Das Kapital, Karl Marx's magnum opus, is a scientific analysis that seeks to understand (and critique) the dynamics of capitalist societies. It has nothing to do with the confabulations of Jordan Peterson, political expedience of Twitter personalities, or misnomers of your grandparents. The logic of their takes is akin to blaming the writer of whale mating and migration patterns for illegal fishermen using the information to more effectively hunt whales. Or in some cases [logically], that the writer wants to become a whale himself.
"Freedom is participation in power."
Marx quotes Cicero, and offers an exhaustive methodology of what that means. Those five words have always captured so well what bitcoin means to me conceptually. As the book densely moves along, it ticks every box bitcoiners have identified as systemic problems, and in bitcoin's final form (as a money standard) seems to satisfy them all:
- separating money from state
- demonetizing the political class
- redirecting efficiency
- consumption by time preference
- deprecating banks
- direct ownership and control of your wealth
- financial inclusion
- saving the fruits of your labor
- disinflationary so everyone shares in the labor of others
- the more goods and services added to the economy the more value every laborer accrues
- fixed monetary principles
- fixed liberties
The value theory attaches not to what the individual laborer does, rather labor en masse, globally. It answers the surplus value observation with time inversion. I'm not a Marx expert, I'm only elucidating my post-bitcoin reactions to Das Kapital, where bitcoin has helped me understand concepts I never did about Marx going back to my initial exposure in college, which, like most of the top search items on YouTube et al, was a walk through the fever swamps of conspiracy, revolution, and wide-eyed warnings.
Curious to hear your takes, sats for replies as always, you know the rules.
Note: capitalism is important, and so are the problems it exacerbates under centralized monies. Das Kapital's observations of these problems is just another tool that gives us the knowledge to develop better solutions.