A New Introduction to Capital

__________________________A NEW INTRODUCTION TO CAPITAL. UNDERSTANDING CAPITAL____________________________

CAPITALISM VS SOCIALISM

There is no such thing as a capitalist or socialist "system", it is not a system because it's not precedented by some implementation. Socialism is not some arbitrary discontinuity with a reality we are already familiar with. There is a rational connection between the world as we know it and the socialist mode of prouction. The socialist mode of production is already entering into reality through capitalism itself. So how can we understand this fact?

Marx formalized the capitalist mode of production in M-C-M'. So if we want to learn how the socialist mode of production will enter in to reality, it has to be through the transformation of M-C-M'.

WHY IS THERE EXCHANGE

There is a material reason why exchange is necessary. Social relations are not given, they are determinate. We are not atomized individuals. In reality, we are always already in some kind of social relation. (This is the mystery of history right, when we look at history it seems like everything is already there.) Proof of this is money.

In bartering, money is being used to purchase goods. Two barterers have to make account for the abstraction of money when they enter in to relation/exchange. In this way, the social relation is mediated not just between two barterers, but through the polity.

Polities have a monopoly on coinage. It is through currency that polities exercise dominion over lands and the people which inhabit it.

So, money exchanges for all goods and services. Right?

In our head, money exchanges for all commodities: but this is something unique for modernity and for capitalism.

Why? Because before capitalism the range of commodities which money exchanges for was determinite and finite.

Money before capitalism does NOT exchange for 'all goods and services' rendered abstractly

The abstract (of money) abstracts from determinite goods, commodities and services passed by tradition.

Despite the fact that money abstracts, it was concretly abstract, because the polity and the king does not refer to power in the abstract, but power over definite land, people and services (material relations). Traditional ways of living, traditional ways of producing, The smith has a grandsson which is also a smith.

The ontologisation of abstraction for it's own sake is unique for capitalist modernity. Capital is anti-social.

MONEY: UNDERSTANDING M-C-M'

So what is money? Money: the alienated human ability in general (Marx).

Money is the universal otherness of the state within the economy. Again; exchange has a material reason, social relations are not given, they are determinate. Of course we are materialists, so we have to reconcile with the fact that Oikos reproduces itself in otherness to the state. Or in dumbfk terms: "VALUE" IS CREATED WITHOUT CONSIDERATION OF THE MONEY SUPPLY.

Let's expound upon this fact.

WHAT DOES M' mean?

What does M' mean? M' means more money, right? Simple. More money means money taken from somewhere else? Atleast we think so, in common sense this is true. M' = more money taken from somewhere else.

The part about freezing time is not important to understand this point. The amount of money in circulation is always finite; During the gold standard (when Marx wrote Das Capital), it was almost infinetly finite.

We have two capitalists; Regard and Marxoid. Marxoid has 4 dumbcoins, and Regard has 1; There exists only 5 dumbcoins in circulation.

Regard invests his dumbcoin into something, a commodity, to get more money, M'. But that money has to come from somewhere if the amount of money in circulation is finite. In this example it will have to come from Marxoid. So Marxoid gives Regard 2 dumbcoins for the commodity.

Regard has 2 coins and Marxoid has 3. This is what happens right? M-C-M'. Regard invested his dumbcoin (M) into a commodity (C), and somehow he gained 2 dumbcoins (M'); which means that someones a loser here, since the amount of money is finite. So M-C-M' in this sense means that the *proportion of money changed*.

Trade wars between countries is (really simplified) more or less this fact, there is a finite amount of money in circulation, a finite *instantiation* of value.

Is this what Marx was getting at? Is this the meaning of capital for Marx? Well, this is what it's going to look like initialy.

But when it comes to modern industrial capitalism, for Marx, this explanation is not enough.

For Marx, as most people already know, the M' is a proxy(not technically the same) for surplus value.

But then the question is: How could there be a surplus, if there is merely a change in proportion between Regard and Marxoid?

But this line of thinking, and this type of question, fundamentaly misunderstands Marx and the meaning of M-C-M', because it is individualistic.

Even though Regard and Marxoid act both as consumers and capitalists, they also acts as a class. And that class exists within a polity, meaning they are acting within the range of possibilites of that polity.

They are at the same time subjects being limited by an object (society), and also acting upon that object, changing it. This should not be taken lightly. It has ontological, historical and epistemic implications. This is the very reason that Marxism requires dialectial insight. Marxism is a scientific method (Object-Subject) for acquiring knowledge about the laws governing the historical development of societies, a development which is already taking place materially.

