Introduction: The Theory of Marx’s Texts
1. Frederick Engels, Preface to the Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore, in The Revolutions of 1848, ed. David Fernbach (Harmondsworth/Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc.), 1973, p. 65.
2. Karl Marx, Oeuvres complètes, I (Paris: Gallimard, La Pléiade), 1963, p. 1463; our italics.
3. Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart), 1968, p. 604.
4. In D. Riazanov, Karl Marx, homme, penseur et révolutionnaire (Paris: Anthropos), 1968, p. 78.
5. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press), 1960, p. 258.
6. E. Mandel, La formation de la pensée économique de Karl Marx (Paris: Maspero), 1967, p. 154.
7. Riazanov, Paper on the literary heritage of Marx and Engels, presented on November 20, 1923, before the Moscow Socialist Academy, in Karl Marx, pp. 198–99.
8. Frederick Engels, Preface to the Communist Manifesto, p. 66.
9. Socialisme et science positive (Paris: Giard et Brière), 1897, p. 162.
10. Riazanov, Paper on the literary heritage of Marx and Engels, p. 195.
11. “L’Idéologie allemande et les thèses sur Feuěrbach,” in L’homme et la société, special issue, 150th anniversary of Karl Marx, January–March, 1968 (Paris: Anthropos).
12. Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso Edition), 1979, pp. 83-84.
13. Ibid., p. 156.
14. Ibid., p. 32; Althusser’s italics.
15. Ibid., p. 38.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 104.
18. “. . . to explain this paradoxical dialectic whose most extraordinary episode this is, the Manuscripts that Marx never published . . .” (ibid., p. 160; Althusser’s italics); “. . . a text which he never published ” (ibid., p. 36; Althusser’s italics).
19. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. S. W. Ryazanskaya, ed. Maurice Dobbs (New York: International Publishers), 1970, p. 22. Our italics. We know, moreover, that for more than a year Marx and Engels did everything that they could to have their work published.
20. Althusser, For Marx, p. 223.
21. Ibid., p. 229.
22. Marx’s letter to his father dated November 10, 1837, is revealing in this respect.
23. The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers), 1976, 3d ed., p. 253.
24. Cf. Althusser, For Marx, pp. 227-29.
25. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 1962, p. 207.
Chapter 1: The Critique of Political Essence
1. Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, in Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingston and Gregor Benton (New York: Vintage Books), 1975, p. 61; Marx, Engels, Werke, I (Berlin: Dietz), 1961, p. 205. (Henceforth cited, in accordance with the French text, as D, I, with page reference following).
2. Ibid., p. 62; D, I, p. 206.
3. Ibid., p. 63; D, I, p. 207.
4. Ibid., p. 62; D, I, p. 206.
5. Ibid., p. 63; D, I, p. 208.
6. Ibid., p. 62; D, I, p. 206.
7. Ibid., p. 61; D, I, p. 206.
8. Ibid., p. 62; D, I, p. 206; our italics.
9. Ibid., p. 69; D, I, p. 212.
10. Ibid., p. 67; D, I, p. 211.
11. Ibid., p. 109; D, I, p. 250.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 151; D, I, p. 288.
14. Hegel states: “The will is the unity of both these moments. It is particularity reflected into itself and so brought back to universality, i.e. it is individuality.” Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1952, p. 23. All references to the Philosophy of Right will quote from this translation.
15. Ibid., § 279, p. 181.
16. Ibid., § 279, pp. 181-82.
17. Cf. Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, p. 93; D, I, p. 236: “. . . the subject here is the pure self-determination of the will, the simple concept itself; it is the essence of the will, which functions as a mystical determining force; it is no real, individual . . . willing . . .”; and later Marx speaks of “an action of the Idea devoid of all content” (ibid.)
18. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, § 279, p. 182.
19. Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, p. 84; D, I, p. 228.
20. Ibid., p. 83; D, I, p. 227.
21. We already catch a glimpse of this thesis, however, when we see Marx “demand . . . a constitution that had the property and principle of advancing in step with consciousness; i.e. advancing in step with real human beings–which is very possible when ‘man’ has become the principle of the constitution” (ibid., p. 75; D, I, p. 218; our italics).
22. Ibid., p. 87; D, I, p. 231.
23. Ibid., p. 88; D, I, p. 231.
24. Ibid., p. 87; D, I, pp. 230-31.
25. Ibid., p. 72; D, I, p. 215.
26. Ibid., p. 80; D, I, p. 225.
27. Ibid., our italics; D, I, p. 224.
28. Ibid., p. 87; D, I, p. 231.
29. Ibid., p. 88; D, I, p. 224.
30. Ibid., pp. 124–25, translation modified; D, I, p. 264.
31. Ibid., p. 125, translation modified; D, I, p. 264.
32. Ibid., translation modified.
33. Ibid., p. 126; D, I, p. 265.
34. Ibid., translation modified.
35. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, in Early Writings, p. 389.
36. Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, p. 155; D, I, p. 293.
37. Ibid., p. 156; D, I, p. 293.
38. Ibid., p. 98; D, I, p. 241.
39. Ibid., P. 175; D, I, p. 311.
40. Ibid., P. 88; D, I, p. 231.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., P. 89; D, I, pp. 232-33.
43. Ibid., PP . 88-89; D, I , p. 232.
44. Ibid., P. 88; D, I, p. 231.
45. Ibid., D, I, p. 232.
46. Ibid., P. 89; D, I, p. 233.
47. Ibid., PP . 90-91; D, I , p. 234.
48. Ibid., P. 90; D, I, p. 233.
49. This was frequently pointed out by Jean Hyppolite.
50. Ibid., P. 131; D, I, p. 270.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., P. 141; D, I, p. 279.
53. Ibid., P. 142, translation modified; D, I, p. 280.
54. Ibid., PP . 142-43; D, I, p. 280.
55. Ibid., P. 143, translation modified; D, I, pp. 280-81.
56. Ibid., D, I, p. 281.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., P. 142, translation modified; D, I, pp. 279-80.
59. Ibid., P. 144, translation modified; D, I, p. 282.
60. Ibid., P. 145; D, I, p. 283.
61. Ibid., P. 147; D, I, p. 284.
62. Ibid., translation modified; D, I, p. 285.
63. Ibid., P. 127; D, I, p. 266.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., P. 112; D, I, pp . 252-53.
66. Ibid., P. 113; D, I, p. 254.
67. Ibid., P. 112; D, I, p. 253.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid., P. 115; D, I, p. 255.
70. Ibid., P. 114; D, I, p. 254.
71. Cf. Ibid., , p. 167; D, I , p. 303.
72. Ibid., P 169; D, I, p. 306.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid., P. 168; D, I, p. 305.
75. Ibid., P 166; D, I, p. 303.
76. Ibid., P 169; D, I, p. 306.
77. Ibid., P 171; D, I, p. 308.
78. Ibid., P 169; D, I, p. 306.
79. Ibid., P 174; D, I, p. 310.
80. Ibid., P 167; D, I, p. 304; in French in the original text.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid., P 173; D, I, p. 310.
