Marxist theory of brewing

A week or two ago I started reading Marx’s Capital again.  For ten years now, I’ve been picking up my copy of Capital and for a week or two I’ll diligently work my way through those opening chapters until one morning, I wake up and I think, What does all this writing about economic theory have to do with my life?  While economic conditions probably shape every aspect of my life whether I like it or not, all I want to do is read and write novels and make decent beer for people to drink.  (There’s other stuff I like to do also, but you get the idea.)

Like I said, I started reading Capital again and the wheels started turning in my head.  Marx starts off writing about commodities and labor.  The labor theory of value.  That seems pretty straight-forward. Only human labor creates value.  Machine labor doesn’t add value.  But does that mean that machine labor is bad?  No.  Even artisan brewers use pumps and burners to make beer.  Pots and pans can even be considered machines, I suppose.  Which raises a question about tools which require human labor to function and machine which replace human labor.

Alright, you should have an working idea of what sort of things were going through my mind when I started reading Capital again.  In order to give my reading of Capital some shape, some goal, some motive, why don’t I apply the ideas discussed in Capital to the operation of our small brewery?

Given that this is a blog, I’ll proceed in typical blog-fashion and declare a grand project to read Marx (and maybe not just Capital, but I’d like to dip into the Grundrisse) and view Marx’s economic theory through the lens of a small artisan brewery.

Just to start: our brewery appears to be a capitalist enterprise, but it’s too small to compete and we’re not trying to make a profit, we’re just trying to cover the bills.  We joke around and say that our brewery is a worker owned and operated collective, but maybe that’s not such a joke.  It might actually describe what we are.  While we produce a commodity, we don’t think of the beer we make as an instrument for generating profit.  We make beer because we enjoy making it and are proud of what we make.  We really are trying to make the world (our community) a better place to live in.  And to make beer on such a small scale requires lots of human labor.  We can’t rely on mass production to increase our surplus value.

That should get us started.  Feel free to read along.  Grab a growler of craft beer and crack open your copy of Marx.

Brewing up a revolution

The word “drafts” in the title for this blog refers not only to the various versions or revisions of a text, but to a writer / thinker’s favorite pass time: drinking.  The connection between writing and drinking has been well-documented.  Many writers have been as famous for their drinking habits as for what they’ve written (F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway come immediately to mind — and Kerouac of course who managed to kill himself off at the ripe old age of 47 from the complications of over-indulging).

Another enthusiastic drinker was none other than Karl Marx.

As it happened, Marx was no stranger to alehouses either. He was a co-president of the Trier Tavern Club, a society of about thirty university students from his home town whose main ambition was to get drunk as frequently and riotously as possible: it was after one of their revels that young Karl found himself detained for twenty-four hours, though the imprisonment did not prevent his chums from bringing him yet more booze and packs of playing cards to ease his sentence.

This is from the first chapter of Francis Wheen’s Karl Marx: A Life.

Last Saturday, our brewery hosted its Sixth Annual Long Island Nano(brewery) Cask Festival.  It’s a small craft beer festival that feels more like a gathering of friends.  Because our brewery and other nanobreweries are small, we tend not to be in competition with each other.  And most of us brew because we love good beer and want to share that goodness with others.  Our focus is more certainly not on following the capitalist model.  Our small businesses are mostly run like worker-owned cooperatives.

This year we had the fine folks from The Brewer’s Collective at the festival.  Their logo communicates exactly what they are about.  From their table at the festival I took a couple of their stickers and put one on one of my notebooks.  (I have another notebook with a “Read.  Write.   Revolt.” sticker.)

Brewing your own beer is simple and fun.  But it’s even more fun to brew with a friend.  And more fun to brew with nine friends.  Mike and I started brewing together more than ten years ago and we continued to bring more and more of our friends in to lend a hand on brew day.  Everyone would get to take a keg home.  Today, now that we are licensed and selling beer to the public, we make a lot more beer, but we still try to operate in a collective fashion.  Our on-going collaboration with Secret Engine Brewing Company is just one example of how we are trying to build a communal culture.  The lonely capitalist might wish to crush all competition and subjugate and alienate an army of underpaid workers to accomplish that antisocial goal, but not us!  We aren’t capitalists.  We are artists.  We are artisans.  We are the collective.  We’re in this life to do good, to respect our fellows, to make the world a better place.

If you want to be part of the revolution, brew your own beer.  And while you’re at it.  Teach your neighbor to brew.  Brew together.

Brewing fetishism

Things at the brewery are kicking up a notch.  Other Mike (that is Secret Engine Mike) and Dave have been showing up at the brewery regularly for Big Brew Days and Matt and Dave have been doing our deliveries.  We have lots of new locations serving our beers.  I've added a list to our web site.

Every beer we make now (or nearly all of them) is a collaboration beer with our Secret Engine friends.  And having three other guys helping out has made it possible to increase our production as well as our distribution range.  Basically, we are like two nanobreweries.

I was talking with Other Mike yesterday and he's sketched out a brewing plan that will more than double our present production.  We purchased new fermenters which we will bring online soon to handle the increased production.

It's not that we are trying to get big, that's not really the goal.  We like being small and want to stay small.  The point is that now (in collaboration mode) we have to cover the expenses of four brewers instead of just one.

I've been reading some economic theory lately.  And so has Other Mike.  He's trying to come up with a plan that will help both our breweries cover our bills plus pay some of the living expenses for the brewers.  Volume is the key.  The more beer we make, the more money we can make.  However, making more beer means incurring more expenses.

The economic reading I've been doing concerns what Marx called "commodity fetishism."  Most modern people only use the word "fetish" in reference to sexual proclivities, but fetish has a couple of other meanings.  The original meaning of "fetish" was in the context of religious practice.  A fetish is like an idol, an inanimate object worshiped because of its (supposed) magical powers.

I've titled this post "brewing fetishism" because there's another usage of the word fetish that is appropriate to the RPAB / Secret Engine passion for making beer.  We have a brewing fetish in the sense of having "an excessive and irrational commitment" to making good beer.  I hope that describes us.

I'll be writing more about what Marx was talking about and how it relates to our nanobrewing "business plan" in a future installment.  Brew on, comrades!