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THE NATURE AND SIGNIfICANCE OF' MARX'S CRIT lQUE or CLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
Geoffrey Pilling
This thesis is submitted to the Council for National Academic Awards in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of PhD
Sponsoring Establishment : Kingston Polytechnic
r ,,-r .. ~"'-':' ;' ,.'\' . f.
September 1983
1
"
Geoffrey Pilling
A B S T R ACT
THE NATURE AND SIGNIfICANCE Of MARX'S CRITIQUE Of CLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
The thesis is concerned with a series of methodological aspects of Karl Marx's economic writings, notably Capital. These methodological questions are explored by means of a critical review of Marx's relationship to the school of classical political economy in Britain. Here emphasiS is placed on David Ricardo. The aim of the thesis is to demonstrate that it is impossible to understand fully the revolution wrought by Marx in the field of political economy without having fundamental regard for the philosophical foundation of Marx's Capital. It is argued that Hegel is above all the key figure here and that a proper consideration of the influence of his philosophy in shaping Marx's intellectual development is of paramount importance. After an initial survey in which it is held that these matters have received little adequate attention in the past, attention is directed towards the major elements of Marx's critique of classical economics. Stress is placed on the empiricism which underlay much of this political economy and the consequences which this philosophical stance involved. To develop the argument, Marx's notion of labour is examined in detail. A more generel analysis of the concepts employed by Marx in his work follows, designed to demonstrate concretely the fundamental natura of Marx's critique of the work of his predecessors. The opening chapters of Capital are subjected to a close textual scrutiny in order to highlight the dialectical character of Marx's work. finally the nature of the notion of fetishism is explored with a view to establishing its centrality for Marx as well as to explain its absence from the work of the classical economists.
2
PRE f ACE
Aspects of this thesis formed the basis for papers read at Staff
Seminars in Middlesex and Kingston Polytechnics, 1981-2. In
connection with the programme of research undertaken for this
thesis, I attended the Annual Meeting of the Conference of Socialist
Economists in 1981 and 1982. I must thank the School of Economics,
Middlesex Polytechnic, for financial support for these visits.
Abstract
Preface
Abbreviations
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter :5
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Notes
CONTENTS
Introduction to the Themes of the Thesis
Marx's Critique of Classical Economics (I)
Marx's Critique of Classical Economics (II )
The Conceptual Basis of Marx's , Capital'
The Significance of the Opening Chapters of 'Capital'
Marx's Notion of Commodity fetishism and the Critique of Classical Economics
Conclusions
Bibliography of Works Consulted
Aopendix 'The Law of Value in Ricardo and Marx'
4
Page No
2
:5
5
6
27
69
106
152
192
240
253
264
268
A 8 8 REV I A T ION 5
The following abbreviations have been used throughout the thesis:
I
II
III
Th 1
Th 2
Th 3
Critique
G
Lew
SC
Capital, Vol 1, Lawrence & Wishart, 1961.
Capital, Vol 2, Lawrence & Wishart, 1957.
Capital, Vol 3, Lawrence & Wishart, 1959.
Theories of Surplus Value, Part 1, Lawrence & Wishart, 1969.
Theories of Surplus Value, Part 2, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971.
Theories of Surplus Value. Part 3. Lawrence & Wishart, 1972.
Critique of Political Economy, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971.
Grundrisse, Penguin Books, 1973.
The Collected Works of Lenin (in 50 Vols), Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx & Engels, Selected Correspondence, Lawrence & Wishart, 1956.
5
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE THEMES OF THE THESIS
This thesis is concerned with certain aspects of the relationship
between Marx's economic writings and those of classical polieical
economy_ This relationship is explored with a definite intention:
to raise a number of issues about the methodological and
philosophical positions from which Marx investigated economic
processes and phenomena. It is one of the central contentions of
the thesis that those who have been concerned with Marx's
critique of political economy have paid insufficient attention to
the philosophical dimensions of Marx's writings in the area of
'economics'. And this neglect of the philosophical underpinnings
of Capital and Marx's other writings in this field has, it is
suggested, taken an even more specific form, namely a neglect of
the real significance of the relationship between Hegel and Marx.
In one of his last writings, George Lukacs dealt with the effects
of the recently fashionable efforts to distinguish between the
'Young Marx' and the 'later' Marx of Capital. What he says has
considerable bearing upon the approach taken to this latter work.
Lukacs says at one point
"Marx never put forward an express claim to have created a specific philosophical system. In the 1840s, Marx struggled in philosophy against the idealism of Hegel and particularly against the radicalism of Hegel's pupils, which was becoming ever more subjective. After the interruption of the 1848 revolution, the foundation of a science of economics came to form the focal point of his work. Many who esteem his early philosophical writings of the 1840s draw the conclusion from this that Marx turned away from philosophy and became 'simply' an economic specialist."1
6
This, claims Lukacs, would be a very 'hasty conclusion' for
"It is based purely on external criteria, on the dominant methodology of the second half of the nineteenth centcry, which decreed a mechanically rigid opposion between philosophy and the various positive sCiences, and hence degraded philosophy itself, by way of its exclusive foundation in logic and epistemology, to a specific science. from a standpoint of this kind, bourgeois science and the modes of thought influenced by it, even among supporters of Marxism, came to see the economics of the mature Marx as a specific science i2 contrast to the philosophical tendencies of his youth."
And Lukacs goes on to claim that Marx's work in Capital and
elsewhere cannot properly be construed as 'economics' in the
traditional sense
"as simply one specific science: this conception isolated so-called phenomena of pure economics from the total inter-relations of social being as a whole, and analysed these in an artificial way that - in principle - allows an area thus elaborated to be artificially isolated (law, sociology, etc.) whereas Marx's economics always starts from the totality of social being and always flows back into it." 3
This same point is made by another recent writer; although his main
concern is with certain tendencies in contemporary sociological
theory his remarks apply equally for a correct conception of the
relation of Marx's 'economics' to his work as a whole:
"Marxism is not a 'sociology'. It only appears to be so, because, from the point of view of every other particular section of the intellectual division of labour philosophy, economics, history of ideas, etc. - Marxism goes beyond their defined subject matter, insisting that the real content of each of them is to be found in the contradictory totality of social economic relations from which flow the forms of activity and thought to which the separate disciplines address themselves."4
And this same writer proceeds to speak specifically of the case of
political economy which
"is 'negated' by Marxism in the Hegelian sense. Marx's treatment of political economy takes to their limit the contradictory developments of classical political economy. To do this requires the explanation of political economy's concepts and their real content as the 'alienated'
7
consciousness of the development of bourgeois society itself. Thus we find in the Critique of Political Economy and in Capital a negation of political economy, which is demonstrated as being an adequate reflection of the sphere of exchange values and their behaviour. But this sphere is shown to be the real world of appearances or illusions as necessarily created by an historically limited social order, capi tali am. "S
It was of course Lenin who designated English classical economics as
one of the three sources and three component parts of Marxism, the
others being claSSical German philosophy (especially from Kant through
to Hegel) and rrench socialism. But it is clear that Lenin did not
wish to imply that Marxism continued to be composed of three separate
strands, a Marxist 'economics', a Marxist 'philosophy' and a Marxist
·politics'. Indeed, a study of Lenin1s work would, I believe, reveal
a diametrically opposed tendency in his thought: one which insisted
on the organic unity of Marx's thought. Thus in Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism Lenin opposed all those, notably Bogdanov, who
believed that one could still be a Marxist in connection with the
study of society (historical materialism) while at the same time
rejecting the philosophical 'aspects' of the Marxist Joctrine
(philosophical materialism). Lenin says, on this question:
"Materialism in general recognises objectively real being (matter) as independent of consciousness, sensation, experience, etc., of humanity. Historical materialism recognises social being as independent of the social consciousness of humanity. In both cases consciousness is only a reflection of being.... rrom this Marxist philosophy, which is cast from a single piece of steel, you cannot eliminate one basic premise, one essential part, without departing from objective truth, without falling a prey to bourgeois-reactionary falsehood." (LeW, 14, 326).
Plekhanov, writing at roughly the same time as Lenin, was equally
insistent on the integral nature of Marxism and the impossibility of
breaking it up into discrete bits - into economics, politics,
a
sociology, etc. This is how Plekhanov opens his Fundamental Problems
of Marxism.
"Marxism is an integral world-outlook ••••• The historical and economic aspects of this world-outlook, i.e. what is known as historical materialism and the closely related sum of views of the tasks, method and categories of political economy, and on the economic development of society, are in their fundamentals almost entirely the work of Marx and Engels •••• That is why the term 'Marxism' is used to signify only those two aspects of the present-day materialist world outlook not only amongst the 'general public' but even among people, both in Russia and the entire civilised world, who consider themselves faithful followers of Marx and Engels. In such cases these two aspects are looked upon as something independent of 'philosophical materialism', and at times as something almost opposed to it."6
The particular issue which concerned both Lenin and Plekhanov in the
works from which we have quoted - the efforts on the part of certain
Marxists such as Bogdanov to create a 'new philosophy' based upon the
positivism of Ernst Mach and others - will not detain us. But what
both Lenin and Plekhanov say about the efforts to separate rigidly the
philosophy of Marxism from those 'aspects' which are ostensibly
concerned with the study of society and its historical development are
important for the general orientation of this thesis. For the tendency
to which they were drawing attention - and especially the form it takes
as the effort to separate out Marx's political economy from the
philosophical foundations of Marxism as a whole - would still appear
to predominate.
The main interest in what follows will not lie in tracing the historical
development of this tendency to treat Marxism in this fashion; our
chief focus of interest will lie in an examination of Capital in an ~~
effort to show that it can be graspedLif it is seen to be as much a work
of philosophy as a work of political economy • But it will be
9
useful in this introduction to draw attention to certain features in
the development of Marxism which have some bearing on the problem.
Of course no attempt at completion or even less of originality is
made for this historical sketch.
During the period of the Second International (that is prior to its
collapse in 1914) there is little doubt that the main source for the
fragmentation of Marxism and its tendency to reflect uncritically
the intellectual division of labour then being established in orthodox
social science (economics~ sociology, political science,
history of ideas, etc.) came from the influence of neo-Kantianism and
the implicit (often explicit) rejection of any concern for Hegel which
the 'return to Kant' implied. Leaving the details aside as things
which do not centrally concern us, it is clear that this Kantian (or
more strictly neo-Kantian) influence tended to take Marxism in the
direction of mechanical materialism, a tendency noted by many
commentators, although their explanations for the tendency differ
widely. That the influence of neo-Kantianism should take Marxism in
the direction of a mechanical materialism was almost inevitable given
the fact that Kantianism was founded upon the notion that nature (wherein
lay the realm of necessity) was to be kept rigidly apart from society
(wherein lay the realm of freedom).
This mechanical distortion of materialism and the relative neglect of
Hegel (it would not be untrue to say that of all the leaders of the
Second International only Lenin and Plekhanov had a deep knowledge of
Hegel's philosophy and its implications for Marxism) which was so
evidenced in the Second International was, it is commonly accepted, a
distortion which reappeared in the Marxism predominant in the Soviet
10
Union from the late 1920s onwards. Again the roots of this phenomena
are a matter beyond investigation in the present thesis but it is
particularly noteworthy that the orthodoxy which prevailed in the
USSR during the 1930s and continued dawn to the 1950s was associated
with a renewed attack an Hegel, who in extreme cases was dismissed
as merely a product of the aristocratic reaction to the french
Revolution of 1789. It is warth noting that in his famous article
'On the Significance of Militant Materialism' (LeW 33) written in
connection with the launching of the journal Under the Banner of
Marxism in 1922 Lenin had proposed a programme of work between
scientists working in 'various fields and those philosophers aiming to
develop and enrich dialectics; he in fact called for the establish
ment of a kind of 'Society of Militant friends of the Hege~~
Dialectics'. fallowing Lenin's lead there was indeed a lively debate
in the 1920s an problems of Marxist philosophy and its relationship
to the natural and the social sciences. In particular there was a
lang-drawn out struggle between the 'mechanists' and the 'dialecti
cians' before the debate was summarily brought to an end in 1931 with
the condemnation of A M Oeborin and the ather 'dialecticians' who were
accused of blurring the distinction between Marx and Hegel. It is nat
possible to assess these debates - if only because much of the
material is still not yet available, at least in English - but one
result seems clear. Lenin's project - to carry out a systematic study
of Hegelian dialectics from the standpoint of materialism - was pushed
into the background. 7
We have here sketched aut developments which occured within the Soviet
Union. But given the position of the Soviet Communist Party within
11
the international movement, these developments were bound to have a
serious impact - and in the view of the present writer a harmful
effect - on the development of Marxism in the West, including Britain.
It would perhaps be fair to say that these developments occuring in
the USSR tended to re-inforce the inclination amongst British
Marxists - including those engaged within the field of political
economy - to conceive Marxism in mechanical and deterministic terms.
Inhis recent detailed study A Proletarian Science: Marxism in Britain
1917~1933e Stuart Macintyre has much to say of interest about the
development of Marxism in Britain in the period following the Russian
Revolution, including some comments on the treatment of political
economy amongst English Marxists during this period. He underlines
what has been almost the conventional wisdom about British Marxism
that it has always been deficient in the philosophical sphere,
displaying the same empirical and metaphysical bent as the national
culture. As he further notes, Hegelinaism did make a certain impact
in British academic philosophy at the end of the last century,
producing a school associated with the work of T H Green and
Bernard Bosanquet. Apart from the fact that it was based upon a very
definite many would say one-sided reading of Hegel, it was a school
which made little impact within socialist circles, where it might have
been expected to influence Marxism. With the exception perhaps of
Belfort Sax nineteenth and early twentieth century Marxism remained
blissfully unaware or disinterested in the importance of Hegel's
dialectical idealism in the formation of Marx's views and indeed there
was a deep suspiCion of the entire notion of 'dialectics' amongst the
great majority of Marxists in Britain, as Macintyre records in detail.
12
The principal source for those who were interested in philosophical
materialism as a whole or who, on a narrower plane, showed any
inclination to concern themselves with dialectics~ was the work of
Joseph Dietzgen. Indeed, the criticisms of his work made by Lenin
and Plekhanov notwithstanding, many of those in Britain interested
in philosophy tended to regard his work more highly than that of
Marx and Engels themselves. 9 It is true that Dietzgen's influence
began to wane somewhat after 1917 but from this point onwards it was
replaced by those influences emanating from the Soviet Union to which
we have already referred.
In fairness to those attempting to develop Marxism at that period, it
should be pointed out that many of the major works of Marx, and
especially those which can be said to have an explicitly philosophical
character, were not as yet available in English translation. This was
true of the 'Paris Manuscripts' where the relationship of Marx's
critique of Hegelian idealism and his growing interest in the critique
of economics is particularly clear: these did not appear in English
until as recently as 1960. Engels' Dialectics of Nature which clearly
has much to say about the dialectical method and the limitations of
English empiricism was not available until 1940. As far as Lenin is
concerned, although Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was available in
English from 1927 onwards (with an important introduction by Deborin
stressing the dialectical character of the materialism which Lenin was
defending in that work - this was withdrawn in the next and subsequent
editions) Lenin's 'Philosophical Notebooks' did not appear in English
until 1960. This was a particularly important gap in the literature
given that in these notes - based upon a new study of Hegel's work
13
which Lenin undertook after 1914 - Lenin made several important and
explicit references to Marx's Capital and the importance, as he saw
it, of a proper study of Hegel's Logic in connection with this work.
In the case of the 'economic aspects' of Marx's work things stood
somewhat better than in the case of philosophy for many of Marx's
major and lesser works were available in this area. Even here however
there were significant gaps, amongst them the Grundlsse which remained
almost unknown to Marxists in this country (and many other countries
for that matter) and did not appear in anything like a complete form
until the edition of 1973. Here again was a significant gap given y
that the Grundisse has been widely seen as much more explicitly ~
'philosophical' than the later Capital and much more Heglian in its
language and categories •
As Macintyre's study notes, great emphasis was traditionally placed
upon the teaching of Marx's 'economics' amongst socialist activists
in the pre-war period and it was a tradition which survived in the
1920s and beyond. But it is clear from his account that the apprecia-
tion of Marx's Capital was of a severely limited character. In the
first place most of the teaching of and writing about political
economy by Marxists was carried out by auto-didacts (Noah Ablett from
south Wales was perhaps typical here) who had little opportunity and
perhaps little inclination to consider the wider aspects of Marx's
critique of political economy. Second, and perhaps flowing from these
factors, concentration was placed almost exclusively upon the first
volume of Capital where the doctrine of surplus value was accorded
pride of place. In the tradition established in this period the
critique of capitalism was presented, according to the account given
14
by Macintyre, as an illumination of the extraction of surplus value
from the worker rather than as a dynamic analysis of the capitalist
system and its contradictions. It is noteworthy that this version of
Marx's critique of capitalism encountered considerable difficulties
when it was faced with more abstract, theoretical problems such as
the 'great contradiction' between the first and third volumes of
Capital which Bohm-Bawerk claimed to have uncovered at the end of the
last century. Those who held that the essence of Marx's Capital lay
in its demonstration of the exploitation of the working class also
had problems when confronted with the charge that Marx believed in
the inexorable immiserization of the working class or even that he
held to the 'iron law' of wages theory.
It was against this background that the leading commentator on Marx's
Capital throughout the inter-war period and for long into the post
war years, Maurice Oobb, emerged. Oobb occupied a unique position
as the only Communist to hold an academic post in the 1920s and it
was through the work of Dobb that the impact of Marxism on the
academic study of economics can be felt. An important contribution in
this respect was the close attention which Dobb gave in a series of
works to the relationship of classical political economy to that of
Marx. He aimed to show that not only did Marx draw upon the classical
tradition, Ricardo especially, but that this tradition stood on an
immeasurably higher theoretical level than the neo-classical
tradition which was destined to replace it. His Political Economy and
Capitalism first appearing in 193710can be said to mark the beginning
of this long, often no doubt lonely, endeavour to rescue classical
political economy from the almost total neglect into which it had
15
fallen at the hands of the orthodox economics community; its high
point was reached with the definitive edition of the Collected Works
of Ricardo, in the editorship of which Cobb collaborated with
Piero Sraffa.
One interesting feature of Macintyre's work is the fact that he
reveals that Dobb's early work in the 1920s met with considerable
criticism (much of it evidently ill-informed) which suggested that
it had made serious concessions to orthodox economics. In some ways
he was never free of such criticisms for in the 1970s he was also
accused by a number of writers, this one included, of presenting
Marx's critique of capitalism in a manner which did not sufficiently
distinguish it from Ricardo's analysis.
One of the major concerns of this thesis will be an examination of
the relationship of Marx's work to that of Ricardo. It is the
contention of the present writer that this relationship has in
several respects been misconstrued by many Marxists, Cobb included.
It will be suggested that involved here are a series of methodological
and philosophical matters which Marxism in general and particularly
Marxism in Britain have tended to ignore. It should be stressed
that these weaknesses are not seen as a reflection of individual
problems; they emerged out of the cultural and intellectual climate
sketched out above and which had the effect of viewing Marx's
critique of political economy as a discrete area of concern, separate
from the rest of his work and particularly separated from Marx's
philosophical standpOint.
Certain recent work has, I believe, laid the foundation for overcoming
16
, the difficulties and problems into which the sort of view defended
by Maurice Dobb and others led. It will be useful to refer to this
work in a preliminary manner, although it will receive more specific
attention in the body of the thesis.
Roman Rosdolsky's The Making of Marx's Capital unlike many other
works devoted to Marx's critique of political economy places at its
centre a concern for methodological questions. About these questions
the author says the following:
"Of all the problems in Marx's economic theory the most neglected has been that of his method, both in general and specifically in its relation to Hegel. Recent works contain for the most part platitudes Which to echo Marx's own words betray the author's 'own crude obsession with the material' and total indifference to Marx's method.»11
And this same author proceeds to say about those who have traditionally
been concerned with Marx's method
"What would one make of a psychologist who was interested only in freud's results, but rejected the question of the manner in which freud obtained these results as being irrelevant or even 'metaphysical'? One could only shrug one's shoulders. But this is precisely how most present day critics of and 'experts' on Marx judge his economic eystem. Either they totally refuse to discuss his dialectical method because they are opposed to 'metaphysics' ••• or the critique is restricted to a few platitudes better left unsaid.»12
The significance of Rosdolsky's work cannot, we believe, be restrict-
ed to those topics which engaged his attention. Some of them - such
as the distinction on which he concentrates between 'many capitals'
and 'capital in general' - are certainly of considerable importance
and enable him to throw much light on Marx's critique of political
economy. But the real merit of the work lies in the fact that
Rosdolsky has consciously aimed to re-introduce a proper considera-
tion of Hegel's philosophy into the study of Marx's economic theory.
He on more than one occasion refers to the dialectic as the 'soul'
17
of Capital and there seems little doubt that his work was directly
inspired by Lenin's own comments on the significance of Hegel's
Science of Logic for the study of Marx's Capital. Lenin's comments
will also concern us at various points in this thesis and here a
general point is made about them. Lenin was never content, in his
analysis of the degeneration of the Second International, merely to
trace its roots to the socio-economic conditions that arose with the
advent of imperialism. Lenin in many respects went beyond this in
that he sought to probe the theoretical and philosophical method
employed by Kautsky and others. This work was antiCipated in
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908) but above all the 'Philo
sophical Notebooks' of the war period itself. In both these works
Lenin was obliged to take up the baleful influences of the philO
sophy of neo-Kantinaism to which large sections of the International
had fallen victim. Lenin did not rest content with reasserting what
he took to be the truths of Marxism and showing that revisionism had
abandoned these truths. Lenin felt obliged to go 'back to Hegel'
just as his opponents were, in the main, forced 'back to Kant'. As
is well known, this critical re-examination of Hegel culminates in a
sharp renunciation of the former 'Marxism' which had first compromised
with and then capitulated to Kantianism: 'It is impossible to under
stand Marx's Caoital and especially its first chapter without having
throughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's LogiC. Con
sequently half a century later, none of the Marxists understood
Marx.' (LCW 38, 180).
It is the contention of the present thesis that Lenin's statement
carries the following implications: it is necessary to rework Capital
18
thoroughly always keeping Hegel in mind and only if this is done will
it be possible to deepen our understanding of Marx's method which
underpinned his entire critique of political economy. It is further
contended that it is only on the basis of this kind of re-examination
that many of the attempts currently being made to revise the basic
categories of Marxian political economy can be adeqately appraised.
It is the first task - or rather certain aspects of it - which will
principally occupy us, although some brief mention is made of this
latter question.
This thesis can be only a small attempt at a re-examination of Marx's
method, as it is exemplified in his critique of political economy.
We have mentioned some of the weaknesses which have attended previous
work in this area, weaknesses, it has been suggested which grew out
of definite historical and cultural conditions. It seems clear that
many of these past difficulties no longer exist, certainly not in the
same form, nor with the same degree of force. An example of important
changes taking place in the approach to Marx's Capital can be seen in
the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. After a long period in which an
interest 1n Hegel was at best discouraged and at worst condemned, the
period from the mid-1950s onwards witnessed a renewed interest in
German philosophy and its implications for an understanding of Marxism.
A case in point is provided by the work of the late E V Ilyenkov whose
work Dialectical Logic: Essays on its History and Theory (English
translation 1977) although concentrating on a number of themes in the
history of philosophy has much to say about Capital as well as about
the limitations of the empirical method of classical political economy.
This same writer has written specifically about certain concepts in
19
Capital in a manner which suggests that there is now a conscious
attempt to overcome the mechanical distortions of Marxism which
characterised much Soviet work from the late twenties onwards. We
shall refer specifically to the nature of Ilyenkov's work at
appropriate stages of the thesis. Mention at this point can also
be made of Jindrich Zeleny's The Logic of Marx (English transletion
1980) which deals with a number of problems in Marx's philosophical
method from the standpoint of his relationship to classical
political economy. finally, in rehearsing those theoretical sources
to which the thesis is particularly indebted, mention must be made
of the work of I I Rubin whose Essays in the Labour Theory of Value
first written in the 1920s but unaveilable in English for over fifty
years is an outstanding instance of a work which attempts to deal
with the philosophical nature of Marx's work in the field of political
economy.
An important theme running through the thesis is that - on the
theoretical level at least - it was the empirical standpoint of politic-
al economy which in the last instance prevented it from answering the
questions which it had posed about the nature of capitalist economy
and its laws of motion. It will thus be useful in this introduction
to make some preliminary remarks of a general nature about the attitude
of Marx and Engels to the philosophy of empiricism. Urging the
natural scientists of his day to pay specific attention to the
dialectical method, Engels notes that
"the results in which its experiences are summarised are concepts, that the art of working with concepts is not inborn and also not given with ordinary everyday consciousness but requires real thought, and that this thought similarly has a long empirical history, not more and not less than empirical natural science.
20
Only by learning to assimilate the results of the development of philosophy during the last two-and-a-half thousand years will it rid itself on the one hand of any natural philosophy standing apart from it, outside and above it, and on the other hand also of its own limited method of 13 thought which was its inheritance from English empiricism."
It is clear from this passage that Engels sees in empiricism a
barrier to rational thought. This same point is made in the Dialectics
of Nature where Engels, after noting that 'empirical natural science
has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for
knowledge' goes on to say that it is necessary to organise this
material and bring the various spheres of knowledge into proper
connection with one another, but
"In doing so however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance. But theoretical thinking is an innate quality only as regards natural quality. This natural capacity must be developed, improved, and for its improvement there is as yet no other means than the study of previous philosophy."14
The fact that 'theoretical thinking' (thinking in concepts, that is
to say dialectical thought) had to replace empiriCism was true
notwithstanding the fact that the orientation of English empiricism
as a whole, at least in its early phase (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke) was
to~ards materialism. Indeed Engels was prepared to defend, within
limits, the old natural philosophy against the lunphilosophical
theories of the empirical natural SCientists'; for despite the fact
that this philosophy contained la great deal of nonesense and fantasy'
it had however naievely and in however an idealist form attempted to
deal with the problem of the universal iner-connectedness of all
phenomena, a problem which empiricism consigned to the realm of
metaphysics. It was for this reason that Engels also says 'As far
21
as Hegel is specifically concerned, he is in many respects, head and
shoulders above his empirical contemporarles •••••• ,15
Empiricism, in the most general sense, limits knowledge to that
derived from experience. It was precisely because it was by its very
nature 'unphilosophical', downgrading as it did conceptual knowledge,
that it was rejected by Marx and Engels. (This matter is taken up in
detail in Chapter 4 below.) But this rejection of empiricism should
not be misconstrued as a rejection on Marx's part of any concern for
empirical material and its role in the development of knowledge. As
is well known Marx spent many years in the British Museum and else-
where collecting-a mass of empirical material as part of his investi-
gation of the capitalise mode of production. Indeed in connection
with these economic studies Marx says in the 'Paris Manuscripts'
"It is hardly necessary to assure the reader conversant with political economy that my results have been attained by means of a wholly empirical analysis based on a conscientious critical study of political economy."16
Marx took, says Lenin,
"One of the social-economic foundations - the system of commodity production - and on the basis of a vast mass of data (which he studied for not less than twenty-five years) gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing the functioning of this formation and its development."1?
The point here is this. The claims of empiricism to be an adequate
theory of knowledge (claims which Marxism rejects) should not be
confused with the fact that the material and social world is always
given to man through his sensations; in other words the development
of all knowledge must, in a certain sense begin from empirically
given material, although it must certainly not stop there. This
matter is raised here prinCipally because one of the effects of the
22
work of Althusser and his followers (to which reference will be made
at various points) has been to see any concern with empirical
material as a concern with the merely ideological. To the present
writer this seems a thoroughly false position, one which bears the
imprint of a narrow rationalism. The work of Althusser will be
examined from this point of view at various stages in the thesis.
It is intended to review a series of methodological issues surround
ing Capital by means of a review of Marx's relationship to the
school of classical political economy. Clearly this is by no means
the only manner in which such a task could be tackled and therefore
a few words of justification for such an approach are perhaps
required.
Marx's attitude to the work of his predecessors in political economy
was a thoroughly dialectical ane. That is to say Marx clearly
recognises that each shoal in the development of political economy
is in some way connected with the previous history of the subject.
for Marx (the appropriate citations are given in Chapter 1) the
development of political economy was a reflection, in theoretical,
abstract, form of the development of actual economic relations. This
being the case, it then followed from Marx's standpoint that it is in
principle impossible to understand a particular phase in the develop
ment of political economy without analysing all previous (and
contemporary) efforts to understand the same phenomena - even if
these turn out to have been spurious attempts.
Thus it would be a mistake to imagine that the historical path leading
to an adequate investigation of economic phenomena (which is presumably
what the history of political economy is concerned with) is only
23
relevant inasmuch as an adequate (that is scientifically correct)
conception has not been reached. This is so because political
economy is essentially a deeply controversial subject in which, the
intentions of its practitioners notwithstanding, its doctrines have
often served, adequately or otherwise, as the instrument of various
social forces. It would be an extremely barren view if one were to
look over the history of political economy, prior to Marx, merely
to seek out its errors. This was ce.rtainly not Marx's attitude to
the work of his predecessors, as we shall try to demonstrate in what
follows. Marx did of course claim to discern many errors in classical
political economy; but he also attempted to explain the sources, both
social and methodological, of these errors; in a certain sense he
aimed to demonstrate the necessity for these errors in the develop
ment of this particular science. This ambition, we believe, informs
Marx's attitude to the work of his greatest predecessor in political
economy, Ricardo. He was aware, at the same time, of the limits of
this work. He also tried to demonstrate the historically transient
nature of these limits - that is to demonstrate, in theory and
practice, the conditions under which these limits could be overcome.
This we believe is the true meaning of Marx's claim to have negated
the greatest achievements of classical political economy. Marx
neither accepted the results of the classical school uncritically;
nor was he disinterested in the limitations of this school, for it
was only in struggle against these limitations, in the struggle.
against the 'bad sides' of history, as Marx on one occasion put it,
that real progress could be made. This is, ~e believe the real
24
meaning and content of negation:
'Not empty negation, not futile negation, not sceptical
negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and
essential in dialectics, - which undoubtedly contains
the element of negation and indeed as its most important
element - no, but negation as a moment of connection, as
a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e.
without any vacillations, without any eclecticism.'
(Lew 38, 226).
Marx's ability to preserve from the classical legacy all that was
positive was founded on his profound grasp of the dialectical
method, a method quite unknown to even the greatest of the classical
political economists. This, in summary, is the central contention
of the thesis.
The material is organised as follows. Two chapters are devoted to
an examination of Marx's critique of the classical school designed
to bring out the underlying philosophical conceptions on which that
critique was based. This leads to a central chapter (Chapter 4)
which deals with the nature of the concepts which Marx employs in
his examination of bourgeois economy. This leads to a more specific
examination of the nature and significance of the opening chapters
of Capital designed further to illustrate certain methodological
problems. The notion of fetishism is subjected to a separate
examination (Chapter 5) designed to re-inforce a central theme: the
unity of the 'economic' and the 'philosophical' in Marx's work.
finally some conclusions are offered by way of summary_ An appendix
(Appendix 1) contains a first attempt, made by the author some years
25
ago to explore some of the issues of the thesis in a preliminary
1B way.
As the thesis was being completed an important work by £ V Ilyenkov,
The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's 'Capital'
appeared in English translation. Unfortunately it was not possible
to consider this work and its implications for the central themes of
the thesis within the main body of the text. But this is clearly a
crucial work in which IlyenKov elaborates and expands on a number of
problems which were only touched on in his other work available in
English translation. Some consideration of this work is therefore
provided in the Conclusions to the thesis.
26
Chapter 2
MARX'S CRITIQUE Of CLASSICAL ECONOMICS (1)
It is perhaps hardly necessary to stress that Marx was amongst the
warmest admirers as well as the keenest students of that trend in
economic thought for which he invented the term 'classical political
economy'. But it is perhaps necessary to recall the fact that Marx
employed this term in a manner radically different from that of
many later writers, in particular Keynes. By classical political
economy Marx meant to designate that strand in economic thought
originating in france with Boisguillebert (1646-1714) and in Britain
with William Petty (1623-87), a trend which was to reach its high
point with the work of Adam Smith and above all David Ric~rdo whose
work, in Marx's opinion 'gave to political economy its final shape'.
It is important to keep this definition in view if only because the
term 'classical economics' has often been deployed in a much broader
sense; in Keynes' case, for instance, it was a school embracing all
those who, following Ricardo, subscribed to one version or another
of 'Say's Law', who believed, that is, in the quasi-automatic self-
regulating nature of capitalist economy. On such a definition
classical economics was to culminate with the work of Marshall and
1 Pigou.
In an often quoted passage, Marx offered his characterization of
classical economics and differentiated it sharply from vulgar
political economy:
"Once for all I may here state, that by Classical Political Economy, I understand that economy which, since the time of W Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois SOCiety, in contradistinction to vulgar economy,
27
which deals with appearances only, ruminates without ceasing on materials long since provided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systematising in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of all possible worlds."
Marx was always conscious of the enduring achievements of the
classical economists, especially when contrasted with the work of
the 'vulgar school', a school which first emerged to a position of
dominance in the period immediately following Ricardo's death. In
Marx's estimation, classical political economy constituted a
decisive stage in the investigation of the capitalist mode of
production. Marx sees this stage coming to an end in the period
around 1830, an end in his view intimately bound up with the
emergence of a new social and political force, the working class,
increasingly conscious of itself. Marx did not of course wish to
imply that in a somewhat mystical manner the working class was
responsible for the 'killing' of a scientific political economy.
Rather he wished to stress that certain basic methodological
limitations of classical political economy increasingly paralysed
it in the face of the emergence of this new phenomenon.
In this connection it is perhaps necessary to stress that Marx's
considerable respect for the achievements of classical economics
notWithstanding, we should not ignore the fact that he saw in the
work of this school a series of weaknesses which were in the final
analysis to prove fatal. Many commentators especially Professor Meek
have stressed the increasingly ideological and political considera-
tions which inspired the attack on Ricardian political economy
after 1830, an attack which was certainly sharpened by the fact that
28
a trend within the working class movement (which for convenience may
be placed under the rubric of 'Ricardian Socialism'r tried
consciously to deploy Ricardian theory as a weapon against the
2 capitalist order. While these factors are of undoubted importance
in explaining the relatively rapid disintegration of Ricardian
economics in the years after 1830, it is also equally true that the
opponents of Ricardo were able to seize upon real, unresolved, con-
tradictions within the Ricardian system. In what follows it is on
this aspect of the problem that the main concentration will be
placed.
In considering the deficiencies of Ricardo's work - deficiencies
which had rendered it susceptible to the sort of attack launched
against it by Samuel Bailey and others - Marx was to focus his
critique of classical political economy on what he considered to be
its decisive weakness - namely its tendency to view society
a-historically, or to put the matter more concretely, its inclina-
tions to treat the capitalist economy as the final form of economy,
as one working directly in accordance with the laws of nature. All
Marx's detailed criticisms of political economy's inadequate
conceptions of value, money, capital, etc., which are found
throughout Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, rest firmly upon
this, his basic criticism. It is one stated in The Poverty of
Philosophy though not at that stage fully worked out:
"Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc., as fixed immutable, eternal categories ••• Economists explain how production takes place in the above mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations are produced, that is the historical movement that gave them birth •••• these categories are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products (emphasis added).,,3
29
The implications of Marx's assertion that the standpoint of classical
political economy was fundamentally an a-historical one deserve
careful consideration. Some commentators have taken Marx simply to
mean that Smith and Ricardo were either unaware of or disinterested
in pre-capitalist economic forms of production. This however would
seem quite wide off the mark; Adam Smith was concerned more than
most to demonstrate the superiority of the capitalist form of pro
duction as a means of creating wealth in contrast with feudal
economy. Others, adopting a slightly different approach, have
assumed that Marx aimed simply to make Ricardo's analysis dynamic,
to 'set in motion' the work of the classical school, as Althusser
at one point puts it.4
Marx,asamaterialist, held that the categories of political economy
were a product of the historical development of the social relations
of production. In his review of certain aspects of the history of
political economy, Marx at all times insisted on the objectivity of
the categories of the science: 'They are socially valid and therefore
objective thought forms' he writes. Marx was here stressing a point
which will concern us at various points of this work, namely the
fact that science necessarily develops through definite forms which
stand outside the individual consciousness. Men of course always
commence, in all spheres of life, with certain definite aims and
motives and the leading figures in political economy were no
exception in this respect. But the history of political economy
cannot be reduced to the conscious aims and motives of its leading
representatives. Science develops under determined historical
conditions in that it must always commence its work in and through
the categories which have been historically handed down to it,
30
categories which reflect the work of all previous thinkers in the field
concerned. Thus, just as Smith's work can be properly understood only
in connection with the achievements of the Physiocrats, so Ricardo's
work was very much an effort to deal with the problems which he thought
Smith's work had left unresolved.
Marx attacked the political economists precisely because they took the
categories of their science uncritically. His charge that their out-
look was a-historical amounted to this: the political economists
fetishistically accepted the available concepts as fixed and unalter-
able. Classical economics took its categories for granted precisely
because it did not know the historical path through which they had been
created. In short, it fell under the illusion that the relations of
modern economy not only appeared according to the categories of
political economy, but that these relations really were as they
appeared.
Although the 'Young Marx' had not at that stage of his development
worked out in detail his specific criticisms of political economy -
they were only to appear in detailed form with the publication of
Capital itself - he had, even at this early stage, formed his general
approach to the work of the classical economists and it was this
approach which, in essence, guided his work from that point onwards.
Thus in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) he draws
attention to the fact that the political economists tended to start
from certain premises which they never inquired into:
"We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We presupposed private property, the separation of labour, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land - likewise division of Labour, competition, the concept of exchange value, etc.nS
31
And in the next paragraph of these Manuscripts Marx is even more
explicit about the methodological defect which he sees lying at the
heart of political economy:
"Political economy starts with the fact of private property; it does not explain it to us. It expresses, in general abstract formulas the material process through which private property actually passes~ and these formulas it then takes for~. It does not comprehend these lews, i.e. it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property. Political economy throws no light on the cause of the division between labour and capital, and between capital and land. When for example, it defines the relationship of wages to profit, it takes the interest of the capitalist to be the ultimate cause, i.e. it takes for granted what it is supposed to explain. Similarly, competition comes in everywhere. It is explained from external circumstances. As to how these external and apparently accidental circumstances are but expressions of a necessary course of development, political economy teaches us nothing. n6
Marx does not object to the concentration which the political
economists placed on the analysiS of private property. He agrees that
the problems presented by private property must constitute the basis
for political economy. His objection to the political economists
was they took for granted that which was, in point of fact, in need of
explanation. Thus, says Marx in these early Manuscripts, when
characterising the relation of wages and profit of capital, economists
tend merely to say that each side (workers and capitalists) seek to
obtain as much as possible for their commodity and drag in 'competition'
to explain the course of this relationship without going to the
objective basis of such competition. Thus Marx aims to reveal the
methodological premises of bourgeois political economy in accordance
with which the immediate inducements in the capitalist's activity,
i.e. egoism and self-seeking, are the motive forces of capitalist
32
production: 'it takes the interests of the capitalists to be the
ultimate cause, i.e. it takes for granted what it is supposed to
explain'. As against this approach - the approach of empiricism
Marx formulates his task quite differently:
"Now, therefore, we have to grasp the intrinsic connection between private property, avarica, the separation of labour, capital and landed property; the connection of exchange and competition, etc. - we have to grasp this whole estrangement connected with the money system."?
In the light of these extracts from his early work it is perhaps
possible to begin to appreciate the central importance which Marx's
investigations into the history of political economy held for his
work as a whole. Unlike many historians of economic thought Marx
was not interested in the past of the subject in order merely to
find prefigurations for his own ideas. Indeed the Theories of
Surplus Value was not a history of economic thought in the convention-
al sense of the term. It was, as Engels tells us:
"A detailed critical history of the pith and marrow of Political Economy, the theory of surplus value and develops parallel with it, in polemics against predecessors, most of the points later investigated separately in their logical connection in the manuscripts for Books II and III (Engels, Preface to II)".
By 'critique', Engels here means that the categories of political
economy had to be investigated from the point of view of revealing
the contradictory nature of the concepts which the political economists
had developed and at the same time revealing how these contradictions
had been resolved. This was a task which could only be accomplished
by one who was aware that the categories of political economy were the
product of definite sOCial relations and could not therefore be
accepted as timeless, unproblematic categories.
33
To make this matter more concrete we may take the specific example
of the law of value. At one point Marx draws attention to the fact
that for thousands of years - ever since the first appearance of
commodity production in the ancient world - men had striven to
discover the nature of value. It was only in the eighteenth century
that they were able - in the shape of political economy - to make
significant progress along this road. And this progress was made
possible only because of the social conditions in which political
economy operated during that century - the fact that commodity
production was becoming predominant - made possible the clarifica
tion of issues which previously, of necessity, had remained obscure.
Now when Marx criticised the political economists for the a-historical
nature of their work, he meant that they could not grasp that their
own science had emerged and developed only under these determinate
conditions. Political economy laboured under the misapprehension
that the categories of its subject (value, capital, money, labour,
etc.) were not only the product of merely individual minds but that
the laws which these mi~Js had (inexplicably) discovered were valid
for all epochs. They conflated the laws specific to a definite mode
of production with laws which they thought to be universally valid;
they confused social with natural law. Here lies the clue to
political economy's fondness for the parable of Robinson Crusoe.
Marx objected to such parables because of their sheer artificiality
and because the eighteenth century individual was in fact projected
back into history. The individual was not conceived as developing
through definite social relations but as posited once and for all
by nature.
34
Do not let us go back to a fictitios primordial condition as
"the political economist does when he tries to explain. Such primordial condition explains nothing; it merely pushes the question away into a grey nebulous distance. The economist assumes in the form of a fact of an event, what he is supposed to deduce - namely, the necessary relationship between two things - between, for example, division of labour and exchange. Thus the theologian explains the origin of evil by the fall of man; that is, he assumes as a fact, in historical form, what has to be explained. ne
It will be useful at this point to provide a brief sketch of the
main stages in the development of political economy, along the
lines provided by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value. As we have
already suggested Marx did not aim to provide a comprehensive
history of political economy; his purpose, in reviewing the work
of his predecessors, was first to deal with their work in the
area which he considered most vital, namely their analyses of
value and surplus value and secondly, by dealing with the decisive
turning of 'nodal' pOints in the theoretical elaboration of these
two categories, to sUbstantiate his general proposition that the
categories of political economy were the product of the develop-
ment of definite social conditions which existed independently of
the thinkers concerned. In other words, Marx's work in the
history of political economy was inspired by the general orientation
provided by the materialist conception of history.
for Marx, as is well known, Physiocracy was the first genuine
school in the history of political economy. It consisted of a group
of writers all of whom sought to provide a critical analYSis of
Mercantilism, a system which had imagined that value and its
magnitude resulted from exchange or 'upon alienation' as the
35
Mercantilists had expressed it. Against this viewpoint the
Physiocrats counterposed the notion that forms of production were
physiological forms arising from the necessities of production
and independent of will and politics. They thereby turned the
attention of economics towards the study of the social conditions
of production. for Marx, the decisive weakness of this school lay
in the fact that this production was seen only in its immediate
concrete form; for according to Quesnay and his followers labour
on the land was alone productive of value, a conception which to
some extent persists with Smith, although in the case of the latter
it occupies a subordinate place in his overall conception. This
narrowness in the Physiocratic view was, as Marx saw it, a
reflection of the then limited stage reached in the development of
eighteenth-century french economy, which remained one predominantly
based an agriculture. Despite this limitation, the work of the
Physiocratic school nonetheless constituted for Marx a decisive
step forward for all the work that was to follow in the investiga
tion of capitalist economy. This was the case because the source
of all the major contradictions in the Physiocratic system stemmed
from its efforts to analyse feudalism from a conSistently bourgeois
standpOint.
When Marx turns to deal with the work of Adam Smith, he once more
stresses the fact that the advances which are associated with his
work stem from the fact that he was writing in a period which saw
decisive changes in the structure of economic relations. The
Physiocrats had been able to begin the investigation of surplus
value - the difference between the value of labour power and~e
36
value created by it - only because it appears most palpably within
the sphere of agriculture, the primary branch of production. The
total means of subsistence consumed by the labourer is smaller than
the total means of subsistence he produces. In manufacturing
however - which was emerging much more rapidly in Britain than in
france in the latter half of the eighteenth century - the matter
was not as simple. for in the case of manufacturing the worker does
not produce directly his own means of sUbsistence nor therefore an
excess of them. Under the system of manufacturing the process is an
indirect one, a mediated one, a process operating through various
acts of circulation of all commodities within the capitalist system.
The development of the value concept - in Marx's estimation the most
important single contribution made by Smith to the development of
political economy - was an expression of this indirect mediated form
of production within the capitalist system. The fact that the
value concept is not found in Physiocracy was an indication of the
fact that the school developed under conditions where economic
relations were still palpable. This was true equally of the notion
of surplus value; while this surplus appeared in the form of a
surplus of use-values (the products of agriculture) no abstract
concept of such a surplus was either necessary or indeed possible.
Here, it would seem, lay for Marx the true significance of Smith's
work: he was the first to attempt a systematic investigation of
the abstractions of value and surplus value. The specific advance
constituted by his work lay in the fact that he saw that it was
labour in general - not merely one of its specific forms - which is
value-creating. In his commentary on Smith's work Marx again draws
37
attention to the material basis in the development of the economy
which made possible this important step forward. The notion of
'labour in general' was itself possible only in a rapidly
changing economy in which the traditional bond between the individual
and his labour was being shattered. The indifference to the
particular type of labour when considering value - Smith's real,
if at times inconsistent point of criticism against Physiocracy -
implied the existence of a highly developed variety of specific
types of labour, none of which was predominant and all of which were
becoming increasingly subordinated to the demands of the market.
But as in the case of the French Physiocrats, so now in the case of
Smith: Marx perceives definite limits to the advances which his
work constitutes. From the point of view of the method of
political economy, Smith continued and advanced the classificatory
work of his predecessors, notably William Petty. At the same time
Smith was the first to attempt an abstract analysis of the capitalist
economy - to attempt to find the ~ or regularities of its develop
ment and it was this latter aspect of his work which was carried
forward by Ricardo at a later date. Marx characterises Smith's work
in the following way: on the one hand he tries to uncover those
laws which would reveal the essential features which characterised
the economic system then emerging in Britain. Herein lay the
significance of the Smithian notion of the 'hidden hand' summed up
in the well-known statement, 'It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from
their regard to their own interest'? Here, in this sentence is
contained Smith's conception of an economy which worked independently
38
of the aims of the individual. This aspect of Smith's work Marx
refers to as its 'esoteric element'. At the same time Marx
detects a considerable 'exoteric element' in Smith's writings,
that is one concerned, not with the inner structure of economic
relations, but with their immediately outward manifestation, that
is with the farm which such relations assume within the sphere of
competition. It was this 'naieve duality' (Marx'S phrase) which
Ricardo saw as the major weakness in Smith's work. It is a
duality seen most clearly perhaps in the law of value. As is
widely recognised, Smith in fact held two, mutually inconsistent,
notions of value. In certain places, Smith sees the value of
commodities as determined by the quantity of labour involved in
their production, as when he gives his famous example of the
beaver and deer:
"In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another. If amongst a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange for or be warth two deer. It is natural that what is usually the produce of two days or two hours of labour, should be worth double what is the produce of one day's or one hour's labour."10
In other places however Smith drops this labour exchange theory in
favour of what is in effect a labour command theory, or what amounted
to the same thing, a theory of value which sees exchange-value as
determined by the level of wages. Thus we find Smith saying:
"The value of any commodity therefore to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to command.""
39
Smith is here in effect saying that the appearance of wages along
with profits and - once private property in land is established,
rent - overthrows the determination of value by labour time. All
three 'factors' had now to be taken into account and Smith adopts
what is essentially an 'adding up' theory of value as Maurice Dobb
amongst others has pointed out. Thus,
"In every state of society the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other of all of these three parts; and in every improved society all the three enter more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities."12
Several later economists took hold of this latter, e~teric, aspect
of Smith's work and developed it into a theory of value which
constitutes the main point of the vulgar strand in political economy.
Ricardo recognised that there was indeed a contradiction in Smith's
treatment of value theory and, having recognised it he attempted to
resolve it. And this Ricardo did by endeavouring to demonstrate
that the determination of value by labour-time could be made consistent
with the existence of wages, profits and rents. That is, he attempted
to show that the law of value as given in Adam Smith's first formula-
tion continued to hold for an 'improved' society. In fact it is
possible to say that Ricardo went further and attempted to demonstrate
that the determination of value by labour-time was the only basis on
which the distribution of the social product between wages, profit
and rent could properly be explained, a task which he regarded as
being the major one facing political economy. From the very outset
of the Principles Ricardo notes the different and ultimately
incompatible conceptions of value in The Wealth of Nations.
"Adam Smith, who so accurately defined the original source
40
of exchangeable value and who was bound in consistency to maintain that all things become more or less valuable in proportion as more or less labour was bestowed on their production, has himself erected another standard measure of value, and speaks of things being more or less valuable in proportion as they will exchange for more or less of this standard measure; not the quantity of labour bestowed on an object, but the quantity which it can command in the market: as if these were two equivalent expressions, and as if, because a man's labour had become doubly efficient and he could therefore produce twice the quantity of a commodity he would necessarily receive twice the quantity in exchange for it."13
This same point is made when Ricardo, once again objecting to Smith's
inconsistency, says
"In the same country double the quantity of labour may be required to produce a given quantity of food and necessaries at one time than may be necessary at another and a distant time; yet the labourer's re~ard may possibly be very little diminished. If the labourer's wages at the former period were a certain quantity of food and necessaries, he could probably not have been sustained if that quantity had been reduced. food and necessaries in this case will have risen by 100 per cent if estimated by the quantity of labour necessary to their production while they will scarcely have risen in value if measured by the quantity of labour for which they will exchange."14
Ricarda saw that the duality to which he was here drawing attention
must be eliminated if political economy was to progress as a science.
It was through his efforts to grapple with the theoretical problems
left unresolved in the work of Smith that Ricarda was forced to
develop a quite different method in the analysis of economic phenomena.
It was this new method which for Marx constituted 'Ricarda's great
service to the science'. Political Economy, Ricardo came to see,
must start with a fundamental proposition - the determination of
value by the quantity of labour bestowed upon a commodity. All those
phenomena which appear, prima facia, to contradict this law must be
41
made compatible with it and the law of value thereby established as
the true axis of a scientific political economy. '(Ricardo)
demonstrates that this law governs even those bourgeois relations
which apparently contradict it most decisively.' (Th. 2, 60). Here
lies the clue to the true significance of the English adage: 'it's
the exception that proves the rule': the task of science for
Ricardo was to show that the law of value was, above all, upheld
preCisely through those phenomena which seemed, on the level of
immediate appearances, to overthrow it.
The general approach adopted by Ricardo in the Principles is as
follows: after stating the law of value in a manner much less
ambiguous than in the case of Adam Smith, Ricardo then proceeds to
consider a number of questions in turn. He thus examines the
~xtent to which the law of value stands in contradiction with the
manner in which it appears in the realm of competition, as it
presents itself to the immediate eye. Marx, in his account of this
approach tells us that,
"The basiS, the starting point for the physiology of the bourgeois system - for understanding its internal organic coherence and life-process - is the determination of value by labour-time. Ricardo starts with this and forces science to get out of the rut, to render an account of the extent to which the other categories - the relations of production and commerce - evolved and described by it~ correspond to or contradict this basis, this starting point." (Th.2, 166).
The nature'of Ricardo's procedure can be illustrated by reference
to rent. The chapter on rent in the Principles (Chapter 2) begins,
'It remains however to be considered, whether the appropriation of
land and the consequent creation of rent, will occasion any varia-
tion in the relative value of commodities, independently of the
15 quantity of labour necessary to production.' Here Ricardo is
42
about to consider the extent to which, if at all, the existence of
the concrete category, rent, undermines, or at least forces a
modification of the basic starting point for political economy -
the law of value.
Ricardo deals with the question of wages in a similar manner.
Ricardo argues that, contrary to immediate appearances, the level
of wages is quite independent of the value of commodities.
Marx paid full tribute to Ricardo's efforts to create a systematic
political economy by following the method outlined here. But Marx
drew attention to a series of weaknesses which nonetheless remained
with Ricardo and seriously vitiated his attempts to carry through
his intended task to completion. It would of course be a mistake
to see these weaknesses as residing in the conclusions at which
Ricardo arrived; it is clear that Marx objected to the very
structure and method of Ricardo's political economy. We have already
noted that the opening chapter of the Principles deals with a series
of phenomena to see whether they can be reconciled with the law of
value, as Ricardo understood that law. Ricardo examines wages and
considers that their level is independent of the determination of
value. Here was a significant step beyond Adam Smith, who continually
allOWS a consideration of the level of wages to intrude his analysis.
Ricardo says on this matter: 'Labour of different qualities
differently rewarded. This is no cause of variation in the relative
16 value of commodities.' This point is elaborated further when we
43
find soon after
"The proportion which might be paid for wages is of the utmost importance in the question of profits; for it must at once be seen, that profits would be high or low; but it could not in the least affect the relative value (of fish and game) as wages would be high or low at the same time in both occupations."1?
Having rejected Smith's claim that the emergence of wages undermines
(or at any rate seriously limits) the operation of the law of value,
Ricardo then continues (in the third section of the opening chapter)
to deal with the impact of the fact that fixed and circulating
capital exist in different proportions; the fifth section of this
same chapter discusses how far a rise or fall in wages calls for a
modification of the initial value analysis, given the existence of
capital of varying durability and unequal rate of turnover in
different spheres of production. Marx comments on the structure of
Ricardo's opening chapter as follows
"Thus one can see that in this first chapter not only are commodities assumed to exist - and when considering value as such nothing further is required - but also wages, capital, profit, the general rate of profit and even, as we see, the various forms of capital as they arise from the process of circulation, and also the difference between 'natural and market price' ••••• In order to carry out this investigation he introduces not only en passant, the relationship of 'market price' and 'real price' (monetary expression of value) but the whole of capitalist production and his entire conception of the relationship between wages and profits." (Th.2, 168).
Here, it would seem, lies the essential point of Marx's attack upon
political economy and t~e key to grasping why he rejected not merely
its conclusions but its method of investigation. tor Marx wishes
to stress that Ricardo started by assuming 'as given' the very
phenomena - the developed relations of bourgeois economy - which he
44
sought to explain. This faulty procedure - which Marx at one point
characterises as 'giving the science before the science' - was
precisely a reflection of the a-historicism of political economy.
