Marxism and Society

"It goes without saying that the proletarian, i.e.; the man who, being without capital and rent, lives purely by labor, and by a one-sided, abstract labor, is considered by political economy only as a worker.Political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the workhouse beadle."

Capital - 1) stored up labor: the capital is the immediate result of market economy and the few who possess productive means. In one sense, the capitalists, those who base their gain on the wage labour, are the people who are accumulating the labour, however, not of their own, but the labour of the workers they page wages to. And paradoxically, despite what the political economists say, the workers to whom the labour belongs to are not the people who have control over their labour. Their labour is merely a commodity to be sold and bought. Other than selling and turning their labour into capital for the capitalists and the subsistence for their survival and externalization, their labour cannot be accumulated. Therefore, as stored up labour, the workers are the possessions and the capitalists the owners of those possessions--stored up labour.

2) the command of labor: (continue from previous point) this relationship between the workers and the capitalists illustrate the second aspect of capital--it is also the power over labour and its products. The power comes from the productive relationship between the worker and the capitalists-- the buying and the selling of products and labour. The capitalists is always the seller to whom the labour is sold. They have the power to take the labour away from the workers and to turn them into more buying power and profits. Therefore, it is only through the abolishment of buying and selling, and the whole market economy, that the capital can be destroyed.

1) "The political economist tells us that everything is bought with labor and that capital is nothing but accumulated labor."
2) "Capital is thus the governing power over labor and its products."

Labor as Commondity - 1) same as slavery? 2) not true commodity

1) "Is the theory of labor as a commodity anything other than a theory of disguised bondage? "
2) "The capitalists is always free to use labor, and the workers is always forced to sell it...labor can neither be accumulated nor even be saved, unlike true commodities...it is a commodity with the most unfortunate attributes...it is not the free result of a free transaction. The present economic regime simultaneously lowers the price and the remuneration of labor; it perfects the worker and degrades the man."

Karl Marx, Selected Writings, Oxford University Press

Meanings of Alienation

1) Objective Alienation - the object does not belong to him and will be used against him. The result of his labour is in/of the form of things. It inevitably separtes from him. Also since the object is a part of the capital that forces him to participate in the production of extracting things from his labour, the object confronts the worker as an alien and hostile object.

a. "the object that labour produces, its product, confronts it as an alien being."

b. "the externalization of the worker in his product implies not only that his labour becomes an object, and becomes a self-sufficient power opposite him, that the life that he has lent to the object affronts him, hostile and alien."

2) Subjective Alienation - The act always comes first. Follwing the act of production then it comes the product. As much as the product itself exploits the worker as alien and hostile, the act of production itself is the allowing--the set-in-motion of which is alien and hostile to the worker. The ends of the worker in his productive process is also a source of alien to him. He works non-volunteerily in the sense that the whole essence of his productive process is merely the mean to stay alive and to continue to be a subject of exploitation. He no longer works for self actualization bur the surpression of his self actualization.

a. "labour is exterior to the worker..not voluntary but compulsory...he does not belong to himself in his labour but to someone else...result only feels himself freely active in his animal function of eating, drinking..."

b. "Also in the act of production, inside productive activity itself. how would the worker be able to affront the product of his work as an alien being if he did not alienate himself in the act of production itself? For the product is merely the summary of the activity of production. So if the product of labour is externalization, production itself must be active externalization, the externalization of activity, the activity of externalization. The alienation of the object of labour is only the resume of the alienation, the externalization in the activity of labour itself."

Def. Species-Being - that in which sets us apart from animal, a sense of "we", something higher than just oneself. we are intrinsically communal in the essence of our being. Because the essence of each individual human being is the communla whole in which he or she belongs, each is free and universal as far as he views himself through his essence, and not his individuality.

"Man is a species-being not only in that practically and theoretically he makes both his own and other species into his objects (like animals), but also, and this is only another way of putting the same thing, he relates to himself as to the present, living species in that he relates to himself as to a universal and therefore free being."

