Weep, pitiful Song of mine

Water jug belonging to a militant of the Paris Commune, 1870-1871. From the Franco Prussian War, made in Holz.

A bowl with pictures of representatives from the 1875 Gotha Congress, c. 1900.

Let me show you a glimpse of the Karl Marx and Capitalism exhibit, put on by the German Historical Museum. I wasn’t aware it was even being held…But made it anyway, fortunately.

Marx watches over Liebknecht declaring the Free Socialist Republic of Germany at the Neuer Marstall..!

Luxemburg’s apartment in Berlin. Just a small plaque outside an inhabited building

While I was exploring around Berlin I covered Luxemburg and Liebknecht—assassinated in retaliation for the January 1919 uprising by Ebert, Noske et al. Both of their memorials are located along the Landwehr Canal. Luxemburg’s dead body was literally just dumped under this bridge. By now, I’m sure you’ve happened to hear that — “Mannheimer leads straight to Dachau”. So please note the Monument to Europe’s murdered Jews—near the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate—which provides us all an opportunity for self reflection, inspired by a particularly “dark time” in Germany’s (unique) history. Quite the sight— absolutely devastating…

- Goethe, letter to F. W. Reiner, August 1808.

- J. G. Fichte, “The Vocation of Man”, 1799.

Hegel, Fichte, Brecht, and Marcuse at Dorotheenstadt cemetery in Berlin.

Marx’s own copy of Capital, with personal, handwritten notes— first edition from 1867, temporarily displayed at the Karl Marx and Capitalism exhibit, held by the German Historical Museum in Berlin, February 10-August 21, 2022.

Most fundamentally, Marx explains much better what I’m trying to get at on “value before capitalism.” And per Marx’s suggestion, pre- capitalist commodity exchange, based on embedded labor time, was at the margins of society. Re capitalist society, however, all products that have use value are exchanged based on embedded labor time. And, of course, requires a “modified” understanding of the value of a commodity (which brings us to production price). Marx not only foretold virtually everything significant in contemporary, bourgeois economics— such as the dynamics of supply and demand on price that he is accused of ignoring— but did so more methodically and went far beyond…

As Marx states… I think in Grundrisse… while prices revolve around value, it is “only by coincidence” that price exactly matches value. And, of course, this is true for both commodities and prices of production, as the price of machinery, raw materials, and labor power also only revolves around value. Indeed, while many posited a theory of value based on labor before Marx, Marx’s major contribution — and his “law of value” — provides a foundation for understanding how and why prices deviate from value…

“Of all life water is the primal source” … 💧

According to Heinrich’s special understanding, value is used only for abstract theorizing — a notion which, by the way, I have criticized for a long time. My suggestion, on the other hand, is to build the debate by invoking the writings of Engels who, I feel, clarifies a key tenet of Marx’s economic theory by speculating Marx’s “Law Of Value” began operating at the onset of commodity exchange — historically realized several thousand years pre capitalism—resulting in a certain “equality” among exchangers—although production directed toward increasing value and completion of the world-historic transformation of money into capital had not arisen. In other words, Engels allows for recognition that value emerges with exchange —its locus is the form of exchange — production of commodities, originally without regard for surplus value —while, finally, in capitalism, value functions as capital precisely because it is conditioned by recovering itself— plus a surplus value. Again, the function of capital is to produce not just value but surplus value…

A cascade of interesting info about where Shakespeare was born… As one biographer claimed, Marx read Shakespeare’s entire works, cover to cover, each year. His children also memorized much of Shakespeare’s work and related recitations were often the focus of family entertainment…