It should perhaps be emphasised that Marx never attacked Ricardo's
work for its abstract quality as such; it was, on the contrary,
this very abstract quality which so appealed to him. He did
however take Ricardo to task for the forced and inadequate nature
of the abstractions which he employed. It was because he started
by assuming, taken as read, the social relations of capitalist
production that Ricardo tended to counterpose directlx the outward
appearance taken by these relations on the surface of society with
their inner source, which Ricardo identified with the law of
value. Entirely missing from this procedure is a systematic
examination of the historical and logical paths by which this inner
law actuallY develops to produce and sustain the surface relations
of bourgeois society. Or to put this same point another way:
Ricardo fails to trace the manifold and contradictory links
(mediations) between this relatively hidden inner determination
(law of value) and the immediate phenomena, or phenomenal forms, in
which this law 'moves' and finds its expression (prices, profits,
interest, etc.). When Marx notes that 'all science would be
superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things
directly coincided' (III, 797), he was, by implication, rejecting
the methodological basis of Ricardo's work. Ricardo, in effect,
allowed the day-to-day expression of the social relations of
capitalist production to stand in the way of his presentation of
the law of value.
45
It cannot be an accident that the structure of Ricardo's work is not
merely different from that of Marx but is in certain respects its
opposite. Whereas in the case of Ricardo all the historically developed
economic relations of 'modern society' are dealt with at the very
start of the work, quite the reverse is true in the case of Capital.
Marx in his work shows, not in the opening chapter, but over three
entire volumes, how all the economic relations of bourgeois economy
grow - and this growth it should be noted is at once logical and
historical - out of the relations of simple commodity production.
And in a fourth volume (Theories of Surplus Value) the theoretical
reflection of this contradictory process is reviewed in the work of
all the leading (and many of the minor) political economists, both
'scientific' and 'vulgar'. Marx is aiming to show that the essence
of all the contradictions in modern society - Which to the liberal
mind tend to assume the form of a series of separate phenomena - is
to be located, discovered, within the commodity form itself. At
the same time, matters could not be left standing there insofar as
the growth and development of this contradiction had to be
demonstrated. Thus while it would be a mistake to think that all
the relations of bourgeois economy (let alone of politics, ideology,
etc.) can be explained by direct reference to Marx's opening chapter
in Capital (this would imply that the structure of his work was akin
to that of Ricardo's), it would be equally erroneoud to believe that
these more complex relations can be considered in isolation from
Marx's analysis of the commodity. Lenin sums up what is perhaps the
•
46
fundamental point here at issue when he writes
"In his Caoital, Marx first analyses the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz the exchange of commodities. In this very simple phenomenon (in this 'cell' of bourgeois society) analysis reveals ~ the contradictions (or the germs of all the contradictions of modern society. The subsequen~xposition shows us the development (~growth ~ movement) of these contradictions, and of the society in the summation of its individual parts, from its beginning to its end." (.k.9!L 38, pp 360-1).
Lenin here indicates that in Capital all the developed forms of
modern economy are traced to their point of origin in the simple
commodity form. In the first volume Marx is concerned with the
nature of money and of capital and with the general relationship
of wage labour to capital. In the second volume this concern
develops into an investigation into the turnover of capital and
the way in which this turnover modifies the analysis already made.
Having dealt with these matters, only now is Marx able (in his
third volume) to investigate the surface phenomena of bourgeois
economy and the reflection of these phenomena in the consciousness
of the agents of production themselves, as well as in political
economy. In this way Marx aims to reveal that the appearances of
this specific mode of production are in no sense 'natural' but a
product of definite historically formed social relations; this,
and second, that the consciousness of these relations is also not
arbitrary - not merely a false consciousness in this sense - but
is itself an objective product of these social relations. This
tracing of the contradictory connection between social relations on
the one hand and social consciousness on the other was precisely
what was needed to demonstrate and make concrete the truth of
historical materialism, the 'testing out' of which Lenin considered
47
to be the real task of Capital. But if this method of procedure
constituted Marx's efforts to establish that it was indeed social
being which in the last instance determined social consciousness
it also contained at the same time the essence of his critique of
political economy. for Marx had to show that the conceptions
which lay at the base of political economy were no mere illusions,
no product of apologetic intent (this element came to prominence
only with the domination of vulgar political economy), but were the
abstract expression of actually existing social relations. Thus at
the very outset of the third volume Marx says:
"In Book I we analysed the phenomena which constitute the process of capitalist production as such, as the immediate productive process, with no regard for any of the secondary effects or outside influences. But this immediate process of production does not exhaust the life span of capital. It is supplemented in the actual world by the process of circulation, which was the object of study in Book II. In the latter, namely Part III, which treated the process of circulation as a medium for the process of social reproduction, it developed that the process of capitalist production taken as a whole represents a synthesis of the process of production and circulation. Considering what this third book treats, it cannot confine itself to general reflection relative to this synthesis. On the contrary it must locate and describe the concrete forms which grow out of the movement of capital as a whole. In their actual movement capitals confront each other in concrete shape, for which the form of capital in the immediate process of production, just as its form in the process of circulation appear only as special instances. The various forms of capital as revolUid in this book, thus approach step by step the form which they assume on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals to one another, in competition, and in the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production themselves." (III, 25).
What Marx at one point describes as the 'faulty architectonics' of
Ricardo's work stemmed from the fact that he felt no need to
investigate the basic economic categories; he pre-supposed them.
48
It was this faulty structure of this work, Marx felt, which led to a
series of related theoretical misconceptions, ones which exposed
Ricardo to the successful attack of his opponents. Comparing Smith
with Ricardo, Marx emphasises bath his own indebtedness to the
advance which the Principles marked but at the same time the
inadequacy of its method. The point is summarised thus:
"Adam Smith •••• first correctly interprets the value and relation existing between profit, wages, etc., as component parts of this value, and then proceeds the other way round, regards the process of wages profits and rent as antecedent factors and seeks to determine them independently, in order to compose the price of the commodity out of them. The meaning of this change of approach is that first he grasps the problem in its inner relationships, and then in the reverse form, as it appears in competition. These two concepts of his run counter to one another in his work, naievely, without his being aware of the contradiction." (Th 2, 106).
Ricardo's method is contrasted with this approach; while Marx sees
this as an advance he nonetheless pOints to its limitations:
"Ricardo, on the other hand, consciously abstracts from the form of competition, in order to comprehend the laws as ~. On the other hand, one must reproach him for regarding the phenomenal form as immediate and direct proof or exposition of these general laws, and for failing to interpret it. In regard to the first, his abstraction is too incomplete; in regard to the second, it is formal abstraction which in itself is wrong." (Th 2, 106).
This same point is repeated by Marx elsewhere, when for instance he
remarks:
"Classical political economy seeks to reduce the various fixed and mutually alien forms of wealth to their inner unity by means of analysis and to strip away the form in which they exist independently alongside ana another •••• lt often attempts directly, leaving out the immediate links, to carry through the reduction and prove that the various forms are derived from one and the same source. This is however a necessary consequence of its analytical method, with which criticism and understanding must begin. ClaSSical political economy is not interested in elaborating how the various forms come into beIng, but seeks to reduce them to their unity by means of
49
analysis, because it starts from them as given premises. But analysis is the prerequisite of genetical presentation and of the understanding of the real formative process and its different phases." (Th 3, p.500).
To return to a point already anticipated in the Introduction to
this thesis. Marx is here pointing to those limitations of
classical economics which derived from its empiricism. As we
noted this empiricism derives from the work of John Locke, but it
is clearly evidenced in the work of William Petty. In his
Political Arithmetic Petty makes explicit his empiricist standpoint:
"Instead of using only comparative and superlative words, and intellectual Arguments, I have taken the course •••• to express myself in terms of Number, Weight Or Measure; to use only Arguments of Sense, and to consider only such Causes as have visible foundations in Nature."18
for the empiricist knowledge is limited to experience; for the
'pure empiriCist' any concern with matters beyond the bounds of such
experience is deemed to be 'metaphysics'. One consequence of this
philosophical method is that it takes a series of 'facts' as given
given, that is, by experience. Speaking of what he calls the 'old
empiricism' (this to distinguish it from 'naive realism' which is
seen as a later development of empiriCism). Lukacs remarks:
"The old empiricism often had a very naive ontological character; it took as its starting-point the irreducible existence of these given facts, naively remained at the level of direct data of this kind, and left out of account the further mediations which were frequently the decisive ontological relationships.,,19
flowing from the conception of empiricism is a specific conception
of law. for empiriCism a general law of phenomena - such as the
law of value or the tendency for the rate of profit to fall - is
taken as given, as a pOint of departure. Such a general law,
argues empiricism, can be upheld only when it can be established,
50
as an immediately given principle under which all the given facts
being considered can be subsumed, without contradiction. for
empiricism the 'general' is mechanically constructed out of a
series of 'concrete' experiences and in this way all dialectical
relations are set aside, since the universal is merely analysed
from the empirically concrete. Engels characterised this method
the method which starts with a series of principles or ~ which
are then tested against the 'facts' as ideological - as a method
which in fact inverts the true process by which knowledge is
developed and extended.
"The general result of investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence are not principles, pOints of departure, but results, conclusions. To construct the latter in one's head is ideology, an ideology which tainted every speCies of materialism hitherto existing. H20
And Engels points out the roots of this ideology; it rested on a
lack of understanding of the origin of thought in definite
historical-social conditions:
"While in nature the relationship of thinking to being was certainly to some extent clear to materialism in history it was not, nor did materialism realise the dependence of all thought upon the historical material conditions obtaining at the particular time.,,21
This method of starting from principles (instead of abstracting
them in the course of theoretical work) was essentially the same as
beginning with abstract definitions into which the facts can then
be fitted; or, should the facts fail to 'fit', then the defini-
tions can be changed accordingly.
Engels commented upon this type of method, when, commenting
specifically on Capital and reviewing various treatments of the
51
transformation of values into prices he says that several mistakes
made by one writer
"rest upon the false assumption that Marx wishes to define where he only investigates, and that in general one might expect fixed, cut-to-measure, once and for all applicable definitions in Marx's works. It is self-evident that where things and their interconnections are conceived, not as fixed, but as changing, their mental images, the ideas, are likewise subject to change and transformation; and they are not encapsulated in rigid definitions, but are developed in their logical or historical process of formation. This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historic premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital - why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form - from an already capitalistically modified commodity." (Preface to III).
Let us consider again Ricardo's method in the light of this state-
mente As we have seen Ricardo's starting point was the definition
of value according to quantity of labour. According to him this
amounted to a general abstract category which encompassed
characteristics of all these phenomena (money, capital, profit,
etc.) which he was seeking to analyse. Or putting the matter from
a slightly different angle, money, capital, profit, etc., were
conceived of as mere forms of value, all having a common source,
namely labour. Labour was the common element, as it were, in each
of these economic categories. Here for Marx lay the formalism of
Ricardo's abstractions: he sought merely to find what was common
in all the various phenomena which he set out to investigate. But
for Marx the real law of a series of phenomena - their real
relationships and movement - could not be arrived at if analysis
was confined merely to establishing what these series of phenomena
held in common; this was to confine theoretical work to the
52
category which Hegel called 'dead identity' (the point will be
elaborated further below). It was for this reason that Marx was
unable to go along with Ricardo's definition of capital as
'stored up' 'accumulated' labour. Capital, for Marx at any rate,
was a definite social relation of production, a definite form in
which labour was organised and carried out. He agreed fully with
the proposition that labour was the technical basis for capital
(and this was an indispensible basis) but not its social basis.
Capital could not be understood in its speCificity, in its real
concreteness, if attention was confined merely to discovering
within it an element (labour) which it shared with lower economic
forms (value, money, etc.). It could only be understood by means
of an investigation of the path whereby it had grown out of these
lower economic relations. This involved a theoretical study of
its real birth and evolution. It followed, assuming Marx correct,
that 'theory' and 'history' could not be separated: to 'define'
capital was to understand the process which had brought this
social relation into being. Science must then reproduce this
process theoretically in the form adequate notions or to use the
stricter term, in concepts. (This matter is considered in some
detail in chapter 4 below.) This was the essence of Marx's
dialectical method, one which distanced him considerably from the
methodological standpOint of political economy. Speaking of the
notion of capital, Marx makes the following observations:
"To the extent that we are considering it here, as a relation distinct from that of value and money, capital is capital in general, that is the incarnation of qualities which distinguish value as capital from value as pure value or as money. Value, money, circulation, etc., prices, etc., are presupposed, as is labour, etc.
53
But we are still concerned neither with a particular form of capital nor with an individual capital as distinct from the individual capital, etc. We are present as the process of its becoming. This dialectical process of its becoming is only the ideal expression of the real movement through which capital comes into being. The later relations are to be regarded as development coming out of this germ. But it is necessary to establish the specific form in which it is posited at a certain point. Otherwise confusion arises. n
(G, 310).
We shall consider some further methodological aspects and implica-
tions of this and similar passages but let us at this stage note
that here Marx brings out very clearly his view of the relationship
between value and capital, a view which is quite difference from
that of Ricardo. The value concept was arrived at by Marx not
through an aggregation of the abstract general attributes that
experience detects in all its speCial, developed forms (capital,
money, interest, etc.) as the method of empiricism would require.
Marx in point of fact arrives at his concepts by a quite different
route: by means of an examination of one single, quite concrete,
actuallY existing relationship between people - that is, the exchange
of one commodity for another. In the analYSis of the commodity, the
universal determinants of value are abstracted. These determinants
are later reprodcced theoretically at higher levels of development
as abstract general determinations of money and labour-power and
capital.
In order to explore these methodological questions at greater length
and to consider more fully the differences on these questions between
Marx and the classical political economists we can consider the
problem of the relationship between value and profit, as this
relationship was dealt with in Ricardo's work. We can start by
54
rehearsing some well-known details. According to Ricardo the law
of the average rate of profit - which established the dependence
of the scale of profit on the quantity of capital as a whole and
the law of value - which insisted that only living labour created
value - stood 1n stark opposition or contradiction to each other.
But the problem was that both laws determine one and the same
phenomenon - that is profit. This was an antinomy which gave
Ricardo enormous problems and one which Malthus seized upon with such
relish making it the basis for his attack upon the Ricardian school.
Here was a real problem, a real contradiction. for Ricardo had
discovered that there was no direct, no immediate, relationship
between the law of value and its immediate appearance; indeed its
appearance stood in opposition to the law. As soon as Ricardo
attempted to deal with the nature of profit in a theoretical manner,
that is to understand it on the basis of the law of value, it led to
an apparently absurd conclusion. If the law of value was universal,
if it was not to be confined to some mythical 'rude and primitive
state' as Smith proposed, then profit was in principle impossible,
a proposition clearly denied by the most immediate and direct
experience. Ricardo's genius and integrity allowed him to realise
that here was a real problem. But how to resolve it? All Ricardo's
difficulties at this point arose from the fact that he attempted to
deal with what was in fact a real material, objective, contradiction,
by means of a redefinition of his terms. Political economy wanted to
subsume the immediate 'facts' of bourgeois economy directly under
what it took as its basic starting point - the law of value. We are
clearly back to the problem of empiricism, to the particular
55
philosophical standpoint which according to Marx underlay the whole
of political economy. As Marx observed, commenting upon the dis-
integration of the Ricardian school in the 1830s, in trying to make
the laws which determine value agree directly with those determining
the rate of profit, political economy got caught up with a 'much
more difficult problem to solve than that of squaring the circle
which can be solved algebraically. It is simply an attempt to
present that which does not exist as in fact existing'.
In political economy's efforts to overcome the contradiction between
the law of value and the rate of profit by attempting to make its
concepts more precise lay the notion that the supposed problem arose
from an earlier error in thought; it could not sBe, thanks to its
formal method, that the contradiction arose from the actual
contradictory nature of the phenomena under investigation. In
connection with this type of method, one based exclusively on the
principles of a purely formal logic, Marx had this to say:
"Here the contradiction between the general law and further developments in the concrete circumstances is to be resolved not by the discovery of the connecting links but by directly subordinating and immediately adopting the concrete (in the example we are pursuing the average rate of profit) to the abstract (the law of value in this particular case). This moreover is to be brought about by a verbal fiction, by changing the correct name of things. (these are indeed 'verbal disputes', they are 'verbal', however, because real contradictions which are not resolved in a real way, are to be resolved by phrases.)". (pp.87-B).
Brought out here is another important matter: the necessary relation-
ship between empiricism and the adherence to a purely formal logic.
Empiricism argues that the limit to knowledge is provided by
experience. Unless one denies completely the possibility of a
56
knowledge of causality in nature or society (as did Hume) then the
question arises: how are these individual experiences to be
co-ordinated? In practice empiricism has relied upon the rules of
formal logic to as it were 'process' such experiences. And the
main point here is that formal logic sees in contradiction not an
objective, and actual, contradictory relationship between the
phenomena under investigation but an error in thought. In his widely
known 'What is Dialectic?' Karl Popper makes the essential pOint:
fA statement consisting of the conjunction of two contradictory
statements must always be rejected as false an purely logical grounds,.22
And elsewhere this same writer says, 'all criticism consists in
pointing out some contradiction or discrepancies, and scientific
progress consists largely in the elimination of contradictions
wherever we find them,.23 In ather words, on this view, the
existence of a contradiction is an expression of an as yet unresolved
error, an error which must be got rid of if progress is to be made in
the investigation concerned. On this basis, the uncovering of a
contradiction and its removal involve an operation performed on an
aspect of the theory to bring it into harmony with another theory,
or part of theory which is regarded as true. If we cannot succeed in
this operation then one of the two(contradictory) theories must be reject-
ed.
Were we to follow Popper's lead, then the basic weakness of Ricardo's
theory (or at any rate that aspect of it which attempted to explore
the relationship between the law of value on the one hand and the
formation of an average rate of profit on the other) would reside in
57
its contradictory nature. Either the law of value must be rejected
as it stands, or the notion of the rate of profit: this would seem
to be the route out of the seeming impasse. This was in point of
fact the main conclusion of Ricardo's leading followers. And for
Marx none was more guilty than James Mill in his efforts to deal
with the contradictions which Ricardo had unearthed by purely
formal methods. Mill started, says Marx, with Ricardo's system as
a purely abstract system of thought, ignoring the fact that this
system of thought expressed a (contradictory) reality. Driven on
by the criticisms of Ricardo's opponents (Malthus was here in the
lead) and also sensing that Ricardo's work was in contradiction
with reality, Mill tried to eliminate the contradictions in the
master's thought by resort to a re-definition of terms. What he
aimed for says Marx was 'formal, logical consistency'. Mill was
in fact caught in a dilemma. On the one hand he wanted to
establish that the bourgeois mode of production was the absolute
form of production 'and seeks therefore to prove that its real
contradictions are only apparent ones'. At the same time'however,
Mill seeks 'to present Ricardian theory as the absolute theoretical
form of this mode of production and to disprove the theoretical
contradictions, both the ones pointed out by others and the ones he
himself cannot help seeing'. (Th 3, PP.84_5).24
How did Marx approach the contradictions of the Ricardian system?
Certainly in a manner quite different from that of James Mill.
In the first place, he proposed a quite different source for these
contradictions; for him they lay not in the errors of Ricardo's
thought, in the realm of theory but arose from the real contradic-
58
tions in the phenomena which Ricardo, through his theoretical
endeavours, was seeking to express. Speaking of Ricardo and here
contrasting him directly with Mill, Marx says 'with the master
what is new and significant develops vigorously amid the "manure"
of contradictions out of the contradictory phenomenat'. follow
ing from this, Marx held that the more deeply Ricardo penetrated
the social relations of bourgeois economy, the more openly the
contradictory nature of such relations revealed themselves in his
theoretical work. for Marx - always an enemy of purely formal and
metaphysical thought - contradiction was the form assumed by all
development. Thought if it aspired to be truly scientific must
aim consciously to expresses the contradictions within the phenomena
it was trying to investigate for only by so doing would it be able
to grasp the movement of such phenomena. Mill tried to eliminate
the contradictions in Ricardo's work; in this regard, although his
work was an attempted defence of Ricardo against his detractors,
and although Mill continued the (progressive) task of defending the
interests of industrial capital against landed capital, it really
constitutes the true beginning of the 'disintegration' (Marx) of
Ricardo's work. Marx recognised in the contradictions of the
Ricardian system the maturing contradictions of capitalist economy.
This is Marx's meaning when he says that Ricardo's system expressed
the relations of this economy 'with social validity'. If this were
the casa, then it followed that it was a matter of disclosing,
through investigation, how these contradictions were in reality,
in life, finding not a formal solution (re-definition of terms etc.)
but an actual, concrete, solution. This Marx set out to do; he
59
sought to express this solution conceptually by means of a
demonstration of the manifold links which in reality connected
the essential laws of bourgeois company (law of value, formation
of the average rate of profit) with their expression on the direct
surface of bourgeois economy and society.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that here were opposed two
quite different conceptions: those of formal and dialectical
logic. ror Marx a formal logic - that is one confined to the
principle of non-contradiction - could never successfully resolve
the antinomies of Ricardo's system. It required dialectics to
'go beyond' Ricardo and this being the case one can say that
materialist dialectics lies at the very basis of Marx's critique
of classical political economy. ror dialectics, far from abhorring
contradiction, insists that contradictions inevitably arise in the
course of scientific progress; the scientist must resolve such
contradictions, that is he must demonstrate how such contradictions
are resolved in a higher, richer, conceptual unity; he must not,
like Mill did, attempt to sweep them away by resort to the canons
of formal logic. Marx saw in the contradictions which Ricardo had
discovered the great strength of his work, discoveries which placed
him at the very summit of the achievement of political economy.
Ricardo was grappling with deep-seated changes in an economy under
going rapid change in the first part of the last century. The fact
that Ricardo came so close to disclosing the real contradictory
nature of capitalist economy (compared that is with what had gone
on before) signified that a decisive turning point, what Hegel
60
referred to in connection with the growth of science as a whole as
a 'nodal point', had been reached with Ricardo's work.
We have argued, in this section of the development of the thesis,
that it was only because Marx raised the principles of contradiction
to the very centre of his method that he was able to go beyond the
considerable achievements of the classical school in the sphere of
economics. As a further, although briefer, illustration of this
point we can take the problem of the origin of capital. In the
first volume of Capital we find Marx's well-known statement
"Our friend, Moneybags ••••• must buy his commodities at their value, must sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the process must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw into it at the start. His development into a full-grown capitalist must take place, both within the sphere of circulation and without it. These are the conditions of the problem." (I, 166).
In other words, argues Marx surplus value cannot arise within the
sphere of circulation, yet it can only arise within this spheret
Immediately before this Marx has made the same point when he says:
'It is therefore impossible for capital to be produced by circula-
tion, and it is equally impossible for it to originate apart from
circulation. It must have its origin both in circulation and yet
not in circulation.' (I, 165-8). It was of course the prejudice
of Mercantilism that an economic surplus could arise only within
the realm of circulation, 'upon alienation'. The later development
of political economy, starting with Physiocracy, was to turn the
science in the direction of production. Yet this should not blind
us to the fact that Mercantilism did contain an element, an aspect,
of the truth, of the matter albeit one which it made into an
absolute. It was this: a simple commodity owner, considered in
61
relation to his own commodity, can never be the source of surplus
value but only of value. It is therefore impossible that a
producer, outside the sphere of circulation, can, without coming
into contact with and forming relations with others, expand value,
annex surplus value, in short convert commodities into money or
capital. So ~8rcantilism was, within limits, right in insisting
that without circulation there could be no surplus value; yet at
the same time it was wrong in attributing the origin of surplus
value to circulation ~~.
The adhereAt of a logic confined to the principles of non-contradiction
(formal logic) will claim: to say that surplus value arises both in
circulation and yet cannot arise within circulation must be an
indication of some unobserved confusion, some undetected error, in the
theory concerned. for him a solution will be obtained through the
refinement of the concepts with which the theory has been constructed.
Marx proposes a solution which is of a quite different order; it
cannot be achieved by some redefinition of the two terms 'production'
and 'circulation' which would render them compatible (that is non
contradictory). for Marx at any rate the solution was achieved along
the following road: by recognising that the worker sold not his
labour, as political economy imagined, but his labour power. Now
the use-value of this latter commodity, labour-power, possessed the
unique property of being itself the source af surplus value. It was
a commodity whose consumption is the materialisatian af labour, that
is to say in the creation of value, and whose circulation is therefore
production. In ather words, the conversion of money and commodities
into capital arises in the sphere of the circulation of the commodity
62
labour power, the very circulation of which constitutes the sphere
of production. Such a conclusion will certainly conflict with the
conceptions of a purely formal logic, for is it not self-evident ,
given to us through direct experience, that to be circulated a
commodity must first be produced? It was precisely this rigidity
of thought, a rigidity which kept the determinations of an object
quite separate and apart, which always in the last resort
encountered . the inexplicable.
We can in passing note how a recent work on Capital deals with this
particular problem.
"Value analysis can analyse the exploitation in capitalist production because of the concept of the value-creating power of labour and the assumption that commodities despite divergence 'represent' values. This means that for the purpose of analysis of exploitation the differences between production and circulation are obliterated, or rather, that 25 categories of exchange are interiorized within circulation."
On Marx's own account, quoted above, he never aimed to 'obliterate'
the distinction between production and circulation, as this account
has it. What he did attempt was to show these categories in their
real unity, to show by what process such opposed categories actuallY
become identical and how this real identity-opposition provides the
only basis for explaining the nature of capital as 'self-expanding
value'. The fact that labour power had been transformed into a
commodity (a 'fact' which the owner of capital took for granted) and
because it was a commodity which could exist only in a state of
(being bought and sold) was of course no accident. Nor was it
something found in the nature of things; it was something produced
by a definite development of society and specifically by the
63
enforced separation of labour from the direct ownership of the means
of production.
One of the consequences of the fact that the method of classical
economics was one limited to formal logic was that it was, in the
last resort unable to uphold the law of value. As is well known,
under pressure from Malthus and others, Ricardo accepted that changes
in the rate of profit (rate of interest) could also, along with the
quantity of labour, effect relative commodity values. This would
be the case, he conceded, when the organic composition of capital
(this was of course Marx's category; in the case of Ricardo it
referred to the relationship between fixed and circulating capital)
was uniform throughout the various branches of industry. for the
rate of profit to remain the same, the rise or fall in wages - to
which corresponds an inverse movement in profits - must have unequal
effects on capital of different organic compositions. If wages rise.
then profits fall and SO does the price of commodities in whose
production a relatively large amount of fixed capital is used. Where
the opposite is the case the result will also be the opposite. That
is to say, the establishment of an equal rate of profit yielded by
capital of different organic compositions contradicts the law of
value. And similarly, Ricardo admitted, with capital having different
rates of turnover and different degrees of durability. Summing up
the point about fixed and Circulating capital Ricard says
"It appears that the division of capital into different proportions of fixed and circulating capital, employed in different tradesi introduces a considerable modification into the rule, which is of universal application when labour is almost exclusively employed in production; namely, that commodities never vary in value unless a greater quantity of labour be bestowed upon their
64
production, it being shown in this section that without any variation in the quantity of labour, the rise of its value will occasion a fall in the exchange of goods, in the production of which fixed capital is employed; the larger the amount of fixed capital the greater will be its fall. (37-8).26
In short, the exchange of commodities could not, in the last reckon-
ing, be considered as being independent of the level of wages, that
is of distribution. After setting out to show that Smith was
mistaken on this matter, Ricardo actually yields the cass' to him.
The same is true when we consider the question of the durability of
capital. In a letter to James Mill, written in 1818, Ricardo
states:
"I maintain that it is not because of this division into wages and profit - it is not because capital accumUlates that exchangeable value varies, but it is in all stages of society due to only two causes: one the more or less quantity of labour, the-other the greater or lesser durability of capital: that the form27 is never superseded by the latter, but is only modified."
Now Sraffa, in drawing attention to this letter has persuasively
argued that Ricardo was ha;!s trying to dispose of one of Adam Smith's
objections to the law of value. More germane to the argument here
however is that Ricardo accedes to the proposition that value has
~ causes: labour (a social phenomenon) and the durability of
capital (a natural-technical phenomenon). We shall return to this
matter of the relationship between the social and the technical but •
this passage from Ricardo seems once more to underline the fact that
he had failed, in the last resort, in his major aim - to establish
the entire science of political economy on the foundation of the
law of value. As Marx comments:
~Because Ricardo, instead of deriving the difference between
65
cost price and value from the determination of value itself, admits that 'values' themselves ••••• are determined by influences that are independent of labour time and that the law of value is sporadically invalidated by these influences; this was used by his opponents, such as Malthus f in order to attack his whole theory of value." (Th 2, 100).
This last reference to Malthus reminds us that there was one 'solution'
to the unresolved contradictions of Ricardian political economy and
one which was in fact followed increasingly in the period after his
death. This lay in divorcing entirely the law determining value from
that determining the rate of profit. Cost price and value could be
conflated, identified completely; what in the case of Ricardo was
a sporadically occuring exception could now be elevated to the status
of a law. This was precisely the path which vulgar political economy
was to take. It came to the conclusion that profit originated by no
means solely in labour, but in a diversity of what were essentially
discrete factors. According to this line of reasoning it was
necessary to take account of the role of land, of machinery, of time,
of supply and demand, of 'enterprise' etc. Thus was the Trinity
formula born: 'capital-interest; land-rent; labour-wages'.
All the problems which Ricardo had bequeathed to political economy
could now be disposed of. Rent, profit and wages no longer confronted
each other as alienated forms having a common source, an inner unity,
but now became. heterogeneous and independent of each other. It was
now possible to see these economic forms as merely different from
each other, but in no sense antagonistic. The 'discords' in modern
economy which Ricardo's analysis had unearthed could now be pushed
into the background and the notion that the durability of capital
might playa role 'in the determination of value (a possiblity which
as we have noted Ricardo allowed) could now be extended to the point
66
where it was eventually claimed that all economic relations (income
distribution etc.) could be explained by reference to the given
technology.
In this sense the efforts to resolve the problems of Ricardian
political economy in a theoretical manner disappeared under this
conception. There were simply a series of discrete factors which
'combined' to explain economic relations. Ricardo's efforts to
establish a unified political economy which would explain economic
phenomena from one fundamental principle (the law of value) was
abandoned, at least by the majority engaged in the field of
political economy. It was Marx who, starting with Ricardo's
achievement, attempted to resolve the contradictions of classical
economics, and resolve them in the manner indicated in this chapter,
that is in a real and not merely a formal manner. It has been
suggested that Marx was able to begin this task only because he
rejected the empiricism of political economy; Marx tackled many of the
basic problems of political economy by means of a (dialectical) method
which allowed him to trace the entire chain of connecting links
between the law of value and the determination of the rate of profit.
This Marx attempted in his prices of production theory in which the
contradictions of the lower economic forms (the analysis of value)
are overcome, resolved if you like, not in a formal method (redefinition
of terms) but are sublated in a richer, more diverse and concrete
conception.
Having considered several aspects of Marx's approach to the work of
the classical economists and indicated a series of philosophical
methodological dimensions to his critique of the work of Smith,
67
Ricardo and others it is now proposed to deal at greater length with
one aspect of this critique, namely Marx's approach to the analysis
of labour.
68
Chapter :3
MARX'S CRITIQUE OF CLASSICAL ECONOMICS (II)
There is no doubt that in the estimation of the significance of his
work Marx himself regarded the treatment of the category labour as
of decisive importance.
"I was the first to point out and examine critically this two-fold nature of labour contained in commodities. As this point is the point on which a clear comprehension of Political Economy turns we must go into more detail." (1,41).
Writing later to Engels, Marx says (SC, 232)
"The best points in my book are 1) the two-fold character of labour, according to whether it is expressed in usevalue or exchange value (all comprehension of the facts depends upon this). It is emphasised immediately in the first chapter; 2) the treatment of surplus value independently of its particular forms as profit, interest, ground rent, etc."
As we shall in the course of this chapter ses, these remarks are
of particular significance, given that in much recent literature
it is widely taken for granted that Marx shared a labour theory
of value which was in its essentials at least, not far removed from
that of his classical predecessors. I shall argue in the course of
this chapter that this view is wrong and that the notion of a
'labour theory of value' in Marx's work is at best misleading and
at worst quite wrong.
Let us look again at Ricardo's formulation of the law of value,
which Marx recognised as marking a big advance on the work of Smith.
"The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends upon the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the greater or lesser compensation which is paid for that labour."1
But to suggest that this was the theory of value developed by Marx
69
in Capital or even the basis for that theory would seem to be quite
wrong. for on one question the whole of political economy preserved
a significant silence: it made no analysis of the nature of this
'labour' that determined the magnitude of value, a point to which
Marx many times drew attention.
"As regards value in general, it is the weak point of the classical school of political economy, that it nowhere and expressly and with full consciousness distinguishes between labour as it appears in the value of products and the same labour as it appears in the use-value of that product." (I, 80).
for Marx, labour was together with nature the basis for all social
life, in all epochs, a basis which remained independent of any
particular mode of production. In all periods of history man
creates wealth only through a continual struggle against the Forces
of nature, of which forces he remains always an integral part. But
a fundamental question remains still to be answered: under what
particular social form did this universal relationship appear in
each epoch of history? Replying to those who imagined it necessary -
or indeed possible - to 'prove' the law of value, Marx wrote
"The nonsense about the necessity of proving the concept of vaiue arises from complete ignorance both of the subject dealt with and of the method of science. Every child knows that a country which ceased to work, I will not say for a year but For a few months, would die. Every child knows too that the mass of products corresponding to different needs require different and qualitatively determined measures of the labour of society. That this necessity of distributing labour in definite proportions cannot be done away with by the particular form of social production but can only change the ~ it assumes, is self-evident. What can change in changing historical circumstances, is the form in which these laws operate. And the form in which this proportionate division of labour operates, in a state of society where the interconnection of social labour is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labour is precisely the eXChange value of these products. The science
70
consists precisely in working out ~ the law of value operates. So that if one wanted at the very beginning to 'explain' all the phenomena which apparently contradict this law, one would have to give the science before the science."2
How is this passage to be interpreted? I think along the following
lines. Marx here pOints out to his friend Kugelmann that in every
society social labour is distributed in definite proportions. No
society can dispose of this basic law. But the law takes different
forms in different societies. Under the conditions of commodity
production this universal law takes the particular form of the
'value' of the products of labour. Simply to rest on the proposi-
tion that 'labour is the measure of value' (and to designate this a
'labour theory of value') leaves open what 1s the crucial question:
by what social and historical forces are the activities of men
expressed in the values of the products of their labour? Now if
bourgeois economy is viewed naturalistically (that is if its social
relations are universalised, identified immediately with the laws of
nature) as was the case with political economy, then it is equally
'natural' to identify labour in its peculiarly capitalist forms
with labour in general. It was not the least of Marx's achievements
in this field to have investigated the specific characteristics of
labour under commodity production, a matter not even considered to
be a problem for political economy.
To highlight the point at issue we can refer to a work which
rejects this standpoint and interprets the above letter to Kugelmann
in a quite different manner. This work argues that that 'Marx
seeks to explain the ~ of value (value in exchange) as a
71
consequence of certain social relations (those of commodity pro duc-
tion) but in the context of a general law of value which applies to
all forms of production,.3 This argument boils down to the two
propositions that (a) 'value' is a universal economic category
found in all societies and that (b) exchange value is the particular
form taken by this universal economic relationship under conditions
of commodity production.
What do Marx and Engels say on the matter? In Anti-Duhring (which
Marx read in the manuscript and to which he contributed a chapter)
Engels deals with the very point raised by Cutler et ale In the
chapter 'Distribution' (Part III, Chapter IV) he makes the following
observation.
"Commodity production ••• is by no means the only form of social production. In the ancient Indian communities and in the family communities of the sourthern Slavs, products are not transformed into commodities. The members of the community are directly associated for production; the work is distributed on the basis of tradition and requirements and likewise the products in so far as they destined for consumption. Direct social production and direct distribution exclude all exchange of commodities, therefore the transformation of the products into commodities ••• and consequently als0
4thelr transformation into values."
(emphasis added).
Engels here stressed a point which is implicitly rejected by those
who adopt the position of Cutler, namely the fact that the
category value reflects a situation where the relations between men
in production assume the fetishised form of relations between the
products of their labour; a situation where their social relations
of production are not direct but ones mediated through the
relations between 'things' which are exchanged on the market.
72
In a letter written to Kautsky in September 1884 Engels is, if
anything, even more explicit in rejecting the propositions that
'value' is a universal category and that 'exchange value' is its
particular form under conditions of commodity production.
"(You say that) value is associated with commodity production but with the abolition of commodity production value too will be 'changed' that is value as such will remain, and only its forms will be changed. In actual fact however economic value is a category peculiar to commodity production and disappears with it •••• just as it did not exist before it. The relation of labour to its product did not manifest itself in the form of value before commodity production and it will not do so after it." S
It is clear that as far as Marx and Engels were concerned the
category value arises only when the products of labour assume the
form of commodities and that exchange value is the form of
appearance of this category value, a necessary form which arises
from the very nature of the concept of value itself. The category
value does ~ exist on Robinson Crusoe's island; needless to say
the objects which Robinson needs to satisfy his various wants each
cost him a definite quantity of labour time. But this does ~
give these objects a value. Value can arise only when such objects
are eXChanged and then the labour of these products, assuming a
definite social form, become realised in the value of these
commodities. It should also be stressed that only when 'wage
labour is its basis does commodity production impose itself upon
society as a whole' (1,587). Only then can the law of value emerge
from the embryonic forms which it possessed under pre-capitalist
conditions, to become one of the moving forces in the law of motion
of society as a whole. (This point will be developed in chapter
four.)
73
It is thus important to be clear about the precise nature of labour
and its changing social forms under different historical epochs.
As one writer has with truth observed 'All Marxists agree that
labour is the content of value. But the problem 1s what kind of
labour is under consideration. It is known to us that the most
different forms may be hidden under the word "labour". Precisely
what kind of labour makes up the content of value?,6 And it was
precisely such an adequate investigation of the nature of labour
in its changing historical forms that Marx found almost entirely
lacking in claSSical economic. Instead of such a historical
investigation we were given by the classical economists a 'bald'
analysis of labour
"Without exception the economists have missed the simple point that if a commodity has a double character - use-value and exchange-value - then the labour represented in the commodity must also have a double character, while the mere bald analysis of labour as in Smith, Ricardo, etc., is bound to come up everywhere against the inexplicable. This is in fact the whole secret of the critical conception."?
It is surprising that this aspect of Marx's work has not received
closer attention, given the centrality which he accorded it. This
same point is found in the famous analysis which Marx made of the
Gotha Programme of the United Workers Party of Germany. Marx took
strong exception to a phrase in the first Article of the draft for
the programme: 'Labour is the source of all wealth and all
culture'. He comments
"Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use-values (and its surely of such that material wealth consists) as labour, which itself is only a manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct so far as it is implied that labour is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments.
74
But a socialist programme cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that alone give them meaning. H8
To treat labour independently of the social conditions under which
it was performed at each historical period - social conditions
which had their basis in the means of production required to carry
out production - was to treat this category in an abstract manner.
Marx insists that value is an entirely social category ('having a
purely social reality') (I, 47) and containing not a single atom
of matter. It is for this reason, that when Marx comes to consider
the relationship of 'labour' to 'value' he has in mind always
labour of a definite social type, namely abstract labour; it is
this labour, abstract labour, which 'creates' value, that is to say .......... creates and re-creates a set of social relations which are attached
to things. Under capitalism - where commodity production has been
developed to the point where wage labour constitutes is basis - the
private labour of each individual is transformed into its OPPOSite,
social labour, only through the transformation of concrete labour
into abstract labour.
Now by abstract labour, Marx does not mean, as is commonly thought
to be case, some mental generalisation, some mere product of the
mind. If this really were the case - if abstract labour is con-
ceived of as a category arrived at merely by picking out some element
common to all labour - then one would be forced to the inexorable
conclusion that if abstract labour is purely a mental construct
then so too must be its product, value. (This would indeed appear
to be the position of those who consider value to be entirely
'metaphysical' - that is something beyond experience; on this reading
75
of Capital the law of value, having no empirical validity is reduced
merely to the status of heuristic device which, while having
possibly powerful ideological functions, has no status as scientific
category.) According to this view only concrete labour, producing
empirically available use-values would qualify for the status of
9 'real' labour.
Let us therefore try to explore in greater detail Marx's notion of
abstract labour. The products of labour take the form of
commodities when these products are made for exchange on the market.
As such they are the products of autonomous private labour, each
person carries out one determinate form of labour as part of the
social division of labour. Of course, if this social division of
labour were a planned one, the products of individual labour would
not take the form of commodities. While the production of commodities
is impossible without the division of labour, a division of labour
without the production of commodities is perfectly possible - as in
the case cited by Marx of a patriarchal peasant society. further,
under commodity production labour is not immediately social; it
becomes social labour only through the mediation of exchange relations
on the market.
Now in exchanging products men egualise them. That is, the market
as an objective process abstra,cts from the physical-natural aspects
in which one use-value differs from another; and in so dOing the
market abstracts from that which serves to differentiate this labour.
Thus,
"Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to
76
and
them all ••••• human labour in the abstract." (I, 38).
"The labour ••••• that forms the substance of value is homogeneous labour, expenditure of one uniform labour-power. The total labour-power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneoud mass of human labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any ather, so far as it has the character of the average labour-power of society and takes effect as such." (I, 39).
from these quotations alane, it should be clear that in the formation
of abstract labour we are far from dealing with a mental process, but
on the contrary with something that takes place in the actual process
of exchange itself.
"When we bring the products of our labour into relations with each other as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever by an exchange we equate as values,. our different products, by that very act we also equate as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it." (1).
What therefore is the real significance of this category abstract
labour? Let us, in considering further this problem return to
certain aspects of political economy. Ricardo and his predecessors
confused the universal character of labour (as the source, along
with nature, of wealth under all social conditions) with its
particular characteristics under capitalism, as the creator of
value. It necessarily followed from this confusion that when Smith
and Ricardo considered primitive society, the hunter and the
fisherman should already be commodity owners and exchange fish and
77
game in the proportion in which labour-time is embodied in these
products. As Marx wrily observed of Ricardo: 'He commits the
anachronism of making these men apply to the calculations, so far
as their implements have to be taken into account, the annuity
tables in current use on the London stock Exchange in the year
1817'. (I, 76).
The neglect of the historical character of that labour which is
embodied in commodities had, as far as the classical economists went,
its root in a failure to analyse the contradictory nature of the
commodity itself. Smith - in this case followed uncritically by
Ricardo - had noted the difference between the 'value in use' and
the 'value in exchange' of commodities; but the implications of such
a distinction had remained unexplored, namely the fact that only in
'modern society' (capitalism) does the production of use-values
take the predominant form of the creation of exchange values. This
absence of a proper investigation of the commodity, was, for Marx,
connected with another weakness on the part of classical political
economy - its tendency to ignore the value-form in favour of an
almost exclusive preoccupation with the content of value.
nIt is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never su~ceeded by means of its analysis of commodities, and in particular of their value, in discovering that ~ under which value becomes exchange value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo the best representatives treat the form of value as having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value-form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but also the most universal form taken by the product in bourgeois production. If then we treat this mode as production as one eternal for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that which is the specifica differentia of the value form, and consequently of the commodity-form and its full development, money-form, capital-form, etc." (I, 81).
78
This exclusive concern with the content of value and the neglect of
the value-form would, said Marx, be akin to the method of a
physiologist who held that 'the different forms of life are a
matter of complete indifference, that they are only farms of organic
matter'; Marx adds 'It is precisely these forms that are alone of
importance when the question is the specific character of a mode of
social production.' (Th 3, p.295). It is clear that Ricardo's
false method involved inter alia a confusion, or conflation, of the
'social' and the 'natural'; for exampl~ he saw money not as an
abstract and necessary product of the value relation, one which had
developed out of commodity production (this was Marx's conception
of the matter) but as merely a means of overcoming the technical
deficiencies of direct barter. Nor could Ricardo aver fully grasp
the real character of capital, which he saw only in its immediate
shape as 'stored up labour' rather than as a definite social form
assumed by these means of labour.
Political economy, in the person of David Ricardo, saw labour as
the measure of the magnitude of value and it was engaged almost
exclusively with the quantitative aspects of this relationship - that
is with the quantitative relations between commodities. It failed -
Marx suggests above why it failed - to see that when it treated the
various types of labour in a quantitative sense their qualitative
unity was always implied that is their relationship to abstract
labour. Here again were important, substantial, difference between
Marx and Ricardo which cannot be grasped if they are seen as merely
differences on the plane of economic theory. Marx rejected the
social philosophy underlying the school of classical political economy;
79
this saw society as an aggregation of individuals, each engaged in
his individual labours, each tied together by market forces. This
view of society as merely a summation of individuals - and this
can be taken as the essence of bourgeois individualism - lay at the
basis of the social philosophy of both Smith and Ricardo; in the
former these individuals were cemented together by 'natural law'
whereas in the latter utilitarianism was the principle which made
possible the transition from the individual to the social.
Locke's philosophy is here again seen by Marx as the source of this
view 'because it was the classical expression of bourgeois society's
idea of right as against feudal society'. (Theories (1) 367).
It is notewrothy, that according to Marx, Locke conceived labour
exclusively in its concreteness; for Locke labour constituted the
limit to private property in the sense that the only limitation of
the right to acquire private property should be the ability of the
individual to accumUlate property by dint of his labour. Here lay
the appeal of a 'labour theory of value' to the rising capitalist
class. Locke's stress on the connection between labour and
property constituted a blow against the conception that property
was inherited as of right. 10 It was this view of labour as a
subjective, personal, activity which was taken into political economy
and is reflected in Smith's notion of labour as 'toil and trouble'.
Implied here is the idea that labour is something engaged in by
choice rather then it being a nature-imposed, social actIvity. (It
should be pointed out in fairness to Locke that his position was
very advanced for the period in which he wrote. This was of course
true of his philosophical stance where his materialist empiricism -
80
derived from Bacon and Hobbes - was employed as a weapon against
scholastic empiricism - but also from the standpoint of political
economy which is our immediate concern. At a period when the
bourgeois form of property was far from being the sole form of
property and certainly not yet its dominant one, Locke chose to
regard it as precisely such. In this respect he laid the basis for
that struggle which was taken forward in the work of Smith and
Ricardo against those feudal property forms which were becoming
increasingly outmoded.)
Despite the admiration which he expressed for the work of
Benjamin franklin, Marx also notes his confusion of labour in its
specifically bourgeois form with labour as such, with labour in
general. Marx refers significantly to franklin's 'restricted
economic standpoint', which took the transformation of the products
of labour for granted. (Critique, p.56). And again in connection
with another writer for whom Marx clearly had the highest regard,
William Petty, Marx says that his case 'Is a striking proof that
recognition of labour as the source of material wealth by no means
precludes misapprehension of the specific social form in which labour
constitutes the source of exchange-value.' (Ibid, p.54).
Adam Smith also, for Marx, revealed his lack of any thorough
historical appreciation of the category of labour. He also tended
to see labour subjectively ('toil and trouble'). He tries to
accomplish the transition from concrete to abstract labour by means
of the notion of the division of labour - one of the central
categories of his system. This division of labour - from which
arises commodity production - for Smith had its basis in the famous
'propensity to truck, barter and exchange'. Here in fact was an
81
inversion of the real relationship bet~een commodity production and
the social division of labour. (The point being, as noted above,
that ~hile commodity production necessarily involves a division of
labour the reverse is not the case.)
Stressing that at the centre of a scientific political economy must
be a concern with labour as a social process, Marx says of Ricardo
"Ricardo's mistake is that he is concerned only with the magnitude of value. Consequently his attention is concentrated on the relative quantities of labour which different commodities represent, or which commodities as values embody. But the labour in them must be represented as social labour, as alienated, individual labour." (Th, 1,31).
Marx again points to classical political economy's limited concern
with the measure of value when he writes
"Commodities as values constitutes one substance, they are the mere representatives of the same substance, social labour. The measure of value (money) presupposes them as value and refers solely to the expression and size of their value. The measure of value of commodities always refers to the transformation of value'into price and already presumes the value." (I, 40).
And in an earlier work, Wage Labour and Capital, Marx says: 'What
is the common social SUbstance of all commodities? It is labour.
To produce a commodity a certain amount of labour must be bestowed
upon it, ~orked up in it. And I say not only labour but social
labour. I
It should be clearer from the above discussion ~hy Marx gives such
importance to the category abstract labour. 8y abstract labour is
meant labour ~hich is cut off, abstracted, alienated, from its
particular goal. Under the capitalist system the labour of society
is by no means the mechanical summation of the labour of every
82
individual (as political economy suggested was the case). The
labour process under capitalism has an independent existence which
stands against the labour of each individual; the labour of each
individual has any (capitalist) validity only if it obeys the
objective laws of this social labour process. An individual may
labour for (say) ten hours; but this labour, viewed socially, may
only count for five hours, as in Marx's illustration of the case
of the hand-loom weaver, given early in the first chapter of
Capital. It should be stressed that the use of the word 'count'
in this context does not imply that this 'counting' is carried out
by any individual or body; the counting referred to here is one
accomplished by the very process of production and circulation
itself. The acquisition of this independence on the part of the
labour process from the concrete labour of the subjects who actually
take part in the process reaches its high point with modern labour,
that is with wage labour. The worker owns his labour power. On
the basis of the separation of the greater part of the population
from the instruments of production this labour power itself becomes
separated from its formal owner, taking on its own independence,
becoming a commodity. And not only does it assume an alien form
(as a value), but when realised on the market it becomes one of the
forms of capital, namely variable capital.
We have stressed Marx's strictures against the political economists
for what he took to be their limited concern with the purely quanti-
tative side of the relation when they investigated commOdity
production and circulation. But Zeleny in his important discussion
11 of Marx's method suggests that this should not be taken to mean that
83
Marx either rejected a concern with quantitative matters as something
of no importance, nor that he rejected entirely Ricardo's work in
this sphere. Indeed Zeleny suggests that it was through a close
consideration of the limitations of Ricardo's one-sided quantitative
standpoint that Marx was able to advance beyond it. He suggests the
following:
(1) That Marx did not dismiss Ricardo's analysis of the quantitative
relations of commodity exchange as worthless for an understanding of
the real basis of exchange value and the nature of capital. Marx,
says Zeleny, recognised their positive role in rendering possible a
scientific knowledge of the true nature of the phenomena under
investigation.
(2) But, argues Zeleny, for Marx such quantitative analyses yielded
only a rough end deficient representation; although an investiga
tion of the quantitative aspects of the objects concerned was
necessary such an investigation constituted merely ons of the
individual aspects in the process of perceiving the objects whereas
for Smith and Ricardo the proposition that the quantity of labour
was the measure of value was taken by them to reveal the essence (or
the 'nature') of commodity Circulation.
(3) finally, suggests Zeleny, Marx's criticism of the limitations of
Ricardo's standpoint should not be read as meaning that Marx gave
less attention than his predecessor to the investigation of the
quantitative investigation of economic phenomena. Zeleny cites the
example of 'Marx's analyses of the quantitative attributes of the
aversge rate of profit' which he suggests 'are more comprehensive and
84
more precise than those of Smith and Ricardo'. 12 Zeleny argues that
a concern with the quantitative aspect of economic relations has its
legitimate part to play in any scientific conception; the crucial
thing he suggests is whether the limits of such quantitative
investigations are grasped, that is to say whether they are under
stood as part of a wider, more all-rounded process of investiga
tion. In this respect it is perhaps correct to draw an analogy
between formal logic and dialectical logic. As we saw in the
previous chapter Marx traced many of the problems of Ricardian
political economy to the fact that it was based on a purely formal
method of abstraction, that is to say it was based on a method which
was limited to formal, classical logic. But as we suggested at that
point in the argument, this should not be taken to mean that Marx
rejected out of hand any concern with formal logic. formal logic -
the logic based on the proposition 'A equals A' was within limits
true; was, for certain purposes, an adequate logic. It was only
under conditions when these limits were exceeded, when formal logic
was asked to bear too great a load as it were, that it proved
inadequate and had to be transcended by a richer, more complete
logie, namely dialectical logic.
The importance of the points made by Zeleny is that they have a
direct bearing upon the central issues which we have suggested
underpinned Marx's entire critique, in all its aspects, of
classical political economy, namely that it adopted an a-historical
standpoint which had the effect of seeing the categories of
bourgeois economy as fixed and eternal. Thus when Ricardo came to
investigate the relations of exchange between commodities he limited
85
that process of exchange to its quantitative aspects; he had a
quantitative conception of the category of exchange whereas for Marx
'the category of exchange is employed in a new, incomparably richer
13 context'. And this richer context arose from the fact that for
Marx every category of the understanding exists only in the process
of its alteration, exists only in the process of becoming something
else.
To illustrate this problem Zeleny takes two examples from the work
of Ricardo and Marx. He takes first of all Ricardo's notion of the
'natural price of labour'. On this matter Ricardo had written
nIt is not to be understood that the natural price of labour, estimated even in food and necessaries, is absolutely fixed and constant. It varies in different times in the same country and very materially differs in different countries. It depends essentially on the habits of the customs of the people." 14
As Zeleny quite correctly notes 'Up to a point, Ricardo's concepts
of wages and the "natural price of labour" are not completely fixed,
. 15 fossilised categor1es'J but their variability is a purely quantita-
tive variability. Wages may vary because of changes in geographical
and historical circumstances; but in the investigation of possible
changes in the 'natural price of labour' Ricardo fails to ask ~
labour (actuallY it is labour power which is involved) has a price.
Here Marx's approach is quite different. Whilst not in any way
uninterested in the question of the particular level of wages at a
given moment Marx went beyond Ricardo's limited concerns by grasping
wages as an economic form which represents in its particular
qualitative attributes some~hing temporary, dependent on historical
conditions and the alterability of these overall economic conditions
(the totality of social relations within the capitalist system) of
86
which the wage relation is merely one aspect, one part.
As his second example designed to elucidate the limitations of
Ricarda's confinement to purely quantitative aspects of the various
economic relations, Zeleny takes the question of distribution. He
quotes the well-known passage in the Principles where Ricarda
declares that the chief question for political economy is precisely
to investigate the distribution of the social product between the
three principal classes of the community; namely the proprietor of
the land, the capitalist and the industrial labourer. Then Ricardo
adds
"But in different stages of society, the proportion of the whole produce of the earth which will be allotted to each of these classes under the names of rent, profit, and wages, will be essentially different; depending mainly an the actual fertility of the soil, on the accumulation of capital and population, and on the skill, ingenuity, and instruments employed in agriculture.
