Das Kapital Kritik der politischen. Oekonomie

THE ANALYSIS presented by Marx of the social relations of production under capitalism would have been utterly impossible without the application of the dialec. tical method. He was indebted principally to Hegel for his grasp and development of this method.

It has become increasingly fashionable to attack the dialectical method of 'Capital' as so much German metaphysical nonsence which Marx imposed upon reality.

Logic of Such a view runs completely counter to the real essence of 'Capital', as Lenin and others well appreciated:

If Marx did not leave behind him a "Logic" (with a capital letter) he did leave the logic of "Capital", and this ought to be utilized to the full in this question. In "Capital" Marx applied to a single science, logic, dialectics and the theory of knowledge of materialism (three words are not needed, it is one and the IN same thing) which has taken everything valuable in Hegel and developed it further.' And it is little wonder that this method has been consistently rejected by both the bourgeoisie as well as the For the essence of the dialectical method is that it starts from nothing—including capitalist society — as fixed, but sees everything in the world as a series of processes.

Once the working class had appeared as a historical force the capitalist class had to pretend that its system was 'natural' and 'eternal'.

The science of political economy which had, during the period of 'the industrial revolution tried to discover the real laws operating in capitalist economy, was now transformed and turned into 'economics' which sought to justify the exploitation under capitalism as 'rational' and 'necessary'.

'Dialectics'. , writes Marx in the Preface to 'Capital', 'in its rational form is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisidom Because it irindies in its sorsprehension an affirmative recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically-developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and So without a JUSTIONT NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS study of the origins of Marxism and its relationship to Hegelian dialectics, there can be no full understanding of 'Capital' or a deepening of our understanding of the growing, economic crisis.

This is what Lenin meant when he warned that 'Capital' could not be grasped without a full understanding of Hegel's "Logic'.

As we explained in the first article, Marx started his study of capitalism with the commodity.

Historically this new mode of production involved the dominance of commodity production and in particular the creation of a working class having only one commoditylabour power.

It was, and is, the sale of this commodity - the ability to work - which kept it alive.

Marx starts 'Capital' with an examination of the contradictions within a single commodity.

The commodity is at one and the same time a use value and also an exchange value. Exchange value Karl MarI Erster Band. 1: Doe Propri tomsprossas des Ken Ios senti dus tettmacrune wirt varonitts.

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V, Nejsids, d6 Handar-t The title p Je c first Ge Capital pl lish 1867. tive changes produced qualitative leap.

'Here, as in natural science,' observes Marx, 'is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel (in his "Logic"') that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes.' sides 'In his "Capital"; Lenin explains in the "Philosophical Notebooks', 'Marx first analyses the simplest most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (comHe is interested in them only because they contain exchange value and surplus value.

Unless his commodities can be transformed into exchange value of a universal type — which can be used as and when required to purchase further supplies of raw materials and labour powerthen they are of no value to him.

So under capitalism a producer starts with a sum of money (M). He uses this to buy raw materials and labour power to the value C.

Through the application of labour to these raw materials the resultant commodities now contain more value than the original in puts, C. Let us call this greater magnitude C'.

Value in money The aim of the capitalist must now be to realize this magnitude of value in money of a similar value, M'.

So when complete the process looks like this: M-C-C'-M'. This increased value, M' then provides the basis for the expansion of production on a higher scale.

The rate of surplus value for the capitalist is given by increment value (M'-M) compared with the original magnitude of value (M). Unless the producer can complete the process in this way, by realizing his surplus value in the money form, the exercise has been worthless from his point of view.

For he is left with a collection of use values in the form of commodities which he may not be able to dispose of except by selling at a price below their value, that is by making a loss or at least accepting a lower rate of surplus value.

So for capitalism, driven along not merely by the creation of exchange value but, above all, by the creation of surplus value, the role of money is indispensable. It is not, as many shallow commentators: imagine, merely a clever device which overcomes the problems and difficulties ot barter.

By 'money' we mean one commodity which stands opposed to all other commodities in that its use value represents its command over the exchange value of all the other commodities from which it is excluded.

With the development of capitalism, gold tended to be selected as the money commodity for particular reasons.

It was easily divisible, it was durable and a relatively small weight embodied a considerable amount of value. This was due to the conditions under which it was mined, requiring the expenditure of large quantities of human labour to extract small quantities from the earth.

Parallel ‹ In the opening chapter of 'Capital' Marx explains the money's role as the 'externalizer' of the antagonism between the use value and the (exchange) value of each commodity.

Although difficult, it is worth producing a passage from this analysis which indicates the dialectical method running through the whole of this chapter, and indeed the whole of the work.

Marx explains how the 'opposition' of the money commodity (or simply money) exactly parallels the opposition within the commodity. money. Gold as gold, in exchange value itself. As to its use value, that has only an ideal existence, represented by series of expressions of relative value in which it stands face-to-face with all other commodities, the sum of whose uses makes up the sum of the various uses of gold Marx also shows in the early part of 'Capital' that corresponding to the opposition of use value and value is that between abstract labour and concrete labour.

The development of capitalism tended inexorably to break down all differences between particular types of labour: all tended to be reduced to the same qualitative level through the operation of the market.

Under petty production (that is production not for the market) labour took on a concrete form, in that it was concerned with particular skills (weaving, tailoring etc.) which produced use values, (cloth, trousers etc.).

Under capitalism what is compared is labour in the abstract which produces not use values, but exchange values.

In other words, the exchange of commodities compares not the specific, unique, qualities of labour which they embody, but their abstract labour, the quantity of socially available labour time which they contain.

Concrete labour We can note here that this distinction which Marx draws between abstract and concrete labour as the producer of exchange values and use values respectively was not only a logical, theoretical category; like all Marx's abstractions, as we shall see later, it was also historical, reflecting the real development of social relations which , the emergence of capitalism involved.

It was only under … commodity production that individual, private, concrete labour tended to be dissolved in the market place into its opposite, generalized, labour in the abstract.

This was a process completed essentially in the period of the Industrial Revolution which saw the break-up of nearly all narrow crafts and the development of a relatively homogeneous labour market.

In this one example we can see Marx's dialectical method as well as his materialism.

For throughout 'Capital' he traces the connection between his theoretical categories (in this case the category 'abstract labour') and the real, material developments capitalist economy, of which they (the categories) were a reflection.

This is an aspect of 'Capital's' method we shall examine in the next article. Then we shall look at the present economic crisis in the light of this theoretical analysis.

• Continued next Saturday Culture and Socialism