Marxism: Philosophical, Economic, and Social Perspectives

Posted on Aug 21, 2024 in Social sciences

Three Sources of the Marxist Conception

  • Economy: Classical English political economy (Smith and Ricardo), labor value theory, productive and unproductive labor, capital, etc. Functional Forms.
  • Philosophy: Classical German philosophy, Hegelian dialectics.
  • Socialism: French utopian socialism.

Juan Reynaud, Louis Toureil, Auguste Blanqui, E. – Cabet, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, Fourier, Owen.

Karl Marx

Contents:

  1. The Time and Personality of Karl Marx
  2. The Works of Marx
  3. Methodology
  4. Das Kapital:
    • A. Characterization of Four Volumes of Capital
    • B. Thematic Structure of Volume I of Capital
    • C. Thematic Structure and Content of Part I of Capital
    • D. The Initial Plan of Research and/or Working Capital
    • E. The Marxian Scheme of Social Reproduction

1. Karl Marx: Biographical

Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier in 1818 to a Jewish upper-middle-class family. His father, a lawyer, renounced Judaism. In 1835, Marx began his university studies at the University of Bonn and later transferred to the University of Berlin, where he studied philosophy. In 1841, he defended his doctoral thesis, entitled “Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature,” at the University of Jena.

During 1842, he worked initially as a contributor and then as editor for the Gazette of the Rhine, where, in addition to writing on philosophical topics, he delved into the areas of economics and politics.

In 1843, following the suppression of the publication, he emigrated to Paris, where he remained until 1845. This stay in Paris was of paramount importance for Marx, as it brought him into contact with French utopian socialist ideas, such as those of Blanc, Cabet, and Proudhon. Most importantly, he formed a friendship with Friedrich Engels, who became his collaborator and closest friend.

In 1845, at the behest of the Prussian state, the French government expelled Marx, who then decided to settle in Brussels.

When the 1848 revolution in Paris spread to Belgium, the Brussels government expelled Marx, forcing him to seek refuge once again in Paris. He later returned to Germany to lead the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Gazette of the Rhine).

In 1849, he was expelled from Germany again and moved to France before finally settling in London, where he lived until his death in 1883.

Major Works of Karl Marx

  • 1841: Doctoral Thesis: “Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature”
  • 1844: Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
  • 1844: On the Jewish Question
  • 1844: Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
  • 1845: The Condition of the Working Class in England
  • 1845: The Holy Family
  • 1845: The German Ideology
  • 1845: Theses on Feuerbach
  • 1847: The Poverty of Philosophy
  • 1847: Wage Labour and Capital
  • 1848: The Communist Manifesto
  • 1850: The Class Struggles in France
  • 1852: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
  • 1859: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
  • 1867: Capital, Volume I
  • 1885: Capital, Volume II (edited by Friedrich Engels)
  • 1894: Capital, Volume III (edited by Friedrich Engels)
  • 1905-1910: Capital, Volume IV: Theories of Surplus Value (edited by Karl Kautsky)

3. Methodology

Object of Study: The capitalist mode of production.

Methodology: Marx’s philosophical approach, understood as the synthesis of the dialectical and historical materialism methods.

Fundamental Theses:

  1. Nature, the universe, exists as an objective reality independent of our knowledge.
  2. Knowledge can grasp objective reality.
  3. Knowledge arises from the relationship with objective reality; only knowledge derived from experience is valid.
  4. Truth is objective and concrete.
  5. History and its laws cannot be explained by themselves; their anatomy must be sought in political economy.
  6. The production process defines the characteristics of individuals and the relations between them.
  7. Socioeconomic formations are defined by the degree of development of the following attributes:
    1. Property relations
    2. Social division of labor, which expresses the degree of development of society’s productive forces
    3. Mode of production
  8. The origin of classes lies in the process of the division of labor.
  9. The superstructure of society emerges from the economic base of society.

The laws of dialectics govern society.

Dialectical Laws:

  1. Law of reciprocal interactions (not metaphysical thinking)
  2. Law of universal change and movement
  3. Law of contradiction, unity, and struggle of opposites
  4. Law of the negation of the negation

Content and Thematic Structure of Capital

Scope of the Study

  • Volume I: “The Process of Production of Capital”

    Production is studied in abstraction from circulation. The aim is to uncover the nature and laws governing capitalist production, analyzing the mode of production in its pure form, free from phenomenal and indispensable aspects.

  • Volume II: “The Process of Circulation of Capital”

    The analysis in this volume focuses on the sphere of circulation, specifically the larger capitalist movement. This differs from the simple movement analyzed in Volume I, Part I, Chapter III, “Money, or the Circulation of Commodities.” This volume discusses the movement of specific commodities and capital particular to capitalism, as well as “labor-power,” arising from the transformation of the capitalist mode of production from the simple commodity production of pre-capitalist societies and eras.

    D
    mp … PRODUCTION … D
    m’p’

  • Volume III: “The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole”

    The object of study is the process of production and circulation as a whole. The categories determined by the abstraction process in the previous two volumes are analyzed as they appear on the surface, demonstrating why.