As Zeleny notes in connection with this passage, although Ricarda
allows for a certain alterability in the fundamental economic
categories involved in a study of distribution, this alteration is
again of a purely quantitative character. In other words the
peculiar form taken under capitalism by the universal category of
distribution is taken by Ricardo to be absolute. It is only within
these 'given' parameters that quantitative differences take place.
Here again Marx's approach is of a different order; he recognises
that the particular form taken by distribution is given by the
structure of a definite mode of production and the overthrow of one
form of distribution relations is possible on the basis of the
overthrow of the foundations of that particular mode of production.
67
Zeleny's last point - the limited nature of the Ricardian investiga
tion of the relations of distribution - can be developed in a
specific direction, namely the understanding of the nature of class
antagonisms in work on the one hand and in that of Marx on the other.
This question is of a certain contemporary interest. for some have
seen the recent renewed interest in political economy (as against a
more narrowly conceived 'economics') as consisting, in part at least,
of a restoration of the place of the problem of social antagonisms
into the study of economic phenomena. It is undoubtedly true that
the neo-classical school attempted to remove entirely any considera
tion of class antagonisms from its theory; this it did with its view
of a series of a-social 'factors of production' and its contention
that in the last instance distribution was determined by the level of
technology. It is also true that this conception stood in the sharp
est contrast to the tradition represented by Ricardo, which brought
the question of class antagonisms to the forefront of its analysis.
Marx certainly saw this emphasis upon problems of class conflict
(potential or actual) as one of the strengths of Ricardo's work (as
is well-known, and recorded by Marx, the American writer Carey
denounced Ricardo for precisely this emphasis). And we know that
Marx, in giving pride of place to the discovery of the role of the
class struggle in history to earlier french historians, also recognised
the role of English classical economics in general and Ricardo in
particular in the investigation of the anatomy of this conflict. But
it would be dangerous to conclude from this that Marx and Ricardo
shared a similar conception of the struggle between classes.
To form a clar conception of this matter it is important to under-
88
stand the place occupied by the notion of the class struggle in
Marx's general conception of history - historical materialism.
Despite a widespread popular misconception to the contrary it is
not the case that Marx and Engels saw in the class struggle the
fundamental contradiction of the bourgeois mode of production.
Nor, extending the point, did they see this class struggle as the
basic contradiction in history. A glance at the famous 'Preface'
to the Critigue of Political Economy reveals this to be the case.
lri this short Preface, where Marx sets out the essentials of
historical materialism, there is no mention of classes, nor therefore
of the class struggle. Marx does of course speak of the 'basis' of
society, a basis which consists of the social relations of produc
tion, relations which 'correspond' to a stage reached in the
development of the productive forces. Only at a definite stage in
the growth of these productive forces do the social relations assume
antagonistic form, when society divides into classes. Class
antagonisms must not be taken therefore as 'things-in-themselves';
they are rooted in the deeper, more basic, contradiction between the
productive forces of society on the one hand and the social relations
of a given period of history on the other. To summarise the point as
it impinges upon the analysis of capitalism; the struggle between
the two basic classes of bourgeois society (the class founded on
wage labour and that founded on capital) is the driving force of that
society only because it is the expression of a deeper conflict, namely
that between the increasingly socialised nature of production and its
ever more narrow private appropriation.
It should be clear that this was far from being Ricardo's view of
89
the class struggle. He starts his work by assuming as given the three
basic classes - workers, capitalists (tenant farmers) and landlords.
Ricardo starts his work by pointing to the existence of these three
classes and reveals that the antagonisms between them are a function
of their economic interests. Not only was the interest of the
landlo~- enjoying as he did protection from foreign comoetition - in
conflict with the interests of the rest of society but Ricardo was
increasingly driven towards the conclusion that the development of
machinery might possibly be injurious to the interests of the worker.
These were considerable achievements; but Marx attacked Ricardo for
'naively taking this antagonism for a social law of nature' (Preface
to the 1859 Critique). What Ricardo took as 'given' Marx felt it
necessary to explain. Only at the very end of volume III - in the
famous unfinished chapter - does Marx start to deal with the class
relations of bourgeois society in a systematic fashion. According
to Marx it is precisely in the realm of the class struggle that the
outmard forms of society - those forms which vulgar economy was
unquestioningly to accept - are continually 'smashed up' as Marx
t . t 16 a one po~n says. Thus the structure of Marx's work, in this
respect at any rate, can be considered as directly opposite to the
structure of Ricardo's Principles.
For Marx aimed to show not merely that the interests of the two basic
classes within capitalist society were intrinsically antagonistic -
this had already been established by the leading figures amongst his
predecessors - but to disclose the historical roots of this
antagonism. For only in this way would it be possible to demonstrate
that capital not only produces the antagonism between wage labour
90
and capital but also the basis for overcoming it. (This point should
be viewed in the light of the discussion in the Introduction above
about the limited nature of much of the pre-war Marxist political
economy which tended to be limited to precisely the demonstration
that capitalism was responsible for the exploitation of the working
class.) This matter can be recast in the following manner: the
ultimate aim of Marx's critique of political economy was not merely to
raveal the working cla88 as an exploited class (this fact had in any
case been recognised in the working class prior to Marx and was given
theoretical form with 'Ricardian socialism') but that it was a
revolutionary class, a revolutionary class because it is the most
decisive and revolutionary element in the productive forces of
modern society. These productive forces, holds Marx, are driven
into increasingly sharp conflict with the social relations of
bourgeois society. Here, at the same moment, lies both the source
of capital's most fundamental crisis and the possibility of
resolving that crisis.
In summary, whereas for Marx the existence of classes and the conflicts
between them is bound up with the development of the productive forces -
to which 'correspond' certain definite social relations - the
classical economists merely took as given the existence of the classes
of modern society and failed to inquire into their social and
historical origin. Or rather, to be more precise, they tended to
explain the conflict between classes not in social terms but in
natural terms.
This is clearly the case if we consider economic crises, as they were
conceived by Ricardo. Ricardo did not deny the possibility of such
91
crises; his 'mistake' for Marx lay in the fact that such crises
~ere attributed, in the final analysis, to the forces of nature
and not to the social structure ~hich characterised capitalist
society.
The cornerstone of Ricardo's notion of economic crises rests of
course upon his theory of rent. He starts by defining the rate of
profit as uniquely determined by the amount of surplus value to
variable capital (p1 equals s/v). He then proceeds to confine his
discussion of changes in the rata of profit to one about changes in
the value of labour po~er. Accepting the 'principle of population',
as advanced by Malthus (~hich pronouncing the supply of labour
infinitely elastic assumes ~ages constant at SUbsistence level),
Ricardo was then able to limit his analysis of the rate of profit to
one concerning the level of productivity in agriculture. He believed -
on the baais of the 'la~' of diminishing returns - that the productivity
of labour in this sector would decline over time. This in turn would
force up wages and bring about a reduction in profits. Hence his
famous dictum: 'The interest of the landlord is always opposed to
that of every other class in the community'.
This is intended to be only the briefest sketch of Ricardo's theory
of economic crises; but it is clear that here was a natural theory
of crises, holding that in the final instance the rate of profit
was determined by the fertility of the soil. Given the protection
afforded to agriculture, there must be a secular decline in the
profit rate as increasingly infertile soild is brought into
cultivation to sustain a growing population. The corollary of
such a conclusion was that this process could be arrested if
92
sufficient fertile soil were to be brought into cultivation.
"Profits of stock fall only because land equally well adapted to produce food cannot be procured; and the degree of the fall of profits, and the rise of rents, depends wholly on the increased expense of production. If, therefore, in the progress of countries in wealth and population new portions of fertile land could be added to such countries, with every increase in capital, profits would never fall, nor rents rise. 1t1 ?
Once more Marx traces Ricardo's deficiencies in this area - the
theory of economic crises - to his acceptance of the bourgeois form
of production as one in accord with the laws of nature. Marx
observes that 'Those economists, therefore, who, like Ricardo, regard
the capitalist mode of production as absolute, feel at this point
that it creates a barrier to itself, and for this reason attribute
the barrier to Nature (in the theory of rent) not to production.'
(III, 254). Marx certainly praised Ricardo's efforts to grasp the
movement of the rate of profit. Not only did he probe this matter
much more deeply than Smith (who saw profit falling as a result of
growing competition - which was no explanation at all) but Ricardo
did, for Marx, see the significance of the rate of profit as the
motor of capital accumulation.
'~hat worries Ricardo is the fact that the rate of profit, the stimulating principle of capitalist production, the fundamental premise and driving force of accumulation, should be endangered by the development of production itself. It (III, 254).
But, adds Marx, Ricardo was concerned here, as in so many other matters,
with the purely quantitative aspect of the problem (even though, as
Zeleny suggests, his understanding of the quantitative dimension of
the rate of profit - confusing as it did rate of profit and rate of
surplus value - was far less exact than Marx's). Ricardo was at bast
93
only vaguely aware of the real forces lying behind the movement of
the rate of profit. He conceived the problem, says Marx, 'in a
purely economic way - that is from a bourgeois point of view,
within the limits of capitalist understanding, from the standpoint
of capitalist production itself'. (III, 254; emphasis added).
We can develop further Marx's point that the classical economists
failed adequately to distinguish the social from the natural by
considering the efforts of Ricardo and others to 'define' value, an
attempt which as we saw from the famous letter to Kugelmann, Marx
saw as a misconceived task.
In an economy based on the production of commodities the equalisation
of labour is achieved through the equalisation of the products of
labour. This is but another way of stressing the fact that all
varieties of concrete labour are reduced to abstract labour through
the market and in this process become social labour. But nobody
can or does measure these many forms of labour empirically; to
imagine that this is the case would, amongst other things, be to
ignore a fundamental feature of an economy' based on commodity
production - viz its spontaneous, anarchic,nature. Considerable
misunderstanding will arise, suggests Rubin, if the law of value is
imagined to be an instrument which makes possible the comparison
and measurement of the various products in the act of eXChange.
It has often been held by economists and others that Marx emphasised
the category of labour precisely because he took it to be this
'practical' standard of value. Many opponents of Marx have in the
past directed their efforts to showing that labour could not be
granted this privileged status and they have taken this position
94
precisely because of the absence of established units with which to
measure the various types of labour, which are different from each
other with regard to skill, intensity, etc.
Such a line of attack, in the estimation of the present writer,
misconceives in a fundamental manner the true nature of Marx's value
theory. It is rather the case that it is both unnecessary and in
any case impossible to discover a measure or standard of value which
will render possible the equalisation of the various concrete types
of labour or their products. A simple, but in the context of the
present issue, an important point to keep in mind is this: with a
commodity producing economy the equalisation of labour can take
place only objectively, spontaneously, that is independently of the
wishes, knowledge, intention, etc., of any of the participants
within that system of commodity production and circulation. Out of
the process of commodity production and circulation arises money
(gold). Gold is not some external measure standing outside the
world of commodity circulation; nor was it a devise 'selected' by
either economists or man generally as part of a conscious plan to
regulate, give stability to, that process of circulation. This
measure (gold) was historically selected, after long trial and error,
in the sense that it was the physical-material properties peculiar
to gold which rendered it suitable to play the role of money
commodity.
The matter can be reformulated thus. It is not money that makes
commodities commensurable; on the very contrary, it is precisely
because all commodities are realised human labour, and therefore
95
capable of commensuration, that their values find their measure in
one and the same commodity. By a social and historical process
this commodity is transformed into money. We have already referred
to the social character of the labour which is the source of
value, summed up in Marx's conception of abstract labour. It is
important here to note the significance of Marx's insistence that
it is not labour-time which creates and measures value, but
socially necessary labour-time, that is the time taken to produce
commodities at a definite stage reached in the development of the
productive forces. It is only when a producer attempts to sell
his product on the market that he discovers its real, objective,
value (if any). It is during periods of slump that the piles of
unsold commodities signify that the concrete labour embodied in
them (which of course was expended for a definite period of' time
with a definite intensity, etc.) was socially unnecessary. The
expenditure' of concrete labour embodied in such commodities cannot,
through the force of the market, be transformed into abstract
labour. Although the source of use-value, (that is of things to
satisfy human wants in a variety of ways) such labour creates no
value. This value the owner of capital (nor the workers who have
expended the labour and embodied it in the products concerned) can
never know a-priori, even though he might be armed with the latest
market research findings, equipped with the most powerful computers
and even though he might have a knowledge of Marx's Capital. The
essence of the capitalist process here is that the owner of capital
can discover the extent to which the concrete labour incorporated
into his products was socially necessary only at the end of the
96
process. Here, as elsewhere, 'the Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk'.
This being the case - as I believe it was in Marx's conception -
then the task of seeking some measuring rod for the process of value
creation within the capitalist system was not merely futile: it
betrayed a lack of understanding of the nature of that process at
the most basic level. 'Man is the measure of all things' held
Protagoras; in point of fact it is not man who measures the value
of commodities, nor is it a case of an external measure being brought
to bear on the mass of commodities circulating within the capitalist
system. Rather it is the case that commodities discover their own
measure of value. for Marx the task was to discover the nature of
the process through which this was done, to discover in the movement
of commodities the laws and tendencies of the processes involved.
This being the case - it being the case that the laws of phenomena
cannot be known simply through an empirical knowledge of individual
things - then such laws never reveal themselves directly on the
surface of the phenomena concerned. I might for instance know that
a particular product, a chair, has taken tan hours of labour to
produce, in other words that there are embodied within it ten hours
of labour. But this can tell me nothing about the value of this
chair; to discover that value and its magnitude the chair has to
enter the world of commodity production and circulation as a whole,
a process that embraces all branches of the economy; in this
process alone can its value be discovered. This is how Marx puts
the matter early in Capital
"In the midst of the accidental and ever-fluctuating exchange relations between products, the labour-time socially necessary to
97
produce them asserts itself as a regulative law of nature. In the same way, the law of gravity asserts itself when a person's house collapse on top of him. The determination of value by labour-time is therefore a secret hidden under the apparent movements in the relative values of commodities." (1).
And Marx makes a similat point when he writes
"Under capitalist production, the general law acts as the prevailing tendency only in a very complicated and approximate manner, as a never ascertainable average of ceaseless fluctuations." (III, 161).
Classical political economy ran up against impossible difficulties
in its search for some formal standard by which to measure the
magnitude of value. On some occasions Smith saw this standard in
'commandable labour' which amounted to seeing wages as' the measure
of value. On other occasions he saw corn as constituting this
measure. Others found in labour or in money such a standard.
Marx's comment on this matter reveals the not inconsiderable distance
separating him from all those who looked at matters in this way for
'The problem of an "invariable measure of value" was simply a
spurious name for the quest for the concept, the nature of value
itself, the definition of which could not be another value.'
(Theories 3, p.134). Marx paints out that Bailey had rendered at
least one service to science in the course of his attack on classical
economics in that 'he revealed the confusion of the "standard of
value" (as it is represented in money, a commodity which exists
together with other commodities) with the immanent standard of
value' (Theories 3, p.137). Nor was Ricardo exempt from the criticism
levelled here by Marx, for
"Ricardo often gives the impression, and sometimes indeed writes, as if the quantity of labour is the solution to the false, or falsely conceived problem of an 'invariable measure of value'
98
in the same way as corn, money, wages, etc. were previously considered as panaceas of this kind. In Ricardo's work this false impression arises because for him the decisive task is the definition of the magnitude of value. Because of this he does not understand the specific form in which labour is an element of value, and fails in particular to grasp that the labour of the individual must present itself as abstract general labour and in this form, as social labour. Therefore he has not understood that the development of money is connected with the nature of value and with the determination of value by labour time." (Theories 3, p.137).
On this matter of the 'measure of value' Marx was in fact making a point
with wider significance; namely the fact that involved in this false
search for a 'measure of value' was an equally wrong procedure which
imagines that science must start from a series of concepts which can
then be tested to see the extent to which they correspond to their
empirical manifestation. Thus in his critical comments on Adolph Wagner
(Wagner had accused Marx of 'illogicality' in splitting the concept
of value into exchange-value and use-value) Marx says, inter alia,
'Above all I do not proceed on the basis of "concepts" and thus not
from the "value concept" ••••• What I proceed from is the simplest
form in which the product of labour in contemporary society manifests
itself; and this is the "commodity".,18
We nave already in the Introduction of this thesis, drawn attention
to the leading role which Maurice Dobb for long occupied as the
leading commentator on Marx's Canital in this country. It is clear
that Dobb himself held what we have here argued was an erroneous
position: the belief that Marx regarded the category of labour as
the standard, or constant, most suitable as the basis on which to
develop his analysis of capitalism. This is how Dobb puts the
issue, when explaining why Marx took labour as the principal constant
for his system:
99
"In the case of land or capital there were serious practical objections to taking them as a basis: difficulties which would have exceeded any of those which are charged against the labour theory. Classical Political Economy was already focussing attention on the non-homogeneous character of land and was using the differences in the quality of land, along with its scarcity, as the basis of the classical theory of rent. Acres are more dissimilar than mon-hours of labour. In the case of capital there was the more crucial objection that it is itself a value, depending upon other values, in particular on the profit to be earned."19
If the argument we have outlined above is correct then it is
necessary to conclude that Dobb's defence of Marx is at root
misconceived. It cannot for instance be argued that 'acres are
more dissimilar than man-hours'; it is obvious that every use-value
is not only the product of different individuals, but also the
result of individually different kinds of labour. When we consider
labour as the creator of use-values - that is labour as a material
process common to all societies - it is impossible, in principle,
to compare not merely labour of different skills but even labour in
the same trades or occupations etc. 'Oifferent use-values are,
moreover, products of the activity of different individuals and
therefore 20
the result of individually different kinds of labour.'
Here again is the danger of confining oneself to a simple 'bald'
analysis of labour. As a concrete, material activity it is
impossible to compara the labour of one person with that of another;
only in the course of a social process, a process in which concrete
labour is transformed into its opposite, abstract labour, does this
process of commensurability take place. Dobb, it would seem, has
missed the significance of this vital pOint.
To take the matter a little further. It will be recalled that in
100
his Science of Logic Hegel took exception to that very notion of the
role played by concepts in human thought which is present in
Maurice Dobbls defence of Marxlthat is as auxiliary 'tools' through
which man came to know the phenomena he was investigating. Indeed
the whole of the Introduction to the Science of Logic can be read
as an attack upon this separation of thought (concept) from object
which reached its high point with the philosophy of Kant. Hegel
regards this division - in which concepts serve as mere 'means' for
apprehending the truth of the object (the 'end') - as entirely false;
for it leaves unexplored the nature of these 'means'. The laws of
thought - the procedures by which concepts are formed and developed -
are assumed to inhabit a realm standing apart from the objects under
investigation. They are, says Hegel, empty forms, forms without
living content, empty shells, into which the content of the world
is supposed to be poured.
The viewpoint of Maurice Dobb to which reference has just been made
can be considered as an example of this philosophical standpoint~
Certain 'criteria' are selected with which to investigate economic
phenomena; but the criteria - in the example cited, homogeneity is
the one chosen - themselves go unexamined; they are merely asserted,
taken dogmatically. Thus the particular work from which the passage
was taken opens with a chapter entitled 'Requirements for a Theory
of Value'. In the course of his discussion Dobb admits, in consider
ing the relative merits of various value-theories, that 'Quite a
number of theories of value can be devised with no means of choice
between them except their formal elegance' and as a result he
concludes with a position which borders on that of instrumentalism:
101
'The ultimate criterion (for the 'adequacy' of any value theory)
must be the requirements of practice: the type of question which
one requires to answer, the purpose of the inquiry in hand.' (8).
Here of course the basic principle of materialism is close to being
abandoned. For materialism insists that thought, concepts, reflect
an external world which is independent of and prior to such concepts.
It takes as its starting point the material and social world and
gives priority to this material world as against our thoughts of it.
From this paint of view the adequacy of any theory lies in the extent
to which it accurately reflects, grasps, this independently existing
material world. It is pragmatism which replaces this priority given
by materialism to the objective world by the category of practice.
That Maurice Dobb comes close to this position arises from his false
posing of the problem of value theory. He starts from unexamined
assumption that there are a series of criteria against which the
'adequacy' of a theory may be judged. The fact that he comes to the
conclusion that the 'labour theory of value' best meets such criteria
is beside the paint. For he has approached the problem from a
standpoint closer to that of Kant than of Marx. Kant believed that
the mind was endowed with certain categories of thinking through
which it could grasp the material and social world; but the source
of such categories was left unexplored; the mind was simply
constituted in the way that it was constituted. Object remained
sundered from subject (the mind).
Here again it would seem that the crucial question involved in the
understanding of Capital and the disputes amongst Marxists about
the work involve nat so much details of economic theory but are
102
inextricably connected with a number of the basic questions of
philosophy. In the first two chapters of the thesis we have argued
that in considering the differences which separated Marx from the
classical economists it is these philosophical questions which are
of prime importance and the failure of many commentators to
differentiate sharply enough between classical economics and Marx's
critique of that economics arises in the main from a failure to
give due weight to the philosophical dimensions of that critique.
In concluding this part of the discussion and by way of summary we
can say this. Marx poured scorn on the standpoint of the vulgar
school of political economy because it took the empirically available
'facts' of bourgeois economy as coinciding directly with the essential
features of such economy. For it, appearance and essence COincided,
a propOSition which if true, Marx held, would render science
superfluOUS - in this domain at any rate. Classical economy was
distinguished from the vulgar school precisely because it did
distinguish between surface phenomena and their (relatively hidden)
essence. And for Marx this was entirely to its credit. But this
essence of economic relations is considered by Ricardo as something
unchangeable, akin in this respect to Newton's laws, as Zeleny
notes (10). This fixed essence, was for Ricardo the amount of labour
required for the production of a commodity; it is this fixed
essence which for Ricardo makes it possible to understand the variOUS
phenomena of the capitalist economy, to establish their unity and at
the same time to answer what Ricardo took to be the basic task of
political economy - to elucidate the laws which determined the
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distribution of the social product between the three main classes
of early nineteenth century Britain. This foundation, 'the quantity
of labour', once established remains unexamined. Why the products
of man's labour should be compared according to the quantity of
labour they contain is a question not considered. Thus while the
essence of all the economic relations of bourgeois economy can
change this change is related merely to quantitative aspects - some
things contain more, some less, labour. Of course qualitative
determinations are present in Ricardo's work - he is aware of the
distinction between the landlord, the capitalist farmer and the
worker for instance. But as Zeleny notes
"his theoretical analysiS does not treat them as qualitative determinations, since - contrary to the nature of qualitative determinations - they are derived from appearances, from the empirical world, uncritically, as fixed, unchangeable, unmediated. Thus for example wages, profit and rent are qualitatively differentiated forms of income in capitalism. Ricardo does not examine them however with respect to their specific qualities, but considers them as three constant 'natural' sources of the 'natural' classes of the population and dedicates the whole inquiry to the question of the changes in different quantitative relations between these three forms of income, specifically between different factors in the capitalist mode of production and these forms of income. This shows how the one-sided quantitative standpoint accompanies the a-historical standpoint".21
In the course of the discussion thus far we have attempted to show
that the a-historicism of Ricardo and his fellow political economists
stemmed from his confusion between the natural and the social, a
confusion which has decisive importance for understanding the con-
fusions which surrounded the notion of labour in classical political
economy_ When Marx speaks of Ricardo's 'purely economic way' of
looking at things he means essentially this; the fact that political
104
economy transformed the properties of money, commodities, capital,
etc., which arose from their social existence into properties
belonging to them naturally as things. Here was the fetishism of
political economy, a fetishism which, we have suggested, was
related directly to the empirical standpOint of this school, in that
it attibuted to the objects in their immediately perceptible form
properties that in fact did not belong to these objects and had
nothing in common with their perceptible appearance. That is why
Marx speaks of that 'fetishism peculiar to bourgeois Political
Economy, the fetishism which metamorphoses the social, economic
character impressed on things in the process of social production
into a natural character stemming from the material nature of those
things'. (II, 225).
It was this fetishism, this 'purely economic' way of treating
phenomena which Marx rejected. It goes without saying that he
rejected many of the particular conclusion arrived at by Ricardo
and others. But he was as concerned, in his critique of the
achievements and the shortcomings of his predecessors in the
classical school, to demonstrate the limitations of that method which
had led to these wrong conclusions. In short, Marx proposed what was
a methodological-philosophical critique of political economy. In
the next chapter we shall therefore explore certain further aspects
of this critique and consider more specifically the contribution
which Hegel made to Marx's work.
105
Chapter 4
THE CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF MARX'S 'CAPITAL'
According to Lenin, in its most profound sense, Capital is a work
which elucidates the history of capitalism and this it does by means
of 'an analysis of the concepts which sum up this history'. (LeW 38,
320). Whether one accepts Lenin's specific judgement on this pOint,
it is undoubtedly the case that all the most significant attacks
against Marxian economics have been ones directed against the con
cepts developed in Capital - value, price of production, capital,
etc.
In examining the nature of Marx's concepts - the main task of this
chapter - let us recall one decisive point which emerged from his
critique of classical economy. In that critique Marx was anxious
to stress the historical character of the categories of political
economy. This approach to the development of political economy was
part of a wider conception that all science necessarily develops
through its own particular categories and it is only through the
elaboration of such categories that any science is able to gain a
more rigorous understanding of the objects and processes which are
the subject of its investigations. It was this attitude to science
as a whole which shaped Marx's general attitude to the work of the
political economists. As we have seen, Marx's attitude to the
classical economists was by no means a negative one; in his work
in the history of economics, Marx's concern was never confined to
pointing out the errors of Ricardo and his other predecessors but
rather to a demonstration of the limitations of a method that had
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produced a series of concepts which, while explaining bourgeois
economic relations 'with social validity', proved, in Marx's judge
ment, to be incapable of probing to the 'law of motion' of those
relations.
As we have already suggested, while the categories which Ricardo
developed in his investigation of capitalist economy did express
'with social validity' the relations of that economy, Ricardo, like
political economy as a whole, remained unconscious of the real
significance of this pOint. Unlike Ricardo, Marx started conscious
ly from the proposition that the categories of thought were not the
product of minds considered in their individuality; the development
of thought, like the movement of human history itself, was the
product of 'many wills'. 1 In this connection it is perhaps signifi
cant to note that in his study of the development of ideas about
value and surplus value Marx did not confine his attention to the
work of one or two individuals. It is true that particular prominence
was given to the work of Ricardo. But the work of Ricardo's major
opponents was also studied at length, even though Marx considered
that this work often contained much 'vulgar' materials (Malthus would
be a case in point). Given Marx's overall approach to the develop
ment of knowledge this cannot be construed as an accident. Marx
aimed to study all aspects of political economy insofar as it was
only in the clash of the many wills concerned that the science had
in practice developed. Ricardo's own development provides what can
be interpreted as a striking confirmation of the point at issue:
the objective character of the categories of political economy. His
early work was almost entirely dominated by a concern with monetary
matters - the question of fixed currency and tha bullion price.
107
Despite the fact that Ricardo was familiar with Smith's Wealth of
Nations at the time of these early writings, there is no evidence
that at this stage of his work he was concerned with the more
abstract questions (law of value, rate of profit, etc.) which were
to dominate his later work. In many ways it was direct practical
necessity which obliged him to consider these latter problems, in
particular the question of the Corn Laws and the analysis of class
relations surrounding the Laws. And this in turn meant that
Ricardo was driven to deal with the theoretical inconsistencies
which he detected in Smith's work in these areaS. In short he was
forced to 'connect up' with the most basic and abstract categories
of political economy as they had been developed up to that point.
In considering further this issue about the objectivity of thought-
forms, let us remember Marx's well-known statement in the 18th Brumaire~
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please: they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. "2
The important point here, is that for Marx, what is true of man's economic
political, etc., history holds true of his intellectual development.
Every new development in knowledge, in all spheres, necessarily grows
out of the old forms in which that knowledge has historically emerged.
And, further: the form taken by human knowledge is always a series
of interrelated concepts which, far from reflecting the whims of a
series of individuals, express man's practice as a whole in the sphere
of the science concerned. If this point is accepted - and it is in
the last resort based upon a philosophical proposition - then it
106
would suggest that all attempts to separate Marx's thought off
completely from that of his predecessors is, in the ultimate sense,
a sterile exercise. This would be true of those who, for instance,
have suggested that Marx was in a fundamental sense an a-Ricardian.
The diversity of pre-Ricardian and Ricardian economic thought
reflected, for Marx, the contradictory, diverse nature of the
reality under investigation, namely the emergence of capitalist
economic forms. Marx set out to work over, to review critically,
this body of literature, recognising that as a reflection of man's
social practice it marked an important stage forward in the efforts
to understand these forms.
It is perhaps necessary to stress that Marx never dismissed the con
cepts developed by classical political economy as merely 'bourgeois'.
In Marx's estimation, Ricardo's work, of all political economy, came
nearest to reflecting the real interests of industrial capital (in
its conflict with the landed interest) precisely because it came
closest to a truly objective grasp of bourgeois economic relations.
And this seeming 'paradox' is explained precisely by the fact that
at the time he was writing, the industrial,bourgeosie still had un
disputed claim to leadership in the development of the productive
forces. The immediate class interests of industrial capital did,
at the time of Ricardo's work, coincide with the elaboration of a
scientific, objective, or to use Marx's term, 'disinterested' view
of social and clas3 relations. Only when the leadership of industrial
capital in the further development of the forces of production was
seriously challenged - as it was with the appearance of an
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increasingly conscious working class in the period following Ricardo's
death - did this position alter. 3 If this was the case, as Marx
held it to be, if, that is, the development of political economy was,
in the final reckoning, a reflection of unfolding class relations,
Marx was obliged to subject the categories of political economy to the
most detailed scrutiny. for this was part of the task of uncovering
those social forces which had given rise to these categories. This
is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of Marx's 'critique' of
political economy; really to criticise political economy involved the
struggle to reveal the necessit~ of the categories which political
economy had elaborated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century
while at the same time demonstrating the limits of these categories
once the social relations which constituted their foundation had
progressed beyond a certain stage.
This point can be re-cast in the following manner: for Marx, new
concepts arise in science because, penetrating evermore deeply into
the phenomena concerned, man reveals new aspects of these phenomena
which simply cannot be accommodated within the existing categories
of thought. New concepts are demanded if these new aspects are to
be adequately expressed and established, established in the sense of
being placed within the framework of the science as a whole.
Engels' discussion about the analysis of surplus value, in the
Preface to the second volume of Capital is a useful illustretion of
the point at issue. As Engels notes, the existence of that portion
of the value of products which Marx was later to designate surplus
value was ascertained long before Marx. And Engels goes on to note
that it had been stated with some preCision what it consisted of -
110
namely, of the product of the worker for which its appropriator
had not returned an equivalent. But classical political economy
did not get beyond this point, at least on the theoretical level,
being conteot in some cases to investigate the quantities in which
the product of labour was divided between worker and owner of the
means of production or in other instances declaring the division
to be unjust and looking for utopian solutions to this injustice.
As Engels says (II, 15) 'They all remained prisoners of the
economic categories as they had come down to them.' The details
of Marx's efforts to explain surplus value will not be our concern
at this stage - they obviously involved the conceptual differentia-
tion between 'labour' and 'labour power' alluded to earlier. The
important consideration is that Marx felt it impossible merely to
recognise the existence of surplus value, nor merely to proclaim
this surplus value as standlrg in contradiction to some ethical
principle; this category had to be explained and this involved
Marx in a critical re-examination of the fundamental categories of
political economy which had hitherto been taken for granted.
In connection with the discussion of the problems which pre-Marxian
political economy experienced in understanding the nature of
surplus value, Engels draws an analogy between the history of
political economy and the development of eighteenth century chemistry.
"We know that late in the past century J the phlogistic theory still prevailed. It assumed that combustion consisted essentially in this: that a certain hypothetical substance, an absolute combustible named phlogiston, separated from the burning body. This theory sufficed to explain most chemical phenomena then known, although it had to be considerably strained in some cases. But in 1774 Priestly produced a certain kind of air 'which he found to be so pure, so free from
111
phlogiston, that common air seemed adulterated in comparison with it'. He called it 'dephlogisticated air'. Shortly after him Scheele obtained the same kind of air in Sweden and demonstrated its existence in the atmosphere. He also found that this kind of air disappeared whenever some body was burned it it or in ordinary air and therefore called it 'fire air'. from these facts he drew the conclusion that the combination arising from the union of phlogiston with one of the components of the atmosphere (that is to say from combustion) 'was nothing but fire or heat which escaped through glass'. (II, Preface).
As Engels notes, Priestley and Scheele 'had produced oxygen without
knowing what they had laid their hands on'. Like the political
economists they remained prisoners of the conventional categories
of science - in this case chemistry. It fell to Lavoisier (to whom
Priestley had communicated his findings) to re-work the entire
phlogistic chemistry in the light of this discovery. It was
Lavoisier who came to the conclusion that this kind of air was a new
chemical element, and that combustion was not the result of this
mysterious phlogiston leaving the burning body, but the result of
this new element combining with this body. Priestly and Scheele,
who had produced oxygen, were unable to see what they had done.
Thus although Lavoisier 'did not produce oxygen simultaneously and
independently of the other two, as he claimed later on, he
nevertheless is the real discoverer of oxygen vis-a-vis the others
who had only produced it without knowing what they had produced'.
(II, Preface).
Marx was unable to take the forms developed by political economy as
given. He held that these forms had to be thoroughly investigated
because it was only through them that the real content of economic
relations could be discovered and properly established. Here
again was one aspect of Marx's rejection of the empirical method
112
which he considered lay at the basis of the work of classical
economics. We have already been concerned to explore certain of
Marx's objections to the empiricism of Ricardo and others, but one
way of developing this point is as follows. Marx objected to
empiricism's claim that the only true material and ultimate source
of knowledge is furnished by perception and sensation. As a
materialist Marx did not of course wish to deny that a material
world, existing independently of and prior to consciousness, is
the sole source of sensation. Such a statement however correct
was nonetheless inadequate for a theory of knowledge which aimed
to overcome the inadequacies of a limited, mechanical, materialism.
It is of course the case that a form of empiricism lay at the base
of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century materialism in England and
france. But at the same time this very empiricist point of view
also lay at the foundation of the idealism of Berkeley as well as
the agnosticism of Hume. How is it possible, starting with the
proposition that perception and sensation are the only legitimate
forms of knowledge, to end up by holding, as Hume held, that an
exhaustive knowledge of that world is impossible? Hume's argument
assumed the following direction: to men are given directly percep
tion and sensation and they provide the sola real base for knowledge.
In these perceptions is to be found no necessary internal connection.
How can we know therefore that one thing is the cause of another
thing? We see only one thing followed by another; if this is
constantly repeated we come to expect the second whenever the first
occurs. But this has the status of a mere psychological expectation
and is. not the indication of causality. This was one important
113
conclusion drawn by Hume from the empiricist theory of knowledge
and it followed that any statements about the objectivity of the
concepts of philosophy and science (causality, interaction, law,
tendency, etc.) kbuld be of a purely metaphysical character,
reflecting nothing in the sensed material of knowledge. On this
view the tendency is to see logical categories as schemes which we
use (out of convention and habit according to one version) for the
organisation of sense-data.
Developing this point, we can say that Marx's objection to empiricism
rests upon a contention that empiricism was concerned exclusively
with the content of knowledge and not with the ~ in which that
knowledge had historically developed. For empiricism, the form
assumed by knowledge tends always to be ignored as having no inherent
or necessary connection with the content, with the source of our
knowledge. To return to a matter already raised in connection with
classical economics: classical political economy - above all in
the case of Ricardo - saw in labour the source as well as the measure
of value, and by extension of capital. But Ricardo had failed to
investigate the form assumed by this labour, and here was an
expression of Ricardo's philosophical stance and not merely a weakness
in his economic analysis.
One of the few works which appears to have given adequate attention
to the question of the form of knowledge and to have considered its
implications for Marx's work in political economy is the Soviet
economist I I Rubin, to whom reference has already been made. One
of the purposes of Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value is to
114
stress the indebtedness of Marx to Hegel's achievements in philosophy
while at the same time emphasising the nature of the gap separating
Marx from Kant on a number of basic philosophical questions, all of
which for Rubin have a direct bearing on a proper appreciation of the
significance of Capital. On this specific question of form and
content Rubin says
"One cannot forget that on the question of the relation between form and content, Marx took the standpoint of Hegel and not of Kant. Kant treated form as something external in relation to the content, as something which adheres to the content from outside. Rather, through its development, the content itself gives birth to the form which is already latent in the content. Form necessarily grows from the content itself."4
There is little doubt that the influence of the philosophy of Kant
on the development of Marxism in this century has been considerable;
Lenin for one certainly saw this philosophy as providing the basis
for all those attempting a revision of Marxism at the most fundamental
level, a theme taken up at length in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.
Clearly a consideration of Kantianism from this point of view lies
beyond the compass of the present thesis, but something of a more
limited nature must be said about Kantianism in connection wih the
discussion about the formation of concepts.
In an effort to vindicate scientific reason in the face of Huma's
rejection of causation and of the external world, Kant held that the
mind is an instrument which, by its very constitution, always
apprehends isolated, individual facts in rational form. Kant
realised that without categories, rational thought was impossible;
but for him such categories have their basis in our thoughts,
thoughts which are sundered from the material world. Sensations and
115
the logical moments of knowledge do not, according to Kant, have a
common basis - there is no transition between them, nor can there
be. Concepts, for Kant, do not grow up and develop out of the
sensed world but are already given before it, in the a-priori
categories of reasoning. One problem involved in this view - and it
was a problem to which Hegel was to devote much attention - is that
these categories are supposed to grasp the multifarious material
provided by sensation, but they themselves remain fixed and dead.
Kant tended to counterpose 'sensation' and 'reason' in what amounted
to a mechanical manner, just as his philosophical position tended to
counterpose the forms of knowledge with its content, in the manner
already touched upon.
It was above all Hegel, on the basis largely of a critique of this
view of Kant, who attempted to resolve the problem - of the connec
tion between the 'sensed' and the' logical' and the 'content' as
opposed to the 'form' of knowledge - and it is one of the main
propositions of this thesis that Hegel's efforts had a considerable
bearing on Marx's work in the field of political economy. Hegel
argued, in opposition to Kant, that thought is a process, moving
always from thought of a lower to thought of a higher grade. If
thought was seen in this way, as a continual process, then concepts
developed by thought ceased to be dead, a-priori products of the
individual mind, but were in reality endowed with life, the life
of the movement of thought itself.
In the 'Introduction' to his Science of Logic Hegel attacked the
traditional view of logic as something dealing with a series of
116
thought-forms which were separated from the subject matter under
investigation as well as from the development of thought itself:
"Hitherto, the Notion of logic has rested on the separation, presupposed once and for all in the ordinary consciousness, of the content of cognition and its ~, or of truth and certainty. First, it is assumed that the material of knowing is present on its own account as a ready-made world apart from thought, that thinking on its own is empty and comes as an external form to the said material, fills itself with it and only thus acquires a content and so becomes real knowing."S
It was as a result of reading passages of this type that Lenin
declared: 'What Hegel demands is a logic the forms of which would
be forms with content' (LCW 38, 92) and supported Hegel's attack
on the old formal logic which hod conceived logic as dealing with
external forms of thought which were quite separate from the
phenomena under investigation:
"Logic is the science not of external forms of thought, but of the laws of development 'of all material, natural and spiritual things' i.e. of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and its cognition i.e. the sum-total, the conclusion of the history of knowledge of the world." (Ibid, 92).
One important consequence of Hegel's rejection of the old conception
of logiC - as a mere 'proof producing' instrument - was that the
role of human practice, and more specifically the role of labour in
the development of knowledge could now be placed under the rubric
of logiC, properly conceived. This was a point recognised by Marx
early in his intellectual development, many years before he came to
work on Capital. Thus in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
we find Marx praising Hegel for having seen that labour lay at the
basis of man's actiVity, in the course of which he alone could
117
develop, both materially and spiritually:
"The outstanding achievement of Hegel's Phanomenologie •••• is thus first that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of object, alienation as the transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour and comprehends objective man •••• as the outcome of man's own labour.,,6
We have stressed that Marx's critique of classical political economy
was centrally concerned not so much with the mere conclusions which
this school had reached on a number of specific questions but rather
with the most basic concepts which the classical economists employed.
Marx was critical of the fact that the classical economists had
failed to inquire into the nature and origin of the concepts which
lay at the very foundation of their investigations of bourgeois
economy. Marx sees in this, the uncritical adoption on their part
of the standpoint of empiricism. One specific feature of empiricism
and one which had an immediate bearing upon the work of the classical
school, was, it has been suggested, the acceptance of the categories
with which it dealt as immutable, whereas in fact Marx, following
here the lead of Hegel, insisted that concepts continually develop
and that this development reflects an ever-deepening knowledge of the
real nature of the phenomena under investigation.
We can now attempt to explore Marx's contention to the effect that
rational knowledge is a deeper form of knowledge than that furnished
by mere direct apprehension of the material and social world in the
form of sensations and images. It will be convenient to do so by
means of a review of Marx's investigation of the commodity; this
will also allow us to antiCipate a theme to be considered in the
118
next chapter of the thesis. We can start by considering a statement
by Marx:
»The reality of the value of commodities thus represents Mistress Quickly, of whom Falstaff said, 'A man knows not where to have her'. This reality of the value of commodities contrasts with the gross material reality of these same commodities (the reality of which is perceived by our bodily senses) in that not an atom of matter enters into the reality of value. We may twist and turn a commodity this way and that - as a thing of value it remains unappreciable by our bodily senses.» (I, 47).
How is this properly to be interpreted? Marx would seem to be
stressing that man can of course grasp through the senses the outward
form, the material envelope, of the many different commodities which
he encounters. He can for instance weigh them, measure their
length, test their hardness, etc. But such sensuwsknowledge cannot
in any way disclose the universal connection between commodity
producers, cannot that is to say, disclose the social relations which
under capitalism become attached to these sensuous~y. perceived
objects; nor can a mere familiarity gained through a knowledge of
the empirical, external features of the commodity disc~ose that
within the 'germ' of the commodity lies money, and cannot proceed
therefore to comprehend the movement of capital as a whole. It was
his rejection of empiricism as a theory of knowledge which led Marx
to the conclusion that if the social relations of capitalism were
to be grasped - and this was the task of Capital as Marx saw it -
abstraction from the immediately experienced appearances of these
relations (as merely 'things') was necessary. Thus Marx's well-
known observation' In the analysis of economic forms •••• neither
microscopes or chemical agents are of use. The force of abstraction
must replace both.' (I, 8). Lenin~ comment, noting Hegel's
119
repudiation of those philosophies which reject conceptual knowledge
on the grounds that such concepts are without the spatial and
temporal material of the sensuous, would seem here appropriate
'Hegel is essentially right: value is a category which dispenses
with the material of sensuousness but it is truer than the law of
supply and demand'. (LeW 38, 172).
Of course empirical observation is certainly able to detect a common
element in the phenomena it is studying. for instance in the case
of commodity production it is clearly the case that all commodities
are the product of labour which in this sense constitutes a common
element within each commodity. But Hegel opposed such a method of
establishing concepts, considering it to be far from adequate. In
fact Hegel drew what was an important distinction between the mere
image of a series of phenomena and a true concept of such phenomena.
'The mind makes general images of objects long before it makes
notions of them; and it is only through these mental images and by
recourse to them that the thinking mind rises to know and comprehend
thinkinoly.' 7 Elaborating on this distinction between image and
concept Hegel further remarks 'It may be roughly said that philosophy
puts thoughts, categories, or in a more precise language, adequate
notions in place of generalised images we ordinarily call ideas.
Mental impressions such as these may be regarded as the metaphor of
thoughts and notions.,e Once more, in drawing this distinction
between a mere image and a concept, Hegel was attacking that procedure,
found in Kant, in which concepts were arrived at by finding some
element common to the phenomena in which one was interested. Thus
120
in his Loqik Kant states 'The concept ••• is a general image or
representation of that which is common to many objects, consequent-
ly a general idea provided that it can be included in several
objects.,g
Hegel rejectsd this view on the ground, amongst others, that it
was confined to what he called abstract identity or abstract
universality. Some aspect common to a range of objects is isolated
(abstracted) as that which is general to such objects, to be set
against a 'particular' which, on this view, can exist on its own.
One problem associated with such a method is that it is impossible
to demonstrate the necessity of the aspects which are taken as the
basis for the construction of a generalised image; and if this is
so, such a procedure must in the end prove to be subjective. Hegel
was in effect, in attacking the formation of images basad on the
principle of abstract identity, pointing to the fact that regularity
in appearance is no proof of causality, a point already stressed by
Hume.
Let us give a specific example from Hegel to illustrate the formal
method of image-building. Hegel rejected the consensus gentium as
a proof for the eXistence of God. The fact that everybody agrees
that God exists is by no means an adequate proof for his existence.
Unless the nature of this individual consciousness is thoroughly
explained and its inner necessity established, the proof remains
inadequate. Thus:
"Among the so-called proofs of the existence of God, there used to stand the consensus gentium, to which appeal is made as early as Cicero. The consensus gentium is a weighty authority, and the transition is easy and natural, from the circumstance that a certain fact is found in the
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consciousness of everyone to the conclusion that it is a necessary element in the very nature of consciousness. In this category of general agreement there was latent the deep-rooted perception, which does not escaoe the least cultivated mind, that the consciousness of the individual is at the same time particular consciousness and accidental. Yet unless we examine the nature of this consciousness itself, stripping it of its particular and accidental elements and, by the toilsome operation of reflection disclosing the universal in its entirety and purity, it is only a unanimous agreement upon a given point that can authorise a decent presumption that that point is part of the very nature of consciousness."10
Likewise, but from the opposite standpoint, Hegel praises Rousseau.
In the Social Contract Rousseau held that the laws of the state
must spring from the universal will (volonte generale) but need not,
on that account, be the will of all (volante de tous). This, says
Hegel, is a striking expression of 'the distinction •••• between
what is merely common, and what is truly universal'.
For Hegel a concept is primarily a synonym for the real grasping of
the essence of phenomena and could in no way be limited simply to
the expression of something general, of some abstract identity
discernible by the senses in the range of objects concerned. A con-
capt, if it were to prove adequate, had to disclose the real nature
of a thing and this it must do not merely by revealing what it held
in common with other objects in the range, but by establishing its
. 1 t ·t l··t 11 spec~a na ure, ~ s pecu lar~ y. The concept was for Hegel a
unity of the universal and the particular. Hegel insisted that it
was necessary to distinguish between a universality which preserved
within it all the richness of the particulars and an abstract 'dumb'
generality which was confined to the outward sameness of all objects
of a given kind. Further, Hegel inSisted, this truly universal
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concept was to be discovered by investigating the actual laws of the
origin and development of single things. A matt"Dd of thinking which
was limited merely to registering or correlating empirically
perceived common attributes was essentiallY sterile - it could,
suggested Hegel, never come near to disclosing the actual law of
development of the phenomena concerned. If Hegel was correct in
this matter - and certainly Marx believed him to be and followed his
lead here - then one thing followed which has direct relevance for
an appreciation of Marx's method in Capital. It was this: the real
laws of phenomena do not and can never appear directly on the
surface of things in the form of a simple identicalness; that they
tend to appear like this was, implicitly at least, the conception
lying behind the method of Ricardo, a question with which we have
already been concerned. Ricardo started with an abstract law (the
law of value) and tried to show that such a law operated directly
and immediately on the surface of bourgeois economy (that is in the
market). And as we saw, when he - and even more so his followers
found that this was not the case, the method of political economy
was thrust into a crisis from which it could not extricate itself.
As a demonstration of Marx's indebtedness to Hegel's insistence that
the general cannot be adequately grasped if it is regarded as the
mere mechanical summation of the individUal phenomena concerned, we
can quote Marx's well known comment on Feuerbach:
"lJie} resolves the religions essence into the human essence. But the human essence is not an abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled: (1) To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose
123
an abstract isolated human individual. (2) Essence, therefore can be comprehended only as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals. "12
What is the significance of Marx's criticisms of feuerbach when con-
sidered in the light of the discussion about the nature of concepts?
Essentially this: one can never get near to the real nature of a
any class of objects (in this case to man) through the discovery of
a series of attributes possessed by each member of the class taken
separately. The essence of man can only be arrived at historically
(feuerbach, says Engels, was a ~aterialist in connection with nature
but left materialism behind when he came to consider the social and
historical sphere). further, it was only possible to establish that
this essence was not something fixed and immutable (the conclusion
for which Marx criticised feuerbach), a dead generality, but rather some-
thing which developed and changed, if it was grasped that man had to
be understood as part of the social world. By implication, says
Marx, the essence of anything is not something internal to this thing
but something which revealed itself always in its relations with
other things. (I, 26). To grasp the essence of man, for Marx, meant
the struggle to comprehend the formation and growth of human society
as a whole - and of its separate individuals - as this process has
actually taken place and is continuing to take place. As a separate
individual a person is only a member of a class (in this case man)
insofar as he actualises some aspect or side of a culture which has
been formed historically prior to and independently of him. To the
degree that the individual embodies this historically developed
culture, to that extent he expresses the true, always developing and
124
changing, universal in man. If this is so then this universal is
no mechanically repeated uniformity at 'dead repose' in each and
every member of society. It is on the contrary reality, repeatedly
and directly broken up within itself into particular separate
spheres which complement each other and are in essence mutually
connected in their transition, thereby constituting a real living
ensemble.
Feuerbach's conception of man - a product for Marx of his contemplative
materialism - involved an inadequate understanding of human practice;
Feuerbach did not, says Marx 'conceive human activity itself as
objective activity'. (1st Thesis on Feuerbach). In his efforts to
understand the peculiarities of man, Marx assigned a central role to
the part played by labour in human development, a point made by Engels
when he says
"Labour is the source of wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature -which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself."13
It was because Marx saw the central role played by labour in the develop-
ment of man that he regarded with such sympathy Benjamin Franklin's
definition of man as a tool-making animal. (I. 179).
Let us consider Franklin's conception of man, a tool-making animal,
in the light of the discussion above about the purely formal method
of establishing concepts from which Hegel separated himself. If one
accepted that a concept merely rev eels some common element found in
all men, Franklin's definition would have to be rejected. For it is
clearly the case that only a small minority of men actually ~
tools and such a definition would have to be passed over as being
too narrow and restrictive. It would be possible, in an effort to
avoid such narrowness, to base one's conception of man on a wider
definition by isolating a feature which all men hold in common -
say speech, consciousness, the use of language, etc. It is clear
however that Marx rejected such a procedure for arriving at adequate
concepts of the phenomena being investigated. In connection with
his critique of Feuerbach Marx says the following
"Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like (emphasis added). They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence, men are actually producing their actual means of lif8."14
By implication at least, Marx is here suggesting that a definition
of man based on 'consciousness', 'religion', etc., remained wholly
abstract because it cannot provide the basis for grasping how this
phenomenon (man) actually distinguishes himsslf from the rsst or
nature. The point at issue - the formation of concepts adequate to
grasp the development of the phenomena being studied - can be recast
as follows: to form an adequate concept of anything two related
questions must be asked. First the connection between this 'thing'
and the other objects to which it is related must be established
while at the same time the difference, within this connection, must
also be established in conceptual thought. To return to the specific
example of man: man is connected with the rest of nature (here the
work of Darwin was of great importance for Marx and Engels) and like
all living matter reacts to the external material world; but unlike
126
the rest of the animal world man's relationship to nature is
ourposive, that is in his life man sets out to achieve definite
aims which actually precede the action of realising them (or
attempting to realise them). Man's ability to carry out this
struggle against nature at a level qualitatively higher than in the
case of the rest of the animal world, was for Marx and Engels
directly connected with the development of tools. Here for Marx
and Engels lay the true uniqueness of man.
Such a view of man, Marx and Engels held, avoids both a view of man
as something standing absolutely apart from nature, in which case
one is driven in the direction of concluding that his uniqueness
arises from non-material forces (the Life force for instance) a view
which has taken the form of vitalism in biology. On the other hand,
equally one-sided would be the view that attempted to reduce the
laws of social development to purely biological or chemical laws, a
standpOint which in effect ignores the qualitative differences between
the various forms of matter.
This latter standpoint was the one adopted by the mechanical
materialism of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-centuries, and an
outlook which found its echo in political economy. The seventeenth
century natural scientists picked out velocity, mass and volume as
the simplest most general aspects of all physical phenomena, which
aspects were in turn considered in a purely quantitative manner.
The transformation of these aspects into unique essential qualities
of nature led them, in effect, to a denial of qualitative distinc
tions in nature. In the same manner, political economy found in
127
labour the simplest common element in all economic phenomena, an
element which was then in turn considered only from its quantita-
tive angle.
In this chapter we have been concerned, in somewhat general terms,
to explore what Marx meant by the term 'concept' and how this
meaning differs from that normally given to the term; further, we
have suggested that in his rejection of a purely formal and abstract
method of arriving at conceptual knowledge, Marx was directly
indebted to the example of Hegel. It is now proposed to deal in
more detail with a series of examples from Capital in an attempt to
show how the points we have raised in a general manner actually worked
out in practice. It is proposed to take four specific examples:
(1) Marx's treatment of the labour process. (2) The relationship
between value and use-value in Marx's analysis of capitalism.
(3) The value concept and finally (4) The concept of capital itself.
It is important to note that when, in the first volume of Capital,
Marx comes to deal with the labour process he proceeds in a definite
way and one, we suggest, which flows from the methodological issues
raised immediately above. Contrary to what might seem at first
sight the correct procedure, he starts not with the process of labour
as it manifests itself in its specifically capitalist form. On the
contrary the analysis starts by considering the general (universal)
features common to the process of labour in all societies. Thus
"The fact that the production of use-values, or goods, is carried out under the control of a capitalist and on his behalf does not alter the general character of that production. We shall, therefore, in the First place, have to consider the labour process independently of the particular form it assumes under given social conditions." (r, 177).
128
Only having dealt with the universal aspects of the labour process
does Marx turn to the specific features which this process assumes
within contemporary society,
"It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the production of commodities, and that up to this point, we have only considered one aspect of the process. Just as commodities are, at the same time, use-values, so the process of producing them must be a labour-process, and at the same time a process of creating value." (I, 186).
To present this last point from a slightly different angle: the
labour-process (the general) is the pre-condition for all human life,
the process in which man effects an exchange of matter between
himself and nature, what Marx refers to as 'the everlasting Nature-
imposed condition of human existence, and therefore common to every
such phase'. (I, 184). But this process of labour can never exist
in this general form. For Marx, unlike the political economists
with their fondness for stories of Robinson Crusoe, man can never
confront nature outside definite social relations. This is the point
made in The German Ideology:
"In production, men not only act on nature but also on one another. They produce by co-operating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social connections and relations does their action on nature take place."15
Thus the general process of labour exists only in connection with
definite, specific forms. Man's relation with nature has a definite
material basis which cannot of course be ignored in any society; in
order to live, all societies are obliged to appropriate cartain
things from nature and transform them into things for use (use-
values). Without such a process life is rendered impossible. But
129
at the same time such a process can only take place through relations
between men which are 'independent of their will and consciousness'
in that they reflect not some subjective choice but the stage reached
in the development of the material forces of production in each epoch
of history.
