Fundamentals of Marx: Simple and Expanded Reproduction

In Volume 2 of Capital, Marx introduced several schemas and tables that were designed to represent his model of reproduction on a social scale. To get a better sense for how both simple and expanded reproduction work in Marx's theory, we will go over the relevant mechanisms and dynamics.
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Patreon:
Twitter:
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Narration, script, and video graphics by "M."
Animated intro by Jack, co-host of the Auxiliary Statements podcast @AuxStatements on Twitter.
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Background music from ToastedTomatoes:
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Further Reading/Source Material:
Marx, K., Engels, F., Mandel, E., Fernbach, D., & Marx, K. (1990). Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 2). London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review. [See Chapters 18, 20, 21]

(Thank you to the people who pointed at the error in the first upload!)

[papichulo]

This doesn’t stop being a great video after watching 3 times.

[destroctiveblade]

Am I the only one here that thinks that this shit's too difficult ? I think you should use more examples and try to give more explanations of what each term is in order to make it easier to understand. Like even topology and linear algebra aren't this tough

[jan_kisan]

alright... i am on your side, and i am desperately motivated to understand this particular issue, and i am not a complete idiot, as i do understand some fairly complex things in other spheres, such as biology or linguistics, but i am totaly clueless as to what the hell you are saying for most of the video, i am sorry. all these identical letters with identical numbers together look identical to gibberish, and you could've just written lsdbksurebyvksgvrbls all over the screen with the same effect. with all due respect, comrade.

[ideologically_uncharged]

This was much easier to understand than turnover capital of the last video, though, I still have trouble internalizing expanded reproduction. Are there any simulations/games that can help explain this better? There's a game by Colestia called Crisis Theory which is very helpful to understand the general circuit of capital for individual capital. I think a game version for turnover capital and simple & expanded reproduction would be much help if anyone knows any.

[ErikaBell_Z]

I love this channel! I save so many of your videos as reference sources.

[folke_hagall]

i feel like in the graph at 4:56 the arrows in department two are the wrong way around,

C' -> P -> C seems to imply that derived capital, with added surplus value, is used in production to produce primitive capital, without surplus value, is it not the other way around? shouldn't the graph read C -> P -> C' ?

or have i misunderstood what the arrows mean?

[genesiscomuna]

This was extremely complex. I love it! I will watch again after looking at the references. Thank you!!

[josedavidgarcesceballos]

I mist confess this pops two questions for me:
1) I have never understood the marxian position about money/marxian monetary theory, which has a lot to do here...

2) is this somehow related to Marx idea about the ecological rift?

[dragoncrash]

New intro looks great! Awesome content as always ✊

[massstrikenow]

Great video! Much needed explanations of important concepts!!! 💗

[niboe]

woah this makes me really wanna dig into those later volumes of Capital

[mrz]

Your videos are very informative and have been so helpful, I love the use of graphics.

[DragmuseOfficial]

Keep up the great work and keep building the community! This is absolutely great to see! Do you have any plans for having podcasts, conversations, and involvement with growing more communities to build more of Marx's ideology?

Just interested in where you plan on going now and in the future!

[christopherhill]

On the notion of hordes, and on the disconnect between amount of value produced and consumed in order for capital to expand, I can see how this would be a contradiction in the capitalism of marxs time. Specifically a time when capitalists themselves may need to raise the funds in order to expand, or get a loan from a bank, which is the just the savings of the banks customers. In both cases this represents value produced but not consumed.

However in modern our financial system, banks dont need to have a reserve of cash (or gold) before being able to lend money. They can now simply create money by manipulating numbers on a balance sheet. In this case money is not taken out of circulation in order to expand, the expansion can happen immediately. And the repayments of the loans happen based on the already expanded system of production. Does this relationship still represent the same fundamental contradiction or something new, and if so what? Needless to say crises are still endemic, so a contradiction is still present.

[mauricecornforth]

Under the pretext of the global "pandemic" the following goals are achieved by the largest capital (all of them are aimed at overcoming a massive economic crisis, at the heart of which lies the crisis of overproduction, in other words, what we are witnessing is Great Depression 2.0 covered up with a "deadly virus"):

- closing down plants, factories and even whole industries (i.e. slowing down the production process in order to let old products gradually dissolve and stop the production of new ones; dealing with not only oversupply of products, resulting from incorrect distribution, but also services)

- downsizing workforce (because many workers are simply not needed when there is an overproduction of goods)


- cutting expenses on healthcare and education (millions of operations have been cancelled, medical staff has been getting laid off; schools and universities are switching to remote learning with plans to replace teachers with video lectures)

- fighting and slowing down the inevitable revolutionary uprise (protests and strikes resulting from downsizing, loss of small and medium businesses, loss of democratic rights etc) by banning social gatherings, putting muzzles on people's faces and demoralizing them

- intensifying economic exploitation (cancelling bonuses and freezing salaries; making people work overtime under the pretext of "difficult times for us all"; not paying wages for several months etc)

[newwavesyndicate]

Cute Intro, but maybe try doing a small preview as the first thing in the video, then do the intro and then go to whatever you wanted to talk about!

[pedrocavalcante]

Is there commodity production in socialism? Like in modern China?

[jasondavis]

You got some seriously dope ass teaching skills with your production. Keep it up.

[chriskarnes]

Some of these diagrams would be great for an infographic or poster

[plosh]

Is there still a discord server I could join?