83. Ibid., P 174; D, I, p. 310.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid., P 175; D, I, p. 311.
87. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Elliot (New York: Harper & Row), , 1957, p. 35.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid., P 91.
90. Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, p. 185; D, I, p. 321.
91. Ibid., p. 186; D, I, p. 322; our italics.
92. Ibid., p. 187; D, I, p. 322; our italics.
93. Ibid.
94. Cf. ibid.
95. Ibid., p. 87; D, I, p. 230.
96. Ibid., p. 77; D, I, p. 222.
97. Ibid., pp. 77-78; D, I, p. 222.
98. Ibid., p. 188; D, I, p. 323.
99. Ibid., p. 79; D, I, p. 223.
100. Ibid., p. 148; D, I, p. 285.
101. Ibid., p. 190; D, I, p. 326.
102. Ibid., pp. 189-90; D, I, p. 325.
103. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 23.
104. Although elsewhere Feuerbach, who was already deep in self-contradictions, tried to ascribe an existence to the species itself as such.
105. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 184.
106. Ibid., p. 158.
107. Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, p. 84; D, I, p. 228.
Chapter 2: The Humanism of the Young Marx
1. “Compared with Hegel,” Marx will later say, “Feuerbach is extremely poor” (Marx to J. B. Schweitzer, London, January 24, 1865, in The Poverty of Philosophy, [New York: International Publishers], 1963, p. 194).
2. Cf. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in Early Writings, p. 347.
3. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 2.
4. “Only by uniting man with nature can we conquer the supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity” (ibid., p. 270).
5. “. . . sex is the cord which connects the individuality with the species” (ibid., p. 170).
6. “Man and woman together are the existence of the race” (ibid., p. 167).
7. “Hence the man who does not deny his manhood is conscious that he is only a part of being, which needs another part for the making up of the whole of true humanity” (ibid.).
8. Ibid., p. 81.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 82.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., pp. 82–83; our italics.
13. Ibid., pp. 85–86; italics correspond to those of the French translation of Feuerbach.
14. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (New York: Harper Colophon Books), 1967, p. 81.
15. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, pp. 385–86.
16. Ibid., p. 386.
17. Ibid., p. 328; our italics.
18. Ibid., p. 329.
19. Cf. ibid.
20. Ibid., pp. 328-29.
21. Ibid., p. 329; Marx’s italics.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., p. 349.
26. Ibid.
27. Marx, Engels, Historich-Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke (MEGA) (Berlin: Dietz Verlag), 1975, I, 3, p. 547.
28. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 352.
29. Ibid., note.
30. Ibid., pp. 350–51.
31. Ibid., p. 350; Marx’s italics.
32. Ibid., pp. 349-50; Marx’s italics.
33. A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction, in Early Writings, p. 244; D, I, pp. 350-51.
34. On the Jewish Question, in Early Writings, p. 216; D, I, pp. 350-51.
35. A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right, pp. 244–45; D, I, p. 379.
36. Ibid., p. 251; D, I, p. 385.
37. Ibid., p. 252; D, I, p. 386.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., p. 251; D, I, p. 386.
40. Ibid., p. 246; D, I, p. 381.
41. Cf. ibid., pp. 253-55; D, I, pp. 387-88.
42. Ibid., p. 253; D, I, p. 387.
43. Cf. ibid., p. 254; D, I, p. 388.
44. Ibid., pp. 255-56; D, I, p. 390.
45. Ibid., p. 257; D, I, p. 391; our italics.
46. Ibid., p. 251; D, I, p. 385.
47. Ibid., p. 256; D, I, p. 390.
48. Ibid., p. 257; D, I, p. 391.
49. This is notably the erroneous interpretation offered by Kojève in his Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (Paris: Gallimard), 1947, p. 472, note; pp. 483-85, note.
50. As we know, Cartesian physics was constituted in opposition to the Aristotelian conception of nature as a living power. If German dialectic, as its germ is found in alchemy, can claim an origin in ancient thought, one must look in the direction more of Aristotle than of Plato. But as regards the problem which occupies us here, alchemy cannot simply be reduced to a distant echo of Aristotelianism for the sole reason that alchemy establishes and conceives of a real and total transformation of things rather than the mere completion of their own essence.
51. We refer the reader who is interested in these problems to our work, The Essence of Manifestation, (The Hague: Nijhoff), in particular § 70.
52. “It is,” says Cottier, “from Luther’s translation of the letter to the Philippians that Hegel borrowed the term Entäusserung out of which he forged the substantive but which he also often uses in the form of the verb” ( L’Athéisme du jeune Marx [Paris: Vrin], 1950, p. 28).
53. On all of this, cf. Enrico de Negri, La teologia di Lutero, Rivelazione e Dialettica (Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editoria), 1967, p. 315. We should also like to mention the German translation of this work: Offenbarung und Dialektik Luthers Realtheologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft), 1973, XV, p. 229.
54. The exact sentence by which Engels’ book, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, is concluded is the following: “The German working-class movement is the inheritor of German classical philosophy” (London: Lawrence and Wishart), 1968, p. 632.
55. Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France: 1848–1850, trans Paul Jackson, in Surveys from Exile, ed. with an Introduction by David Fernbach (New York: Vintage Books), 1974, p. 90.
56. On the question cf. G. Cottier, Du romantisme au Marxisme (Alsatia, 1961), p. 40.
57. It is remarkable that the major example given by Schelling of this irony of God is precisely that of Christ on the cross.
58. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, trans. Ben Fowkes, in Fernbach, Surveys from Exile, p. 237; our italics.
59. The Class Struggles in France, p. 35.
60. Ibid., p. 43; Marx’s italics. Here one finds another idea which belongs to this dialectic of opposites, namely that in the process which devours them, these opposites become less and less numerous, clumping together to form larger and larger, ever more compact masses, so that all of this finally ends in the gigantic confrontation of two opposites which confront one another alone, the bourgeoisie (or capitalism) and the proletariat.
61. The Communist Manifesto, p. 75.
62. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 189. Marx returned to this idea in The Communist Manifesto: “The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself” (p. 327). And once again: “The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education; in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie” (ibid., p. 33l).
63. Cf. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, pp. 181, 186.
64. Ibid., p. 236.
65. W. Jankélévitch, L’Odyssée de la conscience dans la dernière philosophie de Schelling (Paris: Alcan), 1932, p. 196.
66. In this way the existence of evil is justified not only because evil itself is presented as something possible which, as such, has to be fully realized, but also for the more profound reason that it is perhaps nothing other than this summons of the possible, this exigency to try and to do everything, nothing other than temptation. The vertigo experienced when we confront the possible also expresses the metaphysical law of being and of its deepest volition, and this under the appearance of evil and even if it is lived as sin.
67. The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, p. 247; D, I, p. 382.
68. Ibid., p. 257; D, I, p. 391.
69. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 236.
70. Ibid., p. 170.
71. In Riazanov, Karl Marx, homme, penseur et révolutionnaire, p. 52.
72. Cf. Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, pp. 247–48; D, I, p. 382.
73. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 146.
