" -- use double quote marks for quotations and give reference (895). 
Marxclass 19:18, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Part Eight Discussion

message: I've come across this while doing work on the History of economic thought page and I just wanted to say that there has been a stellar effort put in on this, and well done. Wikidea 08:13, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Both marxists.org and Saul K. Padover The essential Marx: the non-economic writings, a selection (1979), say September 14, in Hamburg. I will add it to the article. Grant | Talk 03:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good on you 

message: In December 2008 a manga popularization of Volume I hit Japanese bookstores.  The fictionalized Vol. 1 of "Das Kapital" chronicles a cheese factory run by protagonist Robin, who rebels against his father's socialist principles and becomes a slave driver after teaming up with a cold-blooded capitalist investor. But Robin struggles between his capitalist ambitions and his sense of guilt over the exploitation of his workers. Meanwhile, exploited salary-men are seen slowly coming to terms with the central analysis: that they are the sole source of capitalism's wealth.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIVYxy6UnhtQ7VjkmmeCSGjt1V5gD957MCKG1
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/1121/1227137525860.html
Kjk2.1 (talk) 02:55, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: removed per WP:TRIVIA ... see my comment on Talk:Das_Kapital#Popularization CES (talk) 16:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popularization 

message: Since there aren't many wikilinks in the article, I thought I'd add some.  I might add some more another time.  In any case, I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject at hand, so I'll just do my best to link to the most relevant article, and if I miss the mark I hope someone will improve my effort or remove the link if no appropriate article exists.  Dr. Stanovsky, I'm looking your way on this one ;-)
W.stanovsky (talk) 08:07, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikify|Wikification]] 

message: Is there a chapter 2 in the book?  Why isn't there a chapter 2 section in this article? W.stanovsky (talk) 09:28, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing sections? 

message: I know there are arguments to be made for having everything in one place, but currently this article is WAY beyond Wikipedia guidelines for article length.  It seems to me that splitting it out so that there's a separate article for each of the eight parts would get each article down to a pretty ideal size.  Then this main article would only have to have the broad overview and background and a short summary of each part, with a link to the main article.  Thoughts? W.stanovsky (talk) 19:22, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split the article? 

message: I added a line with a reference [2] that helped me a ton when I was trying to finally read Das Capital left to right. I hope it stands and I don't get stompted (again..) I also read that Marx made the first three chapters difficult on purpose so that the censor(s) would fall asleep and in turn approve the book for publication. Can anyone fill this out or not?--Oracleofottawa (talk) 02:47, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: My First Inline Citation!

message: It looks like in the last few months, parts II and III were replaced with much shorter, less thorough, un-wikified versions. I realized that the article is too long, but I think (see a previous post here) that the best solution is eventually to create a separate article for each part. I think it's counterproductive to remove detail that represents someone's hard work in this article. If no one disagrees, I'll eventually come back around and reinstate those sections as they were, preparatory to splitting this article into parts. W.stanovsky (talk) 00:17, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reduction of Parts II and III 

message: Now, I always knew that Volume II and III were 'sealed books' with respect to the general public and even to most educators, intellectuals, and even vulgar Marxists who rely on secondary sources, but I never expected that out of all writers dedicated to working on wikipedia articles for the general public, not a single individual would devote some time to lengthening the content of the wikiarticles Volume II and III.
A la prochaine  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.58.132.193 (talk) 20:09, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Why don't you take a stab at it then?  Sindinero (talk) 11:54, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: request

