February 27, 2002
The Nature and Logic of Capitalism
Matt: Heilbroner says that a social formation exists as a pattern of organization shaping influences.  There are very complex patterns that shape the way we live.  If we think about things that shape or organize our behavior, some would be things like natural factors, climate, geography.  These are all things that determine what our opportunities are. There is also a more important active drive that is the notion that humans have within ourselves a range of capabilities and capacities outside of other species.  Heilbroner is interested in seeing how are we formed from the time we are babies to the time we are adults.  How does society take the bundle of drive and capacities that we have and turn them into how we live as a society.  How do you get socialized?  Human beings are into the idea of love, sex, and fantasy.  If you can’t fantasize, then you can’t imagine a different possibility of the world from the one you live in currently.  To understand any social system, you have to understand nature and realize that human beings do not go on specific tracks.  They have many drives and aggressions and there can’t be any assumptions that when you let humans go loose they will naturally create an orderly and simple organizational society.  There are qualities that do emerge that are important when you think about how people respond and want to accumulate power.  These are dependency, vulnerability, prestige, cruelty.  Any social formation must take all of this into account.
We never move into our roles in society without domination and oppression.  These are both operating there even without being obvious and apparent.
MCM- money to commodity to money.  Money that is turned into commodity that then results in profit money from selling the commodity.
First M:  raw material, labor, tools/machines, means of production.  One of the things that distinguishes capitalism is the ability to own the means of production.  What the capitalist is able to assert is that the thing that is made belongs to him.  The person who provides the material and the machine- that is the owner.  How is it that the capitalist does not have to pay full value to the worker for what he has made?  The workers must have enough money for means of living, so that they can produce another generation of workers.  The capitalist must pay enough in order so that they can reproduce themselves in the means of society.  That is what is called surplus value.