Indeed it is possible to see Marx's task in Capital as turning on
this essential question: to show how certain universal features
common to all societies (the labour process) found their peculiar
expression within a determinate form of society - capitalism. Only
in this way - if this task were successfully completed - would it
be possible for Marx to demonstrate that capitalism was not some
eternal mode of production without barriers to its continued develop
ment, as the apologists for it claimed. Capital, by expressing the
universal laws of production in its own peculiarly specific form,
aided enormously the development of the productive forces; but at
the same time, this specific social form is the source of capital's
definite historical limits. Marx, perhaps more than anybody else,
recognised the considerable role played by capitalism in the develop
ment of the productive forces, and its 'civilising mission' is one
of the central themes of the Manifesto. But it was only through the
effort to relate capitalism to the whole line of social development
that Marxism was able to rise above Utopian socialism with its
abstractly moralistic attitude to capitalism. The fact that there
had been such a dramatic increase in the productivity of labour
with the advent of capitalism(and it was this increase which provided
one index of capitalist development) could not be deduced from the
process of labour viewed ~s <1 ~8terial activity but only from the
social form (the essence of which was the production of surplus
130
value) in which this universal material process took place.
Clearly we are dealing in this instance with the relationship
between a general category and its specific particular form. The
same methodological principle we have noted in connection with the
labour process is also present in the analysis of the commodity -
the starting point for Marx's investigation in Capital. The manner
in which Marx develops his work from the analysis of this 'cell-form'
of bourgeois economy will be the specific subject of the next
chapter, and here we concentrate on only one aspect of the matter.
Just as in the investigation of the labour process Marx starts not
from the peculiar social form which this process assumes under
capitalism, so in the analysis of the commodity he starts not with
'value' but with 'use-value'. That is to say, he starts with the
substance of wealth found in all societies, with a universal category.
Only after making clear that commodities are 'in the first place'
use-values does Marx then proceed to point out the 'peculiarity' of
commodity production, namely that under these conditions use-values
are the bearers of a definite social relation, the value relation.
Use-values ••• constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may
be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are
about to consider they are, in addition, the material depositories of
exchange-values. .( I,. 36). Here again, Marx is stressing that the
production of use-values is an objective process which cannot be
dispensed with in any epoch. But it would be a mistake to believe
that the creation of use-values involves only technical processes,
for in creating wealth men at the same time involve themselves in a
131
definite mode of life. A mode of production must not be thought of
'simply as being the production of the physical existence of the
individuals. Rather it is a definite form of the activity of these
individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite
mode of life on their part.,16
We now turn to the question of the law of value as an illustration
of Marx's procedure in arriving at concepts in Capital. We start
with a short summary of Marx's findings, as they appear in the early
part of this work. In the course of the exchange of commodities,
such commodities are rendered equal despite their many different
qualitative characteristics; or more strictly speaking, the very
fact that commodities do have qualities which differ so markedly
(that is to say they have various use-values) makes it alone possible
to establish an equality between them. There is no basis in the
exchange of boots for boots! Marx aims to show that a 'third' factor
alone makes it possible to establish a relationship between two
quite distinct commodities, and that this third factor is their
value. 'Therefore the common substance that manifests itself in the
exchange-value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their
value.' (1,29). And Marx proceeds to point out that the emergence
of this category value and therefore man's ability to conceptualise
it, related directly to human practical activity. But while the
establishment of commodity production was the sole basis on which
the category of value could emerge, it requires a high level of the
development of such production and eXChange before it was possible
to discover this category. Thus 'Although an abstraction, this is
132
an historical abstraction which could only be evolved on the basis
t ' 1 ' d 1 t f . t ,17 of a par ~cu ar econom~c eve opmen 0 SOCla y. The point can
be put as follows: while the exchange of commodities remained at a
low stage of development, while such exchange occurred on the
edges of communities which remained largely and in normal times
self-sufficient it was impossible to abstract and therefore
conceptualise the category value. For while exchange remained
strictly limited and sporadic, it could still be concluded that the
exchange of commodities was regulated by lUCK or the cunning of the
parties concerned. Only with the generalisation of commodity
exchange - signified by the appearance of money and its general use -
was it possible to abstract the concept of value. Only when
political economy was able to infer on the basis of its investigations
that all commodities can be exchanged for each other in definite
proportions was it possible to conclude that there must be something
in common between them, a common substance, namely value.
The ability to detect in commodities a common substance did not
however mean that an adequate concept of value had yet been arrived
at. The abstraction of a new property in a series of phenomena does
not yet mean that the essential nature of this property has been
understood. To reach an adequate concept of value it was necessary
to discover the origin and source of this common property. And this
could only be achieved on the basis of further investigation, notablY
of the category 'labour', a category which went largely unexamined in
classical economics. Marx went on to argue that value is nothing but
the embodiment of human labour in the abstract, the quantity of which
is measured by socially necessary working-time. It became possible
133
to get to the essence of value, to define this concept adequately,
only under conditions of developed capitalist production, where
the equality and equivalence of all forms of labour was for the
first-time revealed, when the predominant relationship between
people became that of commodity producers and when producers were
finally separated from the means of production and labour power
itself was reduced to the status of commodity.
Here again is an expression of the fact that for Marx all concepts,
far from being generated in thought, are merely a reflection of
historical development, and specifically of the historical develop
ment of the production relations between men. In this respect,
Marx's comments on the role played by Aristotle in the analysis of
value have considerable interest. Marx points out that Aristotle's
genius allowed him to grasp that the money-form was only a further
development of the simple form of value. (In this respect at least
it is possible to argue that Aristotle's achieveme,nts in the ancient
world stood ahead of those of political economy in the eighteenth
century.) Marx goe~ on to note that Aristotle saw that it was also
the case that if two commodities were exchanged it necessarily
followed that they were equal to each other in a qualitative sense.
Marx quotes Aristotle 'Exchange cannot take place without equality,
and equality without commensurability.' (I, 59). At this pOint,
says Marx, Aristotle stopped. He found it impossible, despite what
he had said, to conceive of any commensurability between such
qualitatively different commodities. Now Marx proceeds to a remark
which has direct bearing on the issues under examination: 'Aristotle
therefore, himself, tells us, what barred his way to further
134
analysis, it was the absence of any concept of value'. (emphasis
added) (I, 59). His profound insight that that when commodities
exchange they do so on the basis of commensurability, and his
further insight that money, that universal form of value, grows
out of commodity circulation, were, in themselves an inadequate basis
for the formation of a concept of value. In Marx's opinion this
was the result of the specific social conditions prevalent during
Aristotle's life, in particular the form of labour dominant in the
ancient world:
"There was however an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that to attribute value to commodities is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent because and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the products of labour takes the form of commodities, in which consequently, the dominant relation of man and man is that of owners of commodities. The brilliance of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what 'in truth' was at the bottom of this equality." (I, 60).
This passage serves to indicate that it was only with the eighteenth
century that real strides forward were made in uncovering the riddle
of the value relation. It was only when the notion of human
equality - and the equality of human labour power had, because of
definite economic conditions, become established in man's mind as a
prejudice, that the real secret of value could finally be discovered.
135
Here lies the clue to seeing not only why the eighteenth century
should bring such advances in the field of political economy and
provide the beginnings of solutions to economic problems which had
eluded the minds of thinkers from the time of the ancient world
onwards, but at the same time why these advances were of a strictly
limited nature. It was precisely because the commodity form of
wealth was becoming all-persuasive that it Was in fact treated as
a • prejudice' to use Marx's word. The existence of generalised
commodity production - which was in fact the basis for all its
advances - was taken axiomatically by political economy, as a fact
SO obvious as requiring little investigation. It could not grasp
that the ability of political economy to transcend the limits of
Aristotle was rooted in entirely historical conditions. Lenin's
comment on the syllogism is perhaps appropriate here by way of an
analogy: 'The practical activity of man had to lead his conscious
ness to the repetition of the various logical figures thousands of
millions of times in order that these figures could obtain the
significance of axioms.' (LeW 38, 217).
So for Marx the emergence of the value concept was intimately bound
up with the history of man's 60cial practice, although man was far
from being aware that this was the case. But let us consider some
what more closely how the concept of value actually arose in
political economy, and more specifically how it took shape in the
minds of the thinkers concerned. It was William Petty who in the
modern world made the earliest and most significant step towards
the elaboration of a theory of value. This is how Patty posed the
matter 'If a man can bring to London an ounce of silver out of the
Earth in Peru, in the same time that he can produce a bushel of Corn,
then one is the natural price of the other.' (Th, 1,356) •. In' other
words, in actual fact, in spite of any axioms and precepts it may
have professed, political economy did not arrive at the notion of
value by seeking some common, abstract, element found in all
commodities (which general usage had long previously united in the
term 'value'). In point of fact, as Petty himself makes clear, its
procedure was quite different, indeed the very opposite. It
started with one particular relationship (here the case of silver
and corn, in the case of Smith, beaver and deer). This was the
simplest economic relationship, simplest because historically the
first. It then attempted to move from this simple relationship to
a more general one - this involved the analysis of maney, interest,
capital, etc. tor Marx this was the undoubtedly correct scientific
method and he levelled no criticism against political economy on
this particular score. The political economists had groped their
way empirically towards a correct conception of value. But having
arrived at this concept, they attempted to verify it according to
the canons of formal logic, relying principally on Locke, in the
manner already noted above.
That is to say, in attempting to arrive at the concept of value,
political economy proceeded from the simplest determinations to
ones of a richer and more concrete character. But this by no means
settles the issue of a correct procedure. We have already stressed
in an earlier chapter that Ricardo's method ignored, said Marx, any
conception of a mediation between the simplest determination and
their more concrete and complex development. The exchange of
1 :57
commodities, taken as a whole, could be deduced from the exchange of
two commodities: this was implicitly accepted by Ricarda. And when
empirical evidence suggested that this was not the case, the simple
determination was either held to be an approximation only, or, in
the more extreme case, abandoned entirely. It was an this point
that a considerable gulf separates Marx from political economy. For
Marx the general is no mere mechanical summation of the various
individual phenomena, but is expressed in the real concrete inter-
action of these phenomena, as something which reveals itself in a
tendency. And such a tendency can only one-sidedly and incompletely
capture the wealth of all the particulars. Thought, ~Iarx held, must
proceed from the abstract to the concrete not in a mechanical manner
but through a combination of abstractions. Here again, on the very
basic questions of the method of political economy, Marx sided with
the dialectical conception of Hegel, rejecting the empirical outlook
of classical political economy. One aspect of empiricism which
Hegel trenchantly attacks in his work lay in its tendency to rely
over-much on the method of analysis, while paying inadequate
attention to the question of synthesis.
"In the impression of the senses we have a concrete of many elements, the several attributes we are expected to peel off one by one, like the coats of an onion ••• Empiricism therefore labours under a delusion if it supposes that while analysing its objects, it leaves them as they were: it really transforms the concrete into an abstract. As a consequence of this change the living thing is killed: life can exist only in the concrete and the one. Not that one can do without this division, if it be our intention to comprehend ••• The error lies in forgetting that this is only one half of the process and the main point is the reunion of what has been parted."19
Thus the concrete could not be assembled from a straightforward
addition of the constituents from which it was composed, any more
than society could be conceived of as a mere addition of the
individuals of which it was composed. The concrete was a combination
of abstractions in that the ~ relations composing the whole had
to be studied; they could not be deduced from a knowledge of the
simplest phenomenon.
It must also be emphasised that while the movement from the abstract
to the concrete ,~ the only way of thinking by which the concrete is
grasped and reproduced in our own mind as concrete' (G, 101), we
must be careful not to see this process in a one-sided manner. for
such a process would have been impossible - in the history of
political economy at least - if there had not been a prior movement
in the opposite direction. Although Hegel might have attacked
empiricism for its one-sided emphasis upon the role of analysis,
analysis does, nontheless, constitute an indispensible element in
human thought. Very clearly in the case of political economy, it
was only after a mass of material had been sifted out that the
science could move forward. Thus while thought moves from the
abstract to the concrete 'this is by no means the process through
which the concrete itself comes into being'. (G, '101). That is
the abstractions from which political economy began presupposed a
definite and concrete form of society 'Hence in the theoretical
method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as
the presupposition.' (G, 102). Thus in the analysis of money (a
complex relation) it was necessary to begin the analysis from a
simpler category (exchange-value); to move that is from the abstract
to the more concrete. But it must not be forgotten that the category
1 :39
can never exist independently of the whole (society) of which it
is in reality part. Thus 'the simplest economic category e.g.
exchange value' in its completed form 'can never exist other than
as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete
living whole'. (G, 102).
This is an important point to bear in mind, for otherwise it might
seem that we are dealing with a process which simply involves the
transition from concept to concept. This is a charge which has
indeed been levelled by some against the so-called 'capital-logic'
school, although the charge would seem to be without foundation.
One of the central pOints, to which we have several times returned,
is that unlike political economy, Marx was conscious of the
historical and material basis for the categories with which it
operated; once this point ~ grasped then there could be no
possibility of forgetting that in the movement of economic concepts
(assuming always that they were accurate and adequate concepts) was
expressed the movement of definite, objective social relations of
production.
As a final instance of the nature of the concepts which form the
basis of Capital we can consider the concept of capital itself. For
Marx it is clear that an understanding of this category was the
essential pre-condition for the understanding of the nature and law
of motion of modern society. 'Capital is the all-dominating economic
form of bourgeois society - it must form the starting point as well
as the finishing-point', says Marx at one pOint. (G, 107). This
repeated with even more force when Marx says the following:
140
"The exact development of the concept of capital {Ii! necessary since it is the fundamental concept of modern economics, just as capital itself whose abstractly reflected image ~~ its concept ~~ the foundation of bourgeois society. The sharp formulation of the basic presuppositions of the relation must bring out the contradictions of bourgeois production as well as the boundary where it drives beyond itself." (G, 331).
The classical economists often understood capital to mean accumulated
labour which served as the means of new labour. However, observes
Marx, it is just as impossible to proceed from labour directly to
capital as it is to move from nature to the steam engine. Marx
objects to this conventional definition because it said little more
than that capital was a means of production, and on this basis
capital would have existed and functioned in all forms of society
and must therefore be something purely a-historical. Dealing
incidentally with the point raised earlier about the content and
form of economic relations Marx in effect says on this question of
the definition of capital found in classical economics: If the
specific form of capital is abstracted away and only the content
is emphasised, as which it is a necessary moment of all labour, ~
of course nothing is easier than to demonstrate that capital is a
necessary condition for all human production. The 'catch' in the
definition of political economy, Marx argues, is that if it is the
case that all capital consists of objectified (accumulated) labour
which serves as a means for new production, it by no means follows
that all objectified labour which serves as means of new production
is necessarily capital, as political economy implied.
The root problem of the definition of capital adopted by the
political economists was that for them capital was understood as
a thing and not as it really wa~ a social relation, albeit one which
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attached itself to a thing.
Now in what respect is capital a 'fundamental' category for the
investigation of modern society? For Marx it was such a category
because it contained within itself implicitly all the lower
categories which were its presuppositions, its historical and
theoretical bases. To grasp the nature of capital was therefore
the necessary pre-condition for an understanding of the lower
economic relations (value, money, etc.) out of which it had grown,
grown in bath a historical and logical sense. To 'define' capital
for Marx in this sense meant to grasp conceptually the origin and
development of this basic relation of modern society. Only if this
were done would it be possible to grasp the connection between the
various categories and the path of transition from one to the other.
Of course relations which were predominant in earlier social
formations continue to survive in present day capitalist economy,
but they survive always, Marx suggests, in a position of subordina
tion, in a truncated and distorted farm.
Given that capital now dominated all pre-capitalist economic relations,
these latter relations could only be understood in their living organic
connection with capital in modern society. At one pOint Marx says
that it would appear correct to investigate the economic categories in
the order in which they had actually appeared in history, just as, by
analogy, it might appear correct to deal with the anatomy of the ape
before that of man. As far as political economy goes, this would seem
to suggest that one ought to deal first with rent (landed property)
then interest (mercantile capital) and then finally with profit
(industrial capital). But such a method, holds Marx, would be
'impossible and wrong'. The economic categories cannot be considered
in the sequence in which they evolved:
"Their sequence is determined, rather, by the relation to one another in modern bourgeois SOCiety, which is precisely the opposite of that which seems to be eheir natural order or which corresponds to historical development. The point is not the historic position of ehe economic relations in the succession of different forms of society •••• Rather their order within modern bourgeois society." (G, 107-08).
But if capital is the predominant category, we are faced with a
seeming paradox. tor in Caoital Marx starts, not with the concept
of capital, but with the commodity. Only later - from chapter four
onwards does he begin to deal with capital. This paradox is
explained by Marx in the distinction which he draws between the
mode of presentation of his work and the path of inguiry which had
enabled him to present his material in abstract form. It is clear
from the many drafts which the earlier chapters went through that
Marx grappled at length with the problem of how best to present
the results of his work. This was particularly the case with those
sections of the first chapter which dealt with the analysis of the
value-form. On this distinction between mode of presentation and
form of inquiry Marx says
"Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connection. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a criori construction." (I, 19).
This last point made by Marx must be taken seriously in the light
of those suggestions that the development of Capital is merely the
143
movement of a series of categories, which are manipulated by the
author, Hegelian fashion, to produce the desired results. ~a~x
insists that contrary to the appearance of the matter, we are not
dealing with a mere a-priori construction. Marx had to derive the
concept of capital, and this process of derivation involved much
patient work over a long number of years. The fruits of this work
can be seen in Capital. But it is illegitimate to concentrate
attention to the fruits, the results, without inquiring into the
conditions under which that fruit was produced. Marx says
specifically that categories are 'a product of the working up of
observation and conception into concepts' (emphasis added). (G, 101).
Marx is again insisting that his work should not be regarded as
merely a dialectical elaboration of concepts in Hegelian fashion.
It is based on a thorough analysis of the concrete historical condi-
tions which led to the formation of the capitalist mode of production.
The basic premise for the existence of the concept of capital is, for
Marx, the fact that the owner of money, the capitalist, 'can exchange
his money for another's ability to work, as a commodity'; however
the fact that the owner of capital does find such a commodity - and
this says Marx is 'the presupposition from which we set out and which
forms the starting point for the production process of bourgeois
society'
"is clearly the result of a long historical development, the resume of numerous economic charges, and presupposes the decline of other modes of production ••• and a particular development of the productive powers of social labour".
This is the key to understanding the paradox noted above: for while
capital is the central economic category of capitalist economy, its
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analysis can and indeed must start from a simpler economic relation,
the commodity, as Marx explains in the following passage:
"The general concept of capital can be derived from the study of simple circulation, because, within the bourgeois mode of production simple circulation itself exists only as a presupposition of capital and presupposing it." (G,261 ).
Simple commodity circulation which only becomes the general form
which penetrates the entire economic organism under the rule of
capital, represents no more than an 'abstract sphere' within this
mode of production 'which establishes itself as a moment, the form
of appearance of a deeper process, that of industrial capital which
lies behind it and which both produces it and springs from it'.
(G,261 ).
In dealing with the problem of the formation of concepts, we are, in
effect dealing with an aspect of the relationship between the
individual and the general. Mention has already been made of the
concept of 'capital in general' but it will be useful to return to it
at this point as part of the discussion about the nature of the
concept of capital. It is Rosdolsky perhaps more than anybody else,
certainly in the recent literature, who has drawn attention to the
centrality of this concept for the structure of Marx's Caoital. Let
us, in following Rosdolsky's analysis, recall what was said earlier
about this concept. Rosdolsky argues that Marx could not start from
the existence of each individual unit of capital, taken in isolation,
as a purely external form. This would have been to start from the
external, outward appearance of economic relations, to start that
is from the same position as vulgar economy. In practice, each
capital appears in relation to each other in the sphere of competition,
145
but beneath this surface and through all the contradictions of
competition there remains the undobuted fact that all the individual
capitals constitute the capital of the whole of society. The
existence of these individual capitals in their movement reflects
social laws; because of the inherent anarchy (anarchy meaning the
absence of an a-priori regulation or plan) of capitalist economy
these social laws can only assert themselves and reveal their nature
'behind the back' of the individual capitalist and in opposition to
his consciousness. We are in effect returning to the proposition
that all laws of social development can operate only in a roundabout,
mediated, and indirect manner and only on the basis of continual
deviations from an average. If this is the case then an adequate
theory of political economy cannot be based merely upon a study of the
market; to confine attention exclusively to this realm was in fact
to start from the level of consciousness, that is from the manner in
which the laws appeared to operate to the individual participants in
the processes of production and exchange.
For Marx the concept of 'capital in general' was meant to convey not
merely the summation of all the individual capitals as they appeared
in competition. Political economy - with Ricardo again in the lead -
had recognised the need to abstract from the manner in which capital
appeared in the sphere of competition. But, charged Marx, its
abstractions were formal and incomplete. It had attempted to reduce
all economic relations to a basic substance (labour), attempting
thereby to construct a general nation out of a common element it
discerned in all economic forms. Marx's approach was here qUite
different: in seeking the essential nature of capital (capital in
1~
general) he attempted to trace the development of capital out of its
lower economic forms (commodities, money). In so doing ~arx aimed
to point to the peculiarities of capital, peculiarities which
separated it from these lower forms. Thus, to give a specific
example, Marx showed that while capital cannot exist independently
of money, equally it cannot be reduced to this lower form. It was
for this reason that Marx objected to those who believed that the
contradictions of capital could be overcome through the abolition
of money. But, thought Marx, equally serious mistakes arose when
higher economic forms were mechanically reduced to lower forms -
when, for instance, capital is conflated with one of its specific
forms, say money capital. Marx's conclusion: capital is value, but
value of a peculiar type, namely self-expanding value; it is a
social relation which, attached to a thing, appropriates surplus
value created in a definite process of production, and it thereby
continually creates capital and the relation of capital itself. The
origin of this surplus value (which was merely taken as given by the
classiral economists) was established by Marx without any reference
to individual capitals, or to the relations between them. Indeed
the point can in a sense be even more forcefully put. To have dealt
with the immediate form of economic relations - as they were seen
empirically within the sphere of competition - would, Marx believed,
have rendered impossible an uncovering of the process by which
surplus value is extracted from wage labour. In the Form it takes
as profit, surplus value appears, at first view, to be created in
equal amounts by all sections of capital and, as such, capital
appears to be source of wealth, quite independent of labour. It was
147
therefore essential for Marx, given the tasks which he had set himself,
that he should disclose the nature of this 'capital in general' before
he dealt with its specific, immediate forms (profit, interest and
rent) and why he felt it necessary to deal with the nature of surplus
value in general before dealing with the specific forms which it
assumed, as profit, rent and interest. It is significant in the
context of this examination of Marx's method that Marx considered
this latter differentiation - between surplus value as a general
concept and its specific forms - to have been one of the two best
points in Capital. (The other was the distinction between concrete
and abstract labour.)
A common objection to Marx's conception of 'capital in general' is
that it does not deal with the concrete reality of capitalism, that
it is an abstraction which is unable to deal with crucial problems
such as the rate of profit on a particular enterprise. Here once
more the important questions are as much to do with philosophical
methods and positions as they are with economic theory. for Marx
at least, abstractions - if they were adequate - had a powerful
objective character and this they have precisely because they embrace
the wealth of all the phenomena concerned. A lead towards an
understanding of Marx's position is again provided by Hegel; attack-
ing those who wanted to raise what was immediately given in perception
to the status of the sale legitimate source of knowledge, Hegel says
"Abstract thinking, therefore, is not to be regarded as a mere setting aside of the sensuous material, the reality of which is not thereby impaired; rather it is the sublating and reduction of that material as mere Ehenomenal appearance to the essential which is manifested only in the Notion.,,19
148
Lenin's comment is also relevant to the question of the reality of
abstractions:
"Essentially, Hegel is completely right as opposed to Kant. Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract (Provided it is correct (N8» (and Kant, like all philosophere speaks of correct thought) - does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter; of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc. - in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly, and completelY.~ (Lew 38, 171).
It was because abstractions, if accurate, do not get away from reality
but actually come closer to it that Marx says, specifically of capital
in general
"as' distinct from the particular real capitals, is itself a real existence ••••• capital in this general form, although belonging to individual capitalists, in its elemental form of capital, forms the capital which accumulates in the banks or is distributed through them ••••• while the general is therefore on the one hand only a mental mark of distinction it is at the same time a particular real form alongside the form of the particular and individual". (G, 449-50).
It is clear that, once more, we are in fact discussing the relationship
between the 'individual' the 'particular' and the 'general'. The
notion of capital in general was not arrived at by means of a
mechanical summation of each unit of capital; nor is it an abstraction
based on some dead uniformity found in each capital. The total social
capital consists of the ensemble of all the individual capitals in
their dynamic relations. Dealing with the movement of this social
capital, Marx says
"However the circuits of the individual capitals intertwine, presuppose and necessitate one another, and form, precisely in this interlaCing, the movement of the total social capital. Just as in the simple circulation of commodities the total metamorphOSis of a commodity appeared as a link in the series of metamorphoses of the world of commodities, as now the metamorphosis of the individual capital appears as a link in the seri~s ~f metamorphoses of the social capital." (II, 352).
149
And what is true of individual capitals is true of particular forms
which it assumes as fixed, circulating, variable, etc.
"Capital as a whole, then, exists simultaneously, spatially side by side, in its different phases. But every part passes constantly and successively from one phase, from one functional form, into the next and thus functions in all of them in turn. Its forms are hence fluid and their simultaneousness is brought about by their succession. Every form follows another and precedes it, so that the return of one part of capital to a certain form is necessitated by the return of the other part to some other form. Every part describes continuously its own cycle, but it is always another part of capital which exists in this form, and these special cycles from only simultaneously and successive elements of the aggregate process." (II, 104).
And in its development, this total social capital asserts itself
against the individual owner of capital. Thus
"'If social capital experiences a revolution in value, it may happen that the capital of the individual succumbs to it and fails, because it cannot adapt itself to the conditions of this movement of values.' And in the same passage Marx speaks of this movement as operating 'with the elemental force of a natural process, against the foresight and calculation of the individual capitalist'." (II. 106).
The development of Marx's analysis throughout the three volumes of
Capital can be seen as an attempt to demonstrate that the further
development of the capitalist system brings increasingly to the
forefront the actual power of this social capital as against the
individual unit of capital. This says Marx is brought out with
great clarity in the case of the banking and credit system. for in
the form of banking and credit capital all the actual and potential
capital of society is placed at the disposal of industry and
commerce. In this sense banking and credit
"does away with the private character of capital and thus contains in itself, but only in itself, the abolition of capital itself •••• banking and credit thus become the most potent means of driving capitalist production beyond
150
its own limits, and one of the most effective vehicles of crisis and swindles." (III, 593).
This theme - the manner in which capital develops through its various
forms - and the connection between this movement and the tendency
towards crises of various sorts will form the subject matter of a
later chapter.
151
Chaptar 5
THE SIGNIfICANCE OF THE OPENING CHAPTERS OF 'CAPITAL'
A correct understanding of the opening chapter of Capital was, for
Lenin, a vital pre-condition for understanding the work as a whole.
And, as we have already noted, if such an understanding was to be
achieved it was necessary in Lenin's view to study the dislectic of
this first chapter. What is the status of this opening chapter in
which Marx subjects the commodity form of labour to a detailed
investigation? In the Preface to Capital Marx himself warns us not
to underestimate the importance of the analysis of this, the 'ce11-
form' of capital, while at the same time also warning that the real
problem for any science lies always in its beginning. Thus:
"Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will therefore present the greatest difficulty. That which more especially concerns the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have as much es it was possible popularized. The value-form, whose fully developed shepe is the money-form, is very elementery and simple. Neverthelees, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of mora composite forms there has baen at least an approximation. Why? Because the body as an organiC whole, is more easy to study than are the cells of that body •••• To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy." (Preface to I, 1-8).
What should we make of this passage? I think this: The commodity
is the cell-form of bourgeois society because it is the basiC
relationship of that sociaty, basic in a double sense. First the
economic relation, while of course not the only relation in society,
152
is certainly the simplest and one found historically prior to all
others. Our method, Engels tells us, 'starts from the simplest
fundamental relations we can find historically, in actual fact,
that is economic relations'. Here is a point which has direct
bearing upon and implications for the theory of historical
materialism. tor Engels is, in effect, saying hera that economic
relations (relations between men in the course of producing their
material existence) are the ones found again and again as moments
in more complex relations (political, religious, ideological,
etc.). The simplest relations are moments which stand at the
basis of and are involved in the richer more concrete determinations,
but of course these economic relations do not exhaust the higher
relations, any more than biology can be understood simply from the
point of view of chemistry.
But the commodity form is a fundamental category in a second sense.
Historically capital grew out of simple commodity production.
'Small scale production' Lenin explained, 'engenders capitalism and
the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a
masS scale' (LeW, 34, 24). Exchange value has, at particular points
in time, constituted a dominant and essential economic category: in
antiquity and in the economy of the Middle Ages. Under modern
capitalism it is in one respect 'antediluvian' in that it has besn
transcsnded, sublated into higher and richer economic forms. Yet it
none the less remains the basic and fundamental economic relation:
but for the exchange of commodities there could be no world market,
no commercial, industrial or finance capital. In this respect the
153
study of the commodity-form can be likened to the study of the simplest
form of the movement of capital, one that lies at the base of all the
higher, more developed forms. The connection between Marx's pro-
cedure and the history of science is worth noting. Engels says, in
connection with the study of the most elementary forms of motion.
'The investigation of the nature of motion had, as a matter of course,
to start from the lowest, simplest forms of this motion and to learn
to grasp thesa befora it could achieve anything in the way of
explanation of the higher and more complicated form;' 1 and, adds
Engels,
"All motion is bound up with some change of place, whether it be change of place of heavenly bodies, terrestrial messes, molecules, atoms or other particles. The higher the form of motion, the smaller this change of place. It in no way exhausts the nature of the motion concerned, ~ it is inseparable from the motion. It therefore has to be investigated before anything else." 2
In this sense, an investigation of the commodity, an analysis of its
inherent contradictions, a study of how those contradictions grow
and reveal themselves on the surface of society remains an
indispensable basis for the study of capitalist development. But,
having said this, we should not at the same time be unmindful of a
certain danger here. It is this: while a real study and grasp of
the early chapters of Capital is vital, it would be wrong to think
that these chapters can in any way exhaust all the complexities in
the development of capital, any more than the mechanical form of
motion exhausts the higher forms of motion. In response to
Lachatre's plan to bring out a french edition of Capital in serial
form, Marx, while recognising that this would make it more
154
accessible to the working class ('a consideration which to me out-
weighs everything else') also warned of the dangers involved in
such a proposal. The danger lay in the fact that
"The method of enalysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared thet the french public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connection between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their pessions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once." (I, 21).
This question of the relationship between 'general principles' and
'immediate questions' is further complicated by the fact that
Marx's projected plan of work for Capitel was left incomplete at
his death. In 1857 his plan envisaged the following structure for
the work:
1 The book on capital
2 The book on landed property
3 The book on wage labour
4 The book on the state
5 The book on foreign trade
6 The book on the world market and crises
Even on the level of economic relations (leaving aside political,
ideological, etc. factors) Marx's work was therefore incomplete:
of the above six prOjected parts, only the first three were
completed (and even here the majority only in draft form which
Engels subsequently edited for publication). It is important to
keep this incompleteness in mind and for the following reason: it
is clearly impossible to get fully to the driving forces of the
crises of capital without taking the analysis to the level which
155
Marx was evidently noping to deal with (Books 4-6).
Let us give a concrete instance of the sort of implications which
this involves. It would clearly be naive to attempt an explanation
of the structure and crisis of the present world monetary system
by mere reference to what Marx says on the question of money in
Capital (and even more naive to restrict oneself to what he says in
the early chapters of Volume 1). While, of course, this specific
question will not be our concern here, it is apparant that an
examination of the role and structure of the International Monetary
fund, established following the 1944 Bretton Woods negotiations,
cannot be carried out merely by looking into the pages of Capital.
for the particular crisis of the world money system, with which
Bretton Woods tried to grapple, is a product of the entire develop-
ment and decline of capital in the present century. A proper study
of the world money system from a Marxist standpoint would in point
of fact require amongst other things a detailed consideration of
imperialism, its development since Lenin, together with a study of
the relations between nation states (and particularly the reletion
ship between Europe and America) along with an analysis of the role
of the state in the economy ('Keynesianism', etc.). And even this
would not be exhaustive. But all these factors and others would
have to be analysed in the light of Marx's work in Capital.
Engels gives a characterisation of the early chapters of the Critique
which applies equally well to Capital. Reviewing the Critique and
drawing attention to its dialectical method, Engels writes:
"Even after the determination of the method, the critique of economics could still be arranged in two ways - historically or logically. Since in the course of history, as in its
156
literary reflection, the evolution proceeds by and large from the simplest to the more complex relations, the historical development of political economy constituted a natural clue, which the critique could take as a point of departure, and then the economic categories would appear on the whole in the same order as the logical exposition. This form seems to have the advantage of greater lucidity, for it traces the actual development, but in fact it would thus become, at most, more popular. History moves often in leaps and bounds and in a zigzag line, and as this would have to be followed throughout, it would mean not only that a considerable amount of material of slight importance would have to be included, but also that the train of thought would frequently have to be interrupted; it would, moreover, be impossible to write the history of economy without that of bourgeois society, and the task would thus become immense, because of the absence of all preliminary studies. The logical method of approach was therefore the only suitable one. This, however, is indeed nothing but the historical method, only stripped of the historical form and diverting chance occurrences. The point where this history begins must also be the starting point of the train of thought, and its further progress will be simply the reflection, in abstract and theoratically consistent form, of the historical course. Though the reflection is corrected, it is corrected in accordance with laws provided by the actual historical course, since each factor can be examined at the stage of development where it reaches full maturity, ita claSSical form." (Critique, 225).
Here Engels is again stressing the unity of 'logic' and the actual
historical development. Capital ie a reflection of the actual course
taken by the emergence and decline of a social system, a reflection
in that it sums up this movement in a series of concepts. After
stressing this point, (ngels provides a brilliant sketch of the way
in which Marx developed this method. Marx started, says (ngels, with
the simplest relation to be found, the economic relation first
encountered.
"We analyse this relation. The fact that it is a relation already implies that it has two aspects which are related to each other. Each of these aspecta is examinad separately; this reveals the nature of their mutual behaviour, their reciprocal action. Contradictions will emerge demanding a solution. But since we are not examining an abstract mental process that takes place solely in
157
our mind, but an actual event which really took place at some time or other, or which is still taking place, these contradictions will have arisen in practice and have probably been solved. We shall trace the mode of this solution and find that it has been effected by establisning a new relation, whose two contradictory aspects we shall have to set forth and so on.~ (Ibid, 225-6).
Very important here is Engels' emphasis upon practice. The
theoretical concepts which Marx abstracts in the course of his
investigations are abstracted from human practice; we are dealing
here with 'an actual event' which thought must accurately depict.
And because we are dealing with an ever-changing reality our
concepts must reflect this continual change; they must flow into
each other. Engels now goes on to draw attention to the fact that
in the relations between things are expressed definite social
relations, that is, definite forms of practIce. Thus:
"Political economy begins with commodities, with the moment when products are exchanged, either by individuals or primitive communities. The product being exchanged is a commodity. But it is a commodity merely by virtue of the thing. the product being linked with a relation between two persons or communities, the relation between producer and consumer, who are at this stage no longer united in the same person ••• economics is not concerned with things but the relations between persons, and In the final analysis between classes; these relations however are always bound to things and aepear as things. Although a few economists had an inkling of this connection in isolated instances, Marx was the fIrst to reveal its significance for the entire economy thus making the most difficult problems so simple and clear that even bourgeois economists will now be able to grasp them." (Ibid, 226).
And Engels continues his review by stressing the enormous superiority
of dialectical thought as against the old metaphysics.
"If we examine the various aspects of the commodIty, that is of the fully eVOlved commodity and not as it at first slowly emerges in the spontaneous barter of two primitive communities, it presents itself to us from two angles that of use-value and exchange-value, and thus we come
158
immediately to the province of economic debate. Anyone wishing to find a striking instance of the fact that the German dialectical method at its present stage of development is at leest es superior to the old s~perficially glib metaphYSical method as railways are to the mediaeval means of transport, should look up Adam Smith or any other authoritative economist of repute to see how much distress exchange-value and use-value caused these gentlemen, the difficulty they had in distinguishing the two properly and in expressing the determinate form peculiar to each, and then compare the clear, Simple exposition given by Marx." (Ibid, 226-7).
And he ends this review of the early perts of the Critigue in the
following way:
"After use-value and exchange-value have been expounded, the commodity as a direct unity of the two is described as it enters the eXChange process ••• We marely note that these contradictions are not only of interest for theoretical, abstract reasons, but that they also reflect the difficulties originating from the nature of direct interchange, i.e. simple barter, and the impossibilities inevitably confronting the first crude form of exchange. The solution of these impossibilities is achieved by investing a specific commodity - money - with the attribute of representing the exchange-value of all other commodities. Money or simple circulation is then analysed in the second chapter, namely (1) money as measure of value, and, at the same time, value measured in terms of money i.e. price, is more closely defined; (2) money as means of circulation and (3) the unity of these two aspects, real money which represents bourgeois material wealth as a whole. This concludes the first part, the conversion of money into capital is left for the second part." (Ibid, 227).
In order to underscore the significance of the early chapters of
Capital in the light of Engels' review of the earlier Critigua,
let us take a slight detour and look at the position of Althusser
on these early chapters. According to this author, "we ought to
re-wdte Part I of Capital so that it becomes a "beginning" which
3 is no longer at all "difficult", but rather simple and easy.
for Althusser, in direct opposition to Lenin, Part I of Capital
159
is not the key to understanding the rest, it is a positive barrier
to that understanding. He therefore gives his readers the benefit
of the following advice. 'I therefore give the following advice:
put THE WHOLE OF PART ONE ASIDE FOR THE TIME BEING AND BEGIN YOUR
READINLi WITH PART TWO, "The Transformation of Money into Capital'" 4
adding, 'This advice is more than advice: it is a recommendation
5 that notwithstanding all the respect lowe my readers, I am
prepared to present as an imperative (p BO).' It should be clear
from what we said earlier that the real bete noire for Althusser is
Hegel. He is specific on this point. Many difficulties stand in
the way of understanding Capital which arise from the 'survivals in
Marx's language and even in his thought of the influence of Hegel's
thought,.6 As an instance of these supposed 'difficulties'
Althusser cites,
"the vocabulary Marx uses in Part I: in the fact that he speaks of two completely different things (author's italics) the social usefulness of products on the one hand and the exchange vale of the same products an the other, in terms which in fact have a ward 1n cammon, the ward 'value': on the one hand use-value, and on the other exchange value. Marx pillories a man named Wagner (that vir obscurus) with his customary vigour in the Msrginal Nates of 1BB2, because Wagner seams to believe that since Marx uses the same word, value, in both cases, use-value, and exchange-value are the result of a (Hegelian) division of the concept of 'value'. The fact is that Marx had not taken the precaution of eliminating the word 'value' from the expression 'use-value' and speaking ae he should have dane somply of the social usefulness of the products".7
What are we to make of this passage? Althusser mekes precisely the
same mistake as that ather 'vir obscurus' Wagner. For Marx does
not derive the terms 'value' and 'use-value', from any 'division',
Hegelian or otherWise, of the concept of value. He derivas bath
these concepts from an analysis of the commodity. And this is
160
crucial. tor as earlier indicated, it means that Marx never starts
from any • concepts' (including therefore the value concept). He
begins from the simplest forms of bourgeois wealth - the commodity.
He shows, as against Althusser, that in the commodity far from
being 'completely different things' use value and value are in
separably united, are identical but identical as opposites. Under
conditions of commodity production a product of labour can only
assume the value-form if it constitutes a definite use-value. In
this respect use-value is primary to value in that while use-value
can exist independently of commodity production, the reverse is
certainly not the case. In unfolding the secret of the commodity
form Marx was taking up a problem ~hich had exercised man's mind
since antiquity. Aristotle had ~ritten that sandals could be used
in two ways: in the first place they could be worn, and second,
they could be exchanged for another object. If with Aristotle this
two-fold nature of the products of labour was still expressed in
necessarily primitive form, the economists of the eighteenth century
onwards were much more conscious of this division (see the contrast
political economy drew bet~een 'values' and 'riches'), even though
they railed fully to understand it. And as Engels makes clear,
Marx's ability to provide a clear analysis of the commodity form
arose precisely from his indebtedness to Germen dialectics and
principally to Hegel.
We shall return in a moment to Marx's investigation of the commodity.
But let us d~ell ~ith Althusser a little longer. He ~ants to leave
aside Chapters 1 - 3 (that is presumably until he has got round to
redndering them into simple, non-dialectical language for us). What
161
implications does this 'leaving aside' have? It means, for Althusser,
that we can plunge immediately into Part II, 'The Transformation of
Money into Capital'. This presents no problem at least for workers,
as they will readily understand this section of Marx's work:
"from Part 2 •••• you go straight into the heart of Volume One •••• This heart is the theory of surplus-value, which proletarians will understand without any difficulty, because it is simply the scientific theory of something they experience every day in class exploitation." a
And this is not an isolated point. for earlier in his 'Preface' to
to Capital, Althusser writes, 'If the workers have 'understood'
Capital so easily it is becausa it speaks in scientific terms of the
everyday reality with which they are concerned: the exploitation
which they suffer because of the capitalist systeml H9 A point
emphasised by Althusser, whan immediately following we find 'Capital
is a straightforward discussion of their concrete lives,.10
To take AlthuBser's specific paint: is the essence of Capital a
straightforward discussion of the "concrete lives" of the working
class'? It most emphatically is not. Marx's aim was not to show
workers that they were exploited, 'something they experience every
day'. He aimed for something quite different. The working class
did not need to be told by Marx, or indeed by anybody else, that
they were expl~t8d- this they had recognised long before the birth
of Marxism. It was a recognition which found a reflection, as
alwsys, in practice, in this case the practice of trade unionism.
Marx wanted to establish the revolutionary implications or this
struggle of the working class. And this revolutionary consciousness
does not arisa directly from the immediate day-to-day struggla of
162
the working class - it involves grasping the class struggle as a
whole, on the basis not merely of everyday class exploitation,
but on a real understanding of the relationship of all classes to
each other and to the state. This is the theme of Lenin's ~
is to be Done? (LOW, vol. 5) against all conceptions of a
spontaneous struggle which would automatically generate a scientific
consciousness in the working class. The majority of workers 'know'
they are exploited; what the working class does ~ spontaneously
have is an understanding of the socia-historical roots of this
exploitation, nor of all the theoretical and political tasks which
are posed in its elimination.
Now this matter has a direct bearing on the status of the early
chapters (Chapters 1 - 3). For it is in these chapters that the
logical-historical path whereby capital comes into being is traced.
Speaking of the relationship of capitel to surplus value, Marx says,
"It is quite simple. If with £100, i.e. the labour of 10 (men), one buys the labour of 20 (men) (that is, commodities in which the labour of 20 (men) is embodied), the value of the product will be £200 and the surplus-value will amount to £100, equal to the unpaid labour of 10 (men). Or supposing 20 men worked half a day each for themselves and half for capital -20 half-days equal 10 whole ones - the result would be the same as if only 10 men were paid and the others worked for the capitalist gratis." (Th 3, 481).
'It is quite simple'. But Marx immediately adds a point which
implicitly refutes Althusser and establishes that it would be quite
false to start from the transformation of money into capital without
having grasped first of the nature of commodity exchange.
"The difficulty is simply to discover how this appropriation of labour without any equivalent arises from the law of
163
commodity exchange - out of the fact that commodities exchange for one another in proportion to the amount of labour-time embodied in them - and to start with does not contradict this law." (Th 3, 481-2).
And it was here that Marx made a development on classical political
economy which was to transform completely the science - and this
development in this case consisted in tracing the connection between
the law of value and the law of surplus value, a connection which
utterly eluded Ricardo and company.
Now of course Althusser pays formal acknowledgement to the revolu-
tionary struggle of the working class. But it is purely formal
acknowledgement. for in his conception the struggles are
mechanically, metaphysically separated from the defensive struggle
on wages and economic conditions. This is how Althusser poses this
relationship:
"The economic (trade union) class struggle remains a defensive one because it is economic (against the two great tendencies of capitalism). The politicel class struggle is offensive because it is political (!2t the seizure of power by the working class and its allies). These two struggles must be carefully distinguished from one another; althougn they always encroach upon 11 one another; more or less according to the conjuncture."
Here Althuser's ~onjuncture' is introduced as a pure deus ex machina
to escape from a theoretical impasse. for the problem is ~ is the
defensive struggle transformed into the offensive. In the Manifesto,
Marx shows how the very historical development of capital itself
creates the material conditions for the continual growth of the class
struggle from defensive concerns (wage regulation, etc.) to offensive
concarns (the high point of which is the seizure of power by the
working class). Capital, from this point of view, is an elaboration
164
and working out in detail of Marx's conceptions, first sketched out
in 1848. The point here is this: it is not that the working class
is engaged in a defensive struggle which at some unexplained con-
junctura moment 'encroaches' upon an offensive struggle. As
Althusser presents it here the working class is an inert mass,
12 whose consciousness is raised by entirely outside forces ('theory').
This is, however, far from the case. While denying that the working
class can spontaneously reach a revolutionary consciousness (such a
conception is elaborated in the theory of 'spontaneity') Marxism at
the same time recognises that the working class is driven, by the
very nature of its struggle in the direction of socielist conscious-
ness. Thus in his attack on the economists, Lenin, while denying
that socialist consciousness appears as a direct result of the
proletarian class struggle, did agree with Kautsky that socialism
and the class struggle arise side-by-side. In a footnote in ~
is to be Done? Lenin poses the relationship between the working
class and a Marxist consciousness which avoids the mistakes of
8pontaneity but at the same time sees the living connection between
Marxism and the working class. 'It is often said', remarks Lenin,
'that the working class spontaneously gravitates towards Socialism'.
"This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory defines the causes of the misery of the working class more profoundly and more correctly than any other theory, and for that reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily, provided, however, that this theory does not itself yield to spontaneity, provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself. Usually this is taken for granted, but it is preCisely this which Rabocheye Oyelo (Workers' Cause, a magazine published by the Economists, 1899-1902) forgets or distorts. The working class spontaneously gravitates towards Socialism, but the more widespread (and continuously revived in the most diverse forms) bourgeois ideology nevertheless ~ntaneously imposes itself upon the
165
working class still more." (L.CW, 5).
Engels' treatment of Marx's method and Althusser's attitude to the
early section of Capital once more serve to draw attention to the
dialectical character of Capital as a whole. In considering the
nature of Marx's starting point and his dialectical treatment of
the commodity, let us recall Lenin's characterisation of the most
general features of dialectics. Lenin writes: 'The splitting of
a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts ••• is
the essence of dialectics'. (LOW, 38, 359). Now this question of
the 'single whole' must be especially kept in mind when consider-
ing the point from which Capital begins. If Marx's aim was to
present the capitalist system in the whole sweep of its develop
ment, then the commodity had also to be understood in its whole
development. The commodity was shown by Marx to be a unity of value
and use value. And it was necessary that ~ these 'sides' be kept
in view. for a knowledge of ~ these opposites, in their conflict,
is necessary if thought is to get near to the real movement of
commodity production. Lenin puts this point in the following way
'The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in
their "self movement", in their spontaneous development, in their
real life, is tha knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Develop
ment is the "struggle" of opposites.' (LCW, 38, 360). As we have
seen, for Marx, in the investigation of economic terms abstraction
was essential. But this process of abstraction is a contradictory
one. for abstraction to a certain extent kills the living movement
of reality. The problem for thought, therefore, is really this:
166
how to depict movement through concepts. The ancient Greek ration-
alist Zeno regarded movement as 'sensed truth'. But he did not
rest on a mere admission of fact. He was among the first in the
history of philosophy to show the contradictory aepects of move-
ment - the contradiction between 'discreteness' and 'continuity' of
'rest' and 'motion'. He was among the first of those who attempted
to understand the connection between these eepects; but he was
unable to comprehend this contradiction in terms of fixed concepts,
and therefore, as a rationalist, came to a denial of the reality of
movement. But the question is not whether there is such a thing
as movement; that is acknowledged as a fact of experience and
verified in the history of science - the problem for thought is
thus how to grasp movement through concepts which inevitably tend
to coarsen and strangle reality. As Lenin shows this ie not a
'problem' for thought, so much as an expression of the contra-
dictory nature of all reality, a contradiction which finds its
essential expression in dialectics. Thus
"We cannot imagine, express, measure, depict movement, without interrupting continuity, without simplifying, coarsening, dismembering, strangling that which is living. The representation of movement by means of thought always makes coarse, kills - and not only by means of thought, but also by sense-perception, and not only of movement, but every concept. And in that 11ea the essence of dialectics. And precisely this essence is expressed in the formula: the unity, ---identity of opposites." (Lew, JB, 259-60).
And elsewhere in this work Lenin makes this same point when he says
that Hegel showed that ~n abstract concepts (and in the system of
them) the principle of motion cannot be expressed otherwise than
as the principle of the identity of opposites'. (Ibid, 345).
167
The ~ay Marx develops his investigation of the commodity testifies
both to the truth of Lenin's propositions and the essential
sterility of Althusser's position. for Marx does in fact 'hold
fast' to both sides of the commodity. He reveals throughout the
whole of Capital how the contradiction of the commodity form un-
folds, intensifies and dominates every aspect of bourgeois society.
The contradictions of the commodity are never left behind; nor
are they merely 'returned to' at various paints throughout the
three volumes. This basic contradiction (use-value, value) con-
tinually reappears in newer and higher forms which grow out of the
lower forms as part of an uninterrupted process. It is through
the development of these forms that development in the sphere of
economy takes place.
Let us examine the question more specifically, from the point of
view of the place occupied by usa-value in Marx's analysis. One
considereble debt we owe to Rosdolsky lies in the fact that he has
done much to clear up the confusion surrounding this matter in most
popularisations of Capital. Summing up his discussion and making
what is the decisive paint he says, 'Engels was surely right when
he perceived in Marx's treatment of use-value, and its role in
political economy, a classic ~xample of the use of the "German
13 dialectical method".
Among Marx's many criticisms of Ricardo's work was the fact that he
had tended to ignore the place of use-value in his economics. for
Ricardo, says Marx, it 'remains lying dead, as a Simple pre
supposition'. (G, 320). He ~as, adds Marx, only 'esoterically
168
concerned' with this category. (G, 647). Now, as Rosdolsky makes
clear, the importance of these comments had certainly escaped many
writers on Capital. Sweezy's case is typical and important if only
because his Theory of Capitalist Development has long been
recognised as perhaps the standaro popularisation of Marx's
political economy. Sweezy clearly gets the matter of use-value
quite wrong. And one source of his error is undoubtedly the con-
fusion of 'use value' with the concept of 'utility' found in
orthodox economics. Sweezy writes, 'Marx excluded use-value (or
as it would now be called "utility") from the field of investiga-
tion of political economy on the ground that it does not directly
14 embody a social relation'. And pointing out that bourgeois and
Marxian value theories are 'diametrically opposed', Sweezy adds,
'Nor should it be made a matter of reproach against Marx that he
failed to develop a subjective value theory, since he consciously
15 and deliberately dissociated himself from any attempt to do so.'
Now 'utility' is a subjective,a-social category concerned with
the relationship between an individual's supposed mental state and
material objects. Marx, of course, entirely rejects this starting
point as heving anything to do with science. for it pretends to
deduce aocial laws from states of mind. It would have been
impossible to develop a value theory from such a standpOint. The
theory of marginal utility was not a rival value theory, for value
is, as a social relation of a specific kind, precisely what is
excluded by the upholders of marginal utility theory. But when we
come to consider use-value we are dealing with an entirely different
matter. Use-value is the substance of all wealth, with an entirely
objective existence. Use-values are produced under all social
169
conditions. Thus far from being uninterested in this category,
Marx is vitally concerned with it in so far as it is itself a
'determined economic form'. This is what he says on the subject:
"To be a use-value is evidently a necessary pre-requisite of the commodity, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity. Use-value as such, since it is independent of the determinate economic forms, is outside the sphere of investigation of political economy. It belo s to this shere onl when it is a determinate .!2.!!!!.. 1 , 2B •
The key point here is that Marx is not interested in use-value ~
such. He is interested solely in it in connection with the analysis -of given economic forms. His answer to Wagner clears up the matter
at issue:
"Only an obscurantist who has understood not a word of Capital can conclude: Because Marx repudiates all Germanic professional noneense about 'use-value' in general (author.' s italics) in a note to the firstedition of Capital, and refers readers who wish to know something about actual use-values to 'Introduction to Commodity Theory' - for that reason, use-value plays no role in his work. Naturally, it does not play the role of its contrary, 'value', which has nothing in common with it apart from the fact that 'value' occurs in the term 'use-velue'. He could just as well have said that 'exchange-value' is ignored in my work because it is only appearance-form of value, but it is not 'value', since for me the 'value' of a commodity is neither its use-value not its exchange-value.,,16
And Marx goes on:
"If one has to talk of analysing the 'Commodity' - the simplest economic concretum - then one must keep all relationships distant which have nothing to do with the proposed object of analysis. What is to be said of the commodity in so far as it is a use-value, I have said in a few lines, therefore, but on the other hand have emphasised the characteristic form in which the use-value (the labour product) appears at this paint, namely (here Marx quotes from the first volume of Capital) 'A thing can be useful and a product of human labour without being
170
a commodity. Whoever satisfies his own need by his product creates a use-value, admittedly, but not a commodity. In order to produce a commodity, he not onl has to roduce a use-value but a use-value for others, social use-value' ••• Thereby use-value as use-value of the 'commodity' itself) possesses a history-specific character ••• Thus it would be pure babbling (as emerges from the preceding) in the analysis of the commodity - since it manifests itself on the one hand as use-value or goad and on the other hand as 'value' - to 'tie on' upon this occasion all sorts of banal reflections concerning use-values or 17 goods which do not fall within the realm of commodities."