74. Oeuvres, I (La Pléiade), p. 995. It is interesting to note that this sentence does not appear in the German text and that Marx added it on to the French translation. In this final concession to rhetoric can be recognized the swan song of the dialectic. (Trans, note: The corresponding text in the English translation, Capital, 1, Part IV, Section 9, p. 490, does not include this addition.)
Chapter 3: The Reduction of Totalities
1. The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers), 1963, p. 91; our italics. The text which is quoted by Marx and which he includes as part of his own argument is taken from a work by Thomas Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy (Columbia, 1826).
2. Ibid., ; Marx’s italics.
3. Ibid., p. 96.
4. Ibid., p. 92; our italics.
5. Ibid., p. 95.
6. The German Ideology, p. 221.
7. Cf. ibid., p. 229.
8. Ibid.
9. Cf. ibid., p. 502, and also the critique of the “true socialists” who imagine that if individuals are unhappy or corrupt, the fault lies with society (ibid., p. 491).
10. Grundrisse, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage Books), 1973, p. 94.
11. The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism, trans. Richard Dixon and Clemens Dutt (Moscow: Progress Publishers), 1975, p. 110.
12. Ibid., p. 101.
13. Ibid., p. 93. And again: “For Herr Bauer, as for Hegel, truth is an automaton that proves itself. Man must follow it. As Hegel, the result of real development is nothing but the truth proven, i.e., brought to consciousness” (ibid.).
14. Ibid.
15. The German Ideology, p. 37.
16. Ibid., p. 43.
17. Ibid., p. 36.
18. Cf. ibid., pp. 47-48.
19. Ibid., p. 47; our italics.
20. Capital, 1, pp. 183–84. Cf. also A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 36, and Capital 1, pp. 177, 184.
21. Capital, 1, p. 169.
22. A. Gramsci, Opere complete (Turino: Einaudi), 1952, II, p. 217.
23. Capital, 2, p. 344.
24. The Communist Manifesto, p. 67.
25. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Halle: Niemeyer), 1941, p. 329; Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row), 1962, pp. 431-32.
26. Ibid.
27. Cf. The German Ideology, p. 45, where Marx speaks of history in terms of the activity of a whole succession of generations.
28. The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 98, 100.
29. Grundrisse, p. 265.
30. The German Ideology, p. 85; Marx’s italics.
31. Marx, as we know, did not invent this concept of class. We find it not only in Hegel but also in contemporary French historians and in the book by Lorenz von Stein, Socialisme et communisme de la France contemporaine, published in 1842, which Marx read during this period.
32. The German Ideology, p. 85; Marx’s italics.
33. Ibid., p. 380.
34. Ibid.; our italics.
35. Ibid., p. 462.
36. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 239.
37. Ibid.
38. Another “example,” in the sense of Husserlian exemplification, whose role is to display the “essence” of a phenomenon, would be supplied by the description that Marx gives of vagabondage at the end of the fifteenth century and during the whole of the sixteenth century. We know that this concerns peasants who were expropriated from their land by the great feudal lords and condemned to wander “with neither home nor hearth” until the day when industrial development was to provide them with a job. This mass of “beggars, robbers, vagabonds” itself already forms a class as well as constituting the origin of the modern industrial proletariat. The utter isolation of these individuals who have been stripped of all their possessions and of their roots is a constitutive characteristic of their “class,” and this is so as an individual characteristic. Because the latter is found, according to Marx, in each proletarian in modern industry, because these beggars are the “fathers of the present working class” (Capital, 1, p. 734), the proletariat will possess, due to the very nature of its origin, that tragic aspect in which the tragedy is always and inevitably that of the individual. This is why the descriptions of the industrial proletariat that one finds in Capital will always place the individual at the center of the analysis, as its proper theme.
39. Marx explicitly ascribed to the power of representation belonging to thought the transformation of real social determinations into ideal conditions, the hypostasis of the latter in the form of “relations” which are themselves ideal and which possess a necessity that has become that of ideality. Speaking of the conditions under which men live and of the forms of relations which inevitably accompany them, Marx says that “the personal and social relations thereby given, had to take the form–insofar as they were expressed in thoughts–of ideal conditions and necessary relations . . . ” (The German Ideology, p. 198; our italics). In this way arises the objectivist illusion that holds social conditions to be “objective” conditions and, finally, structures which are presented, on the one hand, as the regulating principles of all empirical determinations reduced to the role and the condition of “elements” and, on the other hand, as the sole themes of theoretical investigation, as the “objects” of science. Marx questioned the alleged objectivity of these determinations, an objectivity resulting from their separation from individual life understood–and this will be the essential theme of his thought–as activity. A note in the margin of the manuscript of The German Ideology states: “So-called objective historiography consists precisely in treating the historical relations separately from activity. Reactionary character” (p. 63).
40. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 239.
41. The Class Struggles in France, p. 91.
42. The German Ideology, p. 87.
43. Ibid., p. 86.
44. Ibid., pp. 85-86.
45. Capital, 1, p. 10.
46. Capital, 2, p. 351.
47. Ibid., pp. 375–76; our italics.
48. The German Ideology, pp. 262–63.
49. Marx distinguished between personal determinations, those that come out of the movement of life and out of the will proper to it, and social determinations that result within this life from its subordination to a type of labor, that is, to the social conditions of existence. He explicitly cited personal determinations as being essential and social determinations as accidental. Both, however, belong to subjectivity; what must be understood is how a determination belonging to life is nevertheless lived as an “outside” constraint. On all of this, cf. ibid., pp. 86–87, and the French text of the present work, vol. I, pp. 243-48.
50. The Poverty of Philosophy, Appendix, “Marx to P. V. Annenkov,” p. 189; “social relations” italicized by Marx. Cf. also “Wage Labour and Capital” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart), 1968, p. 81.
51. The German Ideology, p. 91; our italics.
52. Ibid., p. 62.
53. Ibid., p. 85.
54. Cf. ibid., p. 62.
55. “Marx to P. V. Annenkov,” p. 181.
56. The German Ideology, p. 463; our italics.
57. Cf. ibid., p. 50.
58. Cf. ibid., p. 72.
59. Cf. ibid.
60. Cf. ibid., p. 73.
61. Cf. ibid., pp. 50-51, 82, 84, 464-65.
62. Cf. The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 127-28.
63. Capital, 1, p. 360; our italics.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., p. 361.
66. Ibid., p. 363.
67. Ibid.
68. The German Ideology, p. 86.
69. Capital, 1, p. 264.
70. Ibid., p. 361.
71. Ibid.
72. Cf. ibid.
73. Ibid., pp. 361-62.
74. Ibid., p. 361.
75. Ibid., p. 423.
76. Ibid., p. 361. The full comprehension of this text can be attained only at the end of our analysis, when the problematic of the forces of production will have clearly and definitively separated the subjective from the objective element in them; cf. our conclusion to the present work.
77. Capital, 1, p. 364.
78. The German Ideology, p. 51.
79. The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 138.
80. Ibid.
81. Marx’s economic analysis will be based upon this decisive thesis. In fact, if the machine itself worked, it would produce value and capital, which possessed the machine could grow of itself.
82. “. . . the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa which makes man a mere fragment of his own being” (Capital, 1, p. 360).
