Explain the bookclub: We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year and discussing it in weekly threads. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included in this particular reading club, but comrades are encouraged to do other solo and collaborative reading.) This bookclub will repeat yearly. The three volumes in a year works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46⅔ pages a week.

I’ll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at [email protected] ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there’s always next year.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7 – Week 8 – Week 9 – Week 10 – Week 11 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20

Week 21, May 20-26. From Volume 2, we are reading Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Part 1 (‘Distinctions of Form’) of Chapter 8

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/index.htm

Discuss the week’s reading in the comments.

  • SteamedHamberder [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    6·
    1 month ago

    This kind of goes back to last week with C-C’, but is the Red Lobster bankruptcy a textbook example of a Marxist crisis? Seafood investor keeps buying mp to get commodity shrimp ©. The only way to pay for the L and mp of commodity shrimp is to sell restaurant shrimp (C’). So the seafood investor buys a stake in Red Lobster to unload restaurant shrimp which benefits the seafood capitalist by allowing them to pay off their debts on boats, fishing labor, and packing equipment, but they sell at a loss from the restaurant perspective so that Red Lobster loses money.

    • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      From what I understand, the real reason that Red Lobster went bankrupt is because it was bought out by a private equity firm, Golden Gate Capital. They used a “leveraged buyout” which added a ton of debt to Red Lobster’s books. They expected increased profits after the acquisition, but the profits remained stable instead of increasing. As a result, Golden Gate Capital could barely pay off its interest payments on the immense debt. I don’t think leveraged buyouts even existed within Marx’s lifetime (Google says the first one happened in 1955). The endless shrimp meme definitely did hurt Red Lobster, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, just the last of many previous problems.

      The lesson to take from Red Lobster is that capitalism’s goal is not to build institutions and maintain them at a high standard of quality. Capitalism’s goal is to build a brand and then milk its customers for all the money they can. Once people trust a brand, its owners will 1) decrease quality to cut costs, and 2) increase prices to raise revenue. Today we call this “enshittification,” but it’s really just the natural course of capitalist development. And if there is a rare “good” capitalist who keeps the quality of their product high and the prices low, as soon as they die, the company will be bought up by private equity, and milked dry.

      Here’s a good time-stamped video explaining the Red Lobster debt crisis: https://youtu.be/I17aERAQPfc?t=425