Immediately fallowing this passage Marx says that Wagner failed to
see that in Capital 'use-value plays a very important role differ
ent from in previous Economics, but that it precisely only carnes
from the analysis of a given economic structuring, nat from
intellectualizing hither and yon about the concepts or words ttuse_
18 value" and "value'tf. Karl Korsch got this question right, even
though one would wish to dissent strongly from him on many others.
He writes:
"With Marx ••• use-value is not defined as a use-value in general, but as the use-value of a commodity. This use-value inherent in the commodities produced In modern capitalist society is however, not merely en extra-economic presupposition of this 'value'. It is an element of the value, and itself ie an economic category. The mere fact that a thing has utility for any human being, say for its prodUCer, does not yet give us the economic definition of use-value. Not until the thing hae social utility (i.e. utility tfor other persons') does the thing has social utility (i.e. utility 'for other persons') doee the economic definition of use-value apply."19
(In his last sentence Korsch is not strictly correct; as Engels
points out in a parenthesis (I, 41) in Capital, commodities do
not involve only the production of 'social use-values'; this use-
value 'must be transferred to another, wham it will serve as a
171
use-value, by means of an exchange'.)
Thus, far from being excommunicated from the investigation of
capitalism, use-value plays a central role. We can see this in
connection with surplus value itself which, as Marx shows, arises
from the use-values of the commodity labour-power. But let us
give a series of examples to indicate the role played by use
value.
1 Marx gives one clear example in connection with the deter-
mination of the rate of profit, to the extent thet the rate of
profit depends on fluctuations in the value of raw materials. tor,
as Marx puts it,
nit is especially agricultural produce proper, i.e. the raw materials taken from nature, which ••• is subject to fluctUations of value in consequence of changing yields etc. Owing to uncontrollable natural conditions, favourable or unfavourable seasons, etc., the same quantity of these use-values may therefore have different prices". (III, 117-18).
Such variations must always affect the rate of profit 'even if they
leave the wage untouched and hence the rate and amount of surplus
value too'. (III, 115).
2 As a second instance the role of use-value in the investigation
of economiC forms we can take the case of the Reproduction Schema
given in the second volume of Capital. tor Marx the problem of
capital turnover was a two-sided one. In the first place, in order
that reproduction may be achieved, the total value embodied in the
commodities produced must be realised, that is sold at prices
equivalent to their value. But at the same time, we are not dealing
with a purely value-creating and realising process. tor at the same
172
time reproduction always requires, if it is to be crisis-free,
that the usa-value of the commodities produced should fulfil
definite material conditions for the recommencement of production.
If, in an extreme case, all commodities produced were raw
materials, workers and capitalists alike would starve (assuming
no reserves of food were available). Or if all commodities
produced were consumer goods there would be no resources to make
good wear and tear of machinery and the economy would eventually
grind to a halt. So the use-value composition of the outputs of
Departments I and II is clearly a crucial factor in an analysis
of the conditions of potential equilibrium and breakdown alike.
3 As a final example of the importance of a proper considera-
tion of the use-value side of commodity production let us take the
example ot money. Even with simple commodity circulation, with
the emergence of the money-form of the commodity, the value of a
commodity must be represented in the farm of use-value, that is in
the natural form of the commodity. This means that not only must
money itself be a commodity, but also that this use-value must be
connected to quite specific material properties of this money-
commodity. As Marx puts this paint,
"In proportion as exchange bursts its local bands, and the value of commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour in the abstract, in the same proportion the character of money attracts itself to commodities that are by Nature fitted to perform the social function of a universsl equivalent. These commodities are the precious metals." (I, 89; author's italics).
And Marx immediately adds 'although gold and silver are not by
173
Nature money, money is by Nature gold and silver' (I, 89; author's
italics).
The first three sections of the opening chapter of Capital are
concerned with the formation of money. for Marx, the problem was
not to show that money was itself a commodity (in the case of gold
this was obvious) but to demonstrate the transition from the most
simple, elementary relation of the commodity to money. 'The
difficulty', as Marx puts it, 'lies not in comprehending that money
is a commodity, but in discovering how, why and by ~hat means a
commodity becomes money'. (I, 92). It is necessary to stress once
once more that Marx is not engaged in some mere manipulation of can-
cepts, 'applying' a few Hegelian concepts and phrases. Marx warns
against precisely this vie~ when he tells us:
"It will be necessary later, before the question is dropped, to correct the idealist mannar of its prasentation, which makes it seem as if it ware marely a matter of conceptual determination and of the dialectic of these concepts. Above all in the case of the phrasa: product (or activity) becomea commodity; commodity exchange value; exchange-value, monay." (G, 151).
Hare Marx is making a point he made over and over again; namely that
economic categories reflect real human practica. Engels' insistance
on the unity of the 'logical' and tha 'historical' can be seen in
practice in Capital (as well as in the Grundr!sse) ~here the logical
derivation of the concepts 'valua' and 'money' is paralleled with a
historical derivation of thesa same categories. Marx always can-
fronts the results of his abstract analysis with actual historical
developments. The exchange of commodities arises from a long process
of economic development and presupposas a certain level of the
174
productivity of labour. The decisive point for the development of
commodity production arises when communities are able to produce
more than they require for their immediate subsistence, that is as
soon as this labour can regularly generate ~ 'surplus product'.
Now the exchange of products, says Marx, tends not to take place
within communities, but between them. This primitive barter is
still, however, a long way (both logically and historically) from
developed exchange. for this, developed exchange, exchange value
has to acquire an independent form. This fact is revealed in two
ways. The production of use-value remains the purpose of society.
Use-values cease to be merely use-values and become means of
exchange or commodities, only after a larger amount of them has
been produced than is needed for consumption. But even when this
occurs, this surplus takes the form of commodities only within the
limits set by the nature of these use-values. Thus 'the commodi-
ties to be exchanged by their owners must be of use-values for
both of them, but each commodity must be a use-value for its non-
owner'. (Critique,50). It is only when a portion of the products
of labour are produced with a special view to exchange that,
"the distinction becomes firmly established between the utility of an object, for the purposes of exchange. Its use-value becomes distinguished from its exchangevalue. On the other hand, the quantitative proportions in which the articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent on their production itself. Custom stamps them as values with definite magnitudeslt • (I, 88).
So the appearance of the value-form is a reflection of the growth
of the productive forces: 'The necessity for a value-form grows
with the increasing nature and variety of the commodities exchanged.
175
The problem and the means of solution arise simultaneously.' (I, 88)
(author's italics). Commercial exchange in which commodity-owners
exchange and compare articles, never takes place unless the differ
ent kinds of commodities belonging to different owners are exchanged
for, and equated at values with, one single further kind of commodity.
And this commodity thereby acquires, albeit at first within narrow
limits, the form of a universal social equivalent. But it lacks as
yet any real stability. It appears and disappears with the momentary,
often accidental contacts (between communities) which call it into
being. It is attached first to this, then to that commodity. It is
only with the davelopment and growth of ax change that it fixes itself
to particular types of commodities - that is, it is crystallized out
into the money form.
To start with, Marx indicates that a commodity will serve as money
which represents in a given community the predominant form of wealth -
that is to say the commodity most frequently exchanged and circulated
as an object of consumption. At this stage, the commodity 'selected'
is determined by the particular usefulness of the commodity as an
object of consumption (salt, hides, etc.) or of production (slaves).
In the case of a higher development this situation is transformed
into its exact opposite, now it is the commodity which has the least
utility as an object of consumption or production that beet serves
the needs of exchange as such. In the first case, the commodity
becomes money merely because of its particular use-value, in the
latter case it acquires use-value precisely because of its service
ability as money. This makes the precious metals especially suitable -
they are easily divisible and- combinable, they are readily transport-
176
able owing to the compression of considerable value in a little
space.
Having stressed the historical-practical nature of the process which
brings the money-form into being, let us now consider how Marx
traces this appearance in logic. We know already that the products
of labour only constitute values in so far es they embody the same
social substance, general human labour. But we know also that it is
the labour of individuals, expressing different degrees of intensity,
skill, etc., in short definite concrete labour 'which assimilates
particular natural materials to particular human requirements'. (I,
42). As such this labour is alweys objectified 'in a definite
particular commodity, with particular characteristics, and particular
relations to need', but as human labour in general it needs to be
embodied 'in a commodity which expresses no more than its quota or
quantity, which is indifferent to its own natural properties, and
which can therefore be metamorphosised into - i.e. exchanged for
every other commodity which objectifies the same labour-time'.
(G, 168). This means that 'The commodity, as it comes into being,
is only objectified individual labour-time of a specific kind, and
not universal labour-time. The commodity is thus ~ immediately
exchange-value but has still to become exchange-value'. (Critique,
p.43). It is of course important to keep in mind the fact that
this contradiction between individual and universal labour is a
reflection of the contradictory nature of the commodity itself,
that is of objectified labour. Thus, 'Two commodities, e.g. a yard
of cotton and a measure of oil are different by nature, have differ
ent properties, are measured by different measures, are incommensur-
177
able.' (G, 141). While,
"Considered as values, all commodities are qualitatively equal and differ only quantitatively, hence can be measured against each other and substituted for one another •••• in certain qualitative relations. Value is their social relation, their economic quality •••• As value a commodity is an equivalent for all other commodities: as an equivalent, all its natural properties are extinguished; it no longer takes up a special, qualitative relationship towards the other commodities: but is rather the general measure as well as the general representative, the general medium of exchange of all other commodities. As value, it is money." (G, 141).
And it is for this reason that value must take on an existence
independent of the bodily existence of the commodity. Marx explains
that vital point in the following way;
"The property of being a value not only has but must achieve an existence different from its natural-one. Why? Because commodities as values are different from one another only quantitatively; therefore each commodity must be qualitatively different from its own value. Its velue must therefore have an existence which is qualitatively distinguishable from it, and in actual exchange this separability must become a real separation, because the natural distinctness of commodities must come into contradiction with their economiC equivalence, and because both can exist together only if the commodity achieves a double existence, in which it is a mere symbol, a Cipher for a relation of production, a mere symbol for its own value." (G, 141; author's italics).
We can now examine Marx's analysis of the movement from direct barter;
the succession of the stages of exchange - the 'simple', the 'total'
and the 'general' value-forms. As Marx notes:
"Everyone knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities have a value-form common to them all, and presenting a marked contrast with their varied bodily forms of their usevalue. I mean their money-form. Here, however, a task is set us, the performance of which has never yet even been attempted by bourgeOis economy, the task of tracing the genesis of this money-form, of developing the expression of value implied in the value-relationship of commodities, from
178
its simplest almost imperceptible outline to the dazzling money-form. By doing this, we shall, at the same time, solve the riddle presented by money." (I, 47-8).
We should note, in passing, that despite the fact that Marx here
tells us that in tracing the genesis of the money-form he was
attempting something never properly considered by bourgeois economy,
very few writers on Caeital have paid the slightest ettention to the
sections in Capital dealing with the value-form and its growth. The
late Ronald Meek in his Studies in the Labour Theory of Value
dismissed the analysis of the value-form in one short paragraph.
'There is no need', he writes,
"for us to follow Marx's rather complex analysis of the 'elementary', 'expanded' and 'money' forms of value in any detail. Essentially, what he is trying to do here is to reveal the contradictions which result from the reciprocal interaction of the two sides of the value equation, and to demonstrate the nature of the solutions of these contradicti~8s which logic - and history -demand and provide".
In our opinion this is quite inadequate, Marx's analysis on this
question cannot be dismissed on the grounds that it is 'rather
complex'. for, as we will endeavour to show, the proper apprecia-
tion of the elementary value-form, that is the exchange of two
commodities (20 yards of linen • 1 coat), not only provides the key
to understanding the nature of money (which claSSical economy, let
alone modern economic theory, failed to understand), but also the
key to Marx's notion of fetishism, which Rubin (1972) in particular
has so correctly insisted is one of the foundations of Marx's
entire analysis of capitalism.
Let us follow Marx's argument. from the beginning he indicates that
179
in the elementary or accidental value-form (x commodity A • Y
commodity 8) is expressed in 'external' form the 'internal'
contradiction within the commodity itself. In the first edition
of Caoital we find the following crucial passage.
"The inner opposition contained in the commodity of usevalue and ~alue is thus manifested by an external opposition; that is the relationship of two commodities of which the one counts immediately only as usa-value, the other immediately as exchange-value, or in which both of the opposite determinants as use-value and exchangevalue are apportioned among the commodities in a polar manner."21
And a similar passage is' found in the third edition where we read:
'~he opposition or contrast existing internally in each commodity between use-value and value, is therefore, made evident externally by two commodities, being placed in such relation to each other, that the commodity ~hose value it is sought to express, figures directly as a mere use-value, while the commodity 1n which that value is to be expressed, figures directly as a mere exchange-value. Hence the elementary form of value of a commodity is the elementary form in which the contrast contained in that commodity between usa-value and value, becomes apparent ... (I, 61; author's emphasis).
These passages are crucial and worth considering carefully for the
following reason: Marx is here presenting value in truly dialectical
manner. for value is an inner relation of the commodity to itself,
reversed in outward form through the relation to another commodity.
This other commodity (here the coat) plays the passive role of the
mirror in which the inwardly contradictory nature of the commodity
that expressed its value (the linen) plays the active role. Here. is
expressed the fact that dialectics obliges one always to discover,
behind the outward form of a thing's relation to another thing, its
own inner nature, its own being. (We should note that the properties
180
of a thing - say the linen - are not the result of its relation to
other things - the coat - but only manifest themselves in such
relations.) Of course dialectics does not reduce the external con
tradictions (between two commodities in the elementary form of
exchange) to the internal contradiction of the commodity. The question
was not one of reduction, but of deriving the former from the latter
and thus comprehending both in their objective necessity. Exchange
value has to be derived from the contradiction between value and use
value within the cell of bourgeois society.
True to the dialectical conception of the whole work, Marx tells us
that this elementary form is the key to understanding the mystery
of the entire value-form, just as the contradictory nature of the
commodity is the 'germ' of all the more developed contradictions.
Thus, 'The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this
elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty.'
It is, putting the matter more concretely, the contradictions of this
elementary form which provide the essential key to all the higher,
more general contradictions: 'We perceive, at first sight, the
deficiencies of the elementary form of value; it is a mere germ which
must undergo a series of metamorphoses before it can ripen into the
price-form.' (I, 62; author's italiCS). Thus Marx says, 'The
antagonism between the relative form of value and the equivalent
form, the two poles of the value-form is developed concurrently with
the form itself.' (1, pp. 67-8). Now it is precisely because the
equation 20 yards of linen • 1 coat 1s the 'germ' of all the contra
dictions of capital that we must investigate it thoroughly. Lenin
spoke specifically of this point in Capital when he wrote:
181
"Just as the simplest form of value, the individuel act of exchange of one given commodity for enother, already includes in an underdeveloped form all the main contradictions of capitalism - so the simpr;st generalisation, the first and simplest formation of notions (judgements, syllogisms, etc.) already denotes man's ever deeper cognition of the objective connection of the world. Here is where one should look for the true meaning, significance and role of Hegel's Logic.'t This NB. (LeW 38, 178).
In other words, as Lenin pOints out elsewhere in the Philosophical
Notebooks, even in the simplest copular judgment ('fido is a dog')
is found the germ of dialectics (the relation between the individual
and the universal, between chance and neceSSity, the identity of
opposites, etc.) so in the elementary value-expression is found the
as yet hardly perciptible germ of the entire movement of capital.
Now in this elementary value form (for simplicity's sake we will
throughout use Marx's example, 20 yards of linen • 1 coat) the
linen plays the active role, the coat the passive. The qualitative-
quantitative contradiction of the commodity linen is 'resolved' in
the relationship of this commodity linen to its equivalent-form,
the coat. But it is not resolved in the sense that the initial
contradiction disappears - it is heightened into an even sharper
antagonism. Thus, 'The relative form and the equivalent form are two
intimately connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of
the expression of value; but at the same time are mutually exclu-
sive, antagonistic extremes, i.e. poles of an expression.' (I, p 48).
(We can note in passing that this antagonistic nature of the
elementary value-form comes across even more strikingly in German
by the fact that linen is a feminine word and coat a masculine.)
At the outset Marx leaves aside an investigation of the purely quanti-
182
tative side of this relationship. Here alone is revealed one
important aspect of Marx's difference with the political economists
whose attention, as we have seen, was directed almost wholly to
this quantitative side. Marx says, on this point,
"It is the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities that alone brings into relief the specific character of the value-creating labour, and this it does by actually reducing the different varieties of labour embodied in the different kinds of commodities to their common quality of human labour in the abstract." (I, 49).
Two pOints should be noted in connection with this and many similar
passages. first, one already made and therefore a question that
need not detain us, namely the objective character of this reduction
of concrete to abstract labour. Second, the fact that the two-fold
character of labour embodied in the commodity is only made manifast,
only 'brought into relief' in the elementary value-form, in the
simple relation between two commodities. Just as the two-fold
character of the commodity is only made visible through its relations
with another commodity, the same is equally true for the two-rold
nature of the labour which produces the commOdity.
But, notes Marx, it is not adequate merely to grasp the value
creating nature of labour (that is, abstract labour); it is
necessary to see that the reduction of concrete labour to abstract
labour is not and cannot be a direct one. It is, by its very nature,
a mediated process, one in which the abstract labour congealed in the
commodity is congealed in the form of some object and only in this
indirect way can it become 'value'. In a passage which shows the
not immodest distance separating Marx from all those who read him
183
as a 'consistent empiricist' we find:
"There is however something else required beyond the expression of the specific character of the labour of which the value of the linen consists. Human labourpower in motion, or human labour, creates value, but is not itself value. It becomes value only in its congealed state, when embobied in the form of some object. In order to express the value of the linen as a congelation of human labour, that value must be expressed as having objective existence, as being something materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something common to the linen and all other commodities. The problem is already solved." (I, 51).
Marx is here streSSing the fundamental fact that in a society of
atomized private producers the labour of the individual is not
directly social, nor can it ever be. The labour of the individual
becomes social only through the negation of its own original
character, by appearing in a directly opposed form. Despite the
increasingly socialised nature of production under the capitalist
system, there is no unified, conscious, mechanism of social planning.
The only 'planning' takes place through the blind force of the
market. 'The total movement of this order is its disorder.' Hence,
Marx, in summing up his discussion of the relative form, says, 'The
value of the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of the
commodity coat; the value of one by the use-value of the other ••••
Thus the linen acquires a value-form different from its phYSical
form.' (I, 52). Speaking of the linen, Marx says, 'In order to
inform us that its sublime reality as value is not the same as its
buckram body, it says that value has the appearance of a coat, and
consequently that so far as the linen is value, it and the coat are
as like as two peas.' (I, 52). Marx then turns to the peculiarities
184
of the equivalent form (the coat). It is through an examination
of these 'peculiarities' that he shows how the contradictions in
the elementary form of value are in fact overcome - overcome by
being taken into a higher unity in the money form. tor the
peculiarities of the form 20 yards of linen • 1 coat highlight with
even more force the indirect, unconscious nature of the procesa of
production under capitalism, a process which therefore demands, and
finds, some universal value-form (money) in which this indirectness
is turned into its opposite. The three peculiarities are:
1 'Use-value becomes the form of its manifestation, the
phenomenal form of its opposite, value.'
2 The fact 'that concrete labour becomes the form under which
its opposite direct human labour manifests itself.'
3 The fact 'that the labour of private individuals takes the
form of its opposite, labour directly social in its form'. (I, 55-8).
Here are brought out by Marx (brought out after the detailed
investigation of the elementary form which has so often been
neglected in commentaries on Capital) all the major contradictions
of capital - although naturally only in embryonic form. In
particular we should note the fact that the two-fold character of
labour which is first revealed in the elementary value-form
(remembering the importance of the concrete-abstract labour
distinction in Marx's work):
"The body of the commodity that serves as the eqUivalent, figures as the mater~isation of human labour in the abstract, and is at the same time the product of some specifically concrete labour. This concrete labour becomes therefore the medium for expressing abstract human labour." (I, 58).
185
And further
"If on the one hand the coat rates as nothing but the embodiment of abstract human labour, so, on the other hand, the tailoring which is actually embodied in it, counts es nothing but the form under which that abstract labour is realised. In the expression of the value of the linen, the utility of the tailoring consists, not in making clothes but in making an object, which we at once recognise to be of value, and therefore to be a congelation of labour, but of labour indistinguishable from that revealed in the value of the linen. In order to act as such a mirror of value, the labour of tailoring must reflect nothing besides its own abstract quality of being human labour generally." (I, 58).
Precisely because of the unresolved contradictions of the elementary
value-form, it must develop into newer higher forms in which these
contradictions are never lost, but always sublated. Out of the
internal contradictions of the form 20 yards of linen • 1 coat grows
the expanded value-form, nemely 20 yards of linen • 1 coat, 2 sheep,
t ton of iron, etc. This form comes into ectual existence for the
first time as soon as a particular product of labour, such as cattle,
is no longer exceptionally, but habitually, exchanged for various
other commodities. (I, 66). (This stage corresponds to the
'particular' in Hegel's logic: a series of particular commodities
play the role of eqUivalent alongside eech other.)
Having looked at Marx's treatment of the elementary form in some
detail, this expanded form need not detain us over-long. However,
we need to draw attention to the fact that the relations which were
in the elementary form (the individual) relatively imperceptible
noW manifest themselves with greater force and clarity in this
higher form.
"It is thus that for the first time that value shows itself in its true light, as a congelation of undifferentiated
186
human labour. for the labour that creates it, now stands expressly revealed as labour that ranks equally with every other sort of human labour, no matter what its form, whether tailoring, ploughing, mining, etc." (I, 63, author's italics).
Expressed in the expanded form is an expansion of the actual social
relations of commodity production. for the linen, by virtue of its
form of value, no longer stands in a social relation with merely
one kind of commodity, but 'with the whole world of commodities' and
becomes a true citizen of the world of commodities. (I, 63). The
semblance of the relations of the elementary form now takes on apparent
form in another sense. (We should note that Marx here deals quite
consciously with this movement from 'semblance' to 'appearance', an
appearance in which it becomes possible to identify clearly the
opposites in the phenomena under investigation.) for what seemed
previously mere chance is now ravealed to be necessity in this expanded
form.
"In the first form ••• it might for ought that otherwise appears, be pure accident, that the two commodities are exchangeable in definite quantities. In the second form on the contrary, we perceive at once the background that determines and is essentially different from this accidental appearance. The value of the linen remains unaltered in magnitude, whether expressed in coats, coffee, or iron, or in numberless different commodities, the property of as many different owners. The accidental relation between two individual commodities disappears." (I, 63).
further, says Marx, 'It becomes plain that it is not the exchange of
commodities which regulates the magnitude of their value; but on
the contrary, that it is the magnitude of their value which controls
their exchange proportions', a point which, incidentally, makes
clear Marx's conception of the relationship of 'production' to
187
to 'exchange'. And just as in the case of the elementary form so
now in the case of the expanded, Marx goes on to reveal the
deficiencies of this total form.
"In the first place, the relative expression of value is incomplete because the series representing it is interminable. The chain of which each equation of value is a link, is liable at any moment to be lengthened by each new kind of commodity that comes into existence and furnishes new material for a fresh expression of value." (I, 64).
This form, precisely because it is always by its nature incomplete
and 'deficient in unity' (I, 64) gives way to a higher form, the
General Form of Value, expressed as follows
1 coat 10 lbs of tea • 20 yards of linen 40 lbs of coffee, etc.
This form, like all economic forms, has a definite material base,
that is, a definite foundation in human history. This form 'expresses
the value of the whole world commodities in terms of a single
commodity set apart for the purpose, namely, the linen, and this
represents to us their values by means of their equality with linen'.
(I, 66).
It is this General Form that all the different, opposed, commodities
(and by extension all the particular concrete types of labour
embodied in these commodities) are united in one commodity. The
previous 'defiCiency in unity' of the total form is now overcome.
As such this General Form of Value preserves within it the elementary
form, but in an inverted way:
"All commodities now express their value (1) in an elementary form because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, because in one and the same commodity.
188
This form of value is elementary and the same for all, therefore general." (I, 65).
And this unity, summed up in the General concept is no mere
mechanical unity, no mere addition of each commodity, individually,
apart from the rest, 'finding' the form of its value in one single,
excluded commodity. quite the contrary: the unity is a dialecti-
cal unity, for in one excluded commodity is represented the ....... ensemble of all commodities, their joint action. (This should be
seen in the light of the earlier discussion of the nature of
dialectical concepts es opposed to those constructed on the basis
of purely formal thought.) This point is made clear when Marx
compares the elementary and expanded forms with the general.
"The two earlier forms either express the value of each commodity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or a series of many such commodities. In such cases, it is, so to say, the special business of each single commodity to find an expression for its value, and this it does without the help of the others. These others, with respect to the former, play the passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value, C, results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities, and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general expression of its value only by all other commodities, simultaneously with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent; and every new commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that, since the existence of commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the totality of their social relations alone, and consequently that the form of their value must be socially recognised form." (I, 66; author's italics).
Thus it is not that each commodity 'finds' its value in its passive
opposite. Now we have a transformation of opposites. for the
excluded commodity (here the linen) finds the value of all the other
commodities in an objective process, one where 'every new commodity
must follow suit'. The passive has now become active and the active
189
passive. The social relations of commodities are now revealed as
objective relations in and through which 'by joint action' the
value of each commodity is expressed in the one excluded commod-
ity. If the General value-form embraces,as it does, the whole
world of commodities in their movement, then it must be the
abstract epitome, a condensed history of this whole world, or, as
Marx says (I, 67), the 'social resume' of that world.
Now we are on the edge of the emergence of the money-form, expressed
by:
20 yards of linen 1 coat 40 Ibs of coffee 10 Ibs of tea, etc.
• 2 ounces of gold
Money appears when the exclusion of one commodity, seen in the General
form, becomes finally restricted to one commodity, gold. A commodity
which may have served as a single equivalent in isolated exchanges
(elementary form) or as a particular equivelent alongside several
others (the expanded form) now serves as a universal equivalent.
Only when this monopoly position is firmly established does the
general form give way to the money-form.
Clearly, not all aspects of this opening chapter of Capital have been
examined. But in tracing the transition from commodity to money.
Marx was laying the essential basis for the rest of his work as well
as making an enormous advance over anything achieved in political
economy. for he has now traced the origin of money and in this way
laid the foundation for understanding the mystery which surrounds
this fetishised form in which men's social relationships appear
190
embodied in a metal. Precisely because even the best figures in
political economy were unable to tackle the problem of the histori
cal nature of the predominant forms of bourgeois economy, for them
money did remain a mystery, merely a thing, merely a symbol. We
can bast look at this problem by examining Marx's theory of
fetishism and the place which it occupies in his work.
191
Chapter 6
MARX'S NOTION Of COMMODITY FETISHISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF
CLASSICAL ECONOMICS
"When therefore Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons ••• he ought to have added: a relation between persons expressed as a relation between things." (I, 74)
In his important book Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, I. I.
Rubin draws attention to the fact that 'Marx's theory of
commodity fetishism has not occupied the place which is proper to
1 it in the Marxist economic system'. As he observes, many
writers have failed to grasp the relationship of this notion to
Marx's critique of political economy - it has, he says, often been
regarded as a 'brilliant sociological generalisation, a theory and
critique of all contemporary culture based on the reification of
human relations'. Rubin was surely right to oppose such a view
and also that which seeks to separate out Marx's notion of fetish-
ism as some independent entity, having herdly any connection to
Capital as a whole. Rubin's book was first published over fifty
years ago, but in the light of the many distortions of this aspect
of Marx's work which have appeared in recent years, what he said
2 then carries even more force today. In fact we shall seek to
show that for Marx his notion of fetishism is no mere literary
digression, something ancillary to the main text. On the contrary,
as Rubin, I think, has adequately shown, it provides one of the key
elements in the foundation of Marx's entire theory and is in
particular directly bound up with his conception of economic crisis.
We know that a separate treatment of fetishism did not appear in
192
the first edition of Capital, even though the concept is implicitly
present. Only with the second and third editions (the basis for
the English translations) did a separate section. 'The fetishism
of Commodities and the Secret Thereof' appear at the end of Chapter
One. We know that it was the first chapter which gave Marx the
greatest difficulty. He wrote and re-wrote the sections dealing
with the value-form, seeking to present in the clearest way
possible the contradictory nature of the commodity-form and reveal
the results of these contradictions. It is no accident that the
section on fetishism appears after those dealing with the value-
form and no accident that this section was added as part of Marx's
struggle to present the value-form in the most adequate manner.
But although there is a separate section dealing with fetishism,
it is not as though Marx deals with this matter and then drops it.
It is a notion which is present throughout the entire three volumes,
and one which he develops and concretizes in these volumes as well as
in the Theories of Surplus Value.
Let us start by recalling that Marx took the political economists
severely to task for having accepted the reified, alienated forms
of bourgeois economy at face value, for having failed to inquire
into the historical and social basis of these forms. In this
critique of the work of his predecessors, Marx rejected all notions
which sought to 'derive' value (a social relation) from use-value
(a material phenomenon). ('The mystical character of commodities
does not originate in their use-value', I, 71). In similar fashion,
Marx opposed all those views which explained the nature of money in
terms of the material-technical properties of gold, just as he
193
poured scorn on all those who sought to understand capital from the
technical nature of the means of production. What all these
'errors' had in common for Marx was this: they failed to distinguish
between the technical role of the instruments of labour on the one
hand, and their social form on the other. for Marx the essence of
fetishism was this: under commodity production, relations between
men take the form of relations between 'things'. The social
relations are indirect relations, relations mediated through these
things, and men simply 'represent' or 'personify' these things in
the market place. Now Marx chastised the political economists for
taking these forms 'as given' (by Nature) and not as social forms
arising under definite historical conditions, forms which would
therefore disappear under new social conditions. Those who accept
the social relations of capital 'uncritically' in effect attribute
to things in their immediate menifestation properties which, in
point of fact, have nothing in common with this immediate material
manifestation as such. The attention of Ricardo was directed
almost exclusively to discovering the material base of definite
social forms. These forms of social being were taken as read and
therefore lying outside the scope of further analysis. It was
Marx's aim to discover the origin and development of these social
forms assumed by the material-technical production process at a
definite stage in the development of the productive forces. Here,
inCidentally, is a further clue to the distinction between claSSical
political economy and its later degenerate form in vulgar economy.
In the latter case, vulgar political economy, certain properties
194
materially inherent in things are assigned to the social form of
these things. Hence the power inherent in the means of produc
tion to raise labour productivity - that is the power to increase
the production of usa-values for a given expenditure of labour
time - is ascribed falsely to capital, and by extension to the
owner of capital. from this notion comes the apologetic theory
of the 'productivity' of capital. Classical economy, on the other
hand, ascribed economic forms to the specific property of things.
It attempted to derive social phenomena directly from material
technical phenomena. Hence capital was 'stored-up labour', rent
arose from the soil, etc. Now whatever the inadequacies of the
notion that 'capital is stored-up labour', it at least had the
merit over vulgar economy that the connection between 'labour' and
'capital' was kept in sight, even if this connection was misunder
stood. In the case of vulgar economy, its apologetic nature
reaches its high point with the formula: land-rent, capital-interest,
labour-wages. for as we have already noted, in this formula the
categories of capitalist production do not face each other as
alian, hostile forms, but rather as heterogeneous and different
forms. The different revenues are derived from different sources,
one from land, one from labour and the other from capital. All
notions of any inner connections are obliterated. The three
categories work together harmoniously in the cause of production.
In so far as any contradiction is admitted by the vulgar school,
it is one merely concerned with distribution - one about the
distribution of the value jOintly created by the three agents. As
we have seen, it was John Stuart Mill, with his division between
195
conditions of production (fixed by nature and therefore immutable)
and conditions of distribution (fixed socially and therefore within
limits amenable to modification) who elaborated this aspect of
vulgar economy into a system which was taken over by Fabianism and
various other brands of reformism. Before turning to look at
Marx's notion of fetishism in more detail, we should say a little
about the origin of this idea and its connection with the develop
ment of Marx's work. The notion of fetishism, sketched out in the
Critique and more fully in Capital, is the product of a long line
of development, going back to The Holy Family, with its contrast
between 'social' relations and materialised forms. We find Marx,
in this early work, saying that property, capital, money, wage
labour and similar categories, do not, in themselves, represent
phantoms of the imagination, but very practical, very concrete
products of the self-alienation of the worker. The material
element, dominating all economic relations, is contrasted with
an ideal, with a view of the world as it should be. In The Poverty
of Philosophy Marx says that 'Economic categories are only the
theoretical expressions, the abstractions, of the social relations
of production'. Marx, in opposition to Proudhon, now grasped that
social relations of production stand behind the material categories
of the economy. But he did not yet ask why this relationship was a
necessary one under commodity production. It was only with the
Critique and Capital that this problem is thoroughly examined and
made the basis of the criticism of political economy as a whole.
Now it is explained - and this is the essential point in the notion
of fetishism - that the:
196
"absence of direct regulation of the social process of production necessarily leads to the indirect regulation of the production process through the market, through the products of labour, through things. Here the subject is the 'materialisation' of productive 3 relations and not only 'mystification' or illusion".
It is espeCially important to stress this last point - that fetish-
ism is not mere illusion, that 'fetishism is not only a phenomenon
of social consciousness, but of social being' as Rubin (p 59)
correctly puts it. for fetishism is often worngly equated with
mystification, merely an ideological category. It would of course
be quite wrong to see a fully worked-out theory of fetishism in
Marx's early writings, but it would be equally one-sided to draw a
rigid distinction between Merx's early formulation of this question
and its rounded out version in Capital, a position in general
adopted by the Althusserian school. for one element found in the
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (Paris Manuscripts)
is returned to throughout all Marx's later work - namely that under
capitalist relations, the products of the workers' labour confront
him as something coercive and this is a ~ coerCion, with a
definite material base. This we find in this early work:
"The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the greater is the worker's lack of objects, whatever the products of his labour is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product does not only mean that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien". 4
197
We shall see how this theme, far from being dropped, is enriched
and developed in Capital.
Rubin is absolutely right to say that fetishism is a phenomenon
of social being and because of this alone it is present in
consciousness. And this 'social being' is commodity production
and commodity production alone. Marx is quite explicit on this
point.
"The relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation of objects which exists outside them ••• It is a particular social relation between men themselves which in their eyes assumes a phantasmagorical form of a relation between theings ••• This is what I call fetishism; it attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and it is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities. (I, 72).
Here Marx indicates clearly that the fetishism of economic relations
arises only with commodity production. for him ideology is not a
product of capitalism only; false consciousness is a product of
all societies divided into clssses. But it is only under conditions -of capitalism that men's economic relations appear to them in the
shape of things. So this form of false consciousness, the fetishisa-
tion of the economic relations, is unique to commodity-capitalist
production. This must be stressed against those who wish to see
fetishism as for example a product of the division of labour.
According to this view, the division of labour means that the
individual interest diverges from the general interest, that the
deployment of activity is not determined voluntarily, but by
circumstances apparently independent of man. Man's own activity
thus becomes, by virtue of this division of labour, an alien force
198
which confronts and enslaves him, something not controlled by him.
Each member has an exclusive field of activity; the division of
labour means that each individual can only take on a partial view
of the social whole. What this view 'misses' is that while it is
certainly the case that in all pre-capitalist modes the conditions
of production dominate men, only under capitalism does this take
the form of the dominance of things over men. And these things
dominate men not by virtue of a growing division of labour, but
because of the social role the products of men's labour actually
play. Under capitalism the social relations of production are
established by means of the transfer of 'things' from individual
to individual. This movement of things is a coercive power over
men - for it is through the movement of these 'things' (commodities,
money, etc.) that production is organised, and not according to any
conscious plan on the part of the producers. Thus in the elementary
value-form (20 yards of linen • 1 coat) we have a movement of
'thing~' but simultaneously a definite transfer of economic forms,
of definite activities, activities which correspond to definite
social relations of production. So it must be stressed that it is
only with commodity production (and of course its developed form,
capitalism) that definite economic forms attach themselves to things
and develop through these things. Thus, says Marx of pre-capitalist
society:
ItThis economic mystification arose principally with respect to money and interest-bearing capital. In the nature of things it is excluded, in the first place, where production for use-value, for immediate personal requirments, predominates; and secondly, where slavery and serfdom form the broad foundation of social production, as in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Here the dominance of the producers by the conditions of production is concealed by the relation of dominance and servitude, which appear and are evident as
199
the direct motive power of the process of production." (III, 810).
Referring to the Middle Ages, Marx notes that:
"The practical and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on the production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour ••• the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour." (I, 77).
And this same point is made about those early societies:
"in which primitive communism prevailed, and even in the ancient communal towns, it was the communal society itself with its conditions which appeared as the basis of production, and its reproduction appeared as its ultimate purpose. Even in the medieval guild system neither capital not labour appear untrammelled, but their relations are rather defined by their corporate rules, and by the same associated relations, and corresponding conception of professional duty, craftsmanship, etc.". (I, 77).
These passagas (and many others could be cited) express the fact
that the uniqueness of bourgeois society consists in the peculiar
fact that the most basic relations established between human beings
in the social production and reproduction of their lives can be
known to them only after the event and even then solaly in the
'opposed' 'inverted' form of the relations between things. Or rather
not 'even then' but precisely because the relations are unplanned,
knowable a posteriori they can become visible only through the
results of man's activities, through the things he has produced.
Under capitalism, man's reflections on the forms of social life and
therefore his scientific investigation of these forms take a path
which is not merely different but is in fact the direct opposite to
200
that of the actual emergence and development of these forms. He
begins, as he must, with the result of these activities. That is
why, for instance, the proportions in which the products of man's
labour exchange, appear, and can only appear, to result from the
very nature of the products themselves. Thus: 'The quantities vary
continuously, independently of the will, foresight and action of
the producers. To them, their own social action takes the form
of the action of objects, which rule the producers, instead of
being ruled by them.' (I, 75). It is necessary to keep in mind the
fact that when we say that men's social relations of production
affix themselves to things, are moved by these things, this is no
illusion, to be 'demystified' by some pure thought. Matters appear
necessarily this way. The inverted form taken by man's conscious-
ness is a necessary inversion. It is precisely because fetishism
is inherent in commodity production that it cannot be 'demystified'
in thought alone but only in practice, in the overthrown of those
social relations which create the very conditions for this fetishism.
This is how Marx expresses this point.
nThe life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their form are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development. n (I, 80).
Only under communism will fetishism disappear, for it is only under
commodity production and above all under capitalism - where produc-
tion is unplanned, where economic and social crises strike the
working class as a kind of natural catastrophe, as something having
201
nothing to do with human activity - that the basis for fetishism
exists. As Marx says, the formulae whereby labour is represented
indirectly, in fetishistic form, in the value of its product and
labour-time represented indirectly by the magnitude of its value,
bear stamped upon them the fact 'that they belong to a state of
society in which the process of production has the mastery over
man, instead of being controlled by him'. (I, 81).
Involved here is the notion that if fetishism will only be finally
overcome in a society of freely associated producers, then it is
equally true that the transparency of the economic relations of
pre-capitalist economy was a product of the backwardness of the
productive forces. Marx makes this explicit in the following
passage:
"The ancient social organisms of production are extraordinarily much more simple and transparent than the bourgeois organism, but they are based either on the immaturity of the individual man who has not yet torn himself from the umbilicus of the natural speciesconnection with the other men or based upon an immediate master-slave relationship. They are conditioned by a lower level of the productive powers of labour, by correspondingly restricted relationships of men within their material process of the constitution of their 5 life, and consequently to one another and to natura."
Therefore the loss of the transparent quality of the social relations
marked by the advent of commodity production - a loss which becomes
increasingly pronounced with the development of capitalism - must
not be evaluated in purely negative terms. for the fact that men's
social relations in production become increasingly indirect, the
fact that the internal vein connecting man to man becomes mora and
more embodied in the connection between things, testifies to a
202
development of the productive forces. The point here is that while
the conditions of production rule producers in ancient, Asiatic,
feudal and capitalist economy alike, in the case of pre-capitalist
modes, these conditions were more immediately natural - climatic
changes, soil fertility, etc. Under capitalism man gains increasing
control over these immediately natural conditions (although of course
it can never be complete) and this is reflected in the fact that men
become increasingly dependent on social conditions to secure their
means of life. Under capitalism, the more man gains control over
nature the more he becomes dependent on capital. And this dependency
takes the form of a growing domination of 'things' over man and his
activities. Thus changes in the price of a metal (gold) can, under
certain conditions, not only seem to create economic crises -
unemployment, currency depre~iation, stock collapses, etc. - but
actually do result in these phenomena.
Marx continually draws an analogy between the commodity-form of
production and the religious conceptions developed by man. And this
is important for us here, because it underlines the fact that the
reified character of the products of man's labour just like religion
has a definite objective basis in the social relations of produc
tion. Religion can never be fully understood if it is regarded
merely as an ideological device, carrying a definite function - for
instance, to reconcile the masses to the conditions of their exploita
tion and poverty. Undoubtedly this is one side of religion ('the
opium of the people') but for Marx only one side. ror the fact must
not be lost sight of that religion has definite material roots - it
203
expresses man's inadequate knowledge and control over nature, a lack
of development of the productive forces and the fact that in class
society he confronts nature indirectly through a set of (antagonistic)
social relations. Only the removal of these social relations and
conditions can lay the basis for the final disappearance of religious
conceptions. Thus 'The religious reflections of the raal world can
only disappear as soon as the practicel workaday life represents for
men transparently resolvable relationships to one another and to
6 nature.' Neither religion nor fetishism arise from a wrong way of
viewing the world to be righted by the disembodied intellectual who
has grasped the 'real' relationship between man and the products of
his labour. Just as 'after the discovery by science of the component
gases of the air the atmosphere itself remains unaltered' (I, 74), in
the same way,
'~he determination of the magnitude of value by labour-time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative values of commodities. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of mere accidentality from the determination of the values of products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination takes place." (I, 75).
Let us consider this last point further by looking at one criticism
directed by Marx against Thomas Hodgskin, a member of the 'proletarian
opposition' to political economy (Th 2, 267), and a writer for whom
Marx had much admiration. At one place Hodgskin attacked the
notion, prevalent amongst the economists, that the level of employ-
ment together with the standard of living of the working class
depended on the amount of circulating capital available. Marx quotes
from Hodgskin's 'correct' reply. Hodgskin says, 'The number of
204
labourers must at all times depend on the quantity of circulating
capital; or, as I should say the quantity of co-existing labour,
which labourers are allowed to consume'. (p 295). And Marx
comments:
"What is attributable (in the economists' conception) to circulating capital to a stock of commodities, is the effect of 'co-existing labour'. In other words, Hodgskin says that the effects of a certain social form of labour are ascribed to objects, to the products of labour; the relationship itself is imagined to exist in material form. We have already seen that this is a characteristic of labour based on commodity production, or exchange-value and this quid pro quo is revealed in the commodity, in money ••• to a still higher degree in capital, in their personification, their independence in respect of labour. They would cease to have these effects if they were to cease to confront labour in their alienated form. The capitalist, as capitalist, is simply the personification of capital, that creation of labour endowed with its own will and personality which stands in opposition to labour." (Ibid, 295-6).
So, for Marx, Hodgskin recognised that political economy made a
fetish of the social conditions of capital. But for Hodgskin, Marx
proceeds to point out, this fetish was a subjective illusion, an
illusion advanced, thought Hodgskin, to cover up the class interest
of the owners of capital.
"Hadgskin regards this as a pure subjective illusion which conceals the deceit and the interests of the ruling classes. He does not see that the way of looking at things arises out of the actual relation itself; the latter is not an expression of the former, but vice versa. In the same way English socialists say 'we need capital, but not the capitalists'. But if one eliminates the capitalists, the means of production cease to be capital." (Ibid, 296; author's italics).
This is a vital point made by Marx against Hodgskin. ror it
involves questions not so much in economics, as in the Marxist
theory of knowledge. If SOcial being determines social conscious-
205
ness, then this consciousness cannot be reduced to a series of mere
'illusions' or 'mystifications', the product of a distorted way of
looking at things. To see the matter this way would amount to
sheer idealism. Man's consciousness is a product of his social
being, of his social practice. Thus the manner in which man con-
ceives his social relations, the ~ taken by his consciousness,
cannot be divorced from these relations. 'The way of looking at
things arises out of the actual relation'. Man's social relations
are reflected in his mind and translated into thought-forms. But
these social relations are always reflected in thought in an
inverted form. And this inversion arises from the fact that man's
eocial relations under capitalism are formed without first passing
through consciousness. This last point actually provides the
criterion whereby Marxism distinguishes between social relations and
ideological relations. Speaking of the ideas of that group of
Enlightenment thinkers which found classical expression in Rousseau's
Social Contrect, Lenin says:
ItSo long as they confined themselves to ideological social relations (i.e. such as, before taking shape, pass through man's consciousness) they could not observe recurrence and regularity in the social phenomena of the various countries. • ••• The analysis of material social relations (i.e. of those that take shape without passing through man's consciousness: when exchanging products men enter into production relations without even realising that there is a social relation of production here) at once made it possible to observe recurrence and regularity.1t (LCW, 1).
Thus it is not at all true that the value-relations appearing in the
exchange of the products of labour as commodities are not 'really'
relations between things, but merely imaginary relations having a
206
,
mystical quality. This view is directly refuted by Marx in many
places, for instance when he says,
"The labour of the individual asserts itself as part of the labour of society, only by means of the relations which the net of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly through them, between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are material relations between persons and SOCial relations between things." (I).
This pOint, that the attachment of the social relations of produc-
tion to things is no mere illusion, not something to be explained
from some self-contained 'ideological sphere', is brought out
strikingly by Marx in the Critigue.
"A social relation of production appears as something existing apart from individual human beings, and the distinctive relations which they enter in the course of production in society appear as the specific properties of a thing - it is this perverted appearance, this prosaically real, and by no means imaginary mystification that is characteristic of all social forms of labour positing exchange-value. This perverted appearance manifests itself merely in a more striking manner in money than it does in commodities." (Cd tigue, 49).
It should be clear from the above that (a) Marx understood fetishism
to be an objective phenomenon, a product of definite social condi-
tions and (b) the basis for overcoming fetishism is provided by the
development of the productive forces. from this standpoint it is
clearly impossible to treat Marx's notion of fetishism as merely
mystification. It is here that once again we must take issue with
Althusser. for this is preciselyhow he treats the notion of fetish-
ism. In his view ideology (false consciousness) is not a product of
207
definite social conditions but something playing what is essentially
a functional role in all societies. He tells us, 'Ideology is not
an aberration or a contingent excresence of History: it is a
structure essential to the historical life of societies,.7 And it
follows necessarily from this that 'historical materialism cannot
conceive that even a communist society could ever do without ideology
8 in ethics, art or "world outlook"'. Ideology, for Marx a product
of definite social conditions (and in particular the division between
mental and manual labour which arises with class society), is made by
Althusser into a product of ~ societies. fetishism (which Marx
sees arising specifically in connection with commodity-capitalist
economic forms) can for Althusser have no specific material basis in
definite production relations.
One task involved in refuting Althusser's view - which involves
emongst other things the attempt to draw a rigid distinction between
'ideology' and 'science' - is to demonstrate how Marx traces the
fetishistic forms associated with capitalist economy from their
simplest forms to the more complex, which are discussed in Capital,
Volume III. Here again it is necessary to bring out the connection,
the unity, between 'logic' and 'history', of being and social
consciousness. If the commodity is the cell-form of ~ the SOcial
relations of capital, the embryo out of which all those higher forms
historically emerge, then the commodity constitutes also the cell-
form for all those 'necessary illusions' which dominate present
society. We shall, in dealing with this problem, have to stress one
point: Marx does much more than recognise that political economy
deals uncritically with reified categories. Nor was he content
208
merely to reveal that the inverted way in which the social relations
appear in capitalist society arises from the essence of the social
relations of production which form the basis of this society. He
wanted to show that the more the capitalist mode of production
develops, the more the social relations increasingly confront men
as an external dominating power.
"By means of its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during the labour-process in the shape of capital, of dead labour, that dominates and pumps dry, living labourpower. The separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the SCience, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the 'master'." (I, 423).
And this power is a real, not 'illusory' power. And because it is
a real power, it brings real powers, the working class, into con-
flict with it. Marx stresses this point in the course of his
discussion 'Machinery and Modern Industry':
"Hence the character of independence and estrangement which the capitalist mode of production gives to the instruments of labour and to the product, as against the workman, is developed by means of machinery into a thorough antagonism. Therefore it is with the advent of machinery, that the workman for the first time brutall revolts a ainst the instruments of labour." (I, 432;
In other words, says Marx, the very development of the fetishism
of the products of man's labour under capitalism - seen in naked
form with the emergence of modern industry - brings with it, at
209
the same time, the social force with the potential to bring about
an end to this fetishism. History does not set only 'problems',
it always, in setting these problems, also brings into being the
necessary forces through which these problems can be overcome.
"Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation." (Critique, 21).
So for Marx the growth of fetishism, far from being an indication
of the growing ability of capital to suppress the revolutionary
struggle of the working class, is on the contrary an expression
of the ever-growing contradictions of capitalist society which bring
the working class face-to-face with these contradictions.
"The growing accumulation of capital implies its growing concentration. Thus grows the power of capital, the alienation of the conditions of social production personified in the capitalist, from the real producers. Capital comes more and more to the fore as a social power, whose agent is the capitalist. This social power no longer stands in any possible relation to that which the labour of a single individual can create. It becomes an alienated, independent social power which stands opposed to society as an object, and as an object that is the capitalist's source of power. The contradiction between the general social power into which capital develops, on the one hand, and the private power of the individual capitalists over those social conditions on the other, becomes even more irreconcilable and yet contains the solution of the eroblem because it implies at the same time the transformation of the conditions of production into the general, common, social conditions. This transformation stems from the development of the productive forces under capitalist production, and from the ways and means by which this development takes place." (III, 259; author's italics).
As we have said, Marx's task was to reveal the origin of this
210
reification in its most simple form, commodity production. Let us
begin with the simplest expression of this perversion which reaches
its high point in capital - that is with the elementary value form
itself, 20 yards of linen • 1 coat. This is the first expression
of the 'externalisation' or 'alienation' of the opposition between
value and use-value which exists in every commodity. from this
point all the higher forms of fetishism can be considered as a growth
in the contradiction between the production of use-values and the
social forms through which that production develops. When commo-
dities come into the world as use-values this is merely their
'plain, homely, bodily form'.
"They are, however, commodities only because they are something two-fold, both objects of utility and at the same time depositories of value. They manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of commodities only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form and a value-form." (I, 47).
It is this fetishism, inherent in commodities, which is more clearly
and strikingly expressed in gold. In making this point, Marx refers
to the value-form of the commodity as 'ideal'.
"The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable bodily form, it is therefore, a purely ideal or mental form. Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn has actual existence in these very articles." (I, 95).
Now what does it mean to say that the value-form is 'purely ideal'?
Does this mean that, like value, money is purely a mental state, a
figment of individual imagination? Clearly this is !21 what Marx
means.
211
for Marx, value is an expression of a definite social relation. And
we know that for Marx social relations were objective - therefore
value cannot be something present merely in consciousness. 5imilar-
ly, Marx explicitly rejected the idea that money was a mere symbol,
that is, he rejected the notion that money was something purely
imaginary, thus 'although gold and silver are not by Nature money,
money is by Nature gold and silver'. What does Marx mean therefore,
when he tells us that money is purely ideal form? In his essay
'The Concept of the Ideal', the Soviet philosopher Ilyenkov, in
examining this question of Marx's use of the term 'ideal', has done
much to throw light on the notion of fetishism. 9 As he notes, the
term 'ideal' is used today largely as a synonym for 'conceivable',
phenomena that are represented, imagined and thought. (If we were
to follow this definition, as he correctly pOints out, there would
be no point in talking about any 'ideality' existing outside human
consciousness.) When Marx uses the term ideal in connection with
the value-form, he certainly does not mean something present only
in consciousness. On the contrary - and this is Ilyenkov's main
point in connection with the value-form - Marx means that the value-
form is 'ideal' because it is totally distinct from the palpable,
corporeal form of the commodity in which it is presented. In other
words, the value-form is 'ideal' but certainly exists outside human
consciousness, As Ilyenkov states, in what is a clear reference to
the degeneration of philosophical work under the impact of Stalinism,
"This use of the term may perplex the reader who is accustomed to the terminology of popular essays on materialism and the relationship of the material to the 'ideal'. The ideal that exists outside people's
212
heads and consciousness, as something completely objective, a reality of a special kind that is independent of their consciousness and will, invisible, inpalpable and sensuously imperceptible, may seem to them something that is only 'imagined', something 'supersensuous,.»10
As Ilyenkov argues, the term 'ideal' in this debased version of
materialism, has more in common with Kantianism and the pre-Hegel
tradition in philosophy than it has with Hegel (and, by extension,
with Marx). ror Hegel,
"This relationship of representation is a relationship in which one sensuously perceived thing performs the role of function of representation of quite another thing, and, to be even more preCise, the universal nature of that other thing, that is, something 'other' which iA sensuous bodily terms in quite unlike it, and it was this relationship that in the Hegelian terminological tradition acquired the title of 'ideality'." (1977a, p. 94).11
It is clear that if we follow this line, Marx's designation of the
value-form as 'ideal' takes on a quite different meaning than it
would for a 'simplistic' materialism, and a meaning which throws
much light on Marx's notion of fetishism. By 'ideal' Marx in no
way means that the value-form exists only in the brain of the
commodity owner, but in the fact that the corporeal form of a thing
(the coat) is only a form of expression of a quite different 'thing'
(linen as a value) with which it has nothing in common. The nature
of this linen is represented, expressed, embodied, in the form of a
coat and the coat is the 'ideal' or 'represented' form of the value
of the linen. And far from being something expressed only in
consciousness, this representation expresses a relationship entirely
objective, which actually determines the behaviour of man without
his being aware of it. The social relations under which the linen
is produced find their embodiment, their representation, not directly,
not immediately, but in the mediated form of the coat. These social
213
conditions are alienated in the form of the coat. The transforma-
tion of nature by man which is involved in the production of linen,
a definite form of human objective activity, is represented in an
'object', the coat. And this is what Marx means by ideality - the
form of human social activity represented in a thing. Ilyenkov puts
the point this way:
"Ideality is a kind of stamp impressed on the substance of nature by social human life activity, a form of the functioning of the physical thing in the process of this activity. So all the things involved in the social process acquire a new 'form of existence' that is not included in their physical nature and differs from it completely - their ideal form."12
The commodity form is 'ideal' precisely because it does not include
a single atom of the SUbstance of the body in which it is represent-
ed, because it is the form of quite another body. And this other
body exists only ideally; the chemical enalysis of gold will find
within it not a single atom of boot polish. Nevertheless gold
'represents' a hundred tins of boot polish (say), and this representa-
tion is performed not in the consciousness of the seller of the polish -
it takes place through a market according to forces which is no sense
depend on any consciousness of the money-form. Everybody spends
money without necessarily being aware of what he is spending. (As
Ilyenkov correctly notes, 'In Capital Marx quite consciously uses
the term -ideal" in this formal meaning that it was given by Hegel,
and not in the sense in which it was used by the whole pre-Hegelian
tradition.' This example alone serves to show that Marx did far more
than 'coquette' with Hegel's terminology.)