83. Cf. also The German Ideology, p. 418.
Chapter 4: The Determination of Reality
1. Cf., for example, L’essence du christianisme, trad. J.-P. Osier (Paris: Maspero), 1968, p. 108. (In the Preface to the second edition; this text belongs to the opening paragraphs omitted in the English translation.)
2. Ibid.
3. Ludwig Feuerbach, Provisional Theses for the Reform of Philosophy, §32, in Kleinere Schriften II (1839-1846), vol. 9 of Gesammelte Werke, ed. Werner Schuffenhauer (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag), 1970.
4. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, pp. XXXIV–XXXV.
5. Ibid., p. 63.
6. Ibid., p. 198.
7. Ibid., p. 63.
8. Ibid., p. 54.
9. Ibid., p. 62.
10. Ibid., p. 48.
11. This confusion persists throughout Feuerbach’s work; it is found, for example, in this passage from Provisional Theses, §43: “A being without affection is, however, nothing other than a being without sensation, without matter ” (p. 253; italics in original).
12. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 389.
13. Ibid., p. 399; “self-externalizing sensuousness” is italicized by Marx.
14. Ibid., p. 389.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 390.
17. Ibid., p. 389.
18. Ibid., p. 390.
19. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, pp. 4–5.
20. Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, trans. Manfred H. Vogel, Library of Liberal Arts (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill), 1966, p. 9.
21. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 5.
22. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 390; our italics.
23. Ibid., p. 391; our italics.
24. Ibid., p. 375.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 353.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., p. 352.
31. Ibid., p. 353.
32. Ibid., p. 352.
33. Ibid.; our italics.
34. We have already seen this, for example, in relation to the will, cf. supra, chapter 1, pp. 22-23.
35. Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, p. 44.
36. Hegel, The Encyclopedia, § 244; quoted by Marx in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 397.
37. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 398.
38. Ibid., p. 386.
39. Ibid., p. 387.
40. Ibid., p. 388.
41. Ibid., p. 389.
42. Ibid., pp. 391-92; Marx’s italics.
43. Ibid., p. 392.
44. Ibid., p. 393.
45. Ibid., p. 392.
46. Ibid., p. 393.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., p. 392.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 394.
51. Ibid., p. 391; our italics.
52. Ibid., p. 387.
53. Ibid., pp. 399-400.
54. On this, cf. our general interpretation of Hegelian ontology in The Essence of Manifestation, II, Appendix.
55. Hegel, Encyclopedia, § 384; our italics. Quoted by Marx in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 400.
56. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 391.
57. Ibid., p. 353; our italics.
58. Ibid.; our italics.
59. Ibid., p. 352; Marx’s italics.
60. Ibid., p. 391.
61. Ibid., p. 353; our italics.
62. Ibid., p. 355.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., pp. 352-53.
65. Ibid., p. 355.
66. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 5; our italics.
67. “The abstract hostility between sense and intellect is inevitable so long as the human sense [Sinn] for nature, the human significance [Sinn] of nature and hence the natural sense of man, has not yet been produced by man’s own labor” (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 364; our italics).
68. Ibid., p. 399.
69. Ibid., pp. 355-56.
70. Ibid., p. 352; our italics.
71. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 5.
72. The German Ideology, p. 45.
73. Ibid., p. 616.
74. The sixth thesis states: “Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.”
75. Cf. the article quoted in L’homme et la société, Jan.-March 1968, pp. 18-35, and in particular p. 34: “The scientific character of Marx’s text consists in the fact of thinking of structures in terms of individuals and vice versa. . . . ”
76. In this is revealed to us the fundamental meaning of the concept of theory which designates both the intuition of the sensuous world and the categorial determination of this world, its “theory” stricto sensu. That this is indeed the Feuerbachian concept of theory which the “Theses on Feuerbach” will challenge is explicitly affirmed in this text of The Essence of Christianity (p. 187): “. . . the essential object of theory– theory in its most original and general sense, namely that of objective intuition and experience, of the intellect, of science . . . ” (our italics; translation modified). This Feuerbachian definition of theory–upon which our entire analysis is based–suffices to show the perfectly illusory character of recent interpretations which try to present Marx’s thought as an attempt to substitute “theory,” precisely, for the immediate and naïve experience of sensuous perception, this substitution being understood, moreover, as “ideology” which has been repressed in the name of “science.” An interpretation such as this can arise only out of the complete ignorance of the philosophical and conceptual framework of Marx’s thought in 1845.
77. Our italics.
78. According to Marx, the neo-Hegelians, in their apparent opposition to Hegel, simply represent the scattered pieces of the system in decomposition: “Their polemics against Hegel and against one another are confined to this–each takes one aspect of the Hegelian system and turns this against the whole system as well as against the aspects chosen by the others” (The German Ideology, p. 35).
79. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, § 142, p. 105.
80. Ibid., § 280, p. 184.
81. Ibid., § 9, p. 24.
82. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (New York: Harper & Row), 1967, p. 429.
83. Ibid., pp. 516-17.
84. Hegel, System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, trans. H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox (Albany: State University of New York Press), 1979.
85. Ibid., p. 211.
86. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, Preface, pp. 12-13.
87. Hegel, First Philosophy of Spirit, p. 211.
88. Cf. Hegel, System der Sittlichkeit, p. 432; Jenenser Realphilosophie, II, pp. 197– 98; Wissenschaft der Logik, II, p. 398; these references are given by G Planty-Bonjour in his Introduction to Hegel’s First Philosophy of Mind (Paris: Presses universitaires de France), 1969, p. 37, note 2.
89. Cf. Hegel, First Philosophy of Spirit, p. 246.
90. Ibid., p. 247.
91. Ibid., p. 243.
92. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, p. 517.
93. Ibid., p. 516.
94. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, § 21, p. 30; our italics.
95. They also run up against the same aporias. With respect to this, cf. our study “The Hegelian concept of Manifestation” in The Essence of Manifestation.
96. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 329; our italics.
97. Ibid., p. 396.
98. The German Ideology, p. 46.
99. An exception to this can be found, however, in Maine de Biran, with whom Marx was not acquainted. By elucidating in a radical fashion the essence of action, not on the level of thought as did his German contemporaries, but on that of the body, by thus proposing for the first time in the history of Western culture a problematic of real, individual, and concrete action, a problematic of “praxis,” the thought of Maine de Biran is of critical importance for any serious interpretation of Marx and, in general, of “material labor.”
100. Thus one is led to doubt the assertion made by G Planty-Bonjour in his Introduction to Hegel’s First Philosophy of Mind, p. 33: “To tie the actualization of mind to the sphere of labor is a conception radically foreign to idealism.” It was Adam Smith, of course, who proposed the theme of labor to the reflection of the young Hegel, but the fundamental concept of self-objectification supplied Hegelian idealism with the schema that would enable it not only to give an immediate philosophical interpretation to labor but also to integrate the essence of labor in the inner structure of being, and, what is more, to interpret this structure as identical with labor itself. In this way is explained in particular the intervention of the term “labor” in the Preface to The Phenomenology of Mind, the definition of the essence of man as labor, the determining function recognized in the latter in the process of culture formation, etc. Georges Cottier has well shown the affinity between the Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of labor and the idealist concept of action as self-production and self-objectification. But this interpretation is found in Marx himself only in the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts; it is with this interpretation that the “Theses on Feuerbach” make a deliberate break.