3) Alienated from Species - The end of human activity (production) has turned into greed (for the capitalists) and feeding (for the proletarians). Each is alienated from the human essence. The productive relationship is no longer universal and mutally supportive but individual and antagonistic.

"alienated labour makes the species-being of man, both nature and the intellectual faculties of his species, into a being that is alien to him, into a means for his individual existence. it alienates from man his own body, nature exterior to him, and his intellectual being, his human essence."

4) Alienation of man from man - Finally, the whole life of each individual becomes the violation of each other and themselves.

"An immediate consequence of man's alienation from the product of his work, his vital activity and his species-being, is the alienation of man from man."

Marxs and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

(to be done)

The German Ideology

human animal distinction:

"The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature....Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

Capital, Volume One, Karl Marx

primitive accumulation - how is capital possible in the first place? This is the central question that led to the discussion about primitive accumulation in Marx's Capital. Marx criticizes Adam Smith's assumption that capital comes into being simply as the result of "previous accumulation." Rather, as Marx tells us, primitive accumulation is brought into being through violence and exploitation. In fact, "so-called primitive accumulation is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production." In other words, this process is the entire history that led to the formation of capital society: the slave owning of the feudalist society and the emergence of the free workers. The slaves were deprived of their physical freedom for the accumulation of the wealth for the slave owners, and the free workers, although they were free of their physical existence, they have no choice but to subsume to land owners and guilds. Therefore the accumulation of wealth for the few is anything but "idyllic." It is done through the violence of divorcing the many from productive means and proclaiming the ownership of productive means to the few. However, it is also worth it to mention that the final form of primitive accumulation-its silent and non-expressive-violent form, primitive accumulation never stops. "Advance" capitalist production educates the working class and trains them into a particular habit, an ideology. Therefore, in primitive accumulation, violence and exploitation isn't always done expressively. It can be done by imposing an ideology and more dangerously, letting the workers to accept it themselves.

"So-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. it appears as 'primitive' because it forms the pre-history of capital, and of the mode of production corresponding to capital."

"Free workers, in the double sense that they neither form part of the means of production themselves, as would be the case with slaves, serfs, etc., nor do they own the means of production, as would be the case with self-employed peasant proprietors. The free workers are therefore free from, unencumbered by, any means of production of their own. with the polarization of the commodity-market into these two classes, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are present…the process, therefore, which creates the capital-relation can be nothing other than the process which divorces the worker from the ownership of the conditions of his own labor; it is a process which operates two transformations, whereby the social means of subsistence and production are turned into capital, and the immediate producers are turned into wage-labor."

Proletarianization in England (how is proletarians created) (enclosure, clearing of the estates, bloody legislation) - The proletarianization in England is the early process of capital formation based on the creation, exploitation, and legalization of the free workers that were created at the end of Feudalist society. The process begins as the land lords desire more land and profit from growing sheep. They are no longer satisfied by the old feudal loyalty code and governance. They confronts the kings and the Parliament by enclosing the common lands and "forcibly driving out the weaker and small land owning peasantry." Therefore, a mass of land and property deprived peasants are put onto the wage-labor market. Similarly, the representative of the clan head (the kings of Scottish Highlands) fought back by clearing of the estate and reclaiming lands as their private properties. They further contributed to the development of a wage labor market. Lastly, with the Reformation movement, the dissolution of the monasteries also added more to the proletarianization process. However, the proletarianization does not become complete without the force of legislation. The legislation need to compel those new born proletariats to work as wage-labor and train them to accept this new system of production and social relations. They used law, instrumentally, to make the exploitation legal. It is only after this final step that the new productive relationship becomes stabilized-therefore, become a norm.

a. Enclosure and Clearing of the Estates:
"The spoliation of the Churuch's property, the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the theft of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of ruthless terrorism, all these things were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. they conquered the fields for capitalist agriculture, incorporated the soil into capital, and created for the urban industries the necessary supplies of free and rightless proletarians."

b. Bloody Legislation
"The agricultural folk first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded and tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws into accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage-labor."

