A New Introduction to Karl Marx: New Materialism, Critique of Political Economy, and the Concept of Metabolism (Marx, Engels, and Marxisms) 9783030529499, 9783030529505, 3030529495

Table of contents :
Titles Published
Titles Forthcoming
Preface to the English Edition
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Tables
Chapter 1: The Path Toward Questioning Capitalism (1818–1848): The Young Marx and “New Materialism”
The Real Karl Marx
A Sensitive University Student
From Literature to Philosophy
Encounter with the Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians
Impact of Bauer on Marx
The Move to Journalism
From the Critique of Religion to That of Politics
Critique of Hegel’s Theory of Right and the Modern State
Influence of Feuerbach
Limits of Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Marx’s Two Articles in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher
Transformation of Marx’s View of Social Change
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Private Ownership and “Alienated Labor”
Going beyond the Enlightenment Vision
Meeting Engels Again and the Split with Bauer
Toward a Criticism of Feuerbach
“Theses on Feuerbach” and the “New Materialism”
Breaking Away from Philosophy
New Concept of Social Change: The Materialist Conception of History
The Limits of the Bourgeois Mode of Production
“Association” as the Condition for Freedom
Toward a Critique of Political Economy
Chapter 2: A Changing View of Capitalism (1848–1867): Marx’s Critique of Political Economy
From the Upheaval of 1848 to the Heart of Capitalism
Days of Researching Political Economy
Capital as a “Critique of Political Economy”
Mystery of the Commodity
The Riddle of Capitalism is Concealed in the Commodity
How is the Price of a Commodity Determined?
Why is the Magnitude of a Commodity’s Value Determined by Labor?
Dual Character of Labor
How Does the Market System Constitute Itself?
Significance of the Theory of Value
Why Does the Commodity Exist?
Reification and Fetishism
Source of the Power of Money
Mystery of the Price Tag
Mechanism of the Price Tag
The Power of Money
Personification of Reified Things
The Power of Capital and the Specific Way of Working of Wage Labor
What is Capital?
Capitalists Purchase Labor Power (Not Labor)
Mechanism of Producing Surplus Value
Extension of Working Hours
Development of Productive Power
Co-operation
Division of Labor Within Manufacture
Machinery Within Large-Scale Industry
Effect on Wageworkers of Raising Productive Power
Technology Gives Birth to Technical Education
Capital Accumulation and Property
What is Property?
Capital Accumulation and Widening Class Differences
Absolute Poverty in Modern Society
Relative Surplus Population Places Additional Constraint on Wage Labor
Reification of the Reproduction Process and the General Laws of Capitalist Accumulation
Why Do Crises Occur?
Capitalism Cannot Avert Crisis
Why Does a Crisis Occur?
The Profit Rate as the Standard for Capital Movement
General Rate of Profit and Price of Production
Profit Rate Falls in Capitalist Society
Fall in the Profit Rate Makes Crisis a Reality
The Origins of Capitalism and Its Fate
Chapter 3: How to Fight Against Capitalism (1867–1883): Concept of “Metabolism” Within the Later Thought of Marx
Marx’s Changing Vision
Appreciating Reformist Struggles
Communist Society as “Association”
Key Concept of “Metabolism”
The Major Premise that “Human Beings Are a Part of Nature”
Capital’s Disturbance of Metabolism
Metabolism as the Bastion of Resistance
Marx’s Notes on Social Transformation Later in Life
Problem of Ecology and Theory of Metabolism
Metabolism and the Theory of Climate Change of the Agronomist Fraas
From Metabolism to Research on the Community
Letter to Vera Zasulich as the Culmination of Marx’s Theory of Community
From Research on the Community to Gender
Marx Interest in Gender Later in Life
Marx’s Final Struggle
Appendix A: Marx’s Method
Marx’s “New Materialism”
Labor Form and Economic Determination of Form
Metabolism and Labor
Appendix B: Marx’s Theory of Reification and the Theoretical Structure of Book One of Capital
Reification of Production Relations (Part One of Capital)
Private Labor and Reification (Chapter 1)
Personification of Reified Things (Chapter 2 of Capital)
Institutions and Laws (Chapter 3 of Capital)
Relations Between the Three Aspects
Reification of the Production Process
Wage Labor and the Reification of the Production Process (Part Three of Capital)
Substantialization of the Reification of the Production Process (Part Four of Capital)
Reification of the Reproduction Process (Part Seven of Capital)
Reification of the Reproduction Process within Simple Reproduction (Chapter 23 of Capital)
Deepening Reification of the Reproduction Process through Capital Accumulation (Chapter 25 of Capital)
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