101. In a certain sense Marx’s affirmation is most questionable: never was idealism developed in opposition to materialism, never was the concept of action elaborated by it as an antithesis to that of intuition. The fact is that here Marx is retracing not the history of philosophy but simply that of his own thought. The text of the first thesis is all the more enlightening for this reason.
102. This is the reproach one would be tempted to address to the interpretation proposed by G. Cottier in L’Athéisme du jeune Marx, despite its remarkable character, if it were not that it is deliberately confined to the study of those texts written before 1845.
103. The term “activity of the senses” is found several times in Feuerbach (for example, The Essence of Christianity, p. XXXIV, Preface to the second edition); it defines, in addition, the reality of action by the fact that the latter refers to sensuous objects and is therefore particular as are these objects. This action is explicitly understood as objectification: “What is it to make, to create, to produce, but to make that which in the first instance is only subjective . . . into something objective, perceptible . . .” (ibid., p. 109).
104. The German Ideology, p. 41.
105. Ibid., pp. 47-48.
106. Ibid., p. 44.
107. Ibid., p. 46.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid., p. 47.
110. Ibid., p. 46.
111. Cf. ibid., pp. 46–47. And also the text of the eighth thesis: “All social life is essentially practical.”
112. With regard to this, Feuerbachian anthropology is not the antithesis but the ridiculous subproduct.
113. Let us recall that Husserl defended this thesis in his Prolegemena to Pure Logic in order to safeguard the autonomy and the rational consistency of logic in the face of the psychological reduction that threatened it at the end of the last century. It nonetheless remains that the Husserlian problematic is wholly located within a theoretical perspective and thereby misses the most original essence of being as it was conceived of by Marx.
114. Cf., for example, this passage from the article on the freedom of the press published in May 1842 in the Rheinische Zeitung, in which Marx speaks of “these liberal Germans who imagine they serve freedom by placing it in the starry heaven of the imagination, instead of leaving it on the solid ground of reality. These reasoners of the imagination, these sentimental enthusiasts, who abhor any contact of their ideal with vulgar reality and see in this contact a profanation, are men to whom the rest of us Germans owe the fact that in part, up until today, freedom has remained on the level of the imagination and of sentimentality” (D, I, p. 68). To what extent this Hegelian critique of abstract freedom belongs to the philosophical horizon of the neo-Hegelians before becoming a commonplace of Marxism can also be seen in this letter to Marx, dated March 1843, in which Ruge declares, concerning the freedom of German philosophers, “. . . one tolerated their boldness of declaring in abstracto that man is free . . . this liberty said to be scientific or in principle which resigns itself to remaining unrealized . . .” (Costes, V, p. 192).
115. The reason why normativity cannot be reduced to the rationalist concept of fundamental apodicticity is that it is not directed toward the privileged mode of theoretical actuality but toward that which escapes it, that which is an abyss for it.
116. Our italics.
Chapter 5: The Place of Ideology
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. F. Max Müller (New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books), 1966, note, pp. 265–66.
2. The German Ideology, p. 42.
3. The Communist Manifesto, in The Revolutions of 1848, p. 85.
4. The German Ideology, p. 42.
5. In Early Writings, p. 426.
6. The German Ideology, p. 36.
7. Stirner, L’Unique et sa propriété, trans. H. Lasvignes (Paris: Editions de la Revue blanche), 1900, p. 21; our italics.
8. Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, (Paris: Nagel), 1946, p. 31.
9. Stirner, p. 85; our italics.
10. Ibid., p. 116.
11. The German Ideology, p. 314.
12. Ibid., p. 304.
13. Ibid., p. 313.
14. This is Feuerbach’s concept of representation when he declares that God is the representation of man or the dream the representation of reality. The relation that is established between these terms is, as we have seen, the following: what is represented is the same thing as that which it represents, but this thing then exists in the dimension of irreality.
15. The German Ideology, p. 42.
16. Ibid., p. 42. The term “mental production” employed by Marx here shows that it is absurd to wish to consider theoretical activity as a “practice” and to christen it, for example, “theoretical practice.” This is to destroy Marx’s entire problematic concerning the foundation of ideology, only to slip back into ideology.
17. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, p. 607.
18. The German Ideology, p. 42.
19. Ibid., p. 268; our italics.
20. Ibid., p. 349; our italics.
21. Ibid., p. 304.
22. Ibid., p. 281.
23. Ibid., pp. 280–81. Is there any need to emphasize once again the complete reversal of the Hegelian problematic that occurs here? The universal is no longer the substance which the individual comes to resemble at the end of his labor and of his history; it is a determination and a feature of his own life, and one that results from it, from his practice.
24. Cf. ibid., pp. 280-81.
25. Cf. ibid., pp. 67-68, and also ibid., pp. 41-42.
26. Ibid., p. 42; our italics.
27. The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 109; our italics. Is it by chance that this decisive proposition appears word-for-word in the famous letter that Marx wrote to Annenkov during the same period, Dec. 28, 1846? Cf. ibid., p. 189.
28. The German Ideology, p. 359.
29. Ibid., p. 174.
30. Ibid., p. 173.
31. Ibid., pp. 174-75.
32. Ibid., p. 29.
33. Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard), 1966, p. 74. Cf. also: “However, if we examine classical thought at the level of that which made it possible archeologically, we see that the dissociation of the sign and resemblance at the beginning of the seventeenth century brought to light the following new figures: probability, analysis, combinations, systems and universal language, not as successive themes . . . but as a single network of necessities. And this is what made possible those individuals whom we call Hobbes, or Berkeley, or Hume, or Condillac ” (ibid., p. 77; our italics).
34. The German Ideology, p. 299; our italics.
35. Cf. supra, p. 103.
36. The German Ideology, p. 463.
37. Ibid., p. 43.
38. Ibid., pp. 44, 47, notes.
39. Letter to Annenkov, December 28, 1846, in The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 189; Marx’s italics.
40. Ibid., p. 109.
41. The German Ideology, p. 476.
42. The German Ideology, p. 346: “Our Sancho first of all transforms the struggle over privilege and equal right into a struggle over the mere “concepts” privileged and equal. In this way he saves himself the trouble of having to know anything about the medieval mode of production, the political expression of which was privilege, and the modern mode of production, of which right as such, equal right, is the expression, or about the relation of these two modes of production to the legal relations which correspond to them.”
43. Grundrisse, p. 104.
44. Ibid.
45. Letter to J. B. Schweitzer, January 24, 1865, in The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 196; our italics.
46. Ibid., p. 126.
47. Ibid., pp. 114-16.
48. Ibid., p. 121.
49. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, I, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1970, p. 102.
50. The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 116.
51. Ibid., p. 122.
52. Grundrisse, pp. 100–101.
53. Ibid., p. 101.
54. Ibid.; our italics.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.; our italics.
57. Letter to Annenkov, December 28, 1846, in The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 189.
58. Gramsci, Opere complete, II, p. 95.
59. Capital, 2, p. 34.
60. Capital, 3, pp. 897-99.
Chapter 6: The Transcendental Genesis of the Economy
1. Capital, l, p. 8.
2. Ibid., p. 37.
3. Ibid., p. 73.
4. Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart), 1968, p. 323.