"The rising bourgeoisie needs the power of the state, and uses it to 'regulate' wages, i.e. to force them into the limit suitable for making a profit, to lengthen the working day, and to keep the worker himself at his normal level of dependence. This is an essential aspect of primitive accumulation."

Colonialism and the development of capitalism -colony is a necessary for the development of capitalism as the need of demand, raw material and labor cannot be met only through the exploitation on homeland. Whereas in imperialism that a nation economically dominates over another, colonialism is the crude form of imperialism-it is also actual political domination over another country. Since the political domination can only be done through war and forced conquest, colonialism and the development of capital are then both based on, not only as domestic violence, but also as international violence. In order to maintain and accelerate the process in which capital grows, the exploitation of the worker, common property, resources, and hostile relationship must also expand. Therefore, through colonial expansion, the capital gains slaves for its process of production, market oversea for its need for demand in order to balance the ever growing supply, and finally, the "free" wealth and raw material from other lands. The result of this expansion and violence is, on one hand, the acceleration of capital accumulation but on the other hand, paradoxically, it is also the negation of its own existence through the socialization of capital. Taking the slave trading city of Birmingham as an example, the slave trading process is no longer simply a process of capital accumulation but it has became a social activity in itself as well. What is involved in the process includes not only the buying and selling of slaves as an economical activity but also as a social activity. The process itself has gained a life-deeply rooted in the misery, pain, and suffering inherited in this slave trading process. It is inevitably, while the capital is being accumulated, the antagonism between the exploiting and the exploited class grows stronger. In every aspect, colonialization then accelerates the process of the awakening of the proletariat. It is, therefore, a historical necessity that the growth of capital contains the destruction of capital. As Marx puts it, as the "negation of a negation."

Conquest and colonization
Primary points
1. Violence, political domination - State and colonial system.
2. Necessary role of slavery and colonialism.

Userer's capital and merchant's capital, p. 914.
"conquest as chief moments of primitive accumulation (read 915). Acceleration of process, hothouse, also p. 918.
"concentration of capital (read 918). Who profited from colonialism? The colonial system is the same kind of legal system as the bloody legislation. It is extraeconomic support that is needed until economic power can take over. European capital needed colonialism for a certain period but then became autonomous.
Slavery, pp. 924-925.
p. 929 - dialectic: centralization -> world market -> workers' power -> comunism.
pp. 935-936: open spaces of settler colonies; p. 934: common land.

Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx

1) subjective and objective interaction of history - the agent and the given

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a night mare on the brain of the living."

2)repetition in history - it is not an evil cycle kind of thing. new things come in-the subjective development: it is still "man makes history…" "but not as they please"-the past is which they cannot escape. but CAN be used to the advantage of the subjective development. what is the reality that is being repeated? as the appearance being class and economic conflict and the result of war. The cycle moves toward development (sort of Darwinian Revolutionary theory)but it is one with value and rule-to-world norm, not that of the physical world.

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
(therefore implying the second always better than the first, a progressive development of history)

revolution:

1) the proletarian revolution compared to the bourgeois revolution - it starts from scratch. how is starting anew possible here? what is the ghost?

"Thus the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in imagination, not of fleeing from its solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not of making its ghost walk about again."

2) political struggle is economic struggle - the political is about power, and power only as an utility to a particular interest-economic interest of the particular class-which is the essence of their social existence. how is this relate to the split b/t the civil and the state?

"upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thoughts and views of life. the entire class creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out of the corresponding social relations."

"they do their real business as the party of Order, that is, under a social, not under political title, as representatives of the bourgeois world-order, not as knights of errant princesses, and the bourgeois class against other classes, not as royalists against the republicans."

The paradox of Bourgeoisie - econ interests need stability thus state power. Political interests need parliamentary power. The literary of B class represents the political interest, the rest represents economic Interest. To get economic interest, necessarily needs to annihilate political interest. Therefore, the development of parliament, when looked on retrospectively, is a development toward its own destruction. Revolution is the bursting point when this destruction comes (but Hardt mentions it doesn't have to come at bad time-so it can come anytime? But isn't there a requirement for it to start anyway? i.e. in feudal society can't jump to communist) also question on latter part, who represent the parliament? The source of stagnation i.e. the royalists and the legitimists who want monarchy? Or the political interest of the bourgeoisie?