So again, for Marx, M-C-M' is at the scale of THE POLITY. NOT INDIVIDUALS.

Even though at individual levels, it seems as though the proportion of the money supply is just being redistributed, at some fundamental level on the scale of society as a whole, at the scale of the Oikos, there is more value being created.

There is multiple ways to explain this dilemma of M-C-M'.

Nick Lands Interpretation and its folly

Let's go to Nick Lands interpretation. For Land, M is forwarded into technological means of production, and the revolution in the forces of production is the source of the surplus value. Instead of a merely proportional change, new value and new wealth is created by a change in reality itsef; Technological change.

Land has this view, because that kind of change is tangible. If there is no technological change, then the amount and quality of services is going to remain constant over time. But if there is a change in the very nature of reality, that is going to reflect in terms of value. So for Nick Land, if there is no technological change there is no surplus value. Of course in the orthodox marxist view, automation makes surplus smaller! But for Nick Land, capitalism is infinate because revolution in the forces of production creates surplus.

This revolution in the forces of production is not happening at an individual level. Marxoid and Regard do not create revolutions in the forces of production or the necessary technological change that could possibly correspond to surplus value. But couldn't surplus just continue infinetly as an accumulation of things? Well, thats only quantitative change, not qualitative. At a certain point there is a cap; the Crisis of overproduction.

The scale at which this revolution is possible can only encompass society/polity as a whole. It is historical.

For real surplus to occur, M-C-M' has to be reaping the rewards of something which has already happened. That something can be technology, but it has to have already happened. If it's in the process of happening, you are talking about a loss, the capitalist is not gonna make a profit. An interesting thing of note is that the vast majority of tech companies will invest in research initially at a loss.

M-C-M' does not properly correspond, at an INDIVIDUAL LEVEL to the 'Value-Tech/labor etc.-surplus value' circuit

M-C-M' merely reallocates the finite instantiation of value that is already in circulation, it happens on an individual capitalist level.

But Value-tech/labor-Surplus value (value creation) is expressed ONLY AT THE LEVEL OF THE AGGREGATE, according to Marx (see volume three of Das Kapital). There is a discontinuity.

Meaning that the only manifestation of Value-labor-surplusvalue circuit, is the aggregate total of profits being made.

THIS DISCONTINTUITY IS VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND MARX. (It's also the origin of the transformation problem.)

But Nick Land is wrong, because the revolution in the forces of production is not merely technological change.

A revolution in the forces of production happens at the furthest threshold defining mankind (or a polity)'s relation to nature, and itself, as a whole - FROM TOP TO BOTTOM.

At the level of 'Anthropocene'.

Today, this is geological/ecological level, the deepest possible relation to both nature and mankind, a polity actually has.

Revolution in the forces of production changes how people and institutions are related; The Polity's relation to the individual, and mankinds' relation to nature and itself. We cannot voluntarily orchestrate a revolution in the forces of production.

Why? Because it's an epistemological problem.

For us to be able to voluntarily initiate a revolution in forces of production, this assumes we can be aware of the very range of possibilities that define mankind's relation to nature.

(Modern science presupposes this is possible, btw) ^

In reality, the true revolution in the forces of production, is the one that redefines our knowledge of the range of possibility in the first place.

Ultimately, it is not only superficial 'technological change' that gives rise to true surplus value. The change is also:

• historical
• ontological or metaphysical (relation to nature)
• demotic (people) relation between institutions and the people
• epistemic (threshold of possibility, what is possible in physical reality)

Conclusion

M-C-M' can be very misleading, because of what it implies through language: that there is some temporal sequence.

In reality, the range of 'surplus value' was already created and established beforehand in time (through revolutions in the forces of production). Labor realizes a threshold already established.

M-C-M' should not be understood voluntaristically; in fact, it is a profoundly conservative circuit.

It is not related to some unstoppable thirst for profit. It is not related to the individual capitalist's drive for security or housing.  This is Freudian jurisdiction that should not be confused for Marx; although they are related.

The 'surplus' is already latent, M-C-M' just realizes something that was already there.

Dialectic thinking allows us to see that merely by subsisting, humanity produces an excess, a surplus; we actually do not know what humanity is and what nature is. This surplus reveals to us something about our grounds of being. If 'Being' was a closed circuit, there would be no change. No ecological crisis. No growth.

We have not exhausted our relation to nature and we never will. There will always be a surplus. Marx Capital is the first-ever investigation of this fact.