Subway Diary

Reading Marx’s Capital on the train — thinking about his notion of value as “congealed” labor-time. That seems about right to me, that’s what going to work feels like: you’re time congealing, hardening, cooling, like bread in the oven to be shipped off to the bakery.

Marx writes like a contemporary; at least the Marx of Capital. The book doesn’t seem controversial to me — the literal accuracy of commodity and values theories is historically overrated, overemphasized; Marx is interesting because of the way he’s able to poetically trace the warping effect of profit-motive on human beings; on communities.