1) economic interest overrides political interest

"the parliamentary part of order…clamour for tranquility…on the other hand, the extra-parliamentary mass of the bourgeoisie, by its servility towards the President, by its vilification of parliament, by its brutal maltreatment of its own press, invited Bonaparte to suppress and annihilate its speaking and writing section (which represents its political interest)…in order that it might then be able to pursue its private affairs with full confidence in the protection of a strong and unrestricted government. It declared unequivocally that it longed to get rid of its own political rule in order to get rid of the troubles and dangers of ruling."

2) paradox of Bourgeoisie as a part of the necessary historical process

pt. 1 the last struggle of the parliamentary republic-i.e. the attempt of fusion between royalists and legitimists

"the parliamentary republic was more than the neutral territory on which the two factions of the French bourgeoisie, Legitimists and Orleanists, large landed property and industry, could dwell side by side with equal rights. It was the unavoidable condition of their common rule, the sole form of state in which their general class interest subject to itself at the same time both the claims of their particular factions and al the remaining classes of society…their (royalists and legitimists) exclusive factional interests was to become the expression of their common class interest…the republic…as if the Legitimist monarchy could ever become the monarchy of the industrial bourgeois or the bourgeois monarchy ever become the monarchy of the hereditary landed aristocracy."

Pt. 2 the rise of bourgeoisie, the social democrats

"the aristocracy of finance immediately obvious that their interest coincide with the interests of the state power…the industrial bourgeoisie, in its fanaticism for order…proved that the struggle to maintain its public interests, its own class interests, its political power, only troubled and upset it, as it was a disturbance of private business…the commercial bourgeoisie raged against any parliamentary struggle (with the executive power) of being the cause of stagnation…

Pt. 3 the place of bourgeoisie revolution in the process of revolution

"the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still journeying through purgatory. It does its work methodically…First, it perfected the parliamentary power, in order to be ale to overthrow it. Now it has attained this, it perfects the executive power, reduces it to its purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it has done this second half of its preliminary work, Europe will leap from its seat and exultantly exclaim: Well grubbed, old Mole(=>revolution energy, sort of)!

The lumpenproletariat - the unemployed, thieves, etc. the Dec. 10th Society (so Bonaparte can use universal suffrage to make them vote for him). Represented by Bonaparte, whom they find their interest being protected. A symbiosis relationship.

"the small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is increased by France's bad means of communication and by the poverty of the peasants."

"they form a class…no national bound and no political organization among them. They do not form a class. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power that protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power subordinating society to itself."

The Civil War in France, Karl Marx

Political representation - as political representation for the Parliament and the Party of Order is really a representation of a class's economic interest, the political representation of the commune is a representation of the uprooting of class in general: "The commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of a class rule." However, this uprooting of the class comes in two stages: one in the dong of it and one in the actually attaining of it. In the doing of it, political representation must take its "political" character seriously. It must first take the place of the ruling class. At this moment, the political representation remains to be political. Through universal suffrage, equal wages and democratic judicial processes, the political representation of the Commune is, however, pushed to its limit. It will become the tool that the workers use to transform the relation of production. And it will takes everyone equally and seriously without the exploitation from one by another. As each labor become more and more emancipated and "every man becomes a working man," the productive labor, the once-upon-a-time "class of the workers" will cease to be a class. And with this fundamental change, the political representation of the Commune may cease to be a political representation, for it having no political opposition. Instead, it transforms into a social representation-a representation of the life of a society as one single entity without class antagonism.

About Universal Suffrage:
"instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in the Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business."

About its purpose:
"The commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class-rule. with labor emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to be a class attribute."

Later development at the end of Civil War:
"Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform; the national Governments are one as against the proletariat!"
"Our Association (International Working Men's Association) is nothing but the international bound between the most advanced working men in the various countries of the civilized world."