It is in this sense that the simplest value-form (20 yards of linen
214
• 1 coat) contains the essence of the fetishism inherent in all
bourgeois economic forms. The 'peculiarities' of this form
(abstract labour in the linen taking a form directly opposed to
it, the concrete labour in the coat, etc.) thus contain the key to
grasping the riddle and source of the fetishism of all bourgeois
economic forms.
The reification of production relations associated with simple
commodity production develops further with money. The 'riddle
of the money fetish now becomes dazzling to our eyes', says Marx.
In one of his earliest economic writings he had written about the
fetish quality of money as follows:
"Why must private property develop into the money-system? Because man as a social being must proceed to exchange and because exchange - private property being pre-supposed must evolve value. The mediating process between men engaged in exchange is not a social or human relationship, it is the abstract relation of private property to private property and the expression of this abstract relationship is value - whose real existence as value constitutes money. Since men engaged in exchange do not relate to each other as men, things lose the significance of human personal property.n13
This was written in 1844 as notes on James Mill's Elements of Political
Economy,. It serves to indicate once more that r'larx's notion of
fetishism found in Capital was a true development of all his previous
economic writings right back to the 1840s. (It puts Althusser's much
vaunted 'epistemological break' into true perspective.) Marx con-
tinues:
"The personal mode of existence of money as money - and not only as the inner, implicit, hidden social relationship or class relationship between commodities - this mode of existence corresponds more to the essence of money, the more abstract it is, the less it has a natural relationship to
215
other commodities, the more it appears as the product and yet the non-product of man."14
All the products in a situation of commodity production have first
to be exchanged for a third material thing, in order that these
commodities can receive their adequate social validation. This
material medium has become independent of the world of commodities
this provides the basis for the emergence of money. And it is
through this medium of money and through it alone that man's
social bond is established. Man carries his social power in his
pocket. In this sense, as the power of money grows, it constitutes
the 'objective bond of society' the 'real community' as Marx at one
point characterises it. Thus, far from money overcoming the
reification inherent in the simplest exchange of two commodities,
this fetishism is heightened and intensified. Thus Marx tells us,
'~he same contradiction between the perticular nature of the commodity as product and its general nature as exchange-value, which created the necessity of positing it doubly, as this particular commodity on the one side and money on ther other ••• contains from the beginning the possibility that these two separated forms in which the commodity exists are not convertible into one another." (G, 147-8).
That is, the contradiction between use-value and value is not
definitely, finally, resolved in money, it is externalised, made
more open, more antagonistic. Not merely does the value of one
commodity have to realise its value 1n another commodity, now, in
the money form, all commodities have to express their value in one - -single commodity. This reification of social relations is more
extreme, but, by this very fact, so is the possibility of criSiS.
Hence:
216
"As soon as money has become an external thing alongside the commodity, the exchangeability of the commodity for money becomes bound up with external conditions which mayor may not be present, it is abandoned to the mercy of external conditions." (G, 147).
And this is not all. In the exchange of commodities further contra-
dictions arise. for the act of exchange is .split into two mutually
independent acts, namely exchange of commodities for money and
exchange of money for commodities - in short purchase and sale
(c - M - C). The acts take place at different times and places and
their immediate identity is destroyed. If purchase and sale balance,
this balance can only be the result of accident, never of conscious
will.
"Circulation bursts through all restrictions as to time, place, and individuals, imposed by direct barter, and this it effects by splitting up, into the antithesis of a sale and a purchase, the direct identity that in barter does exist between the alienation of one's own and the acquisition of some other man's product. To say that these two independent and antithetical acts have an intrinsic unity, are essentially one, is the same as antithesis. If the interval in time between the two complementary phases of the complete metamorphosis of a commodity becomes too great, if the split between purchase and sale becomes too pronounced, the intimate connection between them, their oneness, asserts itself by producing a crisis." (I, 113-114).
Marx immediately follows this with e passage which underlines the
point we are here at pains to stress - that the growing reification
of economic relations - the process whereby they are increasingly
attached to things and their connection with human labour, man's
practice, appears to be less and less immediately obvious, involves
the very same process which creates within capitalism the source of
217
its breakdown. That is, the theory of fetishism and theory of
capitalist crisis are in Capital completely united, inseparable.
"The antithesis, use-value and value: the contradictions that privata labour is bound to manifest itself as direct social labour, that a particular concrete kind of labour has to pass for abstract human labour; the contradiction between the personification of objects and the representation of persons by things; all these antitheses and contradictions, which are immanent (author's emphasis) in commodities, assert themselves and develop their modes of action in the antithetical phases of the metamorphoSis of a commodity." (G, 414).
Purchase and sale are equally essential but 'there must come a
moment when the independent form is broken and when their inner
unity is established externally through a violent explosion •••
there lies the germ of crisis'. (G,19B). Here is only a ~
a 'possibility' of a crisis and further development is required
before this possibility is transformed into a reality. Hence
'The conversion of this mere possibility into a reality is the
result of a long series of relations, that, from our present stand-
point of simple circulation, have as yet no existence'. (1, 114).
This path, from possibility to reality, is treated by Marx when he
traces the growing independence of this money-form, separated from
the products it 'represents'. Exchange separates itself out as an
independent aspect, cut off from the actual production of commodi-
ties. Now commodities are bought not only for consumption but for
re-sale. The obtaining of exchange-value becomes the Object of
these latter transactions. 'The rise of exchange (commerce) as
an independent function torn away from the exchanges corresponds to
the rise of exchange-value as an independent entity in money, torn
218
away from products'. (G, 149). And here the possibility of crisis
is now considerably enhanced:
"This doubling of exchange - exchange for the sake of consumption and therefore exchange for exchange - gives rise to a new disproportion ••• The possibility of commercial crisis is already contained in this separation. But since production works directly for commerce and only indirectly for consumption, it must not only create but also and equally be seized by this incongruity ~atween commerce and exchange for consumption." (G, 149).
And finally, the emergence of money as the general equivalent in
which all concrete labour is objectified cannot escape the contra-
diction that while money is a commodity unlike any other particular
commodity, it nevertheless does remain a particular commodity.
Gold still has to be brought out of the ground, refined, transport-
ed, etc. It still has to be produced as a commodity. The
opposition of the money-commodity to the world of commodities can
never be absolute. As Marx says of money: tIt is not only the
exchange-value, but at the same time a particular exchange-value.
Hence a new source of contradictions which make themselves felt in
practice'. (G, 151).
Now of course the analysis of the fetish character of money does not
exhaust the fetishism of bourgeois economy. This fetishism grows and
develops along with tha emergence and development of capital. As we
have seen, it is a growth in which (a) the social relations between
men, based upon their labour, become increasingly obscured, hidden
behind the things which this labour produces. The inner connection
between these outward forms is increasingly lost and can only be
grasped through strict scientifiC analysis but (b) this development
219
is accompanied, and must be accompanied, by an equal growth in the
coercive power of these alienated forms (money, capital, etc.)
which increasingly stand as oppressive rorces, opposed to the needs
of the working class. So the increasing 'reification' of these
forms goes hand-in-hand with the conditions for their overthrow.
The growing social power of capital brings it increasingly into
conflict with the needs of society as a whole. The growth of this
fetishism inherent in commodity production reaches its consummate
expression in interest-bearing capital (M - M'). ThiS, says Marx,
is the mystification of capital in its most extrme form'. (Th 3,
494). And elsewhere,
"of all these forms, the most complete fetish is interestbearing capital. This is the original starting point of capital-money and the formula M - C - M' is reduced to its true extremes M - M', money which creates more money. It is the general formula of capital reduced to a meaningless resume." (Ibid, 453).
Interest-bearing capital is capital which 'no longer bears any birth
mark of its origin'; it represents 'the perversion and objectifica-
tion of productive relations to the highest degree'; it is 'only
form without content'. (Ibid, 384).
In a very interesting passage Marx deals with the various forms of cap-
ital in order to demonstrate that this interest-bearing capital is
the automatic fetish, where money appears to breed money, where capital
appears able to e,xpand without reference to any natural-objective
factors such as the length of the working day, size of the proletariat,
etc. To illustrate this point, Marx takes the elements of the Trinity
rormula in full:
220
"The land or nature as the source of rent i.e. landed property is fetishistic enough. 8ut~a result of a convenient confusion of use-value with exchange-value the common imagination is still able to have recourse to the productive power of nature itself, which, by some kind of hocus-pocus, is personified in'the landlord." (Ibid, 454).
Marx turns next to the formula 'Labour is the source of wages',
and demonstrates that here there is a confusion between labour as
a material activity and labour in a definite social form. However,
despite this,
"the common conception is so far in accord with the facts that even though labour is confused with wagelabour and, consequently, wages, the product of wage-labour with the product of labour, it is nevertheless obvious to anybody ~ho has commonsense that labour itself produces its own wages". (Ibid, 454).
Similarly, when capital is considered as part of the productive
EEocess, it still continues to be regarded as an instrument for
acquiring the labour of others, and 'here the relationship of the
capitalist to the worker is always presupposed and assumed'.
(Ibid, 454). And even though in the case of merchant capital,
capital eppearing in the process of circulation where ideas that
profit arises from swindling, 'buying cheap and selling dear', etc.
_ even here profit is explained as a result of exchange, that is,
arising from a social relation and not from a thing. (Ibid, 454).
Quite different is interest-bearing capital:
"It is capital in its finished form - as such representing the unity of the productive process and the circulation process (here is the subject of Volume III) and therefore yields a definite profit in a definite period of time. In the form of interest-bearing capital only this function remains, without the mediation of either productive process or circulation process. • •• Interest-bearing capital is
221
the consummate automatic fetish, ·the self-expanding value, the money making money, and in this form no longer bears any trace of its origin. The social relation is consummated as a relation of things (money, commodities) to themselves." (Ibid, 454).
Marx deals with these forms in Volume III but the actual growth
of the fetishism is traced throughout the entire work. Considering
'the road travelled by capital before it appears in interest-bearing
capital', (Ibid, 481), Marx examines the connection between the
circulation process and the creation of surplus value. Whereas, in
the immediate production process, the relationship is still very
obvious or cannot be misunderstood, 'The circulation process
obliterates and obscures the connection. Since here the mass of
surplus-value is also determined by the circulation time of capital,
an element foreign to labour-time seems to have entered' (Ibid,
482). And when we come to profit (as distinct from surplus value)
the inner connection between labour-time and the economic forms Is
even more obscured and reified in things.
"This profit is first received for a definite period of circulation of capital, and this period is distinct from the labour-time; it is secondly, surplus-value calculated and drawn not on the part of capital from which it originates directly, but quite indiscriminately on the total capital. In this way its source is completely concealed. Thirdly, although the mass of profit is still quantitatively identical in the first form of profit with the mass of surplus-value produced by the individual capital, the rate of profit is, from the very beginning, different from the rate of surplusvalue; since the rate of surplus-value is s/v and the rate of profit is sic + v. fourthly, if the rate of profit is presumed given, it is possible for the rate of profit to rise or fall and even to move in the opposite direction to the rate of surplus-value." (Ibid, 482).
And the matter becomes even more obscured when we consider the
average rate of profit and with it the conversion of values into
222
cost prices. Here,
"the profit of individual capital becomes different from the surplus-value produced by the individual capital in its particular sphere of production, and different, moreover, not only in the way it is expressed - i.e. rate of profit as distinct from rate of surplus-value -but it becomes substantially different, that is, in this context, quantitatively different". (Ibid, 482-3).
In this form of profit:
"Capital more and more acquires a material form, is transformed more and more from a relationship into a thing, but a thing which embodies, which has absorbed, the social relationship, a thing which has acquired a fictitious life and independent existence in relationship to itself, a natural-supernatural entity; and in this form of capital and profit it appears superficially as a ready-made precondition. It is the form of its reality, or rather its real form of existence. And it is the form in which it exists in the consciousness and is reflected in the imagination of its representatives, the capitalists." (Ibid, 483).
The point here is this: the formation of 'prices and production'
constitutes a more perverted and estranged form than 'value' for
now, outwardly" the price of production'depends not upon labour,
but upon capital. This development of fetishism is a reflection
not only of increasing mystification but of the contradictory
development of the social relations of production. That the forma-
tion of an average rate of profit - and the contradiction this
entails between value and price - is itself engendered by the
development of the productive forces was many times stressed by
Marx. Thus:
"What competition, first in a single sphere achieves, is a single market value and market price derived from the various individual values of commodities. And it is
223
competition of capitals in different spheres which first brings out the price of production equalising the rate of profit in the different spheres. The latter process re uires a hi her develo ment of ca italist roduction than the previous one. III, 177; author's italics.
It is because of the growing disparity in the organic composition
of capitals between and within industries, that values are trans-
formed into production prices. The regulator of capital accumu-
lation, the establishment of an average rate of profit, demands a
deviation, a 'contradiction' between price and value; this is a
contradiction made not in thought but in material reality. In this
form, 'price of production', is reflected the growing social power
of capital. For now the capitalists as a class take part in the
exploitation of the working class as a class. Expressed in this
'thing' the price of production, is the growing antagonism between
the two major classes, an antagonism raised to the level of society
as a whole:
"In each sphere (it transpires that) the individual capitalist, as well as the capitalists as a whole, take part in the exploitation of the total working class by the totality of capital and in the degrees of that exploitation not only out of general class sympathy, but also fOr direct economic reasons. for, assuming all other conditions ••• to be given, the average rate of profit depends on the intensity of exploitation of the sum total of labour by the sum total of capital." (III, 193).
In this form (production prices) Marx notes 'capital becomes con-
scious of itself as a social power in which every capitalist partici-
pates proportionally in his share of the total SOcial capital'. (III,
191). The capitalists now become communists, as Marx wryly observes.
But at the same time the material conditions are laid for the unity
224
of the working class in its struggle against the entire capitalist
class.
Enough has been said about these forms of surplus value to reveal
the truth of Marx's proposition that economics is not concerned
with things but with re!ations between people, and in the last
resort between classes, but that these re!ations 'are always bound
to things and appear as things' (Engels). In place of the fetish
ieed categories which bourgeois social science uncritically
adopted, Marx presented a quite different conception of the process
of social production, that is, one which started not with a view of
things 'in themselves' but a process in which men, in unity with
nature and with other men, continually renew both themselves and the
world of wealth which they create. As Rubin has rightly said, this
revo!utionary conception of the scope and nature of political
economy involved drawing a consistent distinction between productive
forces and productive relations, between the materia! process of
production on the one hand and its social form on the other. It is
under capitalism (as it develops autor commodity production) that
these social relations acquire a material form and because of this
the 'things' to which the social relations are attached playa
definite social role: as the 'bearer' of the given social relations.
The basic notions of political economy express the essence of the
various social-economic forms which in turn express the developing
production relations between the classes in capitalist society. As
Rubin has said, 'some of these relations between and among people
presuppose the existence of other types of production relations
among the members of a given society and the latter do not necessarily
225
15 presuppose the existence of the former'. He gives, as an
example, the relationship between finance and industrial capital
(Ibid, 32). This relationship involves industrial capital's
receiving loans from finance capital; but presupposed here, or
more accurately, sublated here are the relations between
industrial capital and wage labour. On the other hand this latter
relationship - between industrial capital and wage labour - does
not necessarily involve relations between industrial and finance
capital. from this it is clear that the economic categories
'capital' and 'surplus value' precede the categories 'interest
bearing' capital and 'interest'. To take this pOint further, the
relations between industrial capital and the working class take
the form of the sale and purchase of labour-power. Sublated here
are the relations of simple commodity producers without which the
buying and selling of labour-power would, of course, be impossible.
We have noted in several places that in Marx's opinion classical
economic theory had singularly failed to grasp the nature of
money. And the confusion which surrounded this problem amongst the
leading bourgeois economists in the first decades of the nineteenth
century found its reflection amongst the theoreticians of the
working class. This is clear in Marx's polemics against Proudhon
and his analysis of the writings of the English socialists on the
nature of money. The mistakes committed by these writers amounted,
in essence, to a failure to understand the fetishism inherent in
money; or where there was some inkling of this fetishism (Hodgskin
has already been mentioned), its source was not appreciated. We can
226
therefore conveniently draw together some of the points made about
Marx's notion of alienation by considering the functions performed
by money in capitalist economy as well as the mistakes made by
Marx's opponents on this question. for Marx, money fulfils the
following functions:
1 ~'easure of value r
2 Medium of commodity circulation
3 Means of accumulation (hoarding)
4 Means of payment
5 World money
Right from the start we should be careful to realise that Marx is
not 'defining' money in any abstract sense. 'It is not a question
here of definitions which thing~ must be made to fit. We are
"-dealing here with definite functions which must be expressed in
definite categories.' (II, 230). This pOint, which has consider-
able importanca for Marx's method as a whole, applies entirely to
his notion of money. Marx, in his treatment of the functions of
money, is actually pointing to the role which money, appearing as
a thing, plays in the organisation of the social relations of
capitalist production. As with all his categories, the functions
of money express production relations and the various functions
represent the changes taking place in the production relations
which the development of capitalism brings. This is stressed by
Marx when he says,
"The particular functions of money which it performs, either as the mere equivalent of commodities, or as a means of circulation or means of payment, as hoard,
227
or as universal money, point, according to the extent or relative preponderance of the one Function or another, to very diFferent stages in the process of social production." (I, 170; author's italics).
Here once more is expressed the great gap separating Marx from
vulgar political economy. Conventional economic thought contents
itself with enumerating various types of money systems, some of
which exist in reality, others merely in the imagination. Marx
used to remark ironically how proud the economists were with the
discovery that money was a commodity. But vulgar economy has
forgotten even this discovery of its predecessors. For economic
theory, especially since the collapse of the Gold Standard in the
1930s, the commodity is only one of a number of possible money-
forms. On this view we seem to be offered a choice, as if we were
able to select the most suitable money-type after considering all
the advantages and disadvantages of the various possible alterna-
tives. Needless to say, all such 'theories' are quite deVOid of
any historical sense. Neither money, nor any ot the various function
it fills, are the result of 'discoveries'j the various money
systems did not arise because people consciously weighed their
comparative advantages. They have all emerged out of definite
social relations, or, more specifically, out of the contradictions
of commodity production and circulation. For Marx, money reflects
definite social relations, a point emphasised by Rubin when, in
his discussion of the nature of fetishism, he deals with the various
functions of money in the following way:
1 If the transfer of goods from sellers to buyers and the
inverse transfer are carried out simultaneously, then money assumes
228
the function, acts as, a 'medium of circulation'.
2 If the transfer of goods precedes the transfer of money, and
the relation between sellers and buyers is transformed into a
relation between debtor and creditor, then money has now assumed
the form of a 'means of payment'.
3 If the seller keeps the money which he receives from his sale,
postponing the moment when he enters a new relationship as a
purchaser, then money has acquired the function-form of a 'hoard'.
4 Once the emergence of capitalism takes place and a relation
ship between a commodity owner (capitalist) and a commodity owner
(the worker selling his labour power) is established through the
transfer of money, then money has become transformed into capital.
The money which directly connects the capitalist with the worker
plays the role, or takes the form of 'variable capital'. But to
establish the necessary relationship with the worker, the capitalist
must of necessity possess means of production, or money with which
to buy the means of production. In this form money plays the role
of 'constant capital'.
Here are expressed the various 'sides' or 'aspects' of money, as they
have actually come into being. Marx's task (as with all the reified
forms of bourgeois economy) was to grasp the historical character of
the various functional forms of money, or its 'conceptually determined
forms of existence', as the Grundrisse puts it. So the various
functions of money cannot be reduced to a series of formal definitions,
akin to those encountered in conventional text-books of economics.
The functions dealt with in Capital were the ones which money has
actually played (and continues to play) in the evolution of bourgeois
229
economy. The properties of money were abstracted from history.
Thus the first specific form of money lies in its function as a
measure of value - the first because it emerges directly from
commodity circulation 'The principal difficulty in the analysis
of money is surmounted as soon as it is understood that the
commodity is the origin of money.' (I, 64). And all the functions,
as evolved in Marx's analysis, must be seen in the same way - as
expressions, in the alienated form of this metal, of definite social
relations. As commodity production develops so money assumes its
various roles, revealing its essential quality in its highest form
as world money, universal money.
"It is only in the markets of the world money acquires to the full extent the character of the commodity whose bodily form is also the immediate social incarnation of human labour in the abstract. Its real mode of existence in this sphere adequately corresponds to its ideal concept." (I, 142).
All the mistakes of political economy in connection with money take
the following basic form: one aspect of money, one of its several
functions, is isolated from the rest and elevated to the rank of
being the defining function of money, one from which all the rest
can be derived. Rosdolsky quotes H Black, a critic who none the les9
appears to have some insight into Marx's work,
"The strict division of these functions from the substance of money (social value) and likewise the separation of the functions from one another, is a striking feature of Marx's theory of money. Other theoreticians define money as a means of commerce, a unit of account, e means of exchange or a means of payment, i.e. they elevate one particular function to the position of being the determining function on money and then somehow derive all the remaining
230
functions from the main one. In contrast to this Marx strictly separates the essence of money from the services which it is able to perform, owing to its particular character." 16
But if political economy derived the functions of money from one
basic function this derivation was necessarily devoid of any
historical content. And for Marx this mistake - which led to a
confusion of money's various functions - is one concerned not with
economic theory as such, but again involves philosophical questions.
ror political economy, as we have seen, the social relations of
capital were fixed by Nature. It was the very nature of 'things'
which determined the social relations of capital. The political
economists did not grasp that these 'things' were the bearers of
historically changing and developing social relations and therefore
the changing social function of these 'things' (money, means of
production, etc.) had to be examined. for Marx the various functions
of money, as they had evolved, represented the development of the
social relations of modern society. This is why all the various ........ functions of money, in their transition and interconnection, had
to be investigated. To abstract merely one function of money (as
instrument of circulation, means of accumulation) was, in effect,
to deny the historical character of bourgeois social relations.
for this had the result of isolating this 'thing' (gold) from that
totality of social relations which this metal, 1n its diverse
functions, represented. To grasp the role of money in modern society
(that is to grasp it concretely) it was necessary to combine its
many abstract properties into a series of concepts. This is why
the essence of money only emerges at its highest level when it
231
· fulfils the role of world money and hence 'Its real mode of exist-
ence in this sphere adequately corresponda to its ideal concept.'
Mistakes of the type we have mentioned were clearly evident in the
metalist theory of money, a theory which is associated with the
early development of capitalism. The early representatives of
this school, such as Thomas Mun (1511 - 1641), held that gold and
silver were the only true forms of wealth, trade capital the only
legitimate form of capital, and they confined the functions of
money to the single ana as a means of accumulation (money as a
hoard). They attempted to explain this single function of gold by
reference to its very nature. In replying to these ide8s, Marx
shows that objects of one kind or another only assuma the various
functional forms of money as the social relations demand. This
the adhereQts of metalism failed to grasp. Contemporary metaliata
aim to show, but without success, that the instability of capital-
ist economy and its contradiction can be eliminated and capitalism
rescued by means of the 'miraculous' power of gold.
Marx's treatment of 'money as hoard' also brings out another
important point connected with the question of fatishism. When wa
said that Marx 'combined' tha abstract properties ot money, this
should not be taken to mean that he eclectically pulled together
the various functions of money as they had existed historically.
This 'combination' is always undertaken from the standpoint of
developed capitalist relations. (The analogy of the relationship
of ape to man holds fully here.) The hoard is, in one respect, the
clearest form of money's anatomy. But although the formation of
232
hoards is a process cammon to ell commodity production, it constitutes
an end in itself only where this commodity production remains under-
developed - that is, where it has nat reached the level of capitalist
commodity production. This is so because the less intensively and
extensively has commodity production developed, the more does money
appear as actual wealth, wealth as such, wealth in general. The
accumulation of wealth in the form of the precious metals precedes
the accumulation of wealth in the form of ather commodities. This
is due to the natural properties of the noble metals - their dur-
ability, etc. Under developed capitalist conditions hoarding
continues and money, in one of its functions, plays the role of hoard,
as one of the means of accumulation. But this rola is now qualita
tively different. The same object (metal) now assumes a quite neW role,
expressing quite new, mare developed, social ralations. Needless to
say, therefore, these social relations can in no way be deduced from
the natural qualities of this metal. Now the function of money as
hoard must be understood from the point of view of the circuit of
capital in general (M - C - M'). Hoarding is now a resting place in
this process. Whereas in pre-capitalist economy the accumUlation of
hoards signified wealth, now their over-accumulation signifies stagna-
tion, a withdrawal from the circuit of capital, an interruption in
the process of their metamorphosis. Thus:
"Countries in which the bourgeois form of production i8 developed to a certain extent, limit the hoards concentrated in the strong room of the banks to the minimum required for the proper performance of their peculiar functions. Whenever these hoards are strikingly above their average level, it'is, with some exceptions, an indication of stagnation in the circulation of commodities,
233
of an interruption in the even flow of their metamorphosis." (I, 145).
This same mistake - taking one particular function of money out of
its real historical context and deriving the rest from it - was
made by Ricardo and his school, although from a different angle
than in the case of metalism. The error committed by Ricardo con-
sisted of the fact that he raised to the level of dogma that money
was merely a medium of circulation. According to Ricardo's con-
ception, money is only an instrument for the circulation of
commodities. It was not, for him, a necessary form of the existence
of the commodity in which the contradictory nature of the labour
embodied in the commodity (abstract and concrete labour) must
manifest itself in exchange-value, as general social labour. Money
was, for the Ricardians, a means for effecting the union of purchase
and sale, of the buyers and sellers of products. The exchange of
commodities was transformed unwittingly into the mere barter of
products, of simple USB-values. This represented a return not only
to pre-capitalist production relations, but even to condition6'
prior to simple commodity production. Circulation, like ell economic
relations, has two aspects, closely relsted. In so far as this
circulation transfers commodities from those for which they consti-
tute non-use-values to those for whom they are use-values, this
process consists simply of the appropriation of objects for human
needs. However, to the extent, that this process takes place through
private exchange, mediated by money, and the relations between these
ommodities (and indirectly the buyers and sellers of the commodi-
234
ties themselves) to one another are objectified in the different
forms of money~ then it gives rise to definite SOCial relations.
Marx is careful to distinguish these two aspects~ making the
latter the subject matter of political economy. aut Ricardo
reduces this latter relationship to the former. And implied here
was the denial of any possibility of capitalist crisis. This was,
so precisely because the first~ basic, condition of capitalist
production, is that the product of labour must,assume the commodity
form, and therefore this product must express itself in the alienated
form of money.
"Since the transformation of the commodity into mere usevalue (product) oblitarates the essence of exchangevalue, it is just as easy to deny, or rather it is necessary to deny, that money is an essential aspect of the commodity and that in the process of metamorphosis it is independent of the original form of the commodity." (Th 2, 501 ).
This same point i's made against vulgar economy with even more force.
"With regard to this subject, we may notice two methods characteristic of apologetic economy. The first is the identification of the circulation of commodities with the direct barter of the products, by simple abstraction from their points of difference; the second is, the attempt to explain away the contradictions of capitalist production, by reducing the relations between the persons engaged in that mode of production to the simple relations arising out of the circulation of commodities. The production and circulation of commodities are, however, phenomena that occur to a greater or lesser extent in modes of production the most diverse. If we are acquainted with nothing but the abstract categories of circulation, which are common to all these modes of production, we cannot possibly know anything of the specific pOints of difference of these modes, nor pronounce any judgement upon them. In no science is such a big fuss made with commonplace truisms. for instance, J a Say sets himself up as a judge of crises, because, forsooth, he knowa that a commodity is a product." (I, 114).
It was the ahistorical, formal view of money which Ricardo develop
ed into the quantity theory of money. This theory, which affirms
that the value of money (be it gold or paper) is determined
exclusively by the quantity of it in circulation, took shape in the
eighteenth century. Its principal exponent at that time was Hume,
who held that money lacked any innate value, that its value arose
solely as a result of its functioning as currency. With Ricardo's
view of the essence of money one can see yet another example of
the inconsistency of his economic theory. from the standpoint of
the law of value he held that gold and silver did indeed have an
innate value, determined (as in the case of ell commodities
generally) by the quantity of labour involved in their production.
At the same time he held that gold coins had more or less value
according to the number in circulation and that, as the quantity
of gold increased, its value would fall. Here was a clear deviation
from Ricardo's value theory. Reducing the essence of money to a
simple function (instrument of circulation) the upholders of the
quantity theory of money confused the laws of full-value gold money
and token money (paper money) and wrongly assumed that any quantity
of full-value gold money could be in circulation at anyone moment.
from this it followed that commodities entered circulation without
a price and money ~ithout a value, and that prices of commodities
altered according to the quantity of money on the market. In
criticising this theory, Marx shows that only the quantity of full
value money actually needed enters circulation and this quantity
is fixed spontanaously, according to the law of value. Money
236
(gold) has its own value, formed in production before the process
of circulation. It fulfils its function as the measure of value
of commodities before the direct act of purchase and sale. Marx
says,
liThe first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expreesion of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equel, and quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence become money. II (1, 94).
Commodities therefore enter circulation with a price and money with
a specific value and it is thus impossible for the quantity of gold
money to be more or less than that needed. Hence the depreciation
of monetary gold in the seventeenth century (to which those adhering
to the quantity thaory usually referred) was the result not of a
surplus of gold in circulation, but of an increase in the productivity
of labour in gold mining and a consequent fall in the value of gold.
This inability to see in money the universal measure of value led
not only to a series of mistakes about the determination of the
general price level. It was directly connected with Ricardo's false
search for an invariable measure of value. This is a problem we
have already looked at, but can return to briefly in the light of the
discussion of fetishism. To insist, as we have done, that fetishism
is a phenomenon of the very being of capital amounts to exactly the
same as insisting that the tmeasurementt of all commodities in one
alienated (money) commodity is an objective, necessary process and
not the tinvention' of man. All those who think there can be some
237
invariable measure of value in fact completely misunderstand the
nature of capital. It is because man's production relations are
indirect, relations medieted through things, thet there can never
be any invariable measure of value, be it 'labour', 'money', or
the currently fashionable Sraffian 'standard commodity'. Values
ara measured spontaneously, becoming embOdied in one commodity
(money) because the production relations ere not, and cannot be,
planned in advance. To deny this is to deny one of the basic
qualities of capitalism as a mode of production. The task of true
science hers is therefore not to invent fictitious 'measures' but
to demonstrate how this spontaneous process of measurement actually
takes place. The neo-Ricardian school does nat even begin to
understand this point. All those who wish to discover same standard
of value in effect want to transform capitalism into a system
capable of conscious planning. In short they want to retain
capital while removing its contradictions. StreSSing the need for
money as a 'thing' in which the values of all commodities must be
alienated, Marx says,
"To the owner of a commodity, every ather commodity, is, in regard to his awn, a particular eqUivalent, and consequently his awn commodity is the universal equivalent for all others. But since this applies to every owner, thera is, in fact, no commodity acting as universal equivalent, and the relative value of commodities possesses no general farm under which they can be equated as values and have the magnitude of their values compared. Sa far, therefore, they do not confront each other as commodities, but only as products or use-values." (I, 86).
How is this contradiction resolved? Nat through the 'invention' by
men of some invariable measure of value of the sort after which
Ricardo searched. The problem is solved in practice, spontaneous-
ly:
"In their difficulties our commodity owners think like Faust: tIm Anfang war die That t • (tIn the beginning was the deed') They therefore acted and transacted before they thought. Instinctively they conform to the laws imposed by the nature of commodities. They cannot bring their commodities into relation as values, and therefore as commodities, except by comparing them with some other commodity as the universal equivalent." (I, 86).
And Marx stresses that this process ~hereby all commodities find
their representation is one alienated commodity is a social act:
Ita particular commodity cannot become the universal equivalent except by a social act. The social action therefore of all other commodities, sets apart the particular commodity in which they all represent their values. Thereby the bodily form of this commodity becomes the form of the socially recognised universal equivalent". (I, 86).
There is here no question of gold being an invariable measure of
value. Quite the contrary: precisely because gold is a commodity
its value must fluctuate. Its fluctuation in no way impairs its
function as a standard of prices. Nor does it interfere with its
functions as a measure of value for 'The change affects all commodi-
ties simultaneously, and, therefore caeterle paribus, leaves their
relative values inter se, unaltered, although those values are
expressed in a higher or lower gold price. (I, 98).
We have triad to demonstrate in a concrete menner that in Marx's
qualification to Galiani 1s involved no small quibble. for in this
caveat was expressed an essential aspect of Marx's notion of
commodity fetishism, a notion absent from claSSical political economy,
for reasons we have also tried to elucidate.
239
Chap tar 7
CONCLUSIONS
This thesis has been concerned to elucidate certain methodological
philosophical aspects of Marx's critique of the work of the classic
al economists. It has been a central contention of the thesis that
in this task the contribution which Hegel made to the shaping of
Marx's thought must be taken fully into account. Writing to
Conrad Schmidt in 1891 Engels observed ' ••• It is impossible to
dispense with Hegel and the man takes 80me time to digest.' (SC,
519). Engels went to recommend to Schmidt a study of these sections
of Hegel's Shorter Logic dealing with the transition from Being to
Essence because they gave quite a good parallel with Marx's treatment
of the development from commodity to capital in Capital.
We have attempted to show through a series of concrete cases that it
is indeed 'impossible to dispense with Hegel' if the revolutionary
significance of Marx's critical work in the field of political
economy is properly to be appreciated. In taking this position the
thesis does of course depart from certain predominant traditions in
the Anglo-Saxon world. As we outlined in the Introduction above, 1n
most cases scant regard has been peid to the philosophical pre
suppositions of Marx's 'economics'. But in one respect nobody can
be free of a philosophical standpoint, whether this be a conscious
or an unconsciously held one. In practice the position from which
most writers have approached Capital in Britain has been that of
empiricism. Empiricism is that standpoint which believes that
240
experience has all the necessary elements for cognition ~hile
reason is capable merely of evaluating, processing, that ~hich is
provided in experience. Empiricism holds that the mind can grasp
the essence of things and therefore general and essential kno~ledge,
from the individual impressions of sensuous experience. We have
tried to sho~ that this is not the case and that neither the nature
of Marx's Capital nor the development of science generally can be
understood from this narrow standpoint.
The line of argument in this thesis also clashes ~ith much recent
interpretation of the real nature of Marx's though~ particulerly
with those who have attempted to show that Marx's thought involved
an absolute break with that of Hegel's philosophy. Hera the work
of louis Althusser has been amongst the moet significant. Althusser
has proposed that Marxism must be rescued from a Hegelian-humanist
distortion. He claims that Marx failed to understand the decisiVe
ness and completion of his own break ~ith Hegel, though his
practice, and especially his 'theoretical practice' for Althusser
involved precisely this break, a break to science. According to
Althusser's account, this science must be 'produced' by means of a
reading of Marx's texts (here the significance of Reading Capital).
This anti-Hegelianism leads Althussar to a radically different view
of historical materialism than the one advanced in this thesis.
Althusser holds that when Marx speaks of 'essence' and 'appearance'
in his economic and historical analyses he is guilty of mystifica
tion and that the terms are only a transformation of the typically
idealist manner of demarcating the thing (appearance, phenomenon) and
241
and the concept of that thing (essence). Hence Althusser is perforce
obliged to reject the view (the view to which we believe Marx sub-
scribed) that objective reality - both material and 80cial reality -
is a totality of dialectical processes, forms of the spontaneous
movement of this reality, in which the essence of this world assumes
contradictory forms of appearance. The taek of science for Marx ia
therefore to investigate these forms of appearance. The internal
contradictions of any mode of production assume many forms of
appearance and all products of consciousness (we have been principally
interested in the specific case of classical political economy) are
to be understood in the first instance as such forms of the mode of
1 production concerned. Hence Marx 'If material production itself
is not grasped in its specific historical form, it is impossible to
understand the concrete nature of the intellectual production
corresponding to it and the interplay of both factors.' (Th 1,
276).
We have proposed that it was preCisely this inability of the cla88ic-
al economists to grasp the socio-historical content of the categories
of thought (including its own thought) which constituted its chief
weakness. This in turn arose from its acceptance of the specifically
capitalist form of production aa the final and 'natural' form of
production. There is no doubt, that, considered in this light,
Hegel's thought stood on a higher plane than that of the English
economists, great though their contribution to the development of
science undoubtedly was. for Hegel did see his own thought as the
outcome of the critical re-working of the philosophical thought of
242
all previous epochs, a re-working which aimed to preserve all that
was valuable in the spiritual culture of the past. In short
Hegel's thought was imbued with precisely that deep historical
sense which was missing in classical political economy and this led
him to grasp that categories of thought in all fields (science,
art, philosophy, etc.) were not fixed and eternal thought-forma,
but were forma impregnated with a deep content - the content of the
development of thought itself.
The thesis has insisted that it is this historical aspect or
dimension of Marx's thought which must be stressed. By way of a
rehearsal and summary of the central thrust of the thesis we can
return briefly to three instances of this stress on the historical
which have been encountered in the course of the development of the
argument. In the treatment of labour we have tried to show that
for Marx labour was a sociel category which had therefore to be
examined from the historical angle. It was the historical - social
nature of labour which fell quite outside Ricardo's fiald of
theoretical vision. Without going over tha details of the argument
in the chapters above, it is clear that a recognition of the nature
and the not immodest distance separating Marx and tha classical
economists on this point has considerable implications for cartain
current theoretical controversies. Although we have deliberately
refrained from dealing with the question in detail it is clear that
efforts in the direction of a reconstruction of political economy
in general and the theory of value in particular on the basie of the
concept of 'embodied labour' (an effort which can be said to be a
243
distinguishing feature of the 'neo-Ricardian' school of political
economy) can have little in common, at the most fundamental level,
with the work of Marx. Labour is embodied in the most diverse
objects, produced under the most varied historical and social
conditions. This simple, immediate, truth can never lead us to
understand the distinguishing features of labour within the frame
work of a definite historically-formed mode of production. The
notion 'embodied labour' appears to be a most 'concrete' category
but, as in so many other cases, appearances here tUrn out to be
quite deceptive and even an inversion of the truth of the matter.
for to the extent that the concept 'embodied labour' ignores
precisely the social and historical conditions under which labour
is performed it is in fact a most abstract,. 'thin' (Hegel) notion.
It is no accident that what may be termed the 'Sraffa School' has
little if any notion of a mode of production. And this omission
is, in our opinion, intimately connected with its use of the
category 'embodied labour' as against Marx's concept of SOCially
necessary labour time. Needless to say this socially necessary
labour time does not appear empirically within the capitalist system.
And from the empiricist's viewpoint this is sufficient to rule it
out of the court of SCience, or if not rule it out, to reduce it to
the status of heuristic device, a perhaps useful way of lOOking at
reality but one without scientific content. Such is the position
of Joan Robinson in her criticism of Marx. 2
One way of characteriSing Hegel's philosophy is to say that it
raised the principle of contradiction to a central place in theoretical
244
work. Here again we find a profound contrast between the stand-
point of Hegel (and by extension that of Marx) on the one hand
and the position of formal logic and empiricism on the other.
One important, though peculiar, feature of the history of economic
thought in England was thet one of the first important theoreti-
cians of political economy was John Locke who was simultaneously
the classical representative of empiricism in the domain of
3 philosophy. As we have earlier suggested, working from its
central premise that the facts of experience constituted the sole
and legitimate basis for knowledge, empiricism was led inescapably
to the conclusion that contradiction (lack of agreement between
two theories or of two aspects of a single theory) arose from an
error of thought - that is from a failure accurately to perceive
the phanomana under consideration. We saw the consequences of
this approach to the problem of contradiction in connection with
Ricardo's attempt (ultimately unsuccessful) to understand the
contradictory relationship between the law of value on the one hand
and the general rate of profit on the other. We have suggested
that Marx was able to resolve this problem concretely becausa ha
recognised that contradiction was the necessary form of all develop
ment. It is only by taking this pOSition into account that the
controversies surrounding the 'Great Contradiction' between the
first and third volumes of Capital can be properly appreciated. It
would be a not unfair summary of the position adopted by the neo
Ricardian school to say that they in general begin by assuming
the agreement of all the economic categories with one another only
245
then to discover a 'logical incongruity' bet~een the actual and
apparent movement of the capitalist economic system. So too did
Ricardo, who merely noted this lack of agreement and left it
theoretically unresolved. Here the neo-Ricardian school has
attempted to go beyond Ricardo (and in this sense, although perhaps
in this sense alone, warrants the designation 'neo-Ricardian') in
that it has attempted to resolve the problems bequeathed by
Ricardo, believing that Marx's approach to them was 'logically
unsound'. But an issue arises here of no little importance: from
the standpoint of ~hich logic is it proposed to tackle the anti-
nomies left by David Ricardo? And here one cannot escape funda-
mental questions in the theory of knowledge. for if one takes the
position that the categories of political economy are merely
heuristic devices then they can be disposed of if, from the
standpoint of formal logic, they fail to yield a consistent solution.
(Here it can be said that Ricardo stood on a much higher theoretical
level. He took the law of value to be axiomatically true and
attempted by deduction from it to explain all the other categories
within the capitalist economic system.)
As history alone reveals, 'logiC' by no means concerns a series of
self-evident truths. But Ian Steedman seems to presume just this
when he says about the solution to the 'transformation problem'
offered by Dmitriev, von Bortkiewicz and Sraffa:
"first these solutions ••• are logically coherent. Second, that those who oppose such solutions never attempt any direct logical criticism of them ••• No one has every presented a direct logical criticism of these solutions and that for the simple reason
246
there is no logical criticism to be made. So far as they go these solutions are logically sound - and that is that." (33)4
Of course if one begins by assuming that the laws enunciated by
formal logiC are absolutely valid thought-forms5(as this author
seems implicitly to do) then, should the relations between the
economic categories be found to be at variance with the imperious
raquirements of this logic, clearly such categories must be
redefined in order to 'fit' the logic. On this view theoretical
activity tends to bs reduced to the collection of data through
observation, etc., data which can then be processed, arranged and
re-arranged to meet the needs of formal logic. Thus one stumbles
across the fact that there is a contradiction between the
proposition that labour is the foundation of value, and the surface,
empirically given, relations of capitalist economy. This must
indicate the fact that there was something logically unsound in the
initial premise which must accordingly be either re-defined or in
extreme cases dropped altogether. We have show~ that Marx took a
quite different attitude to the theoretical contradictions in
Ricardo's economics. He saw these contradictions as not merely
arising in thought (although of course they were present there) but
in reality itself. The economic categories could not be rendered
congruent with each other by means of the rules laid down in formal
logic for the simple reeson that these categories were not them
selves harmonious, expressing in the last instant as they did the
contradictory interests of social classes in modern SOCiety. Hera
two quite distinct logics and two quite different approaches to the
247
theory of knowledge were involved.
As a last illustration of the impossibility of ignoring the philo
sophical basis from which Marx approached his critique of political
economy we have taken the question of commodity fetishism. Here
was a significant and inevitable lacuna on the part of the classical
economists. Taking capitalist society to be the final and natural
form of economy they necessarily looked upon the individual in
such a society in a fundamentally abstract way, rather than from the
point of view of the specific social relations through which alone
he is able to confront nature. Here again are involved decisive questions
in the theory of knowledge. for Marx nature and society are con
templated never abstractly, but by a concrete individual combined
into a network of social relations. And it is for this reason that
the social and historical properties attached to things merge, in
the eyes of an uncritical observer, with their natural properties,
while at the same time the passing properties of such things appear
to such an observer to be bound up with the very essence (the very
'nature') of such things. These fetishistic illusions are objective,
for Marx 'prosaically real' exactly because they are formed not in
the consciousness of an individual in bourgeois society but in the
reality itself which confronts such an individual. It 1s thus
impossible for an empiriCism which merely recognises the immediate
outward form of things to distinguish critically and clearly between
the social and the natural. for Marx the material and SOcial world
could only be cognisad - that is grasped in its inner coherence,
movement and development - if one insisted on moving beyond the
realm of direct sensation and perception of the surface relations
6 of the phenomena concerned. And this in turn demanded a break
from the empiricism which was in the final analysis the true source
of the theoretical limitations of classical economics. Here again
without the dialectics of Hegel (which of course had to be reworked
from the standp·oint of materialism) Marx could not have 'negated'
the work of the political economists in the way that he did.
In assessing the nature and historical significance of this nega-
tion we have outlined at the start of the thesis the limitations of
the tradition smongst those who have been concerned with the defence
and elaboration of Marx's work in political economy. We also
suggested that recent years have witnessed a renaissance of interest
in Marx's Capital in the USSR, eastern Europe and elsewhere which
goes beyond what has previously been achieved. E V Ilyenkov'a
work The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's
'Capital', is perhaps the outstanding example so far of this tendency,
although as already indicates its very recent appearence made it
impossible to deal with in the body of the thesis. Here are merely
outlined some aspects of the work as they impinge upon the concarns
of this thesis, although this far from does justice to Ilyenkov's
achievement, which would involve much lengthier consideration.
Although the author makes meny interesting reference to the limita-
tione of political economy the real interest of his work is that he
is concerned centrally with the methodological aspects of Marx's
critique of political economy. His book turns on the proposition
that all scientific investigation involves a necessary movement from
249
the abstract to the concrete; the interest of what he says
involves his critical appreciation of the meaning of the terms
abstract and concrete for Marx. He emphasises that these terms
are used rather ambiguously in both everyday speech as well as in
the more specialised literature of philosophy. But in matters of
science there must be no such ambiguity for it is through thesa
terms, the abstrsct and the concrete, that dialectical logic saeks
to establish a series of its fundamental propositions ('that there
is no abstract truth'; the thesis of the 'ascent from the abstract
to the concrate' etc.). As Ilyenkov reveals by means of close
citations from the literature, for formal logic and especially for
the tradition founded by Kant in the case of more recsnt philosophy,
the abstract is invariably taken to be synonymous with thosa
properties which reflect a property of an object considered separately
from the object itself, that is as something existing in the mind.
And concrete, in the usually deployed meaning, is taken as
referring to concretely existing objects. And Ilyenkov notes the
implications of this position: it creates the false notion that
individual things are more real than those universal laws and forms
of existence of the things themselves.
This point is important for the thesis as a whole in this sense:
if 'abstract' is taken to be that which exists in thought merely
than general abstract notions of phenomena will be arrived at along
a definite theoretical path. This will involve isolating those
features which the senses detect in a range of objects. (Thus for
instance to the extent that all imperialism involves political
250
dominance of one people over another this abstractly identicel fact
common to all imperialism, both past and present, will be taken to
constitute the conceet of imperialism, its essential quality.) We
have tried throughout this thesis to reveal that this is not a
procedure which can disclose the real nature of social phenomena.
But it is a procedure which is fully in line with the empiriCist
tradition in Britain, a tradition strongly associated with the
standpoint of nominalism in philosophy. Marx, here again following
the lead of Hegel, rejected this conception of the abstract. for
Marx the abstract meant 'one sided' a partial view of the essence
of the phenomena being investigated. And in the same manner,
concrete meant an all round, many-sided view ot the object or
objects under investigation. So the concrete was not a thing
available immediately to the senses, but a combination of abstrac
tions, or 'the unity of diverse aspects' (Critique, 206). And by
unity Marx clearly has in mind connection, the interaction of
different phenomena within a definite system.
It is from just this angle that the concept of abatract labour,
discussed earlier, must be grasped. Ilyenkov's work reinforces the
point that abstract labour can in no sense be taken to mean merely
a mental concept, arrived at by isolating a single feature which
all acts of labour have in common. Undar capitalism the worker is
alienated from the products of his labour: they confront him as
an oppressive 'second natura'; the labour which produces the value
of commodities (and by extension creatas the surplus value which
increases the value of capital) is labour cut off, separated, from
251
the producer and in this sense abstract labour. So both concrete
and abstract labour are both forms of labour, both equally 'real'
in that they both exist independently of consciousness.
This thesis has attempted to highlight certain distinctive
features of Marx's work in political economy by exploring aspects
of Marx's relationship to classical political economy. Clearly
not all matters worthy of attention have been considered: because
of pressure of space some have been ignored and others only lightly
touched upon. But a deliberate emphasis has been placed upon the
philosophical basis of Marx's work in the field of economics.
Needless to say, a consideration of the philosophical dimensions
of Marx's writings in political economy provides no 'magic key'
which will yield immediate answers to the complex problems to be
solved in grasping the nature of Marx's critique of capitalism
and the work of its theoreticians, both 'claSSical' and'vulgar'.
8ut we have tried to demonstrate that it does provide an essential
theoretical 'orientation' as it were in the solving and clarifica
tion of many of the key debates which continue amongst Marxists
and between Marxists and non-Marxists. It is to be hoped that the
lines of approach mapped out here will be fruitful in the further
development and concretisation of work within the field of
political economy.
252
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1
1 G Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being, Vol.2, p.10.
2 Ibid, p.11.
3 Ibid, p.12.
4 C Slaughter, Marxism and the Class Struggle, p.151.
5 Ibid, p.151.
6 G Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works, Vol.3, p.117.
7 for some useful background material on this topic see G Planty-Bonjour, The Categories of Dialectical Materialism.
8 5 Macintyre, A Proletarian Scianca.
9 for Lenin's specific criticisms of Dietzgen see~, 14 pp. 243-9. Lenin of course saw positive features in the work of Oietzgen and defended him against the Machists who seized upon certain weaknesses of his work.
10 M H Cobb, Political Economy and Capitalism: Some Essays in Economic Tradition.
11 R Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx's 'Capital', p.xii.
12 Ibid, p.xii.
13 Engels, Anti-Duhrins, pp.21-22.
14 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, pp.42-43.
15 Engels, Anti-Duhring, p.18.
16 In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3, p.231.
17 Lenin, 'What the friends of the People Are', pp.14-15.
18 G Pilling, 'The Law of Value in Ricardo and Marx', Economy and Society, 1:3, pp.280-307.
253
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2
1 J M Keynes, The General Theory, p.1.
2 See R L Meek, Economics and Ideology, pp.51-74. for an examination of the relationship between classical political economy, Marxism and the 'vulgar' school see R Rowthorn, 'Neo-classicism, Neo-Ricardianism and Marxism', New Left Review: 85 (1974).
3 Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, p.91.
4 L Althusser, Reading Capital, p.50.
5 Marx Engels, Collected Works, Vol.3, p.270.
6 Ibid, PP. 270-1.
7 Ibid, p. 271.
8 Ibid, p. 271.
9 A Smith, Wealth of Nations, pp.25-7.
10 Ibid, p.65.
11 Ibid, p.5S.
12 Ibid, p.5S.
13 0 Ricardo, Principles, pp.13-4.
14 Ibid, p.15.
15 Ibid, p.17.
15 Ibid, p.20.
17 Ibid, p.27.
18 E Roll, A History of Economic Thought, p.100.
19 Lukacs, loc cit, p.13.
20 Engels, Anti-Duhring, p.462.
21 Ibid, p.462.
22 K Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p.316.
23 K Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol.2, p.39.
254
24 On the question of the 'breakdown' of the Ricardian labour theory of value and its connection with the limits of formal logic see E V Ilyenkov, Dialectical Logic, esp. Chapter 10.
25 A J Cutler et al Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today, p.35.
26 D Ricardo, Principles, pp.37-a.
27 Ricardo: Letters 1816-18, Vol.7 of The Works and Correspondence of Ricardo, p.377.
255
NOTES. TO CHAPTER 3
1 0 Ricardo, Principles, p.11.
2 Marx Engels, Selected Correspondence, pp.73-4.
3 A J Cutler at aI, Marx's 'Capital' and Capitalism Today, p.26.
4 Engels, Anti-Duhring, part III, chapter 4.
5 Quoted in R L Meek, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, p.257.
6 R Rosdolsky, The Makin9 of Marx's 'Capital', p.114.
7 Marx Engels, Selected Correspondence, pp.238-9.
8 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, p.18.
9 This point is explored at length in Ilyenkov's, The Dialectics af the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's 'Capital'. He establishes in detail that in formal logic 'abstract' is taken to mean a mere mental image and 'concrete' to actually existing material things, seen in their isolated state. He demonstrates that Marx rejected this view of the matter. See chapter 7 below for further remarks on this work.
10 for a stimulating study of Locke's social theory see C 8 McPherson, The Theory of Possessive Individualism. its insights this work fails to grasp the significance Marx's distinction between labour and labour power.
11 J Zeleny, The Logic of Marx.
12 Ibid, p.13.
13 Ibid, p.18.
14 0 Ricardo, Principles, p.118.
15 J Zeleny, p.18.
16 Marx Engels, Selected Correspondence, p.250.
17 0 Ricardo, Principles, p.18.
18 Marx, Value: Studies by Marx, p.214.
19 M H Dobb, Palitical Economy and Capitalism, p.18.
20 Ibid, p.29.
21 J Zeleny, p.20.
256
Despite of
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4
1 See F Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach in Marx Engels Selected ~orks (1 volume edition), p.613.
2 See Marx Engels, Selected Works, p.96.
3 C B Mcpherson finds a similar development in political theory to that in political economy. He holds that the political theory stretching from Locke down to James Mill was founded upon a notion of 'possessive individualism'. This amounted to the view that man is the absolute and natural proprietor of his own capacities, owing society nothing for them. On Mcpherson's account, society was seen by classical liberal theory as a collection of individuals related to each other through their possessions, in which relation the role of the market is crucial. After James Mill, Mcpherson sees a growing syncretism in the form of attempts to abandon possessive individualism while retaining bourgeois values. In this he finds a close parallel to the degeneration of political economy following the death of David Ricardo. rar this view see C B Mcpherson 'The Deceptive Tasks of Political Theory' in Mcpherson's Democratic Theory.
4 I I Rubin, Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, p."?
5 G W r Hegel, Science of Logic, p.44.
6 Marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in Marx Engels Collected Works 3, pp 332-3.
7 G W r Hegel, op cit, p.3.
8 Ibid, p.6.
9 Quoted in E V Ilyenkov, Dialectical Looie, p.184.
10 G W r Hegel, Encyclopaedic LogiC, pp. 105-6.
11 On this matter see E V Ilyenkov, The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's 'Caoital', p.46.
12 Marx Theses on Feuerbach in Marx Engels Selected Wo~ks ed cit p.129.
13 Engels Dialectics of Nature, p.170.
14 Marx and Engels The German Ideology, p.42.
15 Ibid, p.42.
16 Ibid, p.42.
17 Marx Engels Selected Correspondence, p.48.
25?