5. Ibid., p. 324.
6. Ibid., p. 323.
7. Ibid., p. 324; our italics.
8. Ibid., pp. 323-24.
9. Ibid., p. 324.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.; our italics.
13. Ibid.; Marx’s italics.
14. It will not fail to be objected that one finds in Hegel, that is to say, precisely in a philosophy based on the premise of objective universality, a critique of the concept of equality. Cf., in particular, Philosophy of Right § 49. But Hegel’s critique is radically different from that of Marx; it signifies that the equality we usually demand is still only the abstract concept of equality to which is opposed the still unequal development of individuals. This is because, for Hegel, equality must be realized and it will be an Idea only through this realization, which is not an ideal end but the actual history of individuals and of humanity. It is toward the unity of a common spiritual substance which their own reality gives them and, at the same time, toward equality that all individuals are directed. For Marx, on the contrary, and this is due to the monadic presupposition of his thought, it is equality as such, not its mere concept, which can be criticized or, better, which is absurd.
15. Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 324.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., pp. 324–25.
18. Grundrisse, p. 171; our italics.
19. Capital, 1, p. 37 (translation modified to include the final clause, which is not found in the English translation); our italics. Cf. also The Critique of Political Economy, p. 28.
20. Capital, 1, p. 38.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Cf. ibid.
24. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 30.
25. Ibid.
26. Cf. ibid., p. 29.
27. Ibid., p. 69.
28. Ibid., p. 30.
29. Ibid., p. 32.
30. Cf. ibid., pp. 30-31.
31. Cf. ibid., p. 31.
32. Cf. ibid., p. 32.
33. Capital, 1, p. 38.
34. Quoted by Marx in The Holy Family, p. 58.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.; “empty” and “filled” are italicized by Marx.
37. Ibid., p. 59.
38. Ibid.; our italics.
39. The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 53-54; our italics.
40. Quoted by Marx in Capital, 1, p. 47.
41. Ibid., p. 243.
42. Ibid., p. 43; our italics.
43. Ibid., p. 44; our italics.
44. Ibid.
45. Le Capital (Oeuvres, La Pléiade, I), 1963, p. 574; also note 1, p. 1636. This sentence was added by Marx to the French edition and is not found in the English translation, cf. Capital, 1, p. 46.
46. Capital, 1, p. 41.
47. Capital, 2, pp. 14–15.
48. Wages, Price and Profit, in Selected Works, p. 205.
49. “We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labor socially necessary, or the labor-time socially necessary for its production” (Capital, 1, p. 39).
50. Ibid., p. 80, note 2.
51. Cf. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 36.
52. Cf. ibid., pp. 68-69.
53. Grundrisse, p. 168.
54. Cf. Capital, 1, p. 80, note 1.
55. Grundrisse, p. 171; our italics.
56. Ibid., p. 143; our italics.
57. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 34.
58. Ibid.
59. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 323.
60. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 34.
61. Cf. ibid., p. 35.
62. Cf. ibid., pp. 34–35.
63. Cf. ibid., p. 35.
64. Ibid., p. 34; our italics.
65. Capital, 1, p. 72.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., p. 95; our italics.
68. Grundrisse, p. 140.
69. Ibid., p. 268.
70. Ibid., p. 759.
71. Capital, 1, p. 47.
72. Grundrisse, p. 856.
73. Ibid., p. 860.
74. Ibid., p. 141; our italics. Cf. also ibid., pp. 856, 860.
75. Capital, 1, p. 47.
76. Ibid., p. 72.
77. Grundrisse, p. 881.
78. “Just as a Manchester family of factory workers, where the children stand in the exchange relation towards their parents and pay them room and board, does not represent the traditional economic organization of the family, so is the system of modern private exchange not the spontaneous economy of societies” (Grundrisse, p. 882).
79. Ibid., p. 304.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., p. 691; Marx’s italics.
82. Ibid., p. 320; Marx’s italics.
83. Cf. ibid., pp. 629-30.
84. Ibid., p. 691.
85. Ibid., p. 692.
86. Cf. ibid.
87. Cf. ibid., p. 312.
88. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 41.
89. Grundrisse, p. 757.
90. Capital, 1, p. 40.
91. Wages, Price and Profit, in Selected Works, p. 207.
92. Capital, 1, p. 46.
93. Capital, 3, p. 219.
94. Cf. Wages, Price and Profit, pp. 205-206, and Capital, 1, p. 39.
95. Capital, 1, p. 46; our italics.
96. Ibid., p. 114.
97. Grundrisse, p. 149.
98. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 123.
99. Capital, 1, p. 114.
100. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 91.
101. Grundrisse, pp. 199-200. Cf. also ibid., pp. 149, 150-51.
102. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 89.
103. Cf. Grundrisse, p. 198, and also Capital, 1, pp. 113, 130, 132.
104. Grundrisse, p. 148.
105. Cf. ibid., p. 147.
106. Cf. ibid., p. 151.
107. Ibid., p. 148.
108. Ibid., p. 149.
109. Cf. ibid., p. 198.
110. “The circulation of commodities differs from the direct exchange of products (barter), not only in form but in substance” Capital, 1, p. 112.
111. Cf. Grundrisse, pp. 146–47.
112. Critique of Political Economy, p. 131.
113. Cf. Grundrisse, p. 145.
114. Capital, l, p. 109.
115. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 379.
116. Grundrisse, p. 163.
117. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 379.
118. Ibid., p. 377; our italics, except for am and can do, which are italicized by Marx.
119. Ibid., pp. 377-79.
Chapter 7: The Reality of Economic Reality
1. Capital, 1, p. 566; our italics.
2. Capital, 2, p. 202.
3. Capital, 1, p. 178.
4. Note to the French translation of Capital, explaining the sense of the German expression Arbeits-Prozess, Karl Marx, Oeuvres, I (La Pléiade), 1963, p. 728.
5. Cf. Capital, 1, p. 181.
6. Ibid., p. 184.
7. Grundrisse, p. 852.
8. Ibid., p. 493.
9. Capital, 1, p. 538.
10. Ibid., pp. 535-36.
11. Wages, Price and Profit, p. 209; cf. also: “Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer” (ibid.).
12. Grundrisse, p. 780.
13. Ibid., p. 272; our italics; “subjectivity,” “living subject,” and “worker” are italicized by Marx.
14. Cf. Capital, 1, pp. 180, 189.
15. Grundrisse, p. 296. On the ultimate meaning of this essential proposition, cf. supra, pp. 277–78.
16. Ibid., p. 273.
17. Cf. ibid., p. 305; cf. supra, p. 217.
18. Ibid., p. 305.
19. Ibid., pp. 610-11.
20. Ibid., p. 611.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 612.
24. Capital, 1, pp. 46–47, note; our italics.
25. Capital, 2, p. 388; our italics.
26. “Wage Labour and Capital,” p. 81; Marx’s italics.