message: Value expresses the fact that a commodity is a product of social labour. In this sense a commodity’s value does not represent the amount of individual labour expended in it but rather - that part of social labour as a whole credited to that commodity; socially necessary labour-power expended. The substance of value is ‘homogenous human labour’ or ‘human labour-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure’ (128). The magnitude of value refers to the socially necessary labour-time required to produce a commodity or ‘the labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society’ (129). Thus a commodity is not only a thing (a use-value) but more importantly, it embodies a portion of society’s labour-time (a value). 
This point touches on Marx’s sociological theory of the market – value is purely a social phenomenon and that the existence of value (Wertgegenstandlichkeit) is therefore ‘purely social’ (139) i.e. abstract labour which creates value must be understood as a social category and not as a physiological concept. This may seem obvious, but it is a very important point that differentiates Marx’s labour theory of value from other classical political economists who preceded him, particularly Ricardo. Exchange relations reflecting amounts of labour-time embodied in particular commodities was not an original discovery: to all of classical political economy this point was central. Marx’s contribution was that value is characteristic only of a particular kind of society in which the relations between various producers or members of society are regulated through the market. Thus value is not inherent in the isolated commodity prior to entering the sphere of exchange where portions of social labour are being measured and equated in relation to one another. 
Value therefore does not simply refer to the amount of labour-time expended in the commodity but the socially necessary labour-time, the amount of labour time in relation to the labour-time of society as a whole. Thus ‘it is the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities which brings to view the specific character of value-creating labour, by actually reducing the different kinds of labour embedded in the different kinds of commodity to their common quality of being human labour in general’ (142). It may appear as if Marx is presenting a technical economic argument in the first three sections of the chapter and then offering a sociological commentary in the fourth but this is misleading. He points out that his close examination of the form of value (174, fn.34) is what differentiates his theory from others i.e. understanding commodity exchange not only in terms of technical economic relations but as one means for the regulation of the social division of labour. This concept is discussed at length in Isaak Illich Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value. 
The third section shows how Marx’s dialectical method is well suited to the task of deriving money as the necessary form to materialize value objectively. He dissects the purely quantitative exchange relation in order to discover the real social content of that relation. Thus his analysis of different exchange forms must be understood as an analysis of different types of social relations corresponding to the different levels of development of exchange. He works his way up from the simplest form of exchange to the most advanced until he reaches the money form. He explains and shows historically/logically how commodity exchange necessarily gives rise to money which acts as the general equivalent expression of value. Therefore money should be understood as itself a form of social relation. Inspiration for his theory of money (or the circulation of commodities), which Marx considered to be one of his main accomplishments and achievements over Ricardo’s theory and classical political economy in general, can be traced back to his reading of Hegel’s Logic, particularly the chapter on Measure (Logic I) as well as the section on Teleology (Logic II). Marx was certainly indebted to Hegel ‘that mighty thinker’ from whom he borrowed the science of dialection and this was captured by Lenin who drew attention to the importance of studying Hegel when reading Marx: ‘It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!’ 
The analysis of chapter one begins with Marx defining the capitalist mode of production as one in which wealth appears as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities’ (125). The wealth of pre-capitalist societies and even mercantilism which was a transitional form did not appear predominantly in the form of commodities but rather as landed property. In the fetishism section, capitalist society is described by Marx as a society in which human relations adopt ‘the fantastic form of a relation between things’ (165), a feature that is not predominant in the early stages of capitalism nor is it predominant in commodity exchange within pre-capitalist societies. Therefore the category of simple commodity production cannot be imposed on the first chapter of Capital for it distorts Marx’s dialectical argument. 
Marx draws a sharp contrast between the capitalist mode of production and all other historical social forms. In the fetishism section, after developing the forms of value and labour in the capitalist world, two examples are given of how the production process worked in societies based on use value production and these he contrasted with modern capitalism. The examples given were the medieval Western European system and the peasant communal household forms of production across a number of different societies. These examples were only added after the 1867 editions of Capital, that is, after the Paris Commune. Thus far from depicting the development from simple commodity production to modern capitalist production as a stable continuum, Marx emphasized the ruptures that occurred historically between capitalism and other forms of pre-capitalist society. 
Money is a commodity in which the value of other commodities is expressed. When the value of a commodity is established, no money is present, however, the price is not arbitrary, for it relates the amount of labour embodied in the commodity and the labour embodied in the gold. Gold is not only a measure of value, it is also a standard of price. The two cannot be confused. Setting prices is done arbitrarily, carried out by governments (e.g. 1 oz of gold will be called $1). 
In order to exchange one commodity for another, the value of the first commodity must be realized in the form of money and the money then has to be realized in the use-value of the second commodity. The form of the circulation of commodities is C-M-C which is different from the simple exchange of use-values C-C. Money serves as a means of circulation in the circulation of commodities. In chapter 3, Marx discusses the money required for circulation and argues that the quantity of money depends on several factors such as the level of prices, transaction numbers and the velocity of circulation of money (211-220). While economists have argued that the level of prices are determined by the quantity of money (monetarist view), Marx argued that with commodity money, the circulation determines the movement of money and not the other way around i.e. level of prices determine the quantity of money required.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 20:21, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: notes on capital

message: For images of books, the first edition is generally preferred over newer editions or translations -- see Template:Infobox book, for example. If there are no objections, I'll replace the newly introduced image of the Fowkes Penguin edition with the original image used at Das Kapital.  Sindinero (talk) 07:08, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Do what you like. Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 07:15, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Any thoughts on whether the articles on the various volumes of capital could benefit from infoboxes?  Sindinero (talk) 07:23, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: If possible, any article on a book (or volume thereof) should have an infobox. Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 07:35, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image/infobox 

message: These two statements/claims seem to contradict one another. Perhaps further clarification/elaboration would clear up the confusion.
'Marx also points out that with the advance in technology of machines led to the substitution of less skilled work for more skilled work... During the progression of machinery the numbers of skilled workers decreased...'  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 01:56, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  clarify 

