a) hardly a valid reason to read The Capital: the correction of a comrade

Hope in Hopeless Times is the relentless granddaughter of a book, that his author want it to be, it “keeps on muttering Not Enough! Not Enough!“(p. 20) from the beginning to end. There is a blatant resemblance to the More! More! of capitalists. But I will focus on the impression, that the grandfather is Not Yet finished with his Critique, Not Yet confident in his hope: “An asking breaking all the answers. That is the subject of Hope”( p. 59). This asking is the Critique inherent in the first sentence of The Capital! Quad est demonstrandum.

Holloway senses, but does not quite believe it just yet. He switches back and forth: “we begin, as Marx did, by looking at the binding of our activity in terms of commodity[…] Or rather he began, as we have seen, by pointing out that in capitalist society richness exists in the form of the commodity” etc.( p. 82) I will soon start with that beginning.

Holloway maybe undermines his own intention of a more hopeful lecture, when he engages in the Sisyphean task of defining the object of Marx Critique, therefore missing it: “capital as self-expanding value is the object of Marx’s critique in Capital[,] a fetish that finds supreme expression in finance capital, money that breeds more money”( p. 118). It is Sisyphean, because The Fetishism of Commodities and its Secret are explained by Marx in Chapter One, where there is no mention of capital. And Holloway at least suspects that it is Sisyphean. He pushes the rock up the hill of derivation-deduction to the furthest points, to “reconcile the notion of a ‘law of a tendency’ with the idea of struggle”( p. 123). Promptly, he notices that “the contradiction between use value and value is a theme presented at the very beginning of Capital”( p. 127). T. W. Adorno wrote For Post-Socratics in Minima Moralia: “In a philosophical text, each part shall to be equally close to the centre.”¹ This could mean that the beginning of the Critique of Political Economy² is close to the end of The Capital, whatever that may be. And even Sisyphus, being equally close to the summit for eternity, can be considered a lucky man.

I would urge the author to really take himself seriously, and therefore to acknowledge the composition of the first sentence. Contemplating, critically, and of course “not because what Marx says is necessarily correct”( p. 83).

b) mediocre reasons to read Karl Marx

There are several reasons to start the lecture of The Capital, even a second time. Firstly, if “talk seriously about hope”( ibed.) is only possible when enough revolutionaries will have studied “a logic of destruction that is driving us towards annihilation”( p.83), those studies are a quasi surmountable bumper for that talk. Instead, this is my thesis, the self-destruction is declared, and criticised in one sentence, which anybody could remember.

Secondly, doing marxist philology, Marxology is fun. It is as fun as an inside joke, but it really is fun! The jokers just have to be aware about the entourage.

Thirdly, reading The Capital is not only a funny digression, but also beautiful, an argument for timeless beauty like a composition created and evolved over the years. That’s what Marx did for most of his lifetime with the Critique of Political Economy(, differently to Engels and to most Marxist archives). That is another argument for marxology, and it would lead to understand not only Marx’ analysis of “value as value-form, commodity as commodity-form[ as a proof for ] their historically transitory nature”( p. 116), but also to understand the book as an art-form. Critique in Marx words, wants to destroy its adversary, spreading hope through the beauty of destruction, the destruction of a Science, proven to be Occultism. The Capital is “an essential part of thinking about how we can break it”( p. 83), but not as a handbook for alternative economy, but as an inspiration.

The last but not the least argument for the contemplating lecture of the beginning in The Capital is the reason why Holloway sees the point break of hopelessness: “to break its source: the containment of richness within the commodity form.”( ibed.) But instead of contemplating, he digresses: “Marx develops this logic through a relentless process of derivation: if x, then y”, etc.( ibed), through the “state derivation debate”( p. 90), all the way until the shortened form: “if commodity, then extinction”( p. 91).

c) semantic digression close to the centre

More slowly for anyone to contemplate: wealth is synonym for richness. There are societies in which a mode of production rules, governs or prevails. Those societies have wealth. That wealth presents itself. Its (re)presentation is a monstrous collection or “immense accumulation of commodities”. One commodity is a unit or an elementary form. And that mode of production, we call it capitalist. Those are the parts composing the sentence, and even after playing with translations, they are transparent.

Why is it then, that in the second sentence “our investigation must therefore begin” at all? If there was no crime to be found, any investigation would be an end in itself. Semantically, the subject is wealth and the predicate is its self-presentation. That is already mysterious, how can wealth present itself?

The fantasy is that a student with knowledge and all, bothers to make that thought again, alone, honestly. Contemplative, ask yourself what questions come to mind, after which of course queues the analysis of the commodity!?!

E.g.

• why is there an immense, even monstrous, accumulation of (self-)presented wealth, while i.e. “I read of ten migrants who died from asphyxiation when they were left piled up with about eighty others inside a trailer in the parking lot of a Walmart in San Antonio, Texas”( p. 13)? (Here, we don’t have to ask, why are “migrants”, or why is Texas?? But acknowledge the mere antinomy of wealth and death.)

• what is a commodity? Well, I have a critical understanding of it, why should I consider my every thing a unit of an immense accumulation?

• How can a mode of production govern?

• John Holloway asked if there a richness different from wealth!?

Many other questions can derive from translations and from the interests or focus of the reader

Questions are of course the beginning of any interested and interesting lecture.

d) a complete Critique and

Moreover, Marx offers a beautiful reflection in actu of what Critique can do, too. When? Already! How? Again, what’s the reason to analyse a single commodity?? It seems very obvious: every analysis has to start somewhere, and the unit of an immense accumulation seems a relatively good starting point. On the other hand, the single “commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood”( Cvol1 p. 47), boring!