History (objective part and subjective part) - foreseeable direction and un-foreseeable subjective influence make history. For the subjective part, you need to do it at the right time, otherwise it doesn't work. But this comes from two levels. On the level of the larger historical development, you necessarily have to do things at the right time i.e. you can't develop communist revolution right after the bourgeoisie revolution overthrown the Feudalist society. However, on the level of immediate historical development, it is more tricky. Marx writes in his letter to Dr. Kugelmann that the Parisian revolution should not have been done because the condition not mature yet. But he praises this attempt anyway, "what elasiticity, what historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians!" This revolution, whether successful or not, is a historical attempt out of the subjective force of human will, which itself is a product of the objective historical condition -class antagonism. This class antagonism, more specifically, the working class struggle, is the energy of history's development. But there is discrepancy, and this is where the objective part of historical development comes in. "World history would indeed be very easy to make, if the struggle were taken up only on condition of infallibly favorable chances. History is constituted, besides its subjective force, by "accidents." "These accidents themselves fall naturally into the general course of development and are compensated again by other accidents." In other words, the accidents also define what history IS. What Marx praises: the "elasticity of the Parisians," is therefore the accidents that "accelerate" the development of a working class society. This accident becomes historically meaningful through the mysterious (because Marx does not explain) interplay between the subjective and objective force of history.
Another way of describing this subjective and objective interplay of history is the rule-to-world constitution (subjective force) and the world-to-rule constitution (objective force) that John Haugland describes in his "Truth and Rule-Following" chapter in Having Thought.

"…to smash it…this is what our heroic Party Comrades in Paris are attempting. what elasticity, what historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice."

"World history would indeed by very easy to make, if the struggle were taken up only on condition of infallibly favorable chances. it would, on the other hand, be of a very mystical nature, if "accidents" played no part. these accidents themselves fall naturally into the general course of development and are compensated again by other accidents. But acceleration and delay are very dependent upon such "accidents," which include the "accident" of the character of those who at the first stand at the head of the movement."

Smashing the State - the proletariat first has to become the state power, then abolish it with following steps.

Define state:
"the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another…Dictatorship of the Proletariat…Paris Commune." (This in intro by Engels) question: Does Marx also think the Paris Commune is a dictatorship?

The State under Bourgeoisie rule
"At the same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class antagonism between capital and labor. the State Power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism."

Abolishing State: pushing representation to a limit so it no longer is a representation.

1. "The Commune formed of municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms."
2. "…public service had to be done at workmen's wages."
3. "Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government." question: how is this proven. so everybody can take the police car? how is collective ownership proven?
4. "disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies."
5. "the judicial functionaries...magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable."

"Keynes and the Capital Theory of the State" by Antonio Negri

working class revolt and capitalist restructuring - the working class gains political autonomy in the form of a state and other organized workers' unions. This development is shown through the Russian Revolution and other places throughout Europe. In order to maintain the workers for their benefits, the capitalists of Europe isolate the working-class state by external isolation. At the same time, the revolution in Russia is only a parallel to the many changes of the working-class within the capitalist states. Pure isolation or oppression is no longer plausible in this new historical situation. The capitalists must realize the working class, through its many unified organizations, have the strength to effect the capitalists in turn. "At every level of capitalist organization there was now a deeper, more threatening and contradictory presence of the working class: a class that is was now autonomous and political consistent." In other words, the working class has developed into a separate entity whereas before, it had no internal existence: an existence that allows it to act together as one collective force. Therefore, in order to oppress this new organized working class, the capitalists need to take the interest of the working class into account, however, not for the workers' benefit, but only as a mean to maintain the equilibrium that is necessarily required for the capitalistic mode of production and profit gain. More specifically, the capitalists realize the strength of the Factor Trade Councils, the Workers' Unions, and the rise of the Soviet. They realize they cannot stop them from happening, but what they can do is to restructure the State and the mode of production so they transform this new opposing energy into a beneficial one.