18 G W f Hegel, Encyclopaedic Logic, pp.62-3.
19 G W F Hegel, Science of Logic, p.588.
258
NOTES TO CHAPTER 5
1 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p 69.
2 Ibid, P 70.
3 L Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, p 5.
4 Ibid, pp 79-80.
5 Ibid, p 80.
6 Ibid, p 89.
7 Ibid, p 91.
8 Ibid, P 80.
9 Ibid, p 73.
10 Ibid, p 74.
11 Ibid, p 84.
12 Opposing the 'humanist-historicist' interpretation of Marxism Althusser argues that 'Marxist theory is produced by a specific theoretical practice, outside the proletariat, and that Marxist theory must be "imported" into the proletariat'. (Reading Capital, pp 140-01).
13 R Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx's 'Capital', p 95.
14 P M Sweezy, The 'Theory of Capitalist Development, p 26.
15 Ibid, P 226.
16 Marx, Value: Studies by Marx, p 215.
17 Ibid, pp 215-6.
18 Ibid, P 216.
19 K Korsch, Karl Marx, p 123.
20 R L Meek, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, pp 173-4.
This omission on the part of Meek is surprising given Marx's explicit statement on the question of the value form. Urging Marx not to alter a draft he had made of the early sections of Capital, Engels writes 'The second sheet especially bears rather strong marks of your carbuncles, but that cannot be altered now and I do not think you should do
259
anything more about it an addendum, for, after all, the philistine is not accustomes to this sort of abstract thought and certainly will not cudgel his brains ror the sake of the form ,of value. At most, the paints here established dialectically might be set forth historically at somewhat greater length, the test made from history, so to speak, although what is most necessary in this respect has already been said. (Se, 226). And Marx's reply is important in bringing out the importance of the value-form: 'As to the development of the form of value I have and have not followed your advice, in order to behave dialectically in this respect as well. That is to say I have 1) written an appendix in which I describe the same thing as simply and pedagogically as possible, and 2) followed your advice and divided each step in the development into paragraphs, etc., with separata headings. In the preface I then tell the "non-dialectical" reader that he should skip pages x-y and read the appendix instead. Hare not merely philistines ara concerned but youth eager for knowledge, etc.' (Ibid, 228).
21 Marx, Value: Studies by Marx, p 61.
260
NOTES TO CHAPTER 6
1 I I Rubin, Essays on Marx's Theory of Value.
2 for a useful survey of the treatment of the concept of fetishism in recent literature, see T Kemp, Karl Marx's 'Capital' Today, PP 15 - 29.
3 Rubin, op cit, p 59.
4 Marx Engals, Collected Works, Vol 3
5 Marx, Value: Studies by Marx, p 38.
6 Ibid, P 38.
7 L Althussar, for Marx, p 232.
8 Ibid, p 232.
9 E V Ilyenkov, 'The Concept of the Ideal' in Philosophy 1n the USSR. pp 71 - 99.
10 Ibid, p 72.
11 Ibid, P 84.
12 Ibid, P 86.
13 Marx Engels, Collected Works, Vol 3, pp 212-3.
14 Ibid, P 213.
15 Rubin, op cit, p 32.
16 R Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx's 'Capital', p 135.
261
NOTES TO CHAPTER 7
1 This is why all ideological forms have, within limits, a definite objective content and can never be reduced merely to a 'way of looking at the world' from a particular social or class standpoint. This would be to adopt the position of relativism. Marx never saw in classical political economy merely a form of bourgeois ideology, merely an expression of the needs and interests of a rising class. Within limits classical economics elaborated concepts and categories which were 'objective thought forms' that is which did, to an extent, reflect objectively existing social relations of production.
2 In her little book Economic Philosophy Joan Robinson writes (p 3) 'The hallmark of a metaphysical proposition is that it is not capable of being tested.' Of the concept of value she observes 'Like all metaphysical concepts, when you try to pin it down it turns out to be just a word.' (Ibid, p 26). Of course this is the empiricist visw of the metaphysical as something lying beyond immediate experience.
3 A point of clarification is perhaps needed here. EmpiriCism, like every other standpoint in philosophy (rationalism, dialectical materialism, etc.) claims to provide an account of how knowledge develops. But this does not meen that proponents of empiricism were actually in their work, their practice, actually guided by this standpoint. Ilyenkov suggests that this wss certainly the casa with Ricardo. In the course of grappling with a series of theoretical and practical problems Ricardo was forced to the recognition that science could not, whatever the claims of empiricism, rest content with the mere reworking of things given in sensation and contemplation but had to establish the inner unity of phenomena. Here Smith antiCipated Ricardo for he too was obliged to deal with both esoteric and exoteric 'sides' of economic phenomena. See E V Ilyenkov, op cit, PP 17B - 194.
4 Ian Steedman, Marx After Sreffa. p.33. For a perceptive review of Steedman's book see G 8 Kay, 'POlitical Economy: Hegel versus Ricardo' in Critigue No 10-11, pp 92 - 102: Winter/Spring 1978-9.
262
5 Of course within limits the propositions of formal logic are true; they become untrue precisely when these tolerances are exceeded. Thus on the principle of identity, A-A, Engels notes 'like all metaphysical categories it suffices for everyday use, when small dimensions or brief periods of time are in question; the limits within which it is true differ in almost every case and are determined by the nature of the object'. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 215.
6 Ilyenkov puts this point neatly in another of his writings when he says 'It is ••• not true that the world is cognised in our sensations. In sensations the external world is only given to us, just as it is given to a dog. It is cognised not in sensations, but in the activity of thought, the science of which is logic ••• ' E V Ilyenkov, Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism, p 29.
263
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267
•
• • •
oor ex In e orl Ina •
eSls.
-......-ome ex oun C ose 0 •
e sine. • •
-......-ome Ima es IS or e
by the individual families. It h2S c\"olt"ed ~~ tered by the Spanish conquero:--, ane ·l'\..ish colonial regime. ~ used here had it not been rer"derec ~ a landed property. So the Spa.::ish ~glicised. It Tcfers to a kind of
qnd as!?umed ethnic origins, an::: is
the degree to which producrion is
f course. 'IVhat is described is b:<..;;.ed 0::
q others. It refers mainly to the 1 sser extent to the Cochab:~mb.:. :-egio::_
Kubler, George (1952) The ['~:5;':1.T! Caste oj Peru, I795-I 9-1o: !l F.'?'l! I: ., Stud)1 Based UpG1! Tax Record.; _nd
'C/1su.s Reports. \Vashington, D C. Lewin, Bob 'ao (1957) La Rt~·dior. i. T,ipac Amaru y los orlgl.!1lef d. L cmatlcipacioll America1lO. Butnc-5 _ i~<~_ Lyncb, John (1957) SpO/:.islt C.;.:.JIii,,: Ad,ui7,;stration I782-18IO. Lo""~()n. Morner, ;\1agnus (1969) 'Tho! -:-'1eor.and Prolcticc of Racial Segn::t;'.!t:.:l in' Colonial Sp~nish ~~.erjc:a', H,s; cry 0/ Loti1l AIIZ(,1"1Can Clt'illsallo,,- Lo:-·::on. Osborne, H. (195:!) lndiCins oj : _< Andes. London. Paredes, H:gnberto (1956) Tiar..L'17:"-' y la P"O'i:i, lda de fllgrn;i. L:~ P.:Lo Paredes, M. Rigobl.;rto (1965) La Altipio,licie. La Paz. parry,]. H. (1966) The Spat~·,.I; _"'borne Empire, London. ParSon, Ebie C. (1945) P <fJ:Jd:!_ Chicago. P fialmr.a, L~.i~ (1 946) Hislon'/Z Econolllica de Bolivia (2,\"0Is.). L.r Paz. Piel J. (1967) 'Un soul.,,"cnlcnt =-_ru! peru~'ien: Tocroyoc (1921 )', R,~~ d' his toire modem/! et COlll cmpowir.! •
10 • XlV. . -Rene-Moreno, G. (1959) La 11_!:':: d, -Potosi i!1I 1795. PotosI. ., ~ey >1'05, Harae! (1937) Cl quzon",. L~ ~:lZ. .
eyeros, Haf~d A .. (!963) Jl:slvr..:: ''':)ncial del ]t1Ij,0 Boilt'1all11. L:i P;u ..
Trquidi , Artllro (1,)66) EI F'iI~":'':''''''IO " America Y la R('jonllt..l A.::nna
::!:301iviona. Cocha bam ba. 'oHmer, Gunter (1967) B,tol/;,r-_;:s
~()Iitih und I1t'1.·(jl/ur1l71gs-slrul :U! :- ~ t(f
-!:i:olligricch Pau Zit E'ld(' tic/" };.v:, :::..;/::,,: r.~74r-I8:iT). Herlin. _ .
Volfe, Eric (1967) PLomllls. 1-n,;.;;'\ 'ood Cliff., N.].
The law of value in icard and arx
Geoffrey Pilling
. bstract
,\ st2.tement of ::"lIar: 5 law of \'alue and the place which it occupies in the stru..:ture of his eco~QnUc studi~s. A ritique of the trealmenl of the b\\ of nlue as fouod in ~e work of several writers- principally :-'laurice Dobb and :'onzld ~reek. The implications of thi~ critiqu<": an c~:lrnination of Rica:do's method in the light of Das K(/[>ila!. The wider imr!ications of the i~;;;ue.:; discussed for l\Iarxist scholarship.
ihere can be little GOU t th2t for academic economists at ] ;J~t , the • ~in object of their :;rtac~~ ag.:.:nst :\larxism cantin les to be its thl'ory
~ ynIue. This is as t.rue of :\Iarx's 'friends' (such as Joan Robinson ~d m:my of her coL:.3g1!cs in the Cambridge School) (IS it is f his
.... Jemie ' . IVe do not pro:,ose to answer all these attacks. Thh; \\\Iuld ~ i.rnpossiblc in the con:ines of a single p"pt'r; in any lSt.: mmt f :~"m ba\ e failed to ;:.d\"2:-ce on tho~c issued by lHihm-13awerk more -: n ~eyenty years ago.
IIl~e.1d, we inh::nc. to restal> as simply as possible the e:scntial , tun::::. of this law ane the place it occlIpiul in 1\1:arx's \\ lk as a whole. - the light of this s:.att::l.cnt we wish to Sllgg<::-t that fundamental ~ors k\'e been coomi::ed t,articu larly by Engli:;h \\"ril~r , manv ! imi..r:g to write as : farY;sts, in their treatment of this law. Fil1~ll;! e intend to examine the~,- errors i.n the light of l\1:.1I"X'S rcl.1tion!;hip
l" c1:!~ica l political CCa"lnor:ly, 3.!1d in particular to Ricard .1 The best statement \yhi.:h ::'1:nx maue about his bw (If "\ aluc-an
..... 'ount "hi h Lenin ~d\'i-ed dl student of Capital to co i:ult car~:.llY-I$ to be found i::. his famolls letter to Dr. Kugelmann f July r r, !!1 '. V,'c reproduce the c:tical passage and th n ufTcr ~OJrlC ,-OlliT11cnts ~ it.
D
... EYen if there '\ ere no harter on 'valLIe' in Illy hook, the an~l: sis of the re;!~ rc]::,-ion3hips which r givc ,,"ould ('''Wain h· pr of of the real y;:._u\.. :-d::.~ion . The nonsense ilblllll till' n~n" it)'
(if );,o\'ing the co~-:~pt of \';.:.Ju arises from c01l1pll t ' it;T,.)!':!n,-\!
bot' of the subjec: dc.Jt \\i-h and of the method of sd.'nl:c. Eyc:"}- hild kno\y ~ -h •. : a cOHntr: "hi h cUlscd to \\f rk, I \\ ill not :1)' for a Yl:ar, but for u few weeks woult! die. En!f\' child kno· ,'S too, t)'at the I112."; of products COlT 'sponding to the
282
different ne~c5 require different and quantitatively deter ::t .. d m(',m~; of the ro!:al1aboul" of society. That this necessity : distributing social labour in definite proportions cannot bi:' :0'
aW:l)' with by the particular form of social production but :4~. -only change 6e form it assumes, is self evident. No natur;.: L C:ln be om' :1'.'.-:1)" "ith, ":hat can change, in changina h:t- n' .:::- -., \..
ClrUH1.';t.lOC(;S, is the form in which these laws operate. _-ll ~ {~. form ",hieh thi:: proportional division of labour OpeT:lt(.'$, 1. ...... stah: of ~ocidy Whert! the interconnections of social labour :s manifCf.ttU in ~he pri'i.:ate exchange of the individual produ-..; l
labollr, is prl.cisely the exchange value of these products. '1 .C
science consists pn.ruely in working out hoZIJ the law of n: .c'~ operatc~. So th::.t if one wanted at the very beginning to 'v";)::U.," all tht! phenornC:1a which apparently contradicted the law, .~..: would ha,'e to gi\'e t e science before the science. (l\1arx, 1(' 7.i,
pp, 73-4) -- .
In our view this is an extremely important passage and in. :. St"
the rest of thiJ pape:- will be a commentary on. the ideas which -;;l: '" ..
are implicit in it. ~h..l.-x evidently wished to stress one basic iC! ;::-~ historico-re1ative ch:ll':lcter of all the categories of political eC1:::or y \Ve mean thi' in the ;:en~e that for him none of the categorie.s I!1~- ;.:L in politic:ll cconomy--sucn as 'production', 'division of labour', .. -can be understood c,'cep: in thcir relations to the specific m<~ 0: production of which they iormed a part.
'The categories of bourgeois economy . , . arc forms of t'::. ~!: .. expressing with social yalidity the conditions and relations of a df:::,ii historically determL.'1ed mode of production viz., the produet:::l !
commodities' (?-.hrx, J96I, p. 76).2 But this recognition of the rL .1.:...nature of economic categories-a recognition which the thl:C:~j -f historical materialism rcquired-did not mean however that th('rt", not featurt!s common to m:lfiy if not all modes of production. TF;', . inevitable in that all ~ocieties had this much in common: tha: :he; involved some mechanism for the allocation of social labour bc:~'" ~ .... the various branches of economy, Socialist society will be no du-:,i' 1'!
in experiencing this univer-al nee-d. However, ancl this is cruci.J., ~'-:, form which this mechmisn: t~es differs widely from society to sOC:e~'. The differences depend ult:.mately, upon the structure of the prodt:.::ntrelations and it was to be one of :0.Iarx's chief preoccupations to C$t..:-!;c~
.... -in opposition to the yulglr school-the dependence of 'distrib",::H ..
on 'production'-Having madc clear the precise nature of this task, Mar . show~ :':.-
tne speciji.ca differentia of the capitalist mode was the dominant po:-::cn achieved within it of commodity production, and the transforrr;~::' '1
of the category 'labour' into the category 'labour power'. GivCH '~:~ hoW was the allocation of social labour bet\\'een the different bra!''' -
/1.., of .. ~uc In Ricardo and Marx 283
.c.r d? It was effected, :ln~'\ rec ::'\b. .,', only through the ~;changc . cJ:nrutJdi ti 'S:lS qui\ alent·, thrc gil their x 'hange \,,,:t.<::i, And, a
\ e ali sec, this c.1tcgor~ 'c'·chJ."'ge \ .Iue' \.,'as but the phenomenal ~ ~~ of '\ 11t1e', l~or l\Iarx, in oth .:- words, the law of yaJlJc reflect'd thC' (I.'1ly , o:<sibJc, indir ct, mecha i.:;m ',\hcrt.!i>y ~oci.ll lab"ur _could he di!t~:blltcd in:l ommodity pt:odudng .')ci .. IY. The la .o of rallle r,fleets .. ~~dfLC social rc/aliolls {ddt}, o/I/Ira/NmdeT tOll/lllodity (an 1 ta'lillllady (. . :tdisl (OII11J1odily) IJroc/ucrion, and 1I11dl}, flt~S(! c01,c;';:if)llS aluIII'.
"pea,kjn~ of '0 ialist . OIlOlUlC org-:ni:ation, Engels said 'The p opic 'j n:T:l ~C! everything Y ry sinlpiy, \,ithout the intern'nlion of the
muc:' f3.1 cd Jaw.' (Engels, 1962, p ... 1-23.)3 his letter to KII dmann, .. ~ ar\ wi. hed to dra\\' Lis friend's
• tt .:ion to another point \\ ~ich,;11 jl:trticu!'lrly Ollccrn U:l in this • _per-r. mdy the f:.lct that C:lpl· .. Iisn w,s . Iso l'niquc in :ltV) h 'r , n _ in l 1t the value rdation (a Slx;:tl rdaliun) appC:l J:l~ a relation betWt n I '.illgs. Capital is Ct):'CerI e , .. bllt h;, with hoth \ ll:m itati\'c
ro' ;ems (the xcbangl..! tatio,; pi ';.liEng hct\\ ccn 'ommo Ii i 's) and ~!<':i~in. problems (that behind t' 'e qu,llll ita live ratio .. tood :;ocial • ! :ions). In ·xchanging commo... il's men were in fa<:t \. xchaoging their labt:l r. For J\Iarx, the to tac' .mcn~ of ~ocial l't I1t iOl'" to things
t.) 'il' J!'don', Fot' \1I11.Jl·[ capit:lE~m the ~od;\ 1 r ·i;.lfiol1 I t"l 'n the .... bournfi~ld iviJu:lls ons icutl;". odety l()uld onl}' m"nif~~t:~h('m ch 's,
r a;pear nr the n I:ltiOl.' bet \(;en Objl' IS of mil t..:riai \halth. 'I'll ~e :,pc::.."3nc :> \\ere, as .. 1nrx pill'> it, 'ncct:' ;:tr), :tppear. JIClS' •
• ;. ~ockl relation or producion. arre:lrs :1S sotl)uiling ~ .. isting :.. ar from inJidulIal hlln',.tn t ~ing~, ano the distinclive r h iOllS into which they ~r.tt:r in the cour~c of 1'·0 l\l~ ion :'?pc.' ;)s th ' spccilic pl'op<;lli\:,,- of. thillg-it i~ this j net tr.;d 2?rt:~"an " tbi!; pro~~lcall: rt: " r:d by I/O /I/talls illl. ,im r)' I.yst,~:afiolt [cmphno;,i' • ddr.;o, <. ~P] ~h:\t i· ch'lrnUl'rislic cl nil !C-ocial forms pO"iting \.:xc!. '.ng\:-\ nllll.... (i\1:tr , 197 1• p. 41))
Or ag&in
'" .. 1 .c rdation cOl1nl'ctinO'th .. l bour of unl.! indi"j';,lal with 1 t of the rest :lpP\:.lr l not ;)) dirc<.t ~o ial rt:i:1tio,,:; k,', en in 1i\·iJu.l!S .ll "o1'k, but as r:hrlt ,lley "C(/lly (Jj (' [l.:mpll:1"i: .,d cd, GP] alc)' inl rebtiolL be ~\·(.cn 1 U30l1S and Goci.i n! tivns b "w\:cn things.' (i\f.lo" lY';f, p, 73)
• \ Y lr:'lpOrlant re$u]t ilO\H:J fr :n thi conC'\;ption of ~pp :\1. rICC"
cs r.t(crs 11'.. .... r..ppL:lranCCl>: tl.I...Y c )ulo o. I)' b dcstroYl'd 1 y 1)\ erthruwing th. CCO:,}OIl';C atcgori\!s which ~llst:li:'lcd hI m. \lan~ did nut ~Cl; his ~" I .er 1. ~s one of tripping aw y the iIlu',iOIl of a1 i~ li~!ll. to ~~ '~l . ing:; ':lS they 1 'ally \\' rei, Th~ conceptiun is ind~ J im )!i ... it 1..'1::1 :' O"e ~rc.\ttncnt· of lIpitcl \\r 1 h ~ ck to r ·dlll..'t' if'. medlOd to a \':l.."le Y Cif ~ .ciological 'moJd buililing'. TllU~ one prominr.;llt \uitt!r
284
puts tit,> mattl:r this way in discu."sing his rcqtlin:U1 m :,r sue'l 'modd': 'But to l')(,1'l11it all) full quantit \tiv' ~tatcmcnt •. be •• de, suc1l g(lrl'rnill~ dilllensions or ellliti~'s to which tIll': price-, &,:' I ~ .J.t
connectl'd ll)\bt be rdnll'lJ in J way \\hidl clnhks tlll'l \ to :'0:: r" u(.~· to :t con :non tl.:nn. ' (Dobb, t9+o, p. IT .) For him, lVl:lrxi.,:n ~ uPt:.:(!' in an '()'wlational' sense in that 'l.lh lIr' provi<ks sllch a J"'t t..t r t
which :111 the other entities in his modd cnn be rcJu d. For) I an., no sl.H:ll task prc;)C1Ht,·J itscJ f. IJ is :'lim \.\.13 c: to rtd:. e
nil the pkrw'ncna of the systt.'m (such as the structur -! of pric ) to the dd.;rOlin:1tion of ynlue hy laL our-time, but on th~ U.· ,m' 01 e of c.\'j,fa i!.,·l/g these phl·numl:J1.l by dcmonstrating how the) 0 :ld 1 reconciled. with the olwration of the law faIlle. 1 Jcnee his S~OI f r all lho$r intellt on 'pl'O\'inS' the Jaw of value, rathc:r tLan : e'-in· tu find out how it operated.
Whik not :lIlticipnting l\,Iar~'s snlution to thi " probl m.~.; uch can be said: the entire method of apilal is bastd upon ,11C ccnt cp,; n that thc t ling in itsdf (in this cn:;e 'val\u;') Cflll unli pre.:.:n i" if through it~ conuatlictory opposite, its npJll!3ral1 C (to I'\n~·"Uc '.
our illustr~ltioll , 'exchallgc-vnlue' is the form of appcar,l'ltl! (/ \a'ue') In olher \\orJs, i\hrx r/~j\.!t:t('d l"unt's sc:paralion of the 'thin in j. :f' from it.: ':lp\war,l.lIcc' in f:\\onr of IJcgd's mdholl. The ' 1. k c::\l iX'S
critique of political economy was ]lui ne which invoh l. 1 h:-n fin i~" ;)::;.a 'constam l in tt;;rms of which cverything could be qll lntiii. bl:' d
-:::.", cst:1blishing th~ laws of mcdi:ltiun through. which th e 't < net" phcnomcru m,1I1ifcsted. it.:ielf as 'appearance'. 'Hence law i:. 11''': b:.:yo_ .\ppcaranel', bui. is ili/fn{'(lit1tc~r preStl1t in it; the rl.!:11m vf 1 'i ' ... qui('~c 'nl counterfeit of the e. i~tillg or appearing 'Vtlrld.' (I L:-J, 19-9, p. L33.) .\s we shall sce, \\hile Ricardo gr<lsped. the r :lttUe of -. C'
problem facing political economy his method prevcnt d '::1, fro. 1
arriving a :l satisfactory ~olution to it. MaL ', \, haYe suggcstl..d, traces the many links bt:tWt.:"n 't1SC (;~
anel 'appearnn e', demonstrating the ncccil~'lry nalUrc of C _ 1.~: r. This is why he is able to writt.: 'The di.~covcry [of the d ·tenr.:nat·cn of the magnitude of value by labour-time] while rCnlovin ", a 1 l.pp 'aOl:C of mere accidcntulity from the Jelcrmination of tr . m~--nitud(' o[ the value of products, ) cl in n \\ ay alter the mode i'1. ,,:.:,' t'~ determination ta ' es place.' (196I, p. 75.) In other word,. or':: a r:. organisatiun of socidy can abulish fetishLm: 'Thc lifc pro .::;.s oi::. .. 1t 'r 11 production, doc,> not strip off' its mystical veil until it i3 tTe:L:.:d :u production by freely ::l::;soci.:lted men, :lnd is consciollsly rt-gu1zd : them in accordance with n settled plan.' (196r, p. 80.) Or :13 Ol,'C:S
a little earlicr after the discovery by science of the com )n(. • cases of air, the atmosphere itself remained unaltered. (1961, p. -;4·) ._
So far we have elaborated a number of points which nre in r telt l!l
the lctter to Kugelmann. To state matters [rom a ditTercnt ~ngi": ;., J..-':
intended to remind his fIiend of what he had already s~id ni:x 'j~ .
e It- of valu; In Rlc:'lrdo and Marx 185
;.:.::~C': with the publication of the Cliliqlle-th~t th<: 'guiding thr ad' , • !l:S w~1rk was the matcrialis conception of history, This was the _!:'C.r;: which started from the proposition 1h.lt the f.ocial relalions of ro.;:!'.:.:.tion form the 'real foundation' of Ocir::lY on which arose a
, ::ci::ll, )('gal, etc. 'superstructur .' S'p cifically • Iar.; set himself the •.• ~ c. .er the three volumes of Capital of tr .. ring out the m:mifolc.l ::.· .. rc:mncctions betwe'n the social relations of pro lIction (lInder
i:.iism. the reflection of whie 1 is to be found 'n tltt t.ltq ory 'value') -.: Ll the other phenomena \\ itbin the sy'tI!m, inc:.'uding th' class
-·.!b;:e. As we shall diseov'f, this implied a In tho ~ntirely 0pP0t-'ed . t.hr: f)f Ricardo, as Marx's I otter nlrl-ndy ~uggt,;_ :s.
It :.: now our intention, thi: pr liminnry s:~ CIncnt h,\ving he n ~ e, to l.ow that many of ~.rarx's aims anJ Inct'.ods havc be 'n
-iou.:,y mis-rcprt.:scntetl by the mnj rit)' of conul1ClH ':on, \\ ho woulJ . ~' t::. be designated 'Murxist conomi::.ts', Wc 'n stnt with the :lSI!
.: :ne '.!adcr in this ficld, Maurice Dobb. lIe OP(:L ' his r: 'jor thlon.:tic;,l :':":::1 the field of value theory \\ ~th a hnptcr c·ltitlu .. 'Thl Rlquirc
t::e..:.:.s of :l Theory of Value', (Dobb, 1910' ',1) I'1111lC iatdy he t:! ::5L??OS(:s a method alien to ,iI It of i\1:ux; \~" h:\\ l aJ1'I:ndy argued ! ... ! ... _ an~~lysis of 'valut;' cannot be di:;ullboJ.:eo from a 'work the i: _ 0: y,111ch wa' to 'luy bare the law of Illotion (If m d I'll $ocicty ', If
• b :.."~ in mind .n.l[arx's valu.: thC01Y (us H inst that of Ricard h: .X':11plt:) then the concern of the hapter \\\,Jt11d ~.clll to be mis" . .:..c. For our only answer would cOllsi:t oC an xposi,'on of the \'alue , ",::_.~ as deydol'l.:d in C(lJ)I'tal, If on the other hi,'),! Dobb has in
Ir.:Jld ~ get/clal concept of yaluc (;,$ indeed th r main'! r of the work ~I .•• , .. him to han:) he is guilty of . tartin y flO, al1 G ~~tr;tct concept ~".: lIC~ :l.S ~rarx insistc.:d we mu t. from an CXnrL1.n:lti.o 1 of the pro ss cfsoc:.: labour as it nppC3t'S in '11 od(:;l'O sClcict)', ~larx c\'ide. tly had h_> ~Yr..; of t:rror in mind when he n.:plicd to th~ c2.1arg~ of .\. Wngncr ;
, .... ~ la~'r had accused him of 'illogirality' in " p!itting the COJW~pt of " '_f.: i::;.+o c.·change aluc and ll '~ value', 1\1:1 .' said 'Abo\ ~ all 1 do ~·"t ~!z.:-: from" oncepts" thus 11 t "from the on"c.pt : raltH . .". Vhat r ~.:,:,;-, ::om is thl: ~implest SOChll form in \\hich L e pro im:t ;.f 1.\1>0111'
: ... :.ne ?:'t:sent form of socidy pr ~ nts it!ldfi and his is "com lI f ,dity",' C,L.;.;'X, :'Ji2, p. 50.) Marx j here pointing nut t. W:lgnC:f, lid others tiu:: hi:: :St:u-,ed as a materialist from 'rcal :llli\"e ii\ illg 1 en' ,lIh.1 not ~ ~"1 iu.;aiist who tarts ahvays flom 'eo'H'cpts'. 1n thi l'l.:fil'l'l t Duhb ~ "':n' ... ~' in the camp of \Vagncr, a,:, inst '\Jar".
~:!,G.i.ll'ly, when Ronald 1\Ieck writes a bo " 'to try :.ml huild ~ ::t::; Sj,t of bridge between 1\1 'rxiall econon :5 3n l their non· . h: :2.:-. colleagues' and sets ou~ to com in c ,Irs, Hobil\~on that :,':l..":'"','S value theory '\\'as good :~n~c' (1956, p. ,) his ta:::k i:; . s ill~::.,.-;,\'t'J as Dobb's starting point the ('oml'ar'~ i1 of ~' c I lkqu:1Cy' o' ',.,.,. , , . l\ r' d' . . I ' -- ;:-,$ -is wrong. arx S :1\ owe ,nn -at <:xp ~:") t) 'v'r-~ ::.:;:,~ ~:lg contradictions of a pll~ticular mode of prud 'ction--i
286
necessarily :1bancloncd by vulgar cconom}. \Ve need only f l,;
for l\I.i :'X, if not !'.Ieek, '1830 sounds the knell of scil.!ntific h _ econor: l." . If 'we do accep! this judgement, then WI.! ar~ f :-:.~ .. the in -capable concluslon that 'modern economics' with which . ! is so .k ,:~·n to forge link: , cannot have a theory of valllc, 'aJ c: • othen., ist::. it was ).Iarx's point that with the emergence of ti'-c, ~c :. • class, i ncr(';t:;ingly consciously ranged against the capitali.:,( d.! 3'
its POh'd C,U economy, t le latter inevitably degcl1l.!rated iato ~ .• :.0' apologni c:s for the exis ting order, ultimatdy to become :l b .. ~- -' • technology . . AU modern 'price theory' (it still occasionally m a:q4!:' C as a 'value theory') cleriv s from the category 'utility' or the rd. :i.:os' l' between 'wealth' (for :\Iarx the aggregate of use valul:') :1' : t .. e 'individual consumer' . The point about lich theorie. is th 3t h.o they are abistorical they arc necessarily a' Clcial. For 'indiviuu:lh.' ~.~: confront 'nature' whaten'.r the moue of production; bl:wu:;e .;. theories concern only the individual'~ relationship with natu-\.!'· n I
.'.'ith his fellow man the:- are devoid of social content. 'l'hU3 it .:l- t:lpossible that 'economic:;' can hay a cate~ory , allie' which, \\ t:
is not a 'thing' but a social rdation. Yet running through t .• , - '. vi many of those who would wi. h to 'defend' l\Iarx or 'pwisc' i:. - he concep~:on that thq have a rival value tht!ory to answer. D obb .:-:' of 'the tWO major vall1e thel}ries which have contl.;s tccl the \.: (;o:v~ic field' (19+0, p, u) and proceeds to sugge t that both (he m'l._· .)f course the 'labour' theory and marginal utility analysis) mc(..~ r-:s lr.n 1 requirernc.>nts of 'adequacy': 'Quite a number of thcoric:s of a' U! il
be deri\'cd with no means of choice between them e. cept th ir -: . . l' elegance.' And in a later work he r peats this view in cv ' n -:c': t erms (Dobb, 1955, passim but pal'ticubrly pp. lIe-II). In t l: am' fashion, :\Icck aC'_l!pts P:lreto'~ and Bohm-B:.lwerk's utility "n:11, ::" . constituting an alternative value theory to that of Marx which he - .' to defend (11)36, ch. 6). Both these writers wrongly sec th t; ;r .: . merely expo:;ing the penumbra of approbation with which . de
theories surround capitalism. Put another way, the mist.lke tht!Y OUl
make is to fail to see the significance of the profound tlistinction -...: h Marx and political economy-however uncle:.lrly in this htt er Cl!l.
drew between 'wealth', the sum of material objects and valll"', a . ;1' •
relation :.pecific to capitalism, _ . This is not a minor point of difference with these writers. F i!:
,. closely connected with a number of equally erroneous concep:ior. b
. f which they hold a out value theory. Dobb, for example, h.:G t:- -- t,
ans\ver the qucstiJn: vVby did Marx choose labour as the basi,. f- . h' value theory? Wby not choose capital or land a the category in ~!:-;.n-s of which everything else is computed? Here is the an wcr:
In the case of land or capital, clearly there were serious prac:5:.li obj ections to taking them as a basis; difficulties which wou.: \l
ell"" of value in Rlardo and t1arx 187
ha 'c excttded any of thos which. were harg~d against the labour th ('Ir),. . .. cr' are more dissimilar t }: ,n man- ours of labour. In the case of capital there was the mo-e cn:cial objcction that it W:!.5 iL~elf a \;llu ) depending II pon cher 'JlH S,
in particular UpOIl profit to be carn d. (I9'1 0 , r. 18)
These, appart!ntly w rt: in~unnountable dimculti~.:. T hu,:; :l Ollr is c11cr.;en I Thus the labour tl~l OTY of nlul!! In a s 11 '.,; we ~nn(\ analyse t' . n:tturc of the answer which D bb provides for hi: own • ucstion. For it is 1'1/ the r.'cr:: pnsi1l" of the qucstirJ1l that thi' 'u1Ido" :enlal I'I'ror is • ~.n:ilft'd. Wio:.I\ good reJson did L<:nin on on' l)c(';1~ion ~re k of 'the ~.c.Jlcd "labour" theory of "alue', (JntroJu tiC)n to :'Ia'·x, 193+) rc must n:p\,;~t·-:'\farx is conce:-ned with an an.!lysis of tbc so inl
rcbtions of produc ion and his work n'v r str,I~;; ou:.-idc of thc~c .unit!l. Man's ~(ici~' elation!' under c:lpitalism appL:lr onl., thr\Jugh the rchtions betwl,.('n 'tl-lin(;$' ( ommoJilics). Leaving ~ ~itlc t~ ~i .. p' rticlilar properties :IS use .... a!'.l.eS-\\ hieh 1ar:' says is ;'In arl. of I.onl·ern "propri:ltc to cOlf.n1o.!rc<.'-their o,.~ common qu,llity is ~h:lt 'hey arc
rrodl1cts of ab,-trae: labour, t e (1'_ mtitntivc ml;:l~lI!'t: of .\ hi<.h is lill/t!. In o~her words, the catc<"ory 'v'luc' is onc entirely slIborc.':lJt.,. in both
'ngiC11 and h stor;cal "-':11 C, to the commodil)., Dol J would 11;"...: ::, ).Inrx 'cho:-:e' 12bour- -:\ s bj 'cti\'(! act· bec:m..:c it .. :: ,l'd him to
• \'C c'rt..1in 'practkal' fll'oukms. 'The :t!llClll~ 'It \\ hi('~~ th labU\lr " co y implied' w.: arc told '\\3S that the l:,l'h~"IS(!-\ .Ill ~ bore :t
ttltain rdation to tic ( 'rput :1JlJ u,ing up of hum m .,., '-gil nlld in doing provi...!ed ~ term" hich gay\.! fome mC;'lIin~ to the <iiit inctioll
_t\\~(,11 a gro:;~ an-l. nt!: pro llet a let to the COIlCl.'pt of :'· ... ipill~, und ;\ ai' 'rion for di:;crt::;tia Lng onl! typ~ of tn 'ome frn m :lllo~~\,;r.' (Dobb, t~40' {':. 22)
Here anum .er ~ j~sues :1rc \'ai:uJ, all of tht'm oi (T-r\:':,~ ililportanc' f.,)~:: correct in~L'r rd::\rion of :\1:\l".:·$ wor . Fir t \\'e Sc' Dohb mo 'i nS' directly in the dirL,,-.. ion of Ril;ardo with thl! cmph·,,;s he rl,lCl'~ lIpon quc.,tions of (;:<tn·b:tti'of!. ,Y<;: nee i to recall th::t .~ w .. ~ Ricard.), not \larx, who def: \;d "he t. ::.k 'To d~tl..nnil\l' tlw laws \ hid "l'glJl1t' this
tii.tribu tion (of thL 'oci;:l proJuet bd\\l' II Il.:nt, prqiil f I ' ..... ,rrl'~] ;,' the princip:ll c"e J' .. ein,,: poli-leal economy.' (Hie.r..3u, -' 33. J'. 55)'
II following Ric~rdo. l)IJ1,b j.;; pIa) ing intu the 11.1 I.: ·)f ;> lh. ~': l frolll
.iC:i1 tein onwa:ds, who h;.l\·\: r.lh: \. :H.Tu!',cd ;:"f:lf, ')[ 'll~ ,.r' 1'1'> "alll' ~:l or)' to 'pro\'e' t: Ie e: :sen ... e or 'exploit:ttinn unti ... r c". it.lli '11. But \\. till: 'luant::..th" prnbkm-th:l f the diHribvion of C'1' l,OLi 11 \ e:lth hl'twccn the dOl' c. whi h • Lt it tlted rapit'l:lst finci t:-., 1:11': 's • _ ~1\ preoccur ;;.ion: It ..... al' I.ot, t <:\Jrplus (wa at' I a') , t l' lllXd·'
t t:ll1tlt'diatc c )ns\:.:11£1·;"'n i inl,\'t bJt.! :lnd I1CC\;~'~'-\ i all i tit the :1 t primitl\'e A)(:l.tie:;. ":11. e tit ... lry m<.rdy rl.'lk cc·l> t e p:.rlic,tlar orm, within C<.1 :--it:::', .[11, of t 11' ~ ttl!)r..: g<'nCl'n! l'l:hltion.
This! HI!\ U-: ;:0 ::r.tlth\;r m:n:er, abn 1ll1pli ·d in thi:, ~:11.1{> ~u()'ation-
:.1
700 Geoffrey Pi
th:lt ,r"rx's valuc tht'ory can in scm\} $ nse c empirically \ n;n utili';.\:, lhu value thCOlY of marginal utility an "I .. ;:is. A recent and \ ,~ ... ' rr.d tc,· tboo];: st: ' ~I ' :> •
Thc !wo-c1a,;sieal theory [This r<:f\.'~s to the th r:ory fOrlInd a d by jI!VO\1$ il England :lntl Walrn: , :\I ng~ :, Pareto anll other;:; on the Cooti ( nt in the la:t qU:1rte! of th· l1im t(.'('llth CClltur ,_ GP] is not only cHvorced frolll soci.li rl'al·'y as whole. It is· :11:0 tlivorc .J from the practical n:ahty of evcryday lifc, The bhour thl'ory cun be uemonstratcu \.1 lpir' ';llty, eVen if only in the ::\cns..: that, in the last analy:i. , :III t~ c c\cl1lcnls of the co"t of protiLlt;tiull of a commodity ttnd to be rcJucctl to labo r, and to labuur nlll1le, if one goe:; b:ll'k far t nough in the anal).' (Mandl'l, 1908, p. 7.6)
Oohu cchocs this point \ 'h<.:n he write. : 'It :;CClIlS ckal', (rom tl l1Ulun' of its subjcd Jllattl.:r alld the typ , of :;tatl.mcnts \v bich i r' I;r;:d
to mnke, that an economic theory must be; quantitative in fIJI" 1 : ,
determining l'chtion or rclatiol1s whi 'h fib"'J,e in the C<JIl\ 'n system $houtd be tnpahlc of :'<prcssi n in tern' : of 'luantit'\li\'c ~'n( ie jn the real world.' (19+°, p, 11) But \\h .~tr We must :1:;1' of tho ,' \~O hare; this standI oint, arc thc:I 'qLl1.ntil1ti\c en.ltics in the real wor~ "
If the phrase h'lS any nW:J.ning it mU5t rdcr to (' ' Iegorlc stich a 'f ri c" 'rat or profit' 'ral~ of intcrst' etc, It d t.3 \S, t .. t j:'l, with thl~ realm ri ~1)PeClmllrcs to whicb the vulgar schoul i' c;~ cl\l siycl)' confill<: '. tl realm where reign supreme 'equality and )'lr. Bentham'.
Spccifie"lIy. we can ;):>k Dohb: how do you oropo:>c 0 'mcn ,ure' quantify , :tpitnl' or 'socially necessary labour time'.7 For • r"o, .capital, we agail'l have to repeat, \Va' a socinl relation, the m C:l:, r production in a specific social form-coniroML-'lg the sellers of J.t t power as an alien, r.ocrcivc POWUl'. In th~ S1tn~ way, how may \,.,:' 1-
ltlate' tht.; quantity f sort-,lIy nccc:;';:lIY IJbolir time incorpor:ltcd :nt a commodity? As we have said, this Inter i: but the Cjuant it:! i 'ql1iYaknt of Mnlx'~ nUstr.lct labour \"hi has n category annot uP. r 1Ilpiricnlly within the enpitallst sY$tcm. In any case, th t' 'ch n' nIne of any commodity docs not depend Ipon the productivity of the ahom in the branch of ecoIH.>tlly in which it has been I rnuuc!!d ; I
reflects the productivity of labonr on a socinl scale. In uenlin;" \ \i t
"microscopic' entities we arc forced .to con:ider phcnomcn'l of <macIoscopic' diml!l1sion. In other words, no one (1Il'H10 lily .:lll
;\bstracled from the totality of commodity production; < S we sldi -Ricardo's false method of ab txaction force t}.£S erron 'OtiS' icw UpO:l
im. Society, not Mr. Mandel, can be the onl~ accountant of sociall) l1cccs~ary labour time.
It is clear that the last few mnttCrl' we han;! briefly con!'idered nr.: '.o~ isolated questions which flow from n series of 'p3rticular' mi tak :~ . r r they all involve a distorLion of Marxism in t h general tlil'cdu)1 0 1
law of v~IUQ In Ricardo and M~I'")( 289
~itivj~m . I\fandcl, for xamplc (op. cit., P: 7 ~6) makes this c _r whe:n ,C suggests .1hflt o~e aspect o~ the 3lJrl:rlon,t)' of the M.lt"i5t yallle r.:ulrsis Iks 111 the Jact that ?usmc.ssmcn, ~Ibelt llncom;ciou::.J~', nctually
tiC\! thLiI' products accordIng to the labour theory of value, S\, CC%)' F ," I 1 . "1 ' .,1) takes this POSItIon W 1en Ie \'. ntcs: .\ :tr. s v:\!ue th ory thl1!; has :', great merit, unlike SOI~'lC oth\;r \ Jlue , h:orics [he here inddt.:ntaHy
.;tpt5 that there c.ln be fl\ ;t1 Y:l)ue theom ~ to tpat developed by Marx Ci ,.t of hi:; ritiquc of d'l:;siC:11 1'olitic31 CCOnt my] ofcJosc com':-:"mdcncc t' tbe actu31 accounting s:·tcm of apitatistic business cn:.crpJ'i:;c.': {19.j6, p. (3) Dobb l1l:Jkcs t: ~entj~lIy the 0;:1111: point, if from :l slightly dJil'rcnl :lnglc, "hen he bt.1tcS: .\n cconOllllC law 01" tl'l1lkncy mllst
~!l!C the po~sibility of some actunl nurse of C\l:nts oecurri;\g' (1940, • :.!y), ;lud carli r 'The ultimate critcri:m [for the trade,!l.,..:y" of n
~'l ry] must be the rCCJuin:r kilt of pract icc: the I ypc of CJue~ti" 1 wh;ch 0' nquircs to ,ln~i\\cr, tlle.. 1 trpo.e of lilt! inquiry in hand' Cp. $). lIen!
h:l\'c only a thinly disgu:· 'J form (,f ill':lrum.:nfalisJ/I, the n1tthod w: ich selects its categories. not 3ccorJin; to their congrucnce with ":',orical ol1d sacinl fore :i but ~imply by virtue of thcir ability to Sl t~itl pn:diction!> 'in the 1'1.:;·1 world',n
Tt \\,;1; posjtivi~m, wc must "cmember, which falsely deci cd rh:lt the . dy 'rl';II' s!';icllccs were tho ! lJc:lling \\ it l1 natlll':tl ph IWllle l:1: '1'1:31'
'r ~hc ~-.cn:;e that thc)' nlolle \\em! 'x ct tOflll"h to 1ll3k(" prl·Jict'''!1'' ' But ,.r n;isIH il V01\'5 the Vil'W that the fut,trI. l'Wllution lr 'Hllb can be 'p.'Jietl:J· only to the c'<tent that the 1l1.ll\;ri I ;llld SQci::l1 V.'urlJ ('r'I1!;i~ts : a s"rics (If fixed CjtJ:lJ1titil'S. Bm the 'Iltirl! method of Capital i:; h;j~('d
en rnlil'cly the opposit(; vic\\ -that 'qlJ<Illti :' ('c I_ modity' for l ':lInplc) ~ (,oll~t:ltltly in process of tr:llll-iform:1tion into 01 III r qllOlnt it:cs nnu ,"'iities ('money' It) conlintl~ "itll our ('. amp le:) and tlJclte\.' i ,to IH.' V q:~ntit it!; :\nd IJII31itics (' ':11 .;Ji' in this -Iloil'); this method fllrthe r i :'t!> th:{ t far from heing ,It. omatie. stich' .1nsformatioJ)s 1)(; til' on y ' .. tier ddinitl! historical • nd ~oci31 circl1mstances, \\'l1i('11 ! U5t he (St.ibli~hcd hy :-ciencc. l\larx 1, 0 m ,de dl'H thtlt h':C:1I15C IIIL C .piwli:.t . ;~r TIl is fundtlllt ntnlly all :11 ,'rchic onl'--thut is, C<lnnot b(~ stl l'j~ctl:d to
a riol'i, conscious regulation ("ae11 law of ~he sy,'tl'11l :It' t'l'1~ it elf n';.1
'. :imlly \\oeking average' :1~ he nlah- k:lr in clmncctinn Illtil :,e bw f.:1 \lc.o Ci\'l~n that this is ~~(I, the pinikt.ll lily of rutlln .. l!\~ II' Ul1llot
dealt with in the pC'l'('mptory m:lJ1ncr Dot '). nd (,lb\.:1'1I 1'I)l)IJ h;n" us r.~F 'rc.
Tn cite hut one ca,c. ) II ,\I,t !wn. c C:l1l i\1aI'\,:'~ l. w f tilt, fallli. ': raIl.! \
f prl,jit ~'J1;1bk WI ccmcrc:tl J) to pre !:ct till. flll\l!'l> our, e of ~\li\it<di, .... ·lnplllCl1t? ft!> author Cit in l)' made nil tlch '!aillls ')11 it < belm!', I
fOllllul.lting thin }:1\\' of l\,;il'! I1l'Y, I.e wi,l:cd to ·It·a\\, att~ ntirm 0 the 1 (" dh'lt (n) t 'e rille of profit II.:"" the rll;uLttof ,)1' th\! l'ntire uc ,tll.lt ::Itio'l I Y
J: sS norl (h) tllnt this "cry process \\':1$ profounl.!Jy t.:Olltl~ldicto : and I .. t It':lJ to pcriouic Cli~cs, But Ie ncYt'i r:l-tllldl'd that the pl'u:i:;(;
.',1!1.t tal·ttl b) ~llch cris(:\ cO'lld he PI' eli -t\;o, 1101' I,;\'cn th\.'ir lxact
290 Ci offr ., ?
n1agnitlldc or tirning. A::.. • brx makes clear in many place's it ••• : ••• each erisi was in a sense unique, cktct'lllinc hy the \vho!c pn t r-of c:lpital :lccnmulation; it was there·fore obligatory to c 'amin fisis in it· concrutt·IH';SS and not by mcanq of sOllie silllple fort:" •
Prcci :;ely brt:(lllsf' c'lpitalist soeil.l relatiolH were :llltagoni"li -, based upon the struggle of cla,,!'Ie', \\ hose hislorical intcn-.,t diametrically 0pp0scd, that is gualitati\ t ly difrt:rcllt- no prcd icti a concrde 1I.1:ml' ahout the c\olution of l'co\lomic at~gor' p()~sihk. More prccisciy, in cOllncctino \\ ith the 1110VCIJll.'nt of th r of profit, 1\lao.: Ill.lc\e clear {li:lt he wa'\ ~t. ting a general law oj tella.. whi~h, a" in .tll ";' St~R, inevitaL ly prO(hlcL·~t 'countcr-acting' force-' ..
peration which modified it!"; functioning in importnnt n ';p ct:. T .. indude( the .. tr(·ngth and de ermination of thc \ orkin!.; cl 'we;ight' of which could in no sense be known b~ r(lrehantl in . • depended upon both objective and subje tive for e" amClngr.t '. ' i -had to be I1nmb(;ret1 thl.: rule which a know] Jgc.: of this law WOll] • :
withill the organ; ~H: (l working cb,,' mOH'lnent. 7 Her \ .l\.larx, \\.-, :. 'Hect, warning 'lg.1illSt th e old m 'ch:mical matcrialislI\ which t
that the world coulJlc unJc.:r~to() , I in a purdj elll temp/a/ire I •• :L::r The~e distortiol\s of l\Iarx's method are douhly importlJlt I
they al~o involve, in oLlr vicw, anotht;r lhngcr. This is thl' tend.,: _ .'I reduce Marxism to the It!\"c:::l of 'politic.1! economy' p'\ tieularly it. lutt r's Hj ";trcli:w form. \ ·e \\ ish thercfMc briefly to review. J .. altitude to his pr 'deccs~or~ in tho;: cia sic,l school in order to what \\l; consider to he the funclnr'1t.!ntal break \\ bich Ili work rt.: >r
with this school. Marx's stu Jit s ill th e history (If political ,'Ct)" I
pro\-ide no mere 'appendix' to Capita!; in t::v 'ry Hen 'C TIll JTlt:.S
Sur/>Ius Vallie must hc onsidLrt.:tl as tht.! final volt II Ill.! of (,api indcl.:d Marx intcn(lcd it to bc. For conlainl'd in th ' 'I'hcoriu i detailed c. 'umioatioJl of t e C\ ohllion of the t.ltcgoril.. '\ nlu.' ... -'surplus valuc' n reflccted in thc wor· of the princip,ll Fri,!lh.~ hngJish c(:onomists. But this work shuuld not be takl'n as 'b ~: .' in the conventional sense; it was intendcd as hngds tit one : - ~ notes to pl'O\'ide '(\ detailed critical hi~tory of the pith nnd tn. - • of Political Economy, the theory of ,urplu.' value, tlml dc'. e. parallc.1 with it, in polcmics against predecessors, most or tht! ' n~ latcr il1ve:-.tigated scparatdy in their logical connection in th ~
scripts for Books n and HI.' (Prl!facc to 1\I:1rx, 11)57) 1\.Jar· ,.i-:this work always 'critictlU. " from the vantage point that i-; r.f ! own theory (historical mnteri,\lism), just as the anatomy of the apt.! m~. be studied from the standpoint of its higher, furth r dcvc1opllWr.:, iman. IIe is intcrei-;tccl not merely in trncing th e origin of his own i eo: in paying his intellectual debts, as it \\ cr '. l ~or is he intcre:;tt.:,l l -'y -= exposing the limi tations of the cb<;sical ~chC')ol of which he \\ ' ful:T conscious. lIe aims, throughout the Theories, to probe the L n' dictions in the writings of Smith, Ricarlio, etc., because he sel'e; in :0
I~w of valuo In Ricardo and MI-X 291
A' a 'purer', more ab_ ract ",nd therefor heightenc "p.",.'<:ion of the ~ cAonomic contrudictioM of the capitalist ysterr_ whkh was their
:"...t1 crrlerpinning. It i from this standpoint that the work of Ricard,., is jt;dat:d, il\ an.
:l.n~nd f.lshion. l\lan: nc', r saw his problem a~ OLe fl)l;rcly 0:-
'r~,'"ting the 'disfortion .' .in Ricardo's work, nor of "'TaI~ ~!ng apit, -~l, i.n a naive manner, frc-n thl.! 'stnndpoint of to .... wC'·'"ing cla:ss . • nd ,:1, as anyone acquainteJ with th' 'l'lU'Olits wili ;.no\;., :\lurx \VOlS
.,t\.l) insistent upon dra\\ 'ng ::Hention to Hic;).r..io·::; ';teat 'disin•• -edn\;s~' (obj<.;ctiyit)) as ,·gainst the spccinl plead~ng or. hI thus:ha: ':11:1111 less sycophanl' 't' at bOllght advOl.;ate of .,.?-\c rulin'.! J.1sse!)' is _.!zrx. contcmptuou;:ly d· bs him. But !vI:m, :sln ... --es alw:.ys tha,
i ~.' )'S sinc('re insl:,tCl1CC that the ne <is of I roJ· .etio:'. ~h(JuJd be •. ( .. j aboyC the I!ctionaJ c aim: of any cI'l~S (hl!r~in i:ly he 'di;:
:. :~r·<·t.:dness' of thi lich ~nancil!r) 'oinc;ded \\lth ~he need, of the .'ug c.1pitnlist closs only in th:lt period when lht.: : ou:'''coi ic h::tJ
ry intLfcst in th~ furtht" (.It;wlopmcllt f the p. d'~c~in~ forces. \i.h (he emergence of the lI,ud 'I'll workillg' b~ -, thl. ;!Hb, tit ci::.iv(! or I toe prodLlctive forc("s, tl-i pmgr(.·$sivl! illh.r~st -,.-as :.I~i,:hed and
\ti~;.ti~ic roliti al economy ";·cd. That is why the p<.:,"od .. :0\1' J 1830 t~lls for political l;C'onOlny it:) 'lill:l! ll'isis'; r;ir "'"o's Goctn:lI;$ b 'COlm;
I e b:t. ... is, albeit in :l confl. 'd anti Ilnsati~fo.ctory m;l\,::'cr, fur the ; :lIil I LconOl1lY of 1.:' topi:m Socinlism.
Wh.t' were the main perle.l.!" which Mar. clisc ... rns t.'l tl.c hi.-tory 0: ~r::t!,l economy IIp to it· ignouk collap~c in die iirs': .t:.2rtl'c of the . '::'ccnth century? \\-hilc Peay 311 IH' rt'g. ,·dl.(\ .$ th e fl'\~;', in rr futht..r
?! tl.c <cill1ec, r'n;nch I'h." iccracy rcprt.:~elltl) the fir_~ tr ,I,; ~cho{)l in • I:lical c~'onOnly. The! wr;tt;:':; \\ ho formed this $(' 1?Ol ~)"l~t .0 lhat ~m.l~ ()f production Were. f liysiL logical rorll1~. :IT i.i.;)g out of the ~ it1C:~ of prodncti"n an ill(,ippcndcnt of \\ill tlnd PO':tL ..... Seeing Ti!: c in production, th", s he tIll pJOC 'I'd~ to tr,tc-: the; 0: :1e~ti()n3 ~t\\cen production ;'Inti cir ui:nion. Th' wc:\k:'1I':-;~l!;:; /If Ph.,';'\OCJ";1CY ~ th~.t 'production' \\.1S .ILl sc neon 1">\('ly tlnd no~ ab"lUC!)" fo:"::.(m:-ng to QUCfill:1Y and his followers, labour <Hi tl ~ l:l.i.J. \\.1' alone!
