fdrake

Yeah. I agree with this, but I think it's a part of the account. Read the bits I wrote on the decomposition of commodities into labour sources and ass...

The brevity of the second section suits its function as an interlude between the analysis of use and exchange values - and their linkage with concrete...

A simple restatement of the proportionality derived above. Direct price is proportional to the quantity produced and inversely proportional to the pro...

As in every other response to you in this thread, so far the discussion concerns value and value production. It is true that even the production of co...

Marx is still summarising the implications of his arguments relating concrete labour to use and abstract labour to exchange, and the properties of abs...

The next paragraph features a methodological reduction of labour in the abstract to simple labour in the abstract. While this was already set up with ...

Marx turns the discussion from the production and trade of use values to the production and trade of (exchange) values. Marx is using his argument abo...

Section 2: THE TWO-FOLD CHARACTER OF THE LABOUR EMBODIED IN COMMODITIES Marx begins this short section with a quick recap. He reiterates that the comm...

Analysing how Naziism took hold and was so persuasive is quite a lot different from believing it to be correct. So some causal/cultural/socioeconomic ...

Section Summary: THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY: USE-VALUE AND VALUE (THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE MAGNITUDE OF VALUE) Commodities have two types of...

Marx finishes the section as he usually does; folding the concepts he exhibited of x into the material expression of x. Before it was value and physic...

Marx continues to give some examples which back up the relationship of socially necessary labour time and prices. He highlights that socially necessar...

Read the long post I made reconstructing Marx's argument for why labour time is determinative of direct price. There are also plenty of other posts wh...

I've written a lot about the distinction between real price and direct price. Real price is what something costs in money - a tin of Eldorado tuna cos...

Lastly, I don't see an analysis of commodity production which characterises it as the sole producer of values as something completely at odds with an ...

Another part of my response should have been; financial operations don't typically come along with the sale of commodities; they don't produce profit ...

Next Marx addresses a common confusion, reiterating the distinction between concrete labour and human labour in the abstract. It's homogenous because ...

Instead of my reconstruction of Marx's argument, he continues: I think I've highlighted the relevant points of it before, and explaining how 'x expres...

Anyone who thinks aggregate economic trends reduce entirely to psychology and culture must be completely baffled by the accumulation of wealth, redist...

I don't really see the point in what you're saying, it doesn't function as a criticism. It's like saying that studying organic chemistry is useless be...

Eh, I still find it convincing for the most part. On the back of a commodity which is sold below its direct price, in order to generate a profit other...

I don't mean to suggest that the causality is one way here - I think it's also part of the account that so long as commodities are exchanged as equiva...

Again, pay attention to the homogeneity of labour in the abstract; it is labour done by the everyperson and only insofar as the general properties of ...

Direct price is the lower boundary assuming sale of that commodity for profit. This is exactly the assumption I made. If it's not sale for profit of t...

Marx concludes his derivation of the distinction between use and exchange values: Which prefigures his argument for the alliance of labour and exchang...

Marx continues his argument for the externality of value to the commodities in an exchange. This time through an analogy. Updating the analogy somewha...

Since there was interest, I'm going to continue giving my exegesis of the book, and take a break from the mathematical modelling above. I'll return to...

That was one reason I put it in scarequotes.

Have a sketch of how to decompose a commodity into its constituents while still satisfying the above algebraic relationships, but it's more based on t...

In 2200 people are going to be looking to Gibson for 'essential insights into the nature of humankind' more than Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Appreciating 'the classics' is fine, reducing good literature to them is silly. In 200 years perhaps people will be lamenting that not enough people r...

It might be, but over 8 times reduced revenue due to piracy in music looks like a stretch to me. Even if you double the amount of people who admitted ...

https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/global-book-market-valued-at-143bn/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_music_industry_market_share_data Global ...

Principle (1), the ability to decompose commodities into constituent commodities and assembly prices is tricky. Might take some time to model it.

Mathematical note: the algebra of commodities and the algebraic structure of value. A tacit assumption in the mathematical model I've made so far is t...

Sketch for later: one feature of the relationship between direct and real price. As highlighted before, direct and real prices can (and usually do) di...

Mathematical note: the isomorphism of the measure of value and the standard of price. I've been trying to understand the connection between value and ...

Thank you lot for giving me good company all these years.

If I can be so intrusive, I'd recommend listening to Manuel De Landa's lectures on Youtube. De Landa sees things from a very Deluzian perspective, but...

Would people be interested in me continuing through the book too? I have a couple of summary posts of what's happened so far planned, and some ideas f...

NP. I've said elsewhere, I don't think it's 'Marx's Marx', I think it's very much 'fdrake's Marx'.

I'm pretty pleased with myself. I had the mathematical components sketched out a while ago, but it turns out that a few more years of reading other th...

I flubbed a bit here, and the use of 'physical processes' as a category of description doesn't really fit the bill. As I highlighted in the first post...

Marx notes that the divergence between value and price has some radical implications; the commodification of everything. Roughly how this works is tha...

I should say, if anyone wants to comment or ask questions please do. It's always more fun to have a discussion than to monologue.

I'm in agreement, and I think the point can be made more generally. I think, for Marx, capital doesn't just deviate from its laws through its internal...

Mathematical aside: on central limit theorems and emergent, yet inherent laws. The final part of the paragraph, which I bolded and italicised above, i...

The next paragraph is pretty dense, requires a lot of unpacking, and is very revealing over how Marx thinks about capital and precisely how Marx think...

Do you think this metaphysics of expression admits of different degrees of expression? The star is shiny -> The star shines -> the star luminesces wit...

I'm much happier with this than with Debord. Marx is much more straightforward a writer, too. It's easy to get somewhere in the vicinity of his intent...