27. Capital, 2, p. 35; our italics.
28. Grundrisse, p. 206.
29. Ibid.; our italics.
30. Ibid., p. 267, note.
31. Cf. ibid., p. 536.
32. Cf. ibid., p. 301.
33. Capital, 1, p. 146.
34. “It [the commodity] never assumes this value when isolated” (Capital, 1, p. 60).
35. Cf. Grundrisse, p. 795.
36. Ibid., p. 872.
37. Capital, 2, p. 225; our italics.
38. Grundrisse, p. 687. One of the essential aims of Marx’s analysis, and this is the case here, is to distinguish rigorously between the real properties and the economic properties of the “reality” he is discussing. Cf., for example, the entire analysis of “fixed capital” which represents the value of the instruments of labor, the “fixed” character of this value having nothing to do with the “fixed” nature of the instrument itself, whether machine, warehouse, factory, etc.
39. Cf. Grundrisse, pp. 646–47.
40. Capital, l, p. 202.
41. Ibid., p. 40; cf. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 28.
42. Cf. supra, pp. 212–13, and Grundrisse, p. 856.
43. Capital, 1, p. 188.
44. Cf. ibid., p. 85, and The Critique of Political Economy, pp. 42–43.
45. Ibid., p. 85.
46. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 43.
47. Cf. ibid., pp. 42-43; Capital, l, p. 147.
48. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 42; our italics.
49. Ibid., p. 43; our italics.
50. Cf. Grundrisse, p. 404.
51. Capital, 2, p. 127.
52. Capital, 1, p. 202.
53. Cf. ibid.
54. Grundrisse, pp. 455–56.
55. Ibid., p. 404.
56. Ibid., p. 405.
57. Ibid., p. 406. Thus, one must admit, along with Marx, that capital finds its limit in “alien consumption” and that “the indifference of value as such towards use value is thereby brought into . . . [a] false position” (ibid., p. 407).
58. Ibid., p. 408.
59. Ibid., p. 409.
60. Ibid., p. 234.
61. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 124.
62. Grundrisse, p. 271.
63. Ibid., p. 646; “particular nature of use value” and “determinant . . . form” are italicized by Marx.
64. Capital, 1, p. 177.
65. Grundrisse, p. 267.
66. Ibid., p. 305.
67. Ibid., p. 295; our italics.
68. Ibid., pp. 259–60; cf. also Capital, 1, p. 153.
69. Ibid., pp. 153-54.
70. Ibid., p. 154. Marx cites Sismondi’s definition of capital: “portion fructifiante de la richesse accumulée . . . valeur permanente, multipliante,” Nouveaux principes de l’économie politique, I, pp. 88–89; in French in the English translation, ibid., p. 155.
71. Cf. Capital, 1, pp. 158, 159, 160.
72. Ibid., p. 163.
73. Cf. Condillac, “Le commerce et le gouvernement” (1776), in Mélanges d’économie politique (Paris, 1847), p. 267, quoted by Marx, Capital, 1, p. 159. It is only because he confuses use-value with exchange-value that Condillac can believe that the advantage resulting from the usefulness of the product signifies its superior exchange-value.
74. Capital, 1, p. 166.
75. Ibid., p. 167.
76. Ibid., p. 175.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid., pp. 175-76; our italics.
79. Ibid., pp. 194–95; our italics.
80. Grundrisse, p. 631.
81. Capital, 1, p. 195; cf. also: “. . . surplus-value . . . like the portion of value which replaces the variable capital advanced in wages, is a value newly created by the laborer during the process of production . . . ” (Capital, 2, p. 387).
82. Grundrisse, p. 632; “value-positing” italicized by Marx; “the use value of labor is itself,” our italics.
83. Capital, l, p. 186; our italics.
84. Ibid., p. 197; our italics.
85. Cf. Le Capital in Oeuvres, I (La Pléiade), p. 1037; this text does not appear as such in the English translation of Capital, cf., 1, pp. 540–41.
86. Capital, 2, pp. 385-86.
87. Cf. Le Capital in Oeuvres, I (La Pléiade), p. 574; this text does not appear in the English translation of Capital, for as is explained in a note, ibid., p. 1636, this sentence was added by Marx for the French translation.
88. Grundrisse, p. 772.
89. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 30; our italics.
90. Capital, 2, p. 386; our italics.
91. Capital, l, p. 195; our italics.
92. Ibid., p. 192; our italics.
93. Capital, 3, p. 381; our italics.
94. Capital, l, p. 206; our italics.
95. Capital, 3, p. 29; our italics.
96. Cf. Grundrisse, p. 274.
97. Capital, 2, p. 29.
98. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
99. Grundrisse, p. 284; our italics.
100. Ibid.
101. Cf. ibid., p. 288.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. Cf. Capital, l, p. 174.
105. Cf. “Wage Labour and Capital,” pp. 82-83.
106. Cf. ibid., p. 82.
107. Grundrisse, p. 673.
108. Ibid., p. 674.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid., p. 576.
111. Ibid.; our italics.
112. Ibid., p. 641; our italics.
113. Ibid., p. 641.
114. Wages, Price and Profit, p. 212.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid.
118. Ibid.
119. Cf. Grundrisse, p. 312.
120. Cf. ibid., pp. 312-13.
121. Cf. ibid., p. 343.
122. Ibid., p. 363; our italics.
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid., p. 358; our italics.
125. Ibid., p. 363; our italics.
126. Ibid.
127. Ibid., pp. 363-64; our italics.
128. Ibid., p. 359; Marx’s italics.
129. Capital, 3, p. 245.
130. Grundrisse, p. 360.
131. “Ego is the night of disappearance,” Realphilosophie, Iena, Hegel, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Lasson, II, p. 185.
132. Grundrisse, pp. 360-61.
133. Capital, 1, p. 182; translation modified. (Last phrase in German text reads: “Sie funktioniren nur noch als gegenständliche Faktoren der Lebendigen Arbeit.”)
134. Ibid., p. 183; our italics.
135. Ibid., p. 200. The analysis in the Grundrisse is obviously taken up again here; cf. Grundrisse, pp. 363–64.
136. Capital, 1, p. 183.
137. Ibid., p. 185.
138. Grundrisse, p. 364.
139. Ibid.
140. Ibid.
141. Ibid.; our italics.
142. Ibid.
143. Ibid.
Chapter 8: The Radical Reduction of Capital to Subjectivity
1. Cf. Capital, 3, pp. 145–46.
2. Cf. Capital, 2, p. 161.
3. Cf. ibid., p. 163.
4. Cf. ibid., pp. 164-65.
5. Cf. ibid., p. 188.
6. Ibid., pp. 163-64.
7. Capital, l, p. 612.
8. Cf. ibid., p. 209.
9. Cf. ibid.: “That part of capital then, which is represented by the means of production, by the raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments of labor, does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration of value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or, more shortly, constant capital. On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by labor-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an alteration of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus-value, which may itself vary, may be more or less according to circumstances. This part of capital is continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or, variable capital.”