A New Introduction to Karl Marx New Materialism, Critique of Political Economy, and the Concept of Metabolism

Ryuji Sasaki

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms Series Editors Marcello Musto York University Toronto, ON, Canada Terrell Carver University of Bristol Bristol, UK

The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critique of capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand for new, critical engagements with Marxism. The peer-reviewed series Marx, Engels and Marxisms (edited by Marcello Musto & Terrell Carver, with Babak Amini, Francesca Antonini, Paula Rauhala & Kohei Saito as Assistant Editors) publishes monographs, edited volumes, critical editions, reprints of old texts, as well as translations of books already published in other languages. Our volumes come from a wide range of political perspectives, subject matters, academic disciplines and geographical areas, producing an eclectic and informative collection that appeals to a diverse and international audience. Our main areas of focus include: the oeuvre of Marx and Engels, Marxist authors and traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, labour and social movements, Marxist analyses of contemporary issues, and reception of Marxism in the world. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14812

Ryuji Sasaki

A New Introduction to Karl Marx New Materialism, Critique of Political Economy, and the Concept of Metabolism

Translated by Michael Schauerte and Edited by Ryuji Sasaki

Ryuji Sasaki Department of Economics Rikkyo University Tokyo, Japan Translated by Michael Schauerte University of Miyazaki Miyazaki, Japan

ISSN 2524-7123     ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic) Marx, Engels, and Marxisms ISBN 978-3-030-52949-9    ISBN 978-3-030-52950-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52950-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Yuri_Arcurs / E+ / Getty Image This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Titles Published

1. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, A Political History of the Editions of Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts, 2014.  2. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach chapter,” 2014.   3.  Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The History and Theory of Fetishism, 2015.  4. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Marx’s Associated Mode of Production: A Critique of Marxism, 2016.  5. Domenico Losurdo, Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History, 2016.  6. Frederick Harry Pitts, Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to Read Marx, 2017.  7. Ranabir Samaddar, Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age, 2017.   8. George Comninel, Alienation and Emancipation in the Work of Karl Marx, 2018.  9. Jean-Numa Ducange & Razmig Keucheyan (Eds.), The End of the Democratic State: Nicos Poulantzas, a Marxism for the 21st Century, 2018. 10. Robert X. Ware, Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals: Retrieving Marx for the Future, 2018. 11. Xavier LaFrance & Charles Post (Eds.), Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism, 2018. 12. John Gregson, Marxism, Ethics, and Politics: The Work of Alasdair MacIntyre, 2018. v

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13.  Vladimir Puzone & Luis Felipe Miguel (Eds.), The Brazilian Left in the 21st Century: Conflict and Conciliation in Peripheral Capitalism, 2019. 14. James Muldoon & Gaard Kets (Eds.), The German Revolution and Political Theory, 2019. 15. Michael Brie, Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and Metaphysics of Domination, 2019. 16. August H.  Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism: Comparative Real-­ Time Political Analysis, 2019. 17. Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello and Mauricio de Souza Sabadini (Eds.), Financial Speculation and Fictitious Profits: A Marxist Analysis, 2019. 18. Shaibal Gupta, Marcello Musto & Babak Amini (Eds), Karl Marx’s Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary, 2019. 19. Igor Shoikhedbrod, Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality, and Rights, 2019. 20. Juan Pablo Rodríguez, Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile: The Possibility of Social Critique, 2019. 21.  Kaan Kangal, Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature, 2020. 22. Victor Wallis, Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories, 2020. 23. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The Bourgeois and the Savage: A Marxian Critique of the Image of the Isolated Individual in Defoe, Turgot and Smith, 2020. 24.  Terrell Carver, Engels before Marx, 2020. 25. Jean-Numa Ducange, Jules Guesde: The Birth of Socialism and Marxism in France, 2020. 26.  Antonio Oliva, Ivan Novara & Angel Oliva (Eds.), Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Real Abstraction. 27.  Francesco Biagi, Henri Lefebvre’s Critical Theory of Space. 28.  Stefano Petrucciani, The Ideas of Karl Marx: A Critical Introduction. 29. Terrell Carver, The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels, 30th Anniversary Edition.

Titles Forthcoming

Giuseppe Vacca, Alternative Modernities: Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth Century. Kevin B.  Anderson, Kieran Durkin & Heather Brown (Eds.), Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism in Marx’s Capital: Towards a De-alienated World. Gianfranco Ragona & Monica Quirico, Frontier Socialism: Self-­organisation and Anti-capitalism. Vesa Oittinen, Marx’s Russian Moment. Kohei Saito (Ed.), Reexamining Engels’s Legacy in the 21st Century. Kolja Lindner, Marx, Marxism and the Question of Eurocentrism. Jean-Numa Ducange & Elisa Marcobelli (Eds.), Selected Writings of Jean Jaures: On Socialism, Pacifism and Marxism. Adriana Petra, Intellectuals and Communist Culture: Itineraries, Problems and Debates in Post-war Argentina. Marco Di Maggio, The Rise and Fall of Communist Parties in France and Italy. George C. Comninel, The Feudal Foundations of Modern Europe. James Steinhoff, Critiquing the New Autonomy of Immaterial Labour: A Marxist Study of Work in the Artificial Intelligence Industry. Spencer A.  Leonard, Marx, the India Question, and the Crisis of Cosmopolitanism. Joe Collins, Applying Marx’s Capital to the 21st century. vii

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TITLES FORTHCOMING

Levy del Aguila Marchena, Communism, Political Power and Personal Freedom in Marx. Jeong Seongjin, Korean Capitalism in the 21st Century: Marxist Analysis and Alternatives. Marcello Mustè, Marxism and Philosophy of Praxis: An Italian Perspective from Labriola to Gramsci. Satoshi Matsui, Normative Theories of Liberalism and Socialism: Marxist Analysis of Values. Shannon Brincat, Dialectical Dialogues in Contemporary World Politics: A Meeting of Traditions in Global Comparative Philosophy. Stefano Petrucciani, Theodor W. Adorno’s Philosophy, Society, and Aesthetics. Francesca Antonini, Reassessing Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: Dictatorship, State, and Revolution. Thomas Kemple, Capital after Classical Sociology: The Faustian Lives of Social Theory. Tsuyoshi Yuki, Socialism, Markets and the Critique of Money: The Theory of “Labour Note”. V Geetha, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India. Xavier Vigna, A Political History of Factories in France: The Workers’ Insubordination of 1968. Atila Melegh, Anti-Migrant Populism in Eastern Europe and Hungary: A Marxist Analysis. Marie-Cecile Bouju, A Political History of the Publishing Houses of the French Communist Party. Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello & Henrique Pereira Braga (Eds.), Wealth and Poverty in Contemporary Brazilian Capitalism. Peter McMylor, Graeme Kirkpatrick & Simin Fadaee (Eds.), Marxism, Religion, and Emancipatory Politics. Mauro Buccheri, Radical Humanism for the Left: The Quest for Meaning in Late Capitalism. Rémy Herrera, Confronting Mainstream Economics to Overcome Capitalism. Tamás Krausz, Eszter Bartha (Eds.), Socialist Experiences in Eastern Europe: A Hungarian Perspective. Martin Cortés, Marxism, Time and Politics: On the Autonomy of the Political.

  Titles Forthcoming 

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João Antonio de Paula, Huga da Gama Cerqueira, Eduardo da Motta e Albuquer & Leonardo de Deus, Marxian Economics for the 21st Century: Revaluating Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Zhi Li, The Concept of the Individual in the Thought of Karl Marx. Lelio Demichelis, Marx, Alienation and Techno-capitalism. Michael Brie & Jörn Schütrumpf, Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Marxist at the Limits of Marxism. Dong-Min Rieu, A Mathematical Approach to Marxian Value Theory: Time, Money, and Labor Productivity. Salvatore Prinzi, Representation, Expression, and Institution: The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Castoriadis. Agon Hamza, Slavoj Žižek and the Reconstruction of Marxism. Kei Ehara, Japanese Discourse on the Marxian Theory of Finance. Miguel Vedda, Siegfried Kracauer, or, The Allegories of Improvisation. Marcello Musto, Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation.

