The Making of Marx's Capital Volume 1

Roman Rosdolsky

Description

A major work of interpretation and criticism, written over fifteen years by one of the foremost representatives of the European Marxist tradition.



Rosdolsky investigates the relationship between various versions of Capital and explains the reasons for Marx's successive reworkings; he provides a textual exegesis of Marx's Grundrisse, now widely available, and reveals its methodological riches. He presents a critique of later work in the Marxist tradition on the basis of Marx's fundamental distinction between 'capital in general' and 'capital in concrete reality'



The Making of Marx's Capital was first published in 1968 as Zur Enstehungsgeschichte des Marx'schen 'Kapital''.

Sujets

• Grundrisse
• Marxian economics
• Political economy
• Economic history
• Economics
• Science
• Karl Marx
• Capital

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 1992
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783716388
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Making of Marx’s ‘Capital’
Roman Rosdolsky
THE MAKING OF MARX’S ‘CAPITAL’
 
Translated by Pete Burgess
 
First published in Germany by Europaische
Verlagsanstalt GmbH as Entstehungsgeschichte des
Marxschen ‘Kapital ’
Copyright © Europäische Verlagsanstalt,
Frankfurt am Main 1968
This translation first published 1977 by Pluto Press
First paperback (abridged) edition published 1980
by Pluto Press
Second (unabridged) paperback edition published
1989 by Pluto Press in two volumes
Copyright © Pluto Press 1977
ISBN 9780861049158 vol 1 paperback
ISBN 0861049152 vol 1 paperback
ISBN 9781783716395 Kindle eBook
ISBN 9781783716388 EPUB eBook
Printed and bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne
Contents
 
 
Author’s Preface
 
 
Translator’s Note
 
 
PART ONE. Introduction
1 .
The Origins of the Rough Draft
2 .
The Structure of Marx’s Work
I .
The original outline and its changes
II .
When and to what extent was the first outline abandoned?
III .
Previous explanations of the change in the outline
IV .
The methodological import of the original outline
 
A .
The first three ‘Books’
 
 
1 .
Marx on the method and object of political economy
 
 
2 .
The ‘trinity formula’ of bourgeois economics
 
 
3 .
The three fundamental social classes
 
 
4 .
The ‘transition from capital to landed property’ and from ‘landed property to wage labour’
 
 
5 .
The real function of the threefold division
 
B .
The Book on Capital
 
 
1 .
The original subdivision of the Book on Capital
 
 
2 .
‘Capital in general’ and ‘many capitals’
 
 
3 .
The structural relation of the Rough Draft to Capital
V .
The scope and probable explanation for the change in the outline
Appendix 1. The Book on Wage-Labour
 
1 .
Themes which were to have been included in the book
 
2 .
Why did Marx abandon the separate Book on Wage-Labour ?
Appendix 2. Methodological Comments on Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of Marx’s Schemes of Reproduction
3 .
Karl Marx and the Problem of Use-Value in Political Economy
 
PART TWO. The First Formulation of Marx’s Theory of Money
 
Preliminary Note
4 .
Critique of the Labour-Money Theory
5 .
‘Transition from Value to Money’
 
1 .
The necessity of the formation of money
 
2 .
The quantitative and qualitative aspects of the problem of value (the magnitude of value and the form of value)
 
3 .
The formation of money and commodity fetishism
 
4 .
The development of the internal contradictions of the money-form
6 .
The Functions of Money
 
A .
Money as measure of value
 
 
1 .
Preliminary note
 
 
2 .
Money as measure of value
7 .
The Functions of Money
 
B .
Money as medium of circulation
8 .
The Functions of Money
 
C .
‘Money as money’
 
 
1 .
General comments
 
 
2 .
Money as hoard
 
 
3 .
Money as means of payment
 
 
4 .
Money as world money
 
 
5 .
Concluding remarks
 
PART THREE. The Section on the Production Process
9 .
Introductory Remarks (On the actuality of the law of value in the capitalist economy)
10 .
The Law of Appropriation in a Simple Commodity Economy
11 .
The Transition to Capital (‘The development of capital out of money’)
12 .
Exchange between Capital and Labour-Power
13 .
Labour Process and Valorisation Process
14 .
Creation of Value and Preservation of Value in the Production Process (‘Variable’ and ‘constant’ capital)
15 .
The General Concept and the Two Basic Forms of Surplus-Value
16 .
Relative Surplus-Value and Productive Force (On the increasing difficulty in valorising capital with the development of the capitalist mode of production)
17 .
The Methods of production of Relative Surplus-Value (Co-operation, manufacture and machinery)
18 .
‘Simultaneous Working Days’. The Capitalist Law of Population and the ‘Industrial Reserve Army’ Marx’s critique of Malthus)
19 .
The Reproduction Process and the Inversion of the Law of Appropriation
20 .
Primitive Accumulation and the Accumulation of Capitals
Appendix. A Critical Assessment of Marx’s Theory of Wages
 