message: http://www.socanth.sfu.ca/documents/doc/Volume_One_Package (gary teeple notes on capital v1)
http://digamo.free.fr/dhcompa.pdf (Harvey Capital reading guide)
http://libcom.org/files/Shortall-Incomplete_Marx-300dpiBW-compressed.pdf  (Shortall's the Incomplete Marx  - notes on the three volumes)
http://marxismocritico.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/guide-to-capital.pdf (Clarke guide to capital volumes 1,2,3)
http://gruppegrundrisse.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rosdolsky-the-making-of-marxs-capital_cs.pdf (Rosdolsky's The Making of Capital)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 01:24, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  external links 

message: After leafing through the first paragraph, I could not get myself to finish reading the entire section. Both the content and form is really bad. Seriously, the word 'intrinsecal' is made up and used instead of the grammatically correct word intrinsic. Next we have the ridiculous phrase 'to do the commodity.' Then it says 'attributes to a thing a characteristic when it is actually a social product, originates in the fact that under a commodity based society' -- first of all, social product or the idea that a commodity is the product of social labour, can very well be a characteristic of something since characteristic is very general term and does not simply refer to a property that appears to be or in fact is intrinsic to something which characteristic used in this context seems to be implying and second, it is not 'originates in fact but FROM the fact. I mean, really, I do no have a good grasp of the English language but even I could... The last sentence starting with 'Therefore, the value of the commodity' is even more difficult to follow. I will stop here and hope that that this section is further edited since CF forms the foundation of Marx's labour theory of value.
'In other words, why does the commodity appear to have an exchange-value as if it was an intrinsecal characteristic of the commodity instead of a measurement of the homogenous human labor spent to do the commodity? Marx explains that this sort of fetishism, which attributes to a thing a characteristic when it is actually a social product, originates in the fact that under a commodity based society the social labour, the social relations between producers and their mutual interdependence, solely manifest in the market, in the process of exchange. Therefore, the value of the commodity is determined independently from private producers so it seems that it is the market which determines the value apparently based on a characteristic of the commodity; it seems as if there are relations between commodities instead of relations between producers.'  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 01:36, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  poorly written fetishism section 

message: I have some rather thorny questions to ask:
# When this work was first printed, how much did it cost to produce, how much was it sold for, and who profited from its publication? 
# Has this work always been in the public domain, and if not, why not? 
I could make a great many easy points like this, but some sort of answer should be made available, just to make the entire subject more clear. If I'm full of it, then there should be some sort of record to make that clear to doubters such as myself. Thank you. TheLastWordSword (talk) 14:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Work in Question and Capitalism 

message: I published the book in this format at http://synagonism.net/book/economy/marx.1887-1867.capital-i.html with these advantages:
* (html5) no need for special programs to read it. All machines have the needed browser (= html reader). 
* (id) anyone can refer to ANY PART of it, because all html-elements have IDs. 
* (toc) automatically created expandable table-of-contents makes reading easy. 
* (preview) link-preview makes reading fast.
Because I do not want to be accused that I promote myself, IF you find it worthwhile, please put it on the external-links of this article. Synagonism (talk) 14:05, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capital I, in html5.id.toc.preview format 

message: Seriously this article is way beyond the wiki guidelines for acceptable length. I realize this book is very important to some people, but that does not give you the right to waffle on endlessly. Condense it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.180.167.113 (talk) 09:13, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Way too long! 

message: I don't understand this passage:
"So, where does surplus value originate? Quite simply, the origin of surplus value arises from the worker. To better understand how this happens consider the following example from Marx's Capital Volume I. A capitalist hires a worker to spin ten pounds of cotton into yarn. Suppose the value of the cotton is one dollar per pound. The entire value of the cotton is 10 dollars. The production process naturally causes wear and tear on the machinery that is used to help produce the yarn. Suppose this wearing down of machinery costs the capitalist two dollars. The value of labor power is three dollars per day. Now also suppose that the working day is six hours. In this example the production process yields up 15 dollars, and also costs the capitalist 15 dollars. Thus there is no profit."
This should be basic arithmetic, but I can't figure out how you arrive at a yield and cost of $15. I guess the yield comes from 5 (the number of days in a work week) * $3 (the value of labour per day) = $15, and the cost comes from $10 (the cost of 10 lbs. of raw cotton) + $2 (wear and tear of machinery) = $12. Where are the missing $3? I'm super confused.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.224.28.134 (talk) 02:10, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just a little arithmetical confusion... 

message: Huge sections of this article seem to be based purely on Marx's own words. In fact a couple of sections consist of nothing but quotations. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. Mere quotations are not encyclopedic content, and commentary on the content is vulnerable to accusations that it is improper synthesis or otherwise original research if they don't reflect the analysis of secondary sources. Hairy Dude (talk) 19:39, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wall of text, need secondary sources 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Das Kapital which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 18:45, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress