Grundrisse thread

[Sympo]

I decided to make a thread about the manuscript where people can talk about Grundrisse.

Personally, I can barely understand anything written in it.

Does anyone know what Marx means with objective and subjective consumption?

[Anonymous]

Objective consumption would see you down the local Indian enjoying a vindaloo with your friends, if you have any. Subjective consumption is you alone at home with a Pot Noodle and the Socialist Standard. I think you'll find that's right.

[Young Master Smeet]

Grundrisse wrote:

Production is also immediately consumption. Twofold consumption, subjective and objective: the individual not only develops his abilities in production, but also expends them, uses them up in the act of production, just as natural procreation is a consumption of life forces. Secondly: consumption of the means of production, which become worn out through use, and are partly (e.g. in combustion) dissolved into their elements again. Likewise, consumption of the raw material, which loses its natural form and composition by being used up. The act of production is therefore in all its moments also an act of consumption. But the economists admit this. Production as directly identical with consumption, and consumption as directly coincident with production, is termed by them productive consumption. This identity of production and consumption amounts to Spinoza’s thesis: determinatio est negatio. [11] But this definition of productive consumption is advanced only for the purpose of separating consumption as identical with production from consumption proper, which is conceived rather as the destructive antithesis to production. Let us therefore examine consumption proper.

I assume this is the paragraph you're thinking of.Lets remember that this was not composed for publication, but is effectively Marx thinking outloud.If you want to skip the dialectics (like I just have):

Grundrisse wrote:

The conclusion we reach is not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity. Production predominates not only over itself, in the antithetical definition of production, but over the other moments as well. The process always returns to production to begin anew. That exchange and consumption cannot be predominant is self-evident. Likewise, distribution as distribution of products; while as distribution of the agents of production it is itself a moment of production. A definite production thus determines a definite consumption, distribution and exchange as well as definite relations between these different moments. Admittedly, however, in its one-sided form,production is itself determined by the other moments. For example if the market, i.e. the sphere of exchange, expands, then production grows in quantity and the divisions between its different branches become deeper. A change in distribution changes production, e.g. concentration of capital, different distribution of the population between town and country, etc. Finally, the needs of consumption determine production. Mutual interaction takes place between the different moments. This the case with every organic whole.

The point is that it is one seamless process, but production, not consumption is primary, and once production is sorted out, the methods and organisation of production, consumption and distribution follow.  I will add that this is obviously Social Production, before someone chimes in.  However, consumption, and otehr relationships, feed into productionj, it is not a one way process.

[Sympo]

Yeah, that's the paragraph.I still don't understand (that's my catchphrase on this forum).First off, what does "organisastion of production" mean? Is there like a  "concrete" way of explaining it?No worries if you don't answer, it might get tiresome and I still might fail to understand

[Young Master Smeet]

Organisation of production is the set of relationships and actions that go into producing goods: so that in our society would be the firms, the teams within the firms, the legal framework underpinning those firms, etc.  It's the way stuff happens.

[Sympo]

How can the production of goods predate the set of relationships/actions that go into producing those goods?

[Author]

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