If the author begins there, he must have a reason, or is would any starting point be equally valid? The study of Hope in Hopeless Times urges hope to be educated and to understand how “the commodity is a struggle to contain richness, while richness is the resistance-revolt that reaches for its own emancipation from the commodity form.”( p. 103) All those and many more are plain and simple, straightforward reasons to begin with the analysis.

Many, probably most of the readers of The Capital in this millennium are taken in by Marx like that, eager to learn. This essay will have surpassed the authors expectation if one person reads one sentence because of it. One more Time: what is there that needs an investigation? Holloway names the richness and its relation to commodity. In order to understand “the fact that richness cannot be contained within money”( p. 73p), we need to understand money, “our inadequacy-for-capital,” etc.( ibed.) needs an understanding of capital, and overall “theory of hope requires an understanding of the weakness or crisis of its object, the hoped-against”( p. 115)! Even more reasons to finally begin with the analysis of a commodity!!

And why is that again?? Holloway looks for an understanding of crisis, which has thrown him back to the beginning. He discovers an antagonism, and that leads back to crisis. “For hope to be realistic and indeed scientific, our struggles must be the crisis of that which we struggle against.”( p. 132p) In parts, Hope in Hopeless Times leaves the reader desperate, maybe even desperately looking forward to finally study The Capital by Marx.

I digress once more, shortly, before the analysis may begin: throughout Hope in Hopeless Times, there are parts or passages that are powerful, empowering and almost poetic: “thinking hope is January-thinking”( p. 19), that suggest choices, activity and possibility, “to walk on a tightrope over an abyss without being afraid to look down”( ibid.) Holloway does not quite allow them to appear, drowning them in endless clarifications and definitions: “certainly the only way to bring it about is through the recognition, creation, expansion, multiplication and confluence of anti-capitalist cracks. Yes, but when I woke up this morning, the monster was still there”( p. 20).

e) an interested lecture

I digressed, but only to explain that there are numerous reasons beforehand to read The Capital: be it the fear of monsters and the hope for whatever reason, that a book can change it. Or be it practical interests, i.e. of a unionist struggling for higher wages. This, too, will be better served by specialised literature, as is proven by the immense accumulation of those, by the state of the labour movement, and by its disinterest in The Capital. Or be it, complementary to disinterest, the fascination of a book that is widely regarded as complicated, along with many other expectations or prejudices, which prohibit any contemplative lecture. Engel’s notions of “the Bible of the working class”( Cvol1 p. 20) and that “Marx discovered the law of development of human history”³, contribute to the eager inquisition of a book: the critical examination of that “law” on one side, prudence of cultism on another, eventually completed by some kind of interest on the last.

The seminary guided by Holloway left many students with an interest in more, more, more: studies of Holloway, or studies of cracks, or studies of methods to study cracks. Holloway urges “not so much a question of studying movements from below, but of following our inadequacy into capital itself.”( p. 74) The lecture of The Capital – Critique of Political Economy might have become interesting. Finally, we have a goal: studies, knowledge and understanding, our investigation can begin!?

f) the riddle is already solved

A brief moment of contemplation might take place, because Holloway emphasizes the first sentence: “The term ‘wealth’ I reserve for the commodified form of richness”( p. 82). Following this translation, opening the book, the lecture begins:

The Capital

Critique of Political Economy,

Book One,

Part 1: Commodities and Money,

Chapter 1: Commodities,

Section 1: The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value( The Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value):

The richness of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities’⁴, its unit being a single commodity.

Different from Holloway’s lecture: “in capitalist societies, richness exists in the form of the commodity”( p. 82), Marx notes that richness does not only exist but presents itself, which already describes a fetishist understanding the thing that seems alive, be it wealth or richness. Capitalist societies are called societies in which a mode of production prevails. Marxologists can be nitpicking about that.

But do you remember? Is there anything worth an “investigation”, or do you just want to start, to understand, accumulate knowledge?

Many possible questions are almost self-explanatory, and do not give a reason for further investigation. E.g.

• wealth – or richness is surplus of human activity that could be used, but its use is negated by the predicate of the sentence.

• The pile of stuff contains something interesting for most, at least enough for all, and yet it deprives everybody from it – everybody knows that, nobody stands in front of a pile of commodities and thinks: mine.

• A mode can’t in fact prevail. But everybody knows that it does; an entire apparatus takes care of it, which is:

• the “society”…

Is there only one remaining riddle in the first sentence?

• What’s the meaning of “capitalistic”?

Again semantically spoken, it is the least important part of the sentence. If knowledge was the principle goal, why start with the analysis of the commodity, why not google capitalism instead? Why is The Capital subtitled Critique and then launches an “investigation”?

g) final thought

My thesis is, that no philosophy, art or science can ever replace the individual effort, decision and answer to the question: is a society even possible, which is ruled by a mode of production, whose richness presents itself, and then “exists” as a self-negation.

Most readers were already decisively anti-capitalist before the lecture. “Struggle against the system that is killing us has no need of hope to justify it”, writes Holloway on page 25. Obviously he needs a justification. Honestly, neither am I actually being killed. We are by no means alone, and aren’t those wonderful times, in which we can contemplate justifications, enjoying an investigation with the hope of Being Right.

Marx offered Critique of Political Economy, and invites “us” to do “our investigation” together, with his lifetime worth of research, wit and talent being a guide. Its a good lecture, not mysteriously but severely, polemically and even funnily dismantling political economy as an obscure science.

It has however no intention of lifting the weight of the decision, whether or not to do anything necessary to eradicate the predicate of the first sentence in reality. This does not mean that only those, who are driven by an instinct of survival can understand the Critique. But if you are satisfied with the way things are, you won’t be coherently convinced – you will be mentally tortured throughout the entire book: trying to get your head around the logic of an irrational object.