Personal insights on some economics

I am from mainland China, and I am currently studying abroad. My subject is economics, and I am currently focusing on theoretical economics. I still remember that when I was just enrolled in the first year, one of the compulsory courses in my university was Marx's Das Kapital (one of the 8 compulsory courses, the others were Keynesian Economics, Marshall's Principles of Economics, History of Economics) , trade principles of classical economics, etc.). I was curious at the time, "Why do Western countries also study Marx's Das Kapital?" With this mentality, I checked some materials and found that all the universities in my country listed Marx's Das Kapital as a compulsory course. class. Because at that time, the subject was still a blank sheet of paper, and the only knowledge was obtained from a cursory reading of Das Kapital, so I dared not draw conclusions. So I took a semester to complete this course with doubts (my university here has no time limit for taking courses, within four years of university, you can study at any time according to your own needs). When I finished this course, I also passed the exam and got credits. Then I began to think about the question I asked at the beginning, why a western country would make this course a compulsory course (attachment: this country does not have a favorable impression of the red world). Other non-compulsory courses are also taken. I finally found the answer in a non-required course.

1) Some of my personal insights and conclusions about the study of Marx’s Capital Theory

1. Some Shallow Summarizations of Das Kapital
2. The compulsory course of Capital in my university does not teach much, mainly the first volume and second volume of Capital, about labor, surplus value, the circulation of productive capital, etc. The two points I want to make are about surplus value and about the circulation of productive capital. According to Marx, the economy is composed of two parts, production and consumption. Production represents the capitalist and consumption represents the laborer. Marx mentioned in Capital that the concept of surplus value also has the concept of labor consideration. This means that when a worker goes to work, the purpose is to obtain a price for labor that sustains his life, that is, income. In the process of labor, capitalists will complete the original capital accumulation by squeezing the surplus value of laborers. L2=G2 (L2: surplus value, G: capital accumulation), L=L1+L2 (L1=labor income, L=labor value), and because workers need to maintain a living, consumption is generated, therefore, L1= C, C=G1 (C: expenditure, G1=capital accumulation), G=G1+G2. But Marx also pointed out that due to the improvement of productivity, the necessary labor time of laborers is shortened, so the relative surplus value of laborers is deprived. On the other hand, due to the exploitation of capitalists, laborers often need to work for the capitalists in addition to the necessary labor time. This part of the work is not paid, so the absolute surplus value of laborers is also deprived. Relative surplus value is the amount of necessary labor time that should have been reduced due to an increase in productivity. For example, a factory has replaced new equipment in the process of production, and can produce more commodities every day. Logically, workers should be able to leave work earlier every day under the condition that their work remains unchanged. In fact, the working hours are maintained without leaving get off work earlier. Therefore, the utility of improving productivity is exclusively occupied by the capitalists, but the laborers do not benefit from it. The absolute surplus value is that the factory only needs to work 8 hours a day to produce it. However, workers have to work 4 hours of overtime every day. Under the condition of constant productivity, the extra 4 hours should be paid, but the capitalists did not pay. Therefore, this is the absolute surplus value. In real society, laborers are often exploited both in absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. This is what Marx said. On the other hand, after completing the process of capital accumulation, capitalists will improve the production efficiency of the factory, that is, productivity, and will make some investment in equipment (this is the part of the non-Marxist economy, and it is the original category of Keynesian effective demand, which I will discuss later. Additional Analysis Notes). And according to what I said above, the part of the utility of productivity improvement (utility is the concept of Marshallian economics, this part will also be said later) will be monopolized by the capitalists. According to what I said above, the economy is divided into two categories, one is production and the other is consumption. Capitalists represent production, and laborers represent consumption. In fact, capitalists also have consumption, but on the premise of equal utility, capitalists are limited by the number of Compared with the number of workers, the difference is too large, so it can be ignored and all consumption is classified as workers. After the capitalists meet their own consumption expenditures necessary for life, the remaining capital accumulation is a lot. Therefore, from the perspective of economic principles, capitalists do not have the ability to consume because the number of people is small. Therefore, most of the capital accumulation they obtain is used in equipment investment. Equipment investment can improve productivity, while Since the utility of productivity will be monopolized by the capitalists, in this cycle, the capitalists will eventually become extremely rich. But because the capitalist is an individual, he does not have a lot of consumption power, in the case of equivalent utility. Therefore, in fact, the capital accumulation of capitalists L=G is actually the first driving force of productivity growth. Because he will keep investing and keep improving productivity. On the other hand, due to the improvement of productivity, the level of material is also improved. Although the laborer's surplus value is exploited, the value of his own labor (the part that has not been exploited) also increases with the overall productivity of the society. improve. For example, workers 100 years ago, with their hard-earned money, could only eat a meal and play around. Today's workers can buy a mobile phone with their hard-earned money. Mobile phones are a product of the improvement of overall social productivity. These are some of my remarks on the circulation of capital and surplus value. (The content of this post will be written so much first, and a lot of content will be updated later. As for whether to open a new post or write on the original post, it depends on the number of experienced people and comments, because the author studies and works. The time is relatively busy, because the residual value is exploited (tears), therefore, the speed of subsequent updates will be relatively slow, about a frequency of a little more in three or five days) Finally, this post of mine is just a simple Theory, and some of my academic views, are not very political and ideological, so I hope readers' comments don't involve that as much as possible. thanks