Uc'j, I.! of V:1Juc. But thi' limited view, :l rct1"nil):\ of d\1! li'll;t~d 'c Tt.1 hed in the e\ 0 ntion of the cit,htl'Cllti (~ll~~ - french eco
,) . :1 . y. \\,5 nunethdcss ..icchiYI; for the fllture :.naly ·i.:: t t:.:! '::'i it.llist
·cm. For th(! c()11tr.1dictions at the hC:lTl of Ph··siI)A~.lC· an):;<.: ~!ltially from its at~\ mpt te. c'-linin fC\lda\i"ll ircI'r' a 1:. ~ : lllm:is-
' •. Itl; bourgeois point . r ,iew" . :fhc ~Fealilt of r(}tio IS mU'k~ a new leap 1'01\\ ar"! ~n i. ... it :;eui .1 Our In gl.!l1cral' 35 ',lltle ex atitv". It was from l:~ time o:1,\ards \ I ,. . I 0 • • : p0olt1<:a economy Co uld be pI:.. d UpOI1 1\ Inllch E::n'r ~hl,.'o\"llC:.ll ~ ... Hut again, Marx sec~ :he material h.15i5 for tb. ", .. nee \\ !lich ~:"li 't's \ 'or!- con<;titlll\:". T he cat 'f ory 'Jb. tract lab,,":' wi.ich . ~lllith v) ;cctly sees as forming the basis of VJiu' \\';" an ~:'7 ~~~-ic..tI1 of the
292 G Trey.
economic cakgurics which were being creJt('d by the d vc\oor. the class strHggle; for here W3S rd lccted a society "here t'.~ v_ • b ond bctwe\!Jl an indh'idual and hi~ labour was in the f -~c ,iolcnt ru pture, Smith' s ind:"fcrenct! to the particular lypl.! f "hen con;.;idering valut- - hisrc:l l point of criticism agaill~t Ph) lOe; implied the ('xisteuct; of highly deyd oped yarkties o( COtlcr' tc; 1 none of \\hich wus predomin:lJ1t,
But, as in the e:l.st! of Phy,iocrac)" so now with Smith: his :\c.i;;u: ..... theoretical un c1crstnnding \\'13 sevt'rdy limited and n~ccss:lri' .,. . was a 'tr:ll1sitiolul' fignrL~ in 1':.Yl:'ry sen".; , Thi , was particularly~" i~ fact that his work continues l e clRssificntory and dl!scriptivc em:) of his llriti f. h jl1\:<.!ecl'ssors-a ' seen most clearly in Petty 's r~!, Arithmetic-and the more abstract approach which wa:; to be fOll
Ricardo's \Hit itlg: :lOllh .. fifty year:> lat~r . The 1l\'\ttcr ean b~ put way: Smith was on the one. lund concl'tlleci with a search f-n t' ab:;tr:lct laws which woulJ accur3tely t'xpn'ss the innenno~t wo:-~: _ capitalism as a sy:tI;:m~hence thc importanc{. fot· his work oi . concept of the 'hidden h.md'. Thi' side of hi~ work-wJ~ich l\l:m: j •
to :lS its 'esoteric' C1cllll'nt i set:n in his famou' phrase 'It is the benevoh:nce of the butch r the brt.:wer or the baker that \: ~ Pill' dinner but fHlm thei r regarJ t their o\\n intcrl'Sl'. On t' eo:' .. hand Smith's work conta ins also j co nsi derabl e ',-oteric' clt:n. '1 •
is a concern not for lhL~ inmr-strllcture nf ph 'nomena, but fer' out\, arJ m:l'l ifl.!$taLioTl ' . :\IallY cxampks or this naive 'dtl~lity' i, ~ Smith wns unaware, could be dr:ml1 from the rVeallh of iVa ' .r clsewlll.;re. But it is seen most clearly in hi., cO!lception that t ja \'alue only holds in ;t 'rude and primitive' state f society, alHI I .t.',t· .
abandoneJ once:.: 'mo(lcrn' socidy i- rl':'Ichetl. Smith wa' thus gll •
of allowing immediate irnpressions of competition bct\\'c~n the 1 r. • of economy to intrude into and ultim:1tply overthrow his b". ic ~ retical starting point,
I n this rc-;pect, Ricard's work involved n significant advar. ' .• ,. should in any case rl;!tnember that he first took tip the study of •• t: conomy as a rc,;sult of th feeling of dis:atisCtction hI! ' ·IH .. ricllCt •
the theoretical and practical answers provided by the W~, .. th Natiolls, For Marx, his work represents n decisive attempt to l: :. politic:11 econo.llY as an abstract scierrce dealing with the la" ~h; governed the workings of the capitalist system. Ricardo, in ::e iIl~i sts that the science can no longer ' operate with 'description' • U one hand and 'analysis' on the other. It must, starting with it_ principle- the detcrmin:1tion of value by lnbour .timc-makc all t .' () !-
ward appearances of the system 'an ' werable' to it. , . , This advance in method, what Marx at one point call:; 'H.: -:
great serl,'ice to the science' can be judged by :In exarnin.ltio~ of i! latter's Pri1lciples. This work, consists, in its third edition, of th ~::) ~ chapters; the essential theoretical matters :U'~ however giveu in th
'-
~" 1'" of value In Ricardo and Marx 293
- the rest consist of elaborations or applications of pn:1ciples . ~~"ciJtcd at the start of the work. How does Ricardo proceed? lIe ~~s with a statement .of the determination of v3 lu~ by la,bocl r time hich is much less amblguous than that to be found 10 South. In the '.~ sections he takes up a number of questions- the rnO\'(;::lent of
: ,j,'c wages between different branches of economy, the varying • • J~lt1rc of capital between the different sectors, etc. Of each he asks : - ) ,,!.:It extent do they overthrow or force the modification of .he law ( \ .. Iue as already stated? We give, as an e.xample of this pro~edure, ' .. f'l'ening paragraph of the scction dealing with rent : 'It re -:',::.ins to
! Closidered whether the appropriation of land, and the cor"cqucnt t::tio!1 of rent, will occasion any variation in the rcl:'tti\'C ~'alue of mmoditics, independently of the quantity of !:tbaur nece.,;~ar)' to
"~l1ction.' (1953, p. 67) lIe thus tries to 'hold fast' to the law 0~' yalue, • ucn'J$ Smith had concluded as we h a\'e noted, that it haG to be
piJ !y abaudoned in the face of the immediate appcnrane(:s of the ~~crging economic system.
1ilUS it can bc said that Ricardo posed correctly the probkr:: fac ing · 'Hical economy. lIence for 'Marx the 'great theoretical satl~:·..:{' tion' 't rJd by thc c::Irlier chapters of thc Prillciples as :lgainst the 'diffuse
.• meandering' work of Smith. The who!" bourgeois economic system based firmly upon one Inw and all phenomena "hieh ,ci...':1cd to
• nl~ il't \I ith it were exam in d in its light. IIcre the clue to :hc real :"'Illing of the English ad'lgc 'l t's thc exception that prow's t .f: ru le';
• • Pic.1rdo, after neatly setting forth the 13\\' of yalllc 'd.:mo -,stratcs .. :n thi-: law governs even those bourgeois rclarion~ of productioi. wh ich C":\ ' "Hiict it most deeisi,·c1y.' (Marx, I97 I, p, 60)
iI!'r,:, howcycr, lVL:./s praise for Ricardo's gnat historical ~chie,'e,'nt ('nds, Each advance in political (;C01101OY UlIl be seen as :! 'criti_ m' of previous writers-Smith of macantilism ; Ricardo of the ridtl, of Natiolls , etc. But Marx's attitude to\\ ., l J S ~ieardo «::'not be
11 ;'is in :my way anlllogous. For each of the writers who ~ ::-~-cc c!ed
~ :. rx accepted l!tat the laws of the capitalist s '£ tU11 were akin to the '.\$ of nature , As we have seen this was ::\1an:'::, main obj..:ction ~,) their
, ~;. which he s<-'es as the source of its ultimate brcak-up. But it \\'JS an objection directly ticd in with another : a recc ,,:lition
, : empiricism donJinated the method ofla,,~ic:Jl Cconon1\', :a this .n', ,tion the central role which l\ Iarx ascribed to L ocke sho~l ~ not b'
! :. tttn: ' .. , his pllilo:::ophy 'crved the basis for nIl the iJ~~i ()[ the . ~J1t.: of s l1b~cquent English political economy.' (1 969 , p , 3~7\ , f~;l in:
, ! h all laler hourgeois economists, as with A(bm 'nmh, : .. ck of • ~,!",tica l undcrstancling need cd to d isti.ngui5h the difTl:fent ft1:-:ns of
Lomic relat ions remains the rule in their CO:lrse grabhinb 2~ and :(::,('q in the empirically available matclia1.' (1969, p. 92) .' 11 Hicanlo 's weakne:ses ref1ect this cmrtricbm and re~ol\'e :hcm
t,!S into this : that while he starts \:orrectly from the law of \'~\l e he
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'f .:._ -l;:w of value In Ricardo and Marx 295
_:"I.f1omena, as in the vulgar conception, nor were they merely counter-.. -cd to their source, the law of value, as in classical economy. They
~ re now grasped as lIeccssary appfara17ces, contradictory, opposite, ... _ni.fotl!tions of definite, historically determined social rela"ions of -;(Jduction. To take one illustration of this method: at one point Marx .",',cs of the transformation of value and price of labour power into the
',;}:11\ of wages:
This phenomenal form, which Ir.:l 'es the actual relation inyisible, alld illdeed shows that d:'rect opposite of that ,'elation ll!mphasis added-GP], forms the basis of all the juridical notions of uoth labourer and capitalist, of all the mystifications of t e capitalist mode of produc:ion, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shim of the vulgar cconomists,
(1961 , p, 54-0 )
We must now indicate the connection between Ricardo's faulty ~'ractions (Marx .calls them 'violent' at one point) and the grave -::,)[5 which he made on all the quC':' ti.ons of poILtical economy which '::t his work open to ready attack by Ji '; opponents, This question can'r ,: be systt'matically dealt with ; we shall merel~' indicate some im•• :1;~ t issues. In the first place, R;cardo failed to sec that under - i'il:dislll, prices could ne. \\,,1" coinc iJc wlth Y:llues, but ,,"crc trans
• -)r;ed into 'prices of production' around \\'1 .... ic1l prices in t1lrn oscillated, .'= 'oHEng to the fluctuations of supply and demand.8 Bcc:IU c Ricardo t ... J dircctly to reduce all prir'cs to \':.I!ues (and lhis is the method of
nxcdure that writers like Dobb would ha\"e us adopt) he ended up, as :u .. shows, with a false theory of Tn:t, a serious matter in his case as it
~~tituted the enrn..:r-stone of his :,;"gtem. Ricardo tried diTCCtly to '!;,hc,ld the law of yaille; this forced him to deny the possibility of .', c!:/!c rent (rent on the least fertile land) and he focused his attention
:'lsi\'cly on the movement of d1f!erential rwt ( ('nt earned on land of '~;')'i!l~ fertility). Marx, in his critique of J<icardo, est:lblish~s the
. :bilit_, of absolute rent, by demonstrating the indirect operation of >;~ ~ \w of \ alue , via prices of production.
H ·\';.rdo also consistently confused the genc!'ic cal eeory, smplus value, WI '!I or.1: of its specific forms, pro fir . This rC$ulted from his f:mlty .... . c.c.:ption of capital, which he sa\" only in its immediately anli lable • !'m ns 'storcd up labour'. This in tur!"'. stcllimt:d frllm his \I rong undel"• .. ':ing of the relation bet\\'C'l'n the "ouree of a category (in this case · ;:plu:; value) with its various forr:1~ of appearance (n'nt, interest, ·o~!). ?\Iarx shows in Volume I of Cc;pital that. surplus value is creat d
'1 :!1\: s?~ere of production, in the al:~agoni,tic relations bet\\ een wage >o'J:- ::\ ·d capital. It is subsequently divided hetween the three classes
') be on this surplus according to definite ~'nd objecti\'c laws, but ',\"S wb:h arc only analysed at a bttr "tagc. ~ot that this procedure
j " I
296 Geoffrey p. ~<:
could be rc\"ersec1, by movin; from the rcalm of appearance bwj: l ess.;:nce, as )Iarx makes clear:
The tramformation of surplus value into profit must be ckduct 1 from the transformation d the r3~e of surplus value into the rate of prl"lfit, not ,"ice versa .. And in fact it wns rate of p rolit which was tbe historical pl"lint of departure. Surplus vallie :11 d ratc of surplus val ue are, relati\-ely, the invisible and unkno\\!) essence that W:1l1t invcstig3ting, while rnte of profit and thl'rl:iot t
the appearance of surplus value in the form of profit are r( veal on the su:-fac:c of rhe phenomenon . (I959, PP' 42--'\-3 )
/ Because Rieardowrollgly ~dentified the category 'profit.' with : ~ more general category 'surplus value' he wrongly conclu(kd th;l t ,:-:
rate of profit could only change: if d-:c valLIe of wage goods chang\:J -:~ other 'vvords, and using MaL"::; terms, only if the rate of surplu' \ t';, altered, 1\Iarx reject-:d thi~ conclusion, By dividing capital into 7. I1r:, 1 ,,'
capital (that .portion, of ca?it~1i adY~1nCed in the form .of wngc:s) . r ~ cor:stanl Cfl.pli:a\ (that portlOl1 expended on raw matenals, he'1t, I, i.~ power, machinery, etc.) i\larx \yas able to arrive at his catl'gory d,,'": 'orzan ic composition of wpit:ll', the ratio of constant to variable C.1i':1.,: 'Th-i3 was plaed at the c~ nt,e of his th,;ory of capital accl1nm: .. ~i(:l and the potential brl!akdown 2.Ssociated therewith. Here ind,'t'l: ','.' a revolutionar;' dcvclop n en t. The only possible barrier to the fun!:: (" development of the procJuu:\'e forces which RicafLlo's ,york ,.:1
allowed was associated with ngr!Cillture. Ricardo had assumed th:1t ,\ n:' 1\Ian~ scornfl:1!y tcrt11ed the 'so-called law of diminish ing retta operated in agriculture; t~e w~.king of t~is Jaw wo~lcl ultimatdy. i': Ricardo, force up thl! pnce ot corn whlch would 111 turn kad k J' ,
increase in wagt:s and produce a tendency for the rate of pro(j · : dec1inc- -a pro"'pect which Sf'l1t shivers c1o\-vn the spine of the millio~ ... ; ,banker. (J Hence the net:d for a 'hef\'.: class struggle' against the \.;n. interest if this. ominous tendency were to be checked. l\Iarx W:b :lL -to shoW, howen:r, that there were force' quite internal to the nC';Un111'
tion process \vhich provided potential sources of breakdown; he \\ thuS able to reject 3.11 'explan4tion,;' of capitalist crisis which n it": . upon the im~ortation of .'outside' factors-:-in Ricard~:s ca~e hem.) :. sphere of agnctllture whIch l\Iarx recognised was rapldly bcco!1Hn: • force increasingly subordin te to industrial capital. Marx went 0:1 :
shoW that'" iTh the 'progres...c:, of industry-' there was an illC~[)r1\l!'!' t endency for the rate of pron:: to decline through a tendency lOr 1 .
organic composition of capi d to rise. (We shoulL1 recall, lJl)"\:c":('~' 'what was said above about the pos ibility of this tendency 11<.l!"" p:1odified in its operation.)10 •
But the inadequacies of classical economy were revealed. m~, clearly and fundamentally in its analysis of the commodity. It 15 t ~~, question which we now WiS~l ~o deal with in that it will enabk \ !S : •
Text cut off in original
29B
Her ,e, 2ccura:dy spcukin; :\Iarx was '\Hong' 2.S be r::rnself rel'ogn: .
,\·hn at ttc bcginnio;:; of this chJpter, we 32id, ;.[1 cOIn,;-:cn ?ar1~nCt~, l~lat a comn1odity is both a tlse-\':i!ue and an exch:ll.' _ ';~Ill:: [for] ' . , a com "odi.~: is a use-value or oc:::ct uf ltiltt:;, AAd a ",tlue. It n1'lI1ifc-sts i:~df as thi::; two-.:olcl t::lng, th ,1t it i.;. , '=5 scan a.:: it:) value aSCerts 2.r1 tndependcn: :orm-\'iz, t ~.c f(',f: ;
, of exchange vaillt'. It never assumes this form \'. htn i!;oi::kd ' ... I 1 ' J d' I h , .. h ' on y wnen p :IC(: ll1 a 'va tie or cxc <loge rc_atlOn Wit anotn':,
CnJI11-.:cJity of H diffcrei1t ki .. o, 'When once We k!10\v th:5, :U\::l I ::I mo.";e of r.;,\ptc~;~ion caes I'O harm; it sin'..?ly !"t.:-',c:s as
abbrc·;iatio;l. (196 (, p. 60)
T:,e m06t generalised ,'alue form taken ',' COi ... nocJit:d cou:-~c' the money form (one C(}3.t = £2). J}.1o;x see?..J, in h;'~ of the "i.'alu~ form, LrJ tr{/~e thi' genesis of this 1IW':(": fon~! from t~e ;r.:n' strltc::ae 0.1 the culllllmd/./y ..1!;d to demonstrate Z!.; fllr:. :",r d e1.·c'tOI"1:l H ••
the f arm oj capital. 'Here howe\'er, a task is set JS, the perfo:-m:ll ..:~ ""hic::" has ncyer been atte:nptc:d by bOlllgeoi~' ('conomy, t::e. tJ :
t racL.'1g the ge:l<~~is of thi:;: :noncy-form, of de..-dopir:J the c'\:~'rc:~ of va.ille lr.1?lied in th(; valu.:::-relai:ion of commo~:ties, r:.)m it.:; sin.p! almost im?erceptible outline, to the dazzling money-form_' (\!.;:!'t,.
196r, pp. ':'7-8) In gent.:al, ::,Iarx ,vas once :-nore sho\ving the o!i.gin cf ;lH !-:
'appe2:-anc;::s' within the cflp: talist system and at .. he ~ne tim", r oir r-to the ba. is for their o\'cnhl'O'.", Thus he cx?lains t:1at t:1t! C0:-;t , -
diction within a single co:nmodity (as a. unity of a llSe-\'a: l: l' 2nd. value) are necessarily overcomc only through :he relations b;~'.;~ tWO commodities in what :\Iarx calls thc 'ac<.:i ccnta:' or 'c!P'!I:':I.U:.
form (one coat = 20 yard.:- of lirten). 'Hence t'::e elementary rd, n ..: value of a commodity is the e.ementary form in \'i'ruch the :::0;;;= .. !
cont:l.;ned i.:1 that commod.ity, bet\ 'cen use-vuke and Yalut, h~t J ~ ..
apparent,' OIurs, 196r, p. 0') Here are !ivo crutial pOi.i1tS. First, the catt'gory nlue Oill or.')
appear as f.::r:clumgF.-~'({I/le; the two cannot be torn :lp:Ut, as so;:nc: :ni . they C"'..Jl w;,en they argue tbat the category 'Y~Je' could co-t inlll!, •. exist ill. socialist economy \y.,i le i-..s form of appearance, exch~:: s:.;- \.t!' . would dis2ope:lr,u Second, Clnd connected \\ :th this poi:- _, , .~l" insi"G that' 'exchange-value' arises from the c:::.:egor:,' \'alut!, an.tl a·' vice versa. 'Our analysi: h3- shown that, the fcrm ned expr{.~"; \ ): \ r: t he value of a commodity origin::!tes ill the nih ~re of "aItle, :11lt! :l that" ::..!ue and its magnitude originate in the mode or thelr t::'-:P:-(:s" .• as exchange-value.' (Ivlarx, I96r, p. 60) Here We hay\! seen en: ::;, t .:" of the different conception of :\Iarx from the ::tter \"Ulgar .. cor:.::, wh ich taught th:J.t exchange could be examinee qui:e indl' ~ ncil!n ..... of the relations of production,
1\12...-x now subjects the 'elementary' form to det:J.iled eXl:-:-.ln,1: : >:.
I r ' ,Iue in Ric:lrco ;;nd Marx - f"!t ~ ..., '"' ~ ....
• ;: .. cusscs the three 'peculiarities' of the form '20 yards of linen ,I: ( ) . (h '1 " )' 1 h ' .' . rC:<itive form = one coat t e equl\'a ent ~orm ,W len e examUles , role of the equiva!ent. 'The first p~cu)i arity th .:.: strikes us , , , is :~ , . ' usc-value bears the form of manift:statio~, the phenomenal '~r.1 cf its oppo:ite, yalue .. . the second peculiarity, , , is that,concrete ~"ur becomes the ;'orm under whic:l its opposi.e, abstract human
. '1tJr, m ... nifests itself , , " a third peculiarity . .. namely that the •• ~ ur of private i.ndi\'jduals takes the form of its opposite, labour . "t(':h ,,;ocial in its form, (M:lrx, 196r, ? p. 56-8)
:-.; ·x'[ WI.' see how tLis accidental £0r:-:1 leads to th e: 'expanded' form "IT with the dc\"eJo?ment of capitaL:n. This is 6\'cn bv '20 yards
· ':;;ll'n c_-: one coat 0: 10 Ibs of tca, or 40 Ibs of rotf(;e;, etc. This ~1 hrings out what was only i.mplicit in the a..:cidental form 'It
•• cme.; ph.in that it i~ not the exchange r;f cOn1!l1oditi ,_s which regulates • t ::l.!~;nitude of thcir Y:llucj but, on the contrary, th .. :- is the n1agnituJe
· li,·:ir \':.Jue which controls thcir exch;:;r;~e proporti ,ms.' (;,Tarx, 1961, i j) But this expanded form suffers [rom gra\'c ' defecls' in that i.t
n incomplete form-:he cr ation of c\'cry new cor.~modity lcngthel1S • c'l.:in and thereby fu rnishes the m a:t.rial for <1 f:- ci'h :~pr,~ssi n of • t·, 1 kncc out of th t-:::c contradiction;; ,-riSl'S rhe 'g;;~\:ral' \'alue form
,,_ {'lat, 10 Ibs of tea, ;'0 Ibs of COITLC, t: C. = 20 yar.-:s of linen). This 'at- thl.: \\lay for tLe ("nergl'11 e of th l': !l.O 1Ly for.:: "hich is in fact ,~.t ', 1 "ith this general form e;cer= that gold '.ow rtrIaces th(;
. :: of our example. Thus has "-Ian: traced the s.eries of logical. 'rical transitions frc'm the c(lmmod:, . · for; :l to t:le monl'Y fo"m , ,,~ hl! is able to enci this section (the third 5..:ction of the epening j1tlr, :'tTarx 1961) thus ; 'Thc simple comr:1odity-f J rt'l is thprefore
.:: !/r7n [emphasis adced, GP] of the r:.loney form.' The riddle of ~,~y is :;olvcd :
'\fon(y is:l crystal formed of necessiry, in the CQu;-se of exchange, \1 hereby different p~oducts of labour 2rc v::crlcll:y equated \\ ith onc another and thus by practi.ce CQl1\'Lrtl"J i,,:*o commodities. Th(' historical an d r:ogressive c:xlcns:on of l"\ch:1f-g~ dt:Ydops the "ontr,'!st latent in cor1"Jmodities, betweLn the U 5e-\':~!l.l e and the \,,!ttC, The neccssity of giving <1n extc,'flal .::o.pre:~i0n to this contrast for the purpose of c()mmerci -.J intcrc.) lJr~t.. urges on .. he t::; tablishment of an independent form o( \':' h e. :1nd finds 1:0 r(',;t until it is once .1Jld (or all sati5-::1ec! by ti lt: ,~3~rLntiation of cOI1mlOd ities into commodities and il1onc~'. (. I ,,-~') I9or, p S~) • I
l.r y now is Marx able to unJcr"land tre my::.t~ 0· 0' :he commodity ~1 \\ hi h is treated in he famous scction : 'The Fe,:':;hi,;m of Com'it:"s and the S(crd tilcreof.' He cxp ~<;.:.ns, :der l.ts in\"l~stigation '.1.' c!':lilcntary form of value lind its i·urthl: d,~\ ,,:!oplnent, th ,~t . r capitalism ; (a) the equality of hunur. labour is e 'i'rcssed not as
, ,
"
~1
',I
I' l
'j
tl \
this equality but in the :·onn of distinctly different corn rn(),J. ; .. , as linen and oyercoat.>; C~) the quantity of social labour tim ~ ~~ ' in each commodity is iCct expressed in a direct cotnt'3. riso. ; but in the indirect phenomenal form of equal quantities of .. '. relations of people ta 'e t:'e necessary appearance as n:btiol'.:' • ::: things; (d) the social cha;-actcr of labour, that is, its re :!tior ~ human output, appears :::. ; something else, as the value fl.':: •• I "
multitude of commodities to one uni\'er~al equivalent (:do ne-Having establisheJ the;t:nesis of the money form, :'IIarx t:: ' .
how this can, under cC:-":lin historical circumstanc(s. Ie.,': 10
emergence of capital. '\-:;.lue ... suddenly prescntf it;:df 2.;.> J.:
depclHlent substance enc..:.wed with a motion of its own. , " 'r, in process as such, capital.' Thi' transition is reflecreJ in the (-:.c, I: ' schema which l\Iar:-.: discu sses ; under simple commodity p :T'~l!~' we have C-lvI-C (co:1::.moditit.s-money-commoditie') bu: t: " '
capital M-C-M (money-commoclities-money), In the fo rm~ _ ,,'(: " that means of circul2.tion, 3S a means of purchasing \\ hat 0 :': 'It
in the latter it is turned in~o itl> opposite-now the owner of ti: ::.c of production uses money to buy what he does not need to . :...his capital, the Ltriving for ;:e of production.
As we have several times said, the transitions involved in tl ! ~; "t' ,
mcnts from 'commodity' ,) 'money' 'were historical as well :l.i .' • '
movements. l\1arx makes ~lis clear when examining the \'arj ()'_~ .1"
forms:
It therefore follows th2.: the elementary value-form is J.! ~(j' • primitive form under \1, hich a product of labour appear" historicCllly as a commodity, and that the gradual transfor.·. of such products into commodities, proceeds pari pasSlt wi the development of the .-alue-form.' (196r, p. 61)
But these developments should be not conceived of in a ml ~: W'i'y; one can say that 'c~:pit31' is 'latent' ,Yithin rh 'com::-::A~ ' However, it is only under c rtain objectiVe:! conditions, the O.lIt . :..... •
long historical processes, ,n:lt this potential can be real i:iL~ '- n · circulation of commodities :L"1d the existence of money in one c; . of its functions can and has ?re-existed capitalism by many hl1:;" . • ~ of years. It is quite otherwise 'with capital.
The historical conditior''';; of its ex,istence are by no mean.::; p with the mere circulatio:'!. of money and commodities. Jt C:l.::
, spring to life only when the owner of the means of proJuc:.. and subsistence meets in the market with the free laboure: selli~ his labour-powe:-, And this one. historical condition" comprises a world's hislery. Capital, therefore, ruUlOUncC$ t:1: -' its first appearance a new epoch in the process of social proc.r; ..;' (Marx. 1q61, p. 170) , '
. _ . c; alue in Ricardo and Marx 301 , ,
' \-; ... cid l\farx spend so much time on the problem of value. 'Vc :1
_:~ re.:al1 that this question finds much fullcr treatr:1tnt in Capital ':.:-:, ~::'dl it. docs in the Cn'tique (1859) and was re\ i<:cd no less than "7 ';mes, wlth the help of, Engels, Kugelm2nn :md others, between
~,,~ :.:t'te:- datc and 187:2. He did so precisely because he ",ished to ~ •. :.- :;;:;h -he link betwt:en the internotl structu:'e of the commodity and • "r.eif: tcned expression of the contradictions within he commodity
":- i:1 :he form of c.al'ital. Here was a c1ccisi\'e brcak with classical '-A;nv; because this l2.tter had ignored the Yaluc fo:-m (in tum a ._ :-::10'" of its ~cccptance of <;:apitalism as a 'natu ral' mode of pro
c:.:cn) ~[ had failed to comprehend eithcr th: nature of money or of :J.':.<J.l~ For classical econO!ll~', money was merely a :-:1eans of o\'er: . ...:.g be difficulties of barter; many of the carly Uto:-ian Socia11sts,
,:::::i-;~d in Theories of Surplus Value h~J IJl;tray~'d a ~iI1l ilar1y nai\'e ''''.~, i,)~ when. they had proposed the abolition or money while
... :-~::::ng .::ommodity production, equivalent to :memp:.s, ommented "f _ - tv retain Catholicism \\'ithout the Pope. SUI'ibr:y, as \\'c ha"c ~ ':~..,.i'; noted, for Ricardo, capital was Dev r seen as a :oocial relation - .. : :~cr:::~' as accumulated labour. lIeJlcc for :\ rarx ;l "resentation of
'! :e:.>J ~ature of capit:tl-not a thing but rather a' ddinite .:ocial : :oj:;:tiOCl rebtion-inyoh'cd him in :l critique of politic<:.l economy.
!'r':e:;s ,\YC accept the lilL'\;:S between 'conlmodity'-'mo:1cy'-'capital' " '", ~.'1c -mity of Marx's thought is immcdiatdy ruptu:-ed and a fatal "(. - :.,n:.::k against historical m:lterialism. \\'c mu!'t rep",at : Marx did
. _ :.: 11 H'erdy to demomtrate the cxploitalion of the ' I'o:-king class-it .. ,_ ssd that this is implicit in Ricardo and cl:rtain:,;" brought out .... :": Ric"rciian !.'ocialists long before Marx rnbar;:ed upon his 0', -mc ;.tuJics. Nor did :\THrx wish only to show that thi. eyploitatioll i
"
'I I,
.".:.: c;Jw:ic to the system. 'What he had to establish was the manner in i n::h the tendency to develop the productive forces ,ame into in- i ea< .. 1.g collision with the social relations cf production. ] n other I ~ J:-':':. he had to show the rdation between the contradictions of the I
.Il.:'.Cl.:""~ I::::ion process and the social relations (If p~oduc:ion, the basic : -:,;:~-:;,.o io:l of which was to be sought in thl. ;lIt:! y~is of :hc rehtions ! !\\-.~:! commodities. It was central to M:arx's nld!1I.lU ~ J trace inner, I .' .: .. -clo:::ed contradictions to their fullest ~~iT~·<."" i'_tn. S :"'lking of the ' • t;-~c:-(;;."Sing division of labour under capitali.m he 110tCS, ' •.. the, : . -:-: _1 development of the antagonisms, immanent in a giyen form ,
. ~ .: :uC'..ion, is the only way in which that forl11 r)f Fc.dllction ,m ' - o.:.oo~\·d and a ncw fo:-m established.' (I959, p. ;-:is)
-:>,_-·::lc.illy: we do not accept t:mt there is a Sepal~ t: :'::ll'xist 'theory , • ~:!. ::ab: crisis' if this is taken to mean that thl! all:!;ysis vf capitalism's
,:"':,iic-.i')ns can in :1Oy way be considered ap:trt fro::1 the results • - .:.."'! contradictions as revealed in the proc~5s of capi:.3.l aCC\1n1ula
.. «- .ct ::.his important re:pcct, we must state that Oil .. ': more what -::1 ~ " lied the 'Dobb school of political ~(:()nomy' G considerably
l-J3dequate, ~ot only do t:-. cse \\;i ters f:u1 entirely to deal y:', cc;estion of tr,c form of VULc, l3 b'.!t we actually find Dobb :' .. :, ~ ~".:pporting those classical v:cws wl-Jch :\Iarx \Va at pains ',., 1"",
Thus he \\Tr:cs, speaking of clU$sical economy, 'money c· .i .. :-.t':rlecreu in t dC determin;Hion of exchange values, so for t . .::
: :-'!''lon could :he "amount o~ emaud" be regulated ac; a fa~t c' : • ;:-jning thc proccsst.:s of pro,:::.::tion and exchange'. (ICHo, pp. I:-~J
Equ111y saious is the tn '1."::::lcr i!1 which thi, samc group of· =;'.' b~ pb:cd a :lgill line betw~C'n their exposition of ' crisis thc. ;,,;,,' ... '','2, ut! theory' , Becau&e of this., they must tend in the direction ,~f v::..riant of K Yj1t.si,lIli:;Jn, T h!i:. latttr theory starts from the co:' c(:;.. oi 'eS'ective d ,:T, ;1. ... 1J' (borro\'. ed in its essentials from Maltlm;;) u '_, i:-: isohtion frorrl the stt'uct'-!rt: of production. Sweezy's latc.> .• (3aran and S" t:t'zy, I966) is :!lmost purely Keynesian in form.' l ~"o.; s:"''':'!;larly acct:p:s this divisior:. between what jg conventional!: '\~t ~" a:; the 'micro' ,b against the ' r:-tacro' problem whcn he attemprs 3: C ..
point to exph>.in the relative lack of any creative work in the : '", , y 22ue theory in terms of th\;' fact -hat the ?ttention of l\bru" :. n¢""",,~~:1I ily b.:'.:u turned on to other, 'theoretical problems t 'c. , . p=- )bL;:n of tht: "breakdown" of capitalism) which are of mor" . ' I: !
ar:d ilmnedi3te relevance to the policy of the working cla's mOw- ...... 1.
(}. ic-ek, 1956, PF" :.!o2- 3) ,\.t Ont: blow, the uni iY of :\Inrx's conception is broken 3:1..1 .... .
cO:lce::sions to yu.lgar econom\" art: made, For here we sec not ;:- .:-r;1
a :-::o\'e !n the c:Jt'ction of Ke~'nes , There is also a L'lcit admi$,,: I):! :,._. w-"'lteYe!.' the sLcngth" or ' :"I.i:,;-x;"t politic~>l economy' (and f~o:,. < ar5":.!roent of this p aper, it should be clear that this i a c:1tcgcr:- t! ~t ca~.not b accepted) vulgar economy may be better able to ., .. :: ' nli .:~oscopic, sho~'H'un phl:no:nena, This indeed has long b\.· .... ,! ':' ex?~icit stamlpo!nt of :1 trend amongst :\Iarxist commentat ~' : p':2cip:tlly by the late Oscar Lange. On.ce more the implic.1.t;.:.~ t:h:5 p05i~.ion are not confined. to purely theoretical matters. }\,!,
im?ies that some forl11 of marrbge may b e arranged between :\13:£. an.:2ys;s and neo-cla sical 'price tht:ory' (hO\v there can hi.: '1 i . thC"J')' Ul the absence of a value theory is never explained) ir: ~ c so,','i.ng of 'economic problems' in all 'indu strial societies' \\'h: h '~ inc:-c:us.ingly broL:.sht together by the imperati \"es of planning ;~nd ... : - , rC'T,_:atio:l of economic :illair ,i5 Such ideas are only variants :-" ~~ ... sp~:ious sociological 'convergence' theory, a theory owing e\'ery~}': ' '" t l\h.;: "\,\'cber and nothing to Ka:l Marx.
'Tb.e logic of many of the va.-ious positions we have analyse.l in. ~r:c: COl.::se of this F.lper has demonstrated the crucial importancx :.. cor.ect understanding of Marx's value theory and the impljc.lt~ 1:;$ ,of all\' distortions ~ 'hich lead it, via empiricism in the direction of Rl~ _ . • th;: is back to political econom:;. But it is ~ot enough !nerdy tl) ,
tha: :\Iarxism cannot be reduced to some fonn of sociological 'r:' n
.... d value in R1Clrdo and Marx 303
"~I", ,Ve rollst go on to establish, against some increasingly -..;. ,~' .;\\t.: ideas, that the completion of :',Ian .. 's critique of political ~ '1\' and his writing of Capital would have been impossible : ',·,:t' the profoundest grasp of the Hegelian dialt'ctic. We hope that . ,dler occasion this p,roblem can be considered in much greater " ,han has here been possible.
!::cs '('x anJ for all may I state, that by classic.>l PnlitiC<11 Economy I
. ;.~and lh:!t economy which ~ince the time of \V. Petty, has in\'t:~'tJgated "J f~!ations of production in uOlu'geois S(lCidy, in contradistinction to .1 ~cnnomy which deals with appe~lram:es only. , . confmes itself to
1 <c"'!!':sin,t! in a pedantic way ;md pl'(;,senting fr,. t'\'(~-lastillg truth, ,he , iJus held by the sclf-compln.c"nt bourgeoi~ic \\ .ith rLgnrd to their own ,' •• !J :ht!m the best of all possible worlds, .. .' (:\foll',\", J96r, p. Sr ) It
1 Lt puinted out that it is not only those writull; OlS :\1arxists who . ' 5<: l~icardo with ::\Jnx. Thus Schumpctcr ,ells u;, thnt 'His [:'\hn:~'s]
~ (;r ',,1Iut.. is a Ricardian one' :md of our~c 'E\''-'t:'-ody kno\vs that , .' c:.\,.ny is unsatis[pctory'. (1959, pp. 23-4) A more l'c'.:cnt writer is
J~' I'-Tical \\'h,~n he sp<..a!;.s of 'thc labour th~)ry of \-aluc which :\IaTx l\tr (rum Adarll Smith and Ri 'ardo'. (Gi..:!J,'ns, II)7!, p. 46)
" '. , . ),1. Proudhon, mainly because hc 1" .s tltl: historic;ll kno "ledge, ~ rcrcLiYed that as mcn dcvelop tbl:r pro2uctiYC facuities, tbat is, as 'c. they develop certain relations with 01',\' :lllO her :Jlld that thc nature ~c rdutions ml.;st necessarily ch;mge \\'ith tl:e ella 'bC anu gro\ '1h of
•• ,.,~a (·ti' .. e facultie~, He has not perceiYcd (lat erO.'iomjc I'Ofegorics are :1 \! al'stml;t f),JJ1'essions of these actual rebtin! .s and I1ly lCI11ain n'ue
· :f. ~~ Ic.lations c:xist. He therefore falls into th\' <.lTl)r of the bourgeois ~.11't$ who regard these econon,ic c:!teg(\n~~ no, eternal anclnot as
.' '.,: hws for a p3:licular historical deyelopr:lt;m, a do;.:wlopmem d;;:terr ' ';) the pJOductive forces.' (Marx &; Engd<, 1956, p, 45)
· 'j;, '(:;;l<rk by Engels has occasioned considerable controversy md we ""! :I.! ["c! obliged ~o comment upon some ?<tJ"et~ (\~ it, Lngels, in the · n in .·ll1ti-Diilzrilig from which it is t,(li:en, c1C<lrly wishes to strtss ",hrr\':\S the diSt~bl.lti()n of social labour t:l:':(;~ pLh~e i1ldirraiy withi n
ium. th:tt is through the exc1l:tnge of com::'co,liti...s. under soei::tli"m '",::ihll~ion will be sLhievcd directly, in t h~t ~(,l1S" '",irnply'. lIence •• si,ould no! be;; taken to mean that cconmnlC pl::lr:r.in{~ Wl)tlld r<::prcsLnt r lk1!1S, Sllciatist Lconomy would, for inst ':CI', •• , ".1 to (lrl',:mg~ that 'tt' :tion of its om"put was used to 111:"intain anJ l' ~ ten d the means of
t ( n. But this 'O\'crprodllction' of he nll'~n!> ,,1' ['~odtlction would • l/. ~ );11' quite oPP'Jsitc to that under cnpita1:<m 'This sort of O\'el'-
• '. ,: '11 i, tantamount to control by f>ociety C" '<" 1' ilk materi::t1 m C.itlS of 11 r<:;)roductiol1. HuLunder cap-italist socid,' it ;'s ,. H clclI1l!nt of Ill;a,.c/ry!'
,. ),):7, p. 469) Thus wc l'al11Jot mechanic'.lly t ',c,; te the I'cpro <.:!uction .-- .. - nf the ~ccond volun1c of Cnpittli intl') the ttna!~ .. ;~ :1 S()Ci~l)ist !:; 1Icicty.
oj;,. 1"Iorc suhst:m\ial point concerning tre di":1!" ,1nncc of til" bw • I, under ~()cialism. It was of course Joscrh 51::1!:: who tcnnjn .. t~d the ~! '11 which had long continuer.! in the CSSR \l'i h his edict that the : :~ !ue diJ indeed continuc to operatc withi ll SO\:<:1 ee.)J1om,-. :!lbci t
': 1. l'lCeI' form, This pronOUtlCClncllt: still CO!'Hinlw5 to fnnn the b<:sis for -I S.)yjct tbinkin,q in this area . Stalin's stat.::rl'nt tbn:w writers like
304 Gcoifrc) ,
i\Ie(;k into cor.s:dnable difficlIltic:. 1t 'wns clcady in couflict with ::'lJ.rx'. explicit slatcm:.,nts that the bw c:- Y:llue was n reflection of econoI':'l.c for opcrutinz Oil',· uncleI' commodity ?~oduction, and would di~aPJle r with socialism- '\\'h;ch involved the cE::1ination of such fom1s of prodl:c!ion. On the other h:md Stalin had als" Nonounced tlut the USSR "':15 ),. t ..
1930 $, alr<'aJy 'socialist'. The re:!: ~hcoreticOlI point is thi~: we ha\; t; distinguish, as :\Jarx does in his ,;;-:rer, bet\'\een 'economic laws' a.r.d 'I~ ll""
Jaws'. Cnc1er c3pit',list commc,dit:; producti n, and under thh fOIIn 01
protiLlctioll aim!!!, tIll: need to dL tr .blltc bbolll' in ddJnitc propo,t: ):1< ( ~,..., the form of the cr<'Jtion of Hill/c.s. In other w01'd~, the labour proc ~s C~!!l take! place only tnmugh the ' ·:'Ih.lc c:-cating process.
As we ha';e already impl ied, Er.;;:ds' tatcnJenl CUll be supported by 11' :.y drawn from). hrx's own writings. In hi;) Critique oj tlte Gotha ['ro 'r,Wrn:' (l'.TUfX & EII.,,"i5, 196z, pp. 22-3) ::.<." state;): 'Within o-op<!ra~ive ',kil;Y bns<ld upon tilt, common oIYncl'shi? of th<l means of prouuc-rion, ~<! pw,; ••• ~ do not e;xch~llg" their pn)dt:cts. Jw.t as tittle ducs the labour employ·J O!l
the plOllucts ::!ppt:ar here as the 'i:C ':liJ of these products, as a material '1,dJp0sscS eu by them, since now, in contrast to capitali$t society, ill,li·;i,iu .ll labo1.1l' no lon f<lr exists in an indirel. f3shion but directly as a com! ')11 'm part of the tOt~:! h bour. ' It is also snell forgotten by those who wish to countcrpose Engels' 'wrong' forrm..la.tions to the 'correct' statcm..::n·:; maJ.: by lVlnrx thnt the \\ hvle of AlIti-D:::hJ'illg was read by Engels to 1\ lan, partly writtt'n by the latter and P' tjlished with hi full lmowlcdgc. (En"d
196z, p. q) 4 . It m:gl.t seem that there is a p.l;,;,dox here. For on the one hand RI\; t !, defined the SlIcj.,ct mnttl'r oE polic·c.o l economy as one COJlcernl'd rr-jn1Jnl~ with thp questions of distribution. 1t W:lS this emphasis upon clistl'ibu:t OI1 ,\'hich implici 1: exposed the contr:.clictions bctween the Ja5Ses; th.!~ wir c for i\Ja\")(, Ricar"':o rcmained 'that ~:o:;t stuical opponent of the \\'o~,,·inr. c!n"g' for others, likc the American Carey ('iVIr. Ricardo's system is one oj disconh;') he W~,$ dCllonoced as th~ f:1tltl r of eOll11nunism'. Yet i\1::rx :n.m: times also SC{'s Hicflrdo HS the eeor. 'Tlist )[ productioll, par excel/en.:.'. Hu' as he explains (:\Iarx, li)7 1 , pp. 2ev-I) t11i.) apparent contradiction ')nly arOse hecause Ricardo had 'instin..:.....;·.dy treated the forms of distri;;)Uti(Hl , thc most precise expressiun in whi.:~ the hctors of production roanif' t
themselves in :l given society' . Yet Debb's cmpha is, when dealinr; "ith l\larx's value th':'ory is wrongly pl-· ~d on distribution. Equally mis,;tk t':t 11
1\ fc:ek ",hCll ht:: 5ays : c ••• fill econo:n.ists, whether c13ssical, l\brxim or modern, ha\"e been largely cnncerno-d with the laws go\'erning the (ESlribu~ of the national cnke bctw-:en the 11'...:.:n social classes.' (1955, p. 232) For l\laf)l:, this was positively 1Jot his 'rr :,.j.n concern'. "'hot he <.lid show ".IS that rdations of tlistribution ancl cxc.hange cannot be understood 'in . thcmseh-es ' but only as a reflection of dt:finite social relatioll.S of pro,;'lIctlOrt. It almost gOl'S without saying that \"Ulgar economy treats 'production' (!n,~ 'distribution' as discrete sectors. It was John Stuart ?-.Iill who mado! of thl:> distinction a ,j rhlc; for him the l!l\'.s of (capitalist) production were .. , i.rn.mutablc while the laws of distrib.lti n might be capable of some modIlH';Jtion in their oper,1tion. TI is trite iCt':l l'l.ter formed the basis for Fahirm economics. . 5. \Ve can see how clos<l Dobb, r.L: .. .,del and others are to the mo·t ntlf::.I! pragmatism Whdl we read in :.\lilto') Fricdman--amongst the most promi.ncnt apolo:;ists of instrllmen:..lism-' .. , the only rclevant tL'S: f the validity of a hypothesis is compar!' -n of its predictions with c. perienc':: (1953, pp. 8-9) and speaking of the '3dequacy' of hypotheses he say.s '\\!l,,:,:C: they are sufficiently good approxlrr_.rions for the purpose in hand [IS a
..... of \"atue In Ricarc::> and Marx
,',,., we can only 2.C.swer by] seeing whether the theory works.' (I953, :;'~:o r Marx, in opposition to this concepti0n, his C<.tt!gories were not
,to.' :1' :!ccording to prngm.atic criteria, but weIt! lusto:-ical and social in
305 I
• ~;cr. Thus the caregory 'labour power' (the ability to work) ,,,as not .~ ";1" 'seJected'; it ,vas a commodity brought into being by the process , ... '~~n.tggJc, in the :Jlanner described by l\1arA: ill ~he sections of Capital
. \Iith the forcibk sep2.r:1tion of the English pe<l!'; .:..!ltry from its 1311d ~ I:. t;ansfonnation eto a' da~s of wage labourers .
'Tl ~ \'ulgur cconolrist has not the faintest idta (1\;" che ;!clual e\'eryday "".b: ,;~ relutions can t:ot be directly idelltica[ v;ith the! :nagnitudc of yalue,
:.t' t""nCC ,)f bourgecis society consists preci5cly in ~:.:s, that a pn'ori there " ("'(':l;cious social r<!-,;ularion of production. The rU:i'>llal and necessary
.. ~ ~s i:sdf only as a b!.indly working 3.\'eragc, And tr ;-n the yulg-,.r ( "\ 'n.: t think. he h:u made a great disco\'ery ,,'hen. :!.S against the rcveht-
't": tb: interconnecton, he proudly claims th:1t in :,.?pearance things • '. i:l'cren t. In fact. be b ,,:::s ts that he holds fa,t to a??,·::u·an("(;~', and takes •. ,': :',c ultimate. \ \ h:, then, haye any science at all?' p.1arx, 193·1, p, 74) • ...... \{ .. n:, 1959, Chs, 13- 15, .. t'o : :hc 'transforrna7ion problem' aJ1d its ' solution.' s¢e i\1;trx, 1959, ... f5:-7 0 .
H,,' .. in~ Jcfined the :-ate of profit as uniquely d,:tcrm.incd by the fate of "":':~ \'.lluc to variau:e cap;~1 (1" = s: \"), RicarJ') c,', dlned his disCllSsiof'
.'...:. ~cS in the rate 0: profit to a d ehctte about ch:l. ~", in th 'l.alue of , ~ ('l) \\ cr. Having o!ccepted the infamol1s 'p ~in cir k of population' as
'l':I~:,·d by 1\ [althus, which by prvnowlcing the ,"J:,?iy of labour !',c:y da~tic 35~Um(::s wa::;:;;:s const;:;·" at slIbsi,;te!ICI '€'\'cl, Ric;lrJo , .~d 10 limit the c.::batc about the 'l-uluc of hlbc,~: power to the -j ':1 of the produc:.!\,ity of agricuimrlll !nLour, 11.< :, elil!\'ed'-al~o ~'n;! th;:: 'law' of ci:nini5hing tdurns-that agri(. ':ural productivity
.JJ decline over tim:: and thus, by [orcin .. up "a, . bring- aboLll a " .<1i ~ ill profit~. H ence his dil:tLun: 'the intut';;t , ': ;:he landlord is al\\'~ys . "".lion to th;1t (:~ e\'cry cl:lsS in the commUllity'. 'n::: bdsi.: idea ru:u as follows i as C;:i?it.al ;ict.\urllL.:.: , there is a : • _:' for the cOI1:;tJ.nt eh::m.nt (c) within tht: total c<'j) ilal to in~re,sc as
• . '.: ' lJtc than the \ 'S'iuble 1-'ortioll (\,) , The o:gani<: compositi\\u of capital ;.r" r tic CJf const3l1t c~pita to vnriabJe apital (c: \'). T f the rate of profit
~~l.:.::n(cd by the re'!ationship of l'i;f:-plus val ue (s; t ' tOlal capital \}, then, if the ra:::io C:\' is rising, Ihc ratio s : (c - \) must tend to
'r on the aSSW1)p::i0!'1. that there is no incre;,->e in ti-.e rate of <!y.ploitation,
\. Hussain (197:, ?P, 35-<)) takes this po~i,ion in ::ttl'mpting to show ~ L: zcl!; wa<; wrong :n the st,li.cOlent we quoted fro~ ... /iuti-Dfilirilig
-, r. i.i,' ~tlggcsts , sp.:.;ifi cU}", that EngeJ~ ,vas ~ltilt:. ()f conflis ing " ':llue' • : ;:5 i,hcnomC'na l k:;11 '('xchangc-\,luUC' . \Ye L:\\ I: .'tread.)' argued that
,~: :\ CH:ccssary ca~,nection be1ween ''':111..1'''' Ilnd ;ts ~1odc of "PI'<c, ran<:e, ' .• h rx shows is a n....I1"iu tl of the nature of the ,'.,:1J1lQUit\' its ... lf . • t-: in~istellce or: the r -imacy f the cnm' J1( , 1-: ;?,; agai l~t .. :1Y
• cpt of val\lC', Second ho" ever, how do',s H1I55~1r. r(;cUlh.ik l'is pnsi ri011 • ?: "'X '~ imistcnce <hat t 1)e law of \'111u(' of nect " .. j,\. can only tJ!,,,rat~
:.;- UlliJ1.moc'o , bJin.:i. way; 1t is from this unc.:rs t<ln~:nlZ that ::.rux ecs · .. ! :.le' ;1:1d 'price' :'lU;r Jiwq"c, a di\'crgcr.cc d~:r'.'ndeu by 11 ,.: ,"cry
.: c' luc ltsdf, 1'\0·.·.· ~f we a..:ccpt th :lt "oe;:;l.is-n ill \.. :"cs not tlv blind, ~.; r: ~',nsri(,,(s rcgu!;:'~i()n \.if production (that i~, ~oci.":';~111 il1\ol\'l's the
.1., ; n of w(:alth, 0: usc .... "Iues, not the pro." uctio'1 ,)f '\':, !UI'S ') then ~ ... ,.,f v,tlue Cl.aSe5 lO h old in such ~ mode 0: prod1..:ction ,
306
12. 'Tht! gentry the economists hay.:' hitherto overlooked the CXb~7.eiJ simple puint that the form 20 yarJs of linen equal one coat is on:: :~f: underde .... dopl,d basis of 20 yards of linen equals £2 and that th('7e:~;-i.:· silllplest/orm of cOll/lllodify, in which its value is not yet expreSSt'C -.:.., 2-
rdation to all other commoditi .. s but only as something difjrfl':lI t i ,'_ ' i- _ tht;; commodity in its nahLral form. cOlllaiJl .~ the f~11.)le secret of liz.: .' ,._, form null with It, in embryo, of all bOllrgcoi~ f('lnn' of the produr' ,;: " (, Iarx, 1956, p. 2:lS) 13. A notabk ,'xccption is Bl,\kc, 1')39· l,~. In this wurk (Haran and Swce,, :.-, 1966) we find virtually no -c:.re.l the theory oJf \allle in a stud,' which purports to deal with the str ,'::.'-1;_
dyn".ITlics (If capitalism. Inst<'1d modern oligopoly 'price th.:ory' i: " '-:~r wltltout qll<.! ... ti .. n :mel an alI ,'>st purely Keync~i:tn, undcrconsulll?::::>:1;~
view of economic crisis clabonted . \Vith the benefit of hindsight :: ~$" possible to disc~rn many of th.: ,o;,-,ds of thi1l p05ition in Sweezy',; c '.:: -and still popubr work (Swee7.Y, T946) wh"re Again a nc~r-Keynt:' ':"--:', ' .. of tIlt! fWI"tioiling of capitalism i~ presented and no link what~oe' t;
established between the exposition of value theory ,1I1d the rest 0: >be analysis. 15. A drcac\e aftl'r t c publication of his stlldy of value theory w:- ' . h -, paper has cliticis(;(\ (i\ r~'ek, T956) :'\Ieck had moved to precisdy t:"':;. r '-'-_'!l. In a later worle (:\kck, 1967) he hat! construcled extremely firm, -:cil:.:! toward" the \ uJ ~ar school. For now he was arglling for a rccolll.i;';;:::c:-: betwcen :\IHr'(i~m anel wh"t no df)Ubt he would rarlier have c'lllt:': ' co' " :t . , t:conOlnlCS .
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Dobb. London: Cam;,riut:c Uniwrsity Press . Sch.ul? peter, J. A. (! 59) CClJ~:":(/lis1/l, Soc",hsl/I and Dell/Geren'. Londml: Allen and Um,vin . -Sweezy, P. M. (19..;.6' Theory oj Capilali,t! D,·ve!0j>1I1wt, London: Dobson.
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