10. Ibid.; our italics.
11. Capital, 2, pp. 219-20.
12. Ibid., p. 222; our italics.
13. Ibid., p. 221; our italics.
14. Capital, 1, p. 210.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., pp. 210-11.
17. Ibid., p. 213.
18. Ibid., p. 214. It must be noted that this rather extraordinary idea of positing constant capital c = 0 was suggested to Marx by Smith himself, as this text from Book Two shows: “with Adam Smith the entire value of the social product resolves itself into revenue, into v + s, so that the constant capital-value is set down as zero” (Capital, 2, p. 475). But Marx’s stroke of genius was to give a radical meaning to this point of view, which, by reducing constant capital to zero, allows the variable capital to be isolated, whereas in Smith the situation is reversed. Because Smith confuses variable capital with wages, he reduces it to a fixed value whose variation is then incomprehensible and, in the same stroke, reduces it to circulating capital so that the specificity of variable capital is lost twice over. We see here how one and the same thesis (c = o) can lead to diametrically opposed consequences; in one case it can completely cloud the essence of the phenomenon studied (surplus-value) and in the other case can lead to its clarification.
19. Capital, 1, p. 214.
20. Capital, 3, p. 145.
21. Let us note that setting constant capital aside is precisely the only method that permits calculating the real rate of surplus-value at the same time as it defines the scientific concept of surplus-value. Cf. ibid., pp. 215–16.
22. Ibid., p. 214; our italics.
23. Ibid., p. 147.
24. Cf. Capital, 1, pp. 538-39.
25. Cf. Wages, Price and Profit, p. 213.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 537. As early as the first chapter of Capital, Marx stated: “Human laborpower in motion, or human labor, creates value, but is not itself value” (ibid., p. 5l).
28. It is indeed this passivity of living praxis that Marx has in mind when he speaks of a “natural power.”
29. Capital, 3, p. 29.
30. The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 55.
31. Ibid.
32. Grundrisse, p. 551.
33. A statement of Ricardo quoted by Marx in the Grundrisse, p. 561.
34. Capital, 1, p. 538.
35. Ibid.
36.Ibid., pp. 539-40.
37. Cf. ibid., pp. 540-41.
38. Capital, 2, p. 28.
39. Capital, 1, pp. 535-36.
40. Ibid., p. 170.
41. Ibid., p. 171; our italics. The constant presupposition of the living individual, which makes him the irreducible prior condition, the condition for every economic determination, is also evident in this singular declaration concerning the primary relation between the individual and the market economy, his entrance into this economy: “In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labor must at all events exist before it is sold” (ibid., p. 535).
Conclusion: Socialism
1. Cf. Grundrisse, p. 603.
2. Ibid., pp. 668–69; our italics.
3. Ibid., p. 670; our italics.
4. Capital, 2, p. 124.
5. Grundrisse, p. 692.
6. Ibid.; our italics.
7. Ibid., pp. 692-93; our italics.
8. Ibid., p. 693.
9. Ibid., p. 695.
10. Ibid., p. 693; our italics.
11. Ibid., p. 706.
12. Cf. ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 705.
14. The German Ideology, p. 37; our italics. This identification which is made between production and the very existence of individuals, the nature of their life, is a constant in Marx’s work. As an example, let us quote the following passage in Capital, in which this identification is asserted in reference to production and hence in reference to the peasant population: “Long before the period of Modern Industry, co-operation and the concentration of the instruments of labor in the hands of a few, gave rise, in numerous countries where these methods were applied in agriculture, to great, sudden and forcible revolutions in the modes of production, and consequentially, in the conditions of existence, and the means of employment of the rural populations” (Capital, 1, p. 430; our italics).
15. Grundrisse, p. 702.
16. Ibid., p. 704.
17. Ibid., p. 693.
18. Ibid., p. 694; our italics.
19. Capital, 1, p. 361; our italics.
20. Ibid., p. 364; our italics.
21. Grundrisse, pp. 705–706; our italics.
22. The German Ideology, p. 37.
23. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 34.
24. Ibid., p. 85; cf. ibid., p. 32.
25. Ibid., p. 45.
26. Ibid.; our italics.
27. Capital, l, p. 78.
28. The Critique of Political Economy, p. 33.
29. Ibid.; our italics.
30. Ibid., pp. 33–34; our italics. It is because the social character of labor, in the sense of a real character, is understood by Marx as an original character that he conceives private labor and private property, on the contrary, as the historical effect and the result of the dissolution of the primitive mode of production: “A careful study of Asiatic, particularly Indian, forms of communal property would indicate that the disintegration of different forms of primitive communal ownership gives rise to diverse forms of property” (ibid., p. 33). Likewise, in the Grundrisse we find: “The system of production founded on private exchange is, to begin with, the historic dissolution of this naturally arisen communism” (p. 882).
31. Capital, 1, p. 77; our italics. Is there any need to point out that this text by itself provides clear confirmation of the theory of classes which we have proposed in these investigations, an interpretation which is also valid for social relations in the market economy because, instead of changing anything about the fact that the relations of production are constituted by the very praxis of the individuals at work, an economy such as this, or capitalism, reposes, on the contrary, on this fact and is limited to “disguising” it?
32. “. . . articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labor of private individuals . . . ” (ibid., p. 77).
33. Ibid., p. 73.
34. Ibid.
35. Grundrisse, pp. 225–26.
36. Ibid., p. 226.
37. Capital, 1, p. 79. What follows this passage–”But they are founded . . . on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community . . .”–is of the greatest interest: it confirms the critique of the Hegelian concept of the political man as defined by the collectivity and as realized in it, and shows incontestably that Marx’s thought continues to be governed by the radical presupposition of a philosophy of individual development, at the very moment when he encounters historical socialism.
38. The German Ideology, p. 86.
39. Capital, 1, p. 79.
40. Grundrisse, p. 171.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., pp. 171-72.
43. Ibid., p. 172.
44. Capital, 1, pp. 78–79.
45. Capital, 2, p. 358.
46. It is therefore impossible to agree with Mandel’s statement that Marx “categorically refused to identify the necessity for an accounting in terms of labor-time (which applies to every human society, except perhaps to the most advanced form of communist society) and the indirect expression of this accounting in the form of exchange-value. And he explicitly affirmed that, when the private ownership of the means of production is replaced by that of the associated producers, the market production will cease, giving way to a direct accounting in terms of work-hours.” So that “one cannot assert that for Marx all living social labor would necessarily take the form of abstract value-creating labor” (La formation de la pensée économique de Karl Marx, pp. 48–49). What this author fails to see is that the indirect account of labor in the form of exchange-value presupposes its direct account, which is, as such, constitutive of abstract labor and which presupposes it. In Capital the problematic of abstract labor is part of the analysis of the market economy, not of that of capitalism.
47. Must it be recalled that in a communist system surplus-labor does not disappear totally? “Only by suppressing the capitalist form of production could the length of the working-day be reduced to the necessary labor-time. But even in that case the latter would extend its limits. . . . because a part of what is now surplus-labor, would then count as necessary labor; I mean the labor of forming a fund for reserve and accumulation” (Capital, 1, p. 530).
48. Ibid., p. 484; on the theory of education in its connection with the problematic of the division of labor and of individual subjectivity, cf. supra, pp. 109–17.