"working-class world revolution was internalized within the given composition of the class. At every level of capitalist organization there was now a deeper, more threatening and contradictory presence of the working class: a class that was now autonomous and politically consistent."

Technological reform of capital and political reform of capital - the central strategy of technological reform of capital is the "eradication of [the worker's party] from within the [working] class." The idea is to further the division of labor-not only for the purpose of more efficient production, but also for the purpose of deskillizing the workers. By Taylor's invention of assembly line, the workers who used to have more skills now can only do automatic work. The skills then become a possession of the capitalist. The workers would not able to take important hierarchical role in the production process. Instead, they become num and automatic, losing their ability to organize. Also, by Ford' invention of the wage system, the workers easily falls into the trap of the capitalist ideology. But certainly, technological reform is not enough for the capitalists' project of subverting the opposing force. They have to also to take control politically. The capitalists need "to create a new political equilibrium thus meant taking account of this new situation, these new relations of force." Keynes' idea of the interventionist State is how the new equilibrium is brought about. An interventionist State is based on the acceptance of the new dynamic of class struggle. It paradoxically admits the necessary existence of working class as a political force. But moreover, the interventionist State really represent the interest of the capitalist by feeding the threat of the working class to incorporate it as a part of the new capital system. therefore the State becomes a productive process itself. it produces social welfare system, it makes law to sustain the capitalist mode of production, and it does whatever it takes to maintain the equilibrium between supply and demand. Therefore, unlike any previous capitalist political reform, the state no longer represent the interest of the capital, it rather directly involves in the production of capital socially-social capital.

Technological-wise:
"to eradicate that party from within the class: this was the aim of capitalist reorganization, the specific form of counterattack against 1917 in the West."

Political-wise:
"The working class was to be controlled functionally within a series of mechanisms of equilibrium that world be dynamically readjusted from time to time by a regulated phasing of the "incomes revolution."

"to create a new political equilibrium thus meant taking account of this new situation, these new relations of force."

Grundrisse (Foundations of Critique of Political Economy), Karl Marx

I. Production (capitalist) - is the eternalization of historic relations of production. i.e. is an abstraction. forgetting the past, naturalizing the present.
produces: 1) product 2) way of life (see relation to consumption)

II. Property = instrument of production = objectified past labor = capital = forgotten by political economy.

Since production in political economy is understood without its historical content, production in political economy is abstracted production.
(what does it mean that ther is no production in general but only particular branches of production: agriculture, etc?)

In PE, what goes with production is then:

1) production is appropriation of nature
2) appropriation (privatization) is a precondition of production
3) need protection of acquisitions

III. Relation b/t production, distribution, exchange, and consumption

A. Production and consumption

By itself: Production = consumption of life forces, means of production (producer objectify himself) = creates external object

By itself: Consumption = production of need (the object he created personifies itself) = creates internal object

Together: (4 different ways to look at the relationship)

1)looping system:

production ---creates (+)---> material ===negate(-)===> desire;

consumption ---creates(+)---> need ===negate(-)===> material

(antithesis of each other?)

(where does reproduction fall in here?)

2) their immediate identity:

Consumption produces production - 1) a product becomes a real product by being consumed 2) creates needs for new production 3) produces the producer's inclination by beckoning to him as an aim-determining need.

production produces consumption - 1) furnishes the material and the object for consumption 2) gives consumption its specificity, character.3) produces "not only the object but also the manner of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively. Production thus creats the consumer"(92 middle). therefore production supplies the material for the need but also the a need for material.

3) production --> consumption --> production --> consumption --> production .....

one as the mean for another, one mediate another, without one, cannot have the other

4) each becomes itself through its relationship with the other

5) it's a social process, creates social identity

B. Distriubtion and production

structure of production --- determines ---> distribution

through mode of production:

1. who owns what? --> capital: 1) as agent of production 2) as form of distribution (source of income)
2. what is produced --> capital: 1) as products

C. Money

D. Criticism of Adam Smith, PE

(The backward history, human anatomy contains key to the ape, money in Greece, abstract labor, how these illustrate backward history?)

(what was that about concept?)