  • Volume IV: “Theories of Surplus Value”

    (History of economic doctrines)

Outline of the Thematic Structure of Capital Contained in the Preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”:

  1. Capital
  2. Land
  3. Wage Labor
  4. State
  5. International Trade
  6. World Market

Thematic Structure of Volume I of Capital

Title: “The Process of Capitalist Production”

  1. Commodities and Money
  2. The Transformation of Money into Capital
  3. Absolute Surplus Value
  4. The Production of Relative Surplus Value
  5. The Production of Absolute and Relative Surplus Value
  6. Wages
  7. The Process of Accumulation of Capital

Thematic Structure of Part I of Capital

Consists of three chapters:

  1. The Commodity
  2. Exchange
  3. Money, or the Circulation of Commodities

Chapter 1: The Commodity

This chapter lays the foundation of the labor theory of value, the basis upon which Marx developed his theory of surplus value, a cornerstone of his entire economic theory.

  1. Two Factors of the Commodity (use-value and exchange-value)
  2. The Dual Character of the Labor Embodied in Commodities
  3. The Form of Value vs. The Exchange Value
  4. The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof

Chapter 2: Exchange

Chapter 3: Money, or the Circulation of Commodities

Functions of Money:

  1. Money as the Measure of Value
  2. Money as the Medium of Circulation
  3. Money as a Means of Hoarding
  4. Money as a Means of Payment
  5. World Money

Theory of Value

“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities,’ its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.”

Marx begins his fundamental work by emphasizing two points of extreme importance:

  1. The object of study of Capital is not society in general, but capitalist society, which operates as a social being defined by the collection of individuals operating within the framework of social and production relations that characterize this mode of production.
  2. The basic and fundamental category of this mode of production is the commodity. This allows for a level of abstraction that does not lose contact with the object of research. While commodities exist in pre-capitalist stages and societies, it is in this mode of production that they become dominant. This quality is also acquired by productive assets such as labor-power.

The Commodity

The dual character of the commodity—its use-value and exchange-value—was highlighted and analyzed by classical economists before Marx. However, Marx’s approach has distinctive features.

For Marx, the category of use-value is understood as a quality of goods applicable to any social formation, even prehistoric and primitive societies. Even then, goods were consumed because they provided utility, satisfying a human need. Thus, this category is historically universal.

Use-value expresses a relationship between humans and nature, or humans and an object, and in no way represents a social relationship. Since the subject matter of political economy, as Marx understands it, is the study of the relationships that develop between people in connection with the production, exchange, circulation, and consumption of material goods, this category is not the primary subject of political economy. Its study is possible and necessary only in its relationship to the exchange-value of commodities.

Exchange Value

For Marx, the exchange-value of commodities is a historical category (a marked difference from use-value). The specific conditions that allow for its full development and manifestation are related to those where the product of labor, and labor itself, takes the form of value. This occurs when private ownership of the means of production and individual labor, which is simultaneously social labor, can only express its social character through exchange.

Use-values always exist, but only under specific conditions does labor take the form of value. This requires a highly developed social division of labor and private ownership of the means of production. These conditions allow objects and products of labor to be transformed into commodities.

Definition of Value: The quantitative relation, as it manifests itself in the exchange-ratio of one use-value to another.

Example: 1 ton of wood = X kilos of wheat

Since in the act of exchange, two use-values, which may be entirely different in their form, geometric properties, physical and chemical characteristics, etc., are equated, it is necessary to identify an intrinsic element of the commodities that makes them measurable.

“As use-values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange-values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use-value… If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labor.”

Therefore, the substance that makes commodities measurable, the common denominator that makes them comparable and exchangeable, is human labor.

Reproduction Theory

In every society, the production process is continuous, meaning it must be repeated continuously for society to exist. This is the process of reproduction.

Simple Reproduction:

simple reproduction is called one in which surplus value is spent with the same frequency with which it is obtained, ie it is not capitalized, not the accumulation expanded reproduction

REPRODUCCION EXPANDED: characteristic of capitalism is the transformation of all or part of surplus value into capital, or capitalization.


C. Marx sees the goods as the unit of use values
and change. from the standpoint of its use value, its
material form, divide the total product or total output
of society into two main sectors:

I-MEDIA PRODUCTION
II.-MASS CONSUMPTION

in each of the sectors, the value of the product consists of capital
constant (c), variable (v) and surplus (m)


(Marxian approach)

CONSTANT CAPITAL CAPITAL VARIABLE


INSTALACIONESMATERIAS FORCE MATERIALS
EQUIPOSPRIMASAUXILIARES DE
WORK

CURRENT CAPITAL FIJOCAPITAL
(classic approach)

THE CLASSIFICATION OF FIXED AND CIRCULATING CAPITAL WHEN YOU WANT TO STUDY THE DIFFERENT FORMS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ROTATION of productive capital.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF CONSTANT AND VARIABLE CAPITAL, lets you view SECRETS of capitalist accumulation, the roles of the different forms of productive capital in value creation or value


I-MEDIA PRODUCTIONI. 4000C +1000 v + 1000m

II.-MASS CONSUMPTION II. 2000c + 500v + 500m

CONDITIONS OF SIMPLE REPRODUCTION

1) I (v + m) = Ic

2) I (c + v + m) = Ic + IIc

3) II (c + v + m) = I (v + m) + II (v + m)

CONDITIONS OF EXPANDED REPRODUCTION

1) I (v + m)> Ic

2) I (c + v + m)> Ic + IIc

3) II (c + v + m)> I (v + m) + II (v + m)