Theses For Debate In Reading Marx

I present four claims about Marx's Capital. I strive for topics more general than, for example, squabbles about the transformation problem. I suggest that some of these claims present a useful focus for reading Marx's book, even if part of your focus is arguing why the claim is wrong. If this were more than a blog post, I would need to cite various Marxists and scholars that inspired me.

Thesis I: Capital is organized around a model of a pure, two-class capitalist economy.

I think the above claim is helpful in making sense of the opening chapters of Volume 1 and of Volume 2. In Volume 2, I am thinking of the analysis of the analysis of various circuits, as well as the models of simple and expanded reproduction.

This claim separates out the historical material and the analysis more sharply than some commentators on Marx accept. I guess it is consistent with some of Marx's use of Blue Books filed by factory inspectors in Britain. Historical material that goes beyond a model of pure capitalism includes the analyses of primitive accumulation in pre-capitalist formations and of the development of machinery and manufacture. I think of the replacement of the putting-out system, handicraft, and domestic industry by factories.

Thesis II: Capital continues the tradition of classical political economy; it does not represent a sharp break with this tradition.

One can argue Marx saw William Petty, Francois Quesnay, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo, for example, as having applied a scientific method of abstraction to identify essences that lie behind the surface phenomena of market prices. Of course, Marx had many criticisms of his predecessors. He thought Smith had not sufficiently distinguished labor that was and was not productive of surplus value. Even Ricardo did not distinguish (abstract, social) labor from labor power. Marx argued his distinction between constant and variable capital was more fundamental, in some sense, that the classical political economy distinction between fixed and circulating capital. And the classical did not talk about surplus value in general, instead of manifestations in the form of profits, interest, and rent.

This claim of continuity can also be argued to be consistent with Marx's contrast of vulgar and scientific political economy. Not everybody in the time of the classics, including Adam Smith, were thoroughgoing in the application of their scientific method.

But some of what Marx has to say about illusions generated by competition is in tension with this claim of continuity. He was interested in what social conditions made possible the development of political economy. The classical political economists championed the rising bourgeois before the social question became sufficiently biting. And what about the sarcasm and irony in Capital.

Thesis III: The system of labor values is a reality behind the appearance of freedom in market transactions.

In some sense, labor values provide a sub-basement underlying a building more obvious to our sight.

A counter thesis would be based on a Wittgenstein-like reading of Capital. Nothing is hidden, but markets, like languages, are befuddling. Marx is presenting arrangements in a therapeutic treatment to dissolve confusions. This also gets into some readings of Sraffa's work.

Thesis IV: One can accept the analysis in Capital as a way of understanding the world, independently of a any position on the desirability of changing it, either through a revolution or otherwise.