The Classics, Revolutionary Work, Part 4a
Political Economy
This part of our course on the revolutionary Classics is
concerned with the hard-working period that followed the 1848 revolutions in
France, Germany and other European countries and which culminated in the
publication in 1867 of Volume 1 of Karl Marx’s “Capital”, which is the greatest
Marxist “classic” of them all. That book is too large to accommodate in this
ten-week course. It will has a ten-part course of its own, followed by a further
ten-part course on Volumes 2 and 3.
After the insurrections of 1848-1852 Karl Marx got down to work on the unsolved problem of what he called “the source of the self-increase of capital”. Marx’s working papers are collected in the enormous “Grundrisse”, of which “Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (download linked below) is Chapter 1.
After the insurrections of 1848-1852 Karl Marx got down to work on the unsolved problem of what he called “the source of the self-increase of capital”. Marx’s working papers are collected in the enormous “Grundrisse”, of which “Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (download linked below) is Chapter 1.
Marx read everything. He compiled notes of all the Political
Economy books that had been written before him (eventually published as
“Capital Volume 4”), and he compiled an outline or plan for the first volume of
his masterpiece, “Capital”, which is fully named “A Critique of Political
Economy”.
The “Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy” was written in 1857. It precedes another, different work of
Marx’s called “A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy” that was published two years
later, and which itself precedes Capital Volume 1 (the full “critique”) by eight
years. Capital Volume 1 was published (in German) in 1867.
First and foremost, today’s text reminds us that none of these works of Marx’s are comparable to economics. On the contrary, they expose “economics” as a false and fraudulent discipline. Instead of economics, Marx’s works deal with what would now be called proper political economy, or in other words the real relations between actual classes of people.
Marx begins by clearly differentiating his argument from that of the romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and also from Adam Smith, and from David Ricardo upon whom in other respects Marx relies quite heavily. It is worth quoting this passage at some length:
First and foremost, today’s text reminds us that none of these works of Marx’s are comparable to economics. On the contrary, they expose “economics” as a false and fraudulent discipline. Instead of economics, Marx’s works deal with what would now be called proper political economy, or in other words the real relations between actual classes of people.
Marx begins by clearly differentiating his argument from that of the romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and also from Adam Smith, and from David Ricardo upon whom in other respects Marx relies quite heavily. It is worth quoting this passage at some length:
“The solitary and isolated hunter or fisherman, who
serves Adam Smith and Ricardo as a starting point, is one of the unimaginative
fantasies of eighteenth-century romances a la Robinson Crusoe; and despite the
assertions of social historians, these by no means signify simply a reaction
against over-refinement and reversion to a misconceived natural life.
“No more is Rousseau's contrat social, which
by means of a contract establishes a relationship and connection between
subjects that are by nature independent, based on this kind of naturalism. This
is an illusion and nothing but the aesthetic illusion of the small and big
Robinsonades.
“It is, on the contrary, the anticipation of
"bourgeois society", which began to evolve in the sixteenth century
and in the eighteenth century made giant strides towards maturity.
“The individual in this society of free competition seems
to be rid of natural ties, etc., which made him an appurtenance of a
particular, limited aggregation of human beings in previous historical epochs.
The prophets of the eighteenth century, on whose shoulders Adam Smith and
Ricardo were still wholly standing, envisaged this 18th-century individual -- a
product of the dissolution of feudal society on the one hand and of the new
productive forces evolved since the sixteenth century on the other -- as an
ideal whose existence belonged to the past.
“They saw this individual not as an historical result,
but as the starting point of history; not as something evolving in the course
of history, but posited by nature, because for them this individual was in
conformity with nature, in keeping with their idea of human nature.”
A little later on in the “Introduction to a Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy”, Marx writes:
“But all this is not really what the economists are
concerned about in the general part. It is rather -- see for example Mill --
that production, as distinct from distribution, etc., is to be presented as
governed by eternal natural laws which are independent of history, and at the
same time bourgeois relations are clandestinely passed off as irrefutable
natural laws of society in abstracto. This is the more or less
conscious purpose of the whole procedure.”
So Marx is saying, in 1857, that the purpose of all the
economic “analysts” (the likes of Azzar Jammine, Tony Twine et cetera) then as
now, is to falsely present bourgeois reality as the permanent and the only
possible reality.
The entire text is worth reading. It will be helpful towards understanding Capital Volume 1, as well as towards understanding the politics of today’s massive price rises, which are invariably, and falsely, presented in our bourgeois media as “governed by eternal natural laws which are independent of history”!
The cartoon (“Reform Bill 1859”) is by Tenniel, from the London magazine “Punch”, made at the time when Karl Marx was working in London on his critiques of political economy. It illustrates the bourgeois turn from “protectionism” to “free trade” (now called “globalisation”). This happened when it suited the capitalists, whether it suited the workers or not. It happened in Britain approximately a century before it happened in the USA.
In this period, Marx continued to be, as we would say,
“active”. In the next part, we will see the momentous role that Marx was about
to play as an individual leader in the foundation of structures which were the
fore-runners of many still-existing revolutionary organisations of today,
including the SACP.
Please download and read the text via the following
link:
Further
(optional) reading:
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