1 .
Marx’s theory of wages
 
2 .
Marx on the movement of wages
 
 
A .
The general conditions for increases in wages
 
 
B .
The economic cycle and the movement of wages
 
3 .
Marx’s doctrine of relative wages
 
4 .
The industrial reserve army as regulator of wages
 
5 .
The so-called ‘theory of immiseration’
 
6 .
The kernel of truth in the ‘theory of immiseration’
 
7 .
Concluding remark
 
PART FOUR. The Section on the Circulation Process Introductory Remark
21 .
The Transition from the Production Process of Capital to the Circulation Process of Capital. Excursus on the Realisation Problem and the First Scheme of Reproduction
22 .
Circulation Time and Its Influence on the Determination of Value
23 .
The Turnover of Capital and Turnover Time. The Continuity of Capitalist Production and the Division of Capital into Portions
24 .
The Characteristic Forms of Fixed and Circulating (Fluid) Capital
 
PART FIVE. Capital as Fructiferous. Profit and Interest
25 .
The Transformation of Surplus-Value into Profit. The General Rate of Profit
26 .
The Law of the Falling Rate of Profit and the Tendency of Capitalism Towards Breakdown
27 .
Fragments on Interest and Credit
 
1 .
The extent to which the original outline envisaged the treatment of these themes
 
2 .
The Rough Draft on interest-bearing capital
 
3 .
The category of ‘capital as money’
 
4 .
Critique of Proudhonism
 
5 .
The Rough Draft on the role of credit in the capitalist economy
 
6 .
The barriers of the credit system
Appendix. On Recent Criticisms of Marx’s Law of the Falling Rate of Profit
 
PART SIX. Conclusion
28 .
The Historical Limits of the Law of Value. Marx on the Subject of Socialist Society
 
1 .
Marx on the development of human individuality under capitalism
 
2 .
The role of machinery as the material precondition of socialist society
 
3 .
The withering away of the law of value under socialism
29 .
The Reification of the Economic Categories and the ‘True Conception of the Process of Social Production’
 
PART SEVEN. Critical Excursus
30 .
The Dispute Surrounding Marx’s Schemes of Reproduction
I .
Introduction
 
1 .
A note on the formal aspect of the schemes of reproduction in Volume II
 
2 .
The ‘approximation to reality’ of Marx’s schemes of reproduction
 
3 .
The basic presupposition of Marx’s schemes of reproduction
 
4 .
The schemes of reproduction and the realisation problem
II .
The discussion between the ‘Narodniks’ and the ‘Legal’ Marxists in Russia
 
1 .
Engels’s debate with Danielson
 
2 .
Bulgakov’s and Tugan-Baranovsky’s interpretation of Marx’s analysis of extended reproduction
III .
Lenin’s theory of realisation
IV .
Hilferding’s interpretation of Marx’s schemes of reproduction
V .
Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of Marx’s theory of accumulation
 
1 .
The historical and methodological background
 
2 .
The schemes of reproduction and technical progress
 
3 .
The neo-Harmonist applications of the schemes
31 .
The Problem of Skilled Labour
I .
Böhm-Bawerk’s critique
II .
Marx’s probable solution
32 .
A Note on the Question of ‘False Rationalisation’
33 .
Joan Robinson’s Critique of Marx
I .
Marx’s theory of value
 
1 .
Marx as a ‘value fetishist’
 
2 .
Marx’s ‘rigmarole’
 
3 .
Marx’s search for a social elixir. The problem of value in a socialist society
II .
Marx’s theory of the essence of capitalist exploitation and his concept of capital
III .
Concluding remarks
34 .
Neo-Marxist Economics
I .
A seemingly dogmatic controversy
II .
On the method of Marx’s economics
III .
Concluding remark
 
Bibliography
 
Index
Author’s Preface
In 1948, when I first had the good fortune to see one of the then very rare copies of Marx’s Rough Draft , 1 it was clear from the outset that this was a work which was of fundamental importance for marxist theory. However, its unusual form and to some extent obscure manner of expression made it far from suitable for reaching a wide circle of readers. I therefore decided, first, to provide a ‘commentary’ on the work and, second, to make a scientific evalution of some of the new findings which it contained. The first exercise (mainly covered by Parts II-VI) necessitated an exposition of the Rough Draft ’ s most important arguments, as far as possible in Marx’s own words. The second required detailed discussions of particular aspects, which are to be found in the first, introductory, and seventh, concluding, parts of this work.
Completion of the work presented a number of difficulties. Inhabiting a city whose libraries contained only very few German, Russian or French socialist works (let alone such indispensable periodicals as Kautsky’s Neue Zeit ) I was restricted to the few books in my own possession, and often doubted the practicability of the venture. But this was not the only problem. The more the work advanced, the clearer it became that I would only be able to touch upon the most important and theoretically interesting problem presented by the Rough Draft – that of the relation of Marx’s work to Hegel, in particular to the Logic – and would not be able to deal with it in any greater depth.
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 authors’ own ‘crude obsession with the material’ and total indifference to Marx’s method.
What would one make of a psychologist who was interested only in Freud’s results, b