Preface to the English Edition

It seems appropriate in this preface to provide an overview of some of the features and underlying positions of this apparently straightforward introduction to Marx. This may be more information than some readers would desire or require, however, so they can of course proceed straight to the beginning of the book. As many scholars of Marx already know, Marxism has long been influential in Japan, not only in the socialist and labor movements but also within academia. That influence declined rapidly after the collapse of Soviet-style “socialism,” to the point where the fields of Marxist philosophy and Marxist historiography have nearly disappeared, but researchers specializing in Marxian economics continue to secure tenure positions in the economics departments of many universities. Thanks to this tradition, Japan is said to have accumulated an unparalleled variety of works of Marxian scholarship. This is indeed true to some extent, and this book benefits from that tradition. In particular, the interpretation of the early Marx’s work in Chapter 1 and of Capital in Chapter 2 relies in large part on past research by Japanese scholars. Therefore, one primary contribution this book can make is to provide English-speaking readers with a glimpse of how Marx has been interpreted in Japan. Nevertheless, the image of Marx developed in this book is not consistent with the mainstream of Marxian scholarship in Japan. One characteristic of Japan, as the influential political scientist Masao Maruyama pointed out, is that “Marxism” was the vehicle for introducing modern forms of thought such as rationalism and positivism. As a result, the so-called Stalinist interpretation of Marx was far more powerful than in the West. In xi

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Japan, as in Russia and China, Marxism functioned as a sort of modernization ideology. Not only intellectuals close to the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), but also representative Marxists like Wataru Hiromatsu and Kozo Uno, who were critical of the JCP, continued to be heavily constrained by Stalinism and modernism. This book is a clear departure from the Marxian interpretation that was so dominant in Japan. What this book inherits from the tradition that has existed in Japan is careful textual analysis. Some of the arguments in the book that might seem, at first glance, to be general statements are in fact based on a close examination of the writings of Marx. A closer look can reveal that some of the seemingly straightforward descriptions differ in subtle ways from other introductory works. And those subtle differences can lead toward a quite different overall image of Marx. Here I would like to point out a few of the most significant differences from other works. The first difference concerns the understanding of the early Marx. There have already been critiques of the interpretation of Marx by Stalinists, who understood his theoretical basis as “dialectic materialism,” a combination of the philosophical worldview of “materialism” with “dialectics” as a universal law of motion, but most of those critiques presented a sort of “philosophical” interpretation of Marx rather than a theory of his actual ideas. Typical examples of this are the attempts to reinterpret Marx on the basis of Hegelian dialectics. Even after such reinterpretations became outdated, various “philosophical” interpretations of Marx appeared, such as Althusser’s structuralism and the phenomenology of Hiromatsu in Japan. A humanist interpretation that combined existentialism and the ideas of Freud was also highly influential. However, it must be said that all of those critiques remained within the sphere of Stalinist “Marxism” in the sense that they presupposed some kind of philosophical thought or supra-historical universal theory. Marx himself totally opposed the “all-purpose formula of a general historico-philosophical theory whose supreme virtue consists in being supra-historical.”1 What concerned him was not a “general historico-philosophical” law, but particular historical laws. Underlying this theoretical outlook is Marx’s critique of philosophy, as described in Chap. 1, which clarifies the significance of this critique by further developing ideas from previous research in Japan on the early Marx. 1  K. Marx, “Letter to Otechestvenniye Zapiski,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 24 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1989), p. 201. Hereinafter quotes from Marx and Engels Collected Works will be abbreviated as “MECW.”

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The second main difference of this book is that its understanding of Capital focuses on “economic determination of form.” As Michael Heinrich, a leading German scholar of Capital, has emphasized, Marx’s critique of political economy is fundamentally distinct from all other economics in that it critically analyzes economic determinations of form, as is clearly expressed in the following passage from Capital: Political economy has indeed analyzed value and its magnitude, however incompletely, and has uncovered the content concealed within these forms. But it has never once asked the question why this content has assumed that particular form, that is to say, why labor is expressed in value, and why the measurement of labor by its duration is expressed in the magnitude of the value of the product.2

Most works of “Marxist economics” to date have either ignored or minimized the importance of this decisive factor for Marx’s critique of political economy. One reason for the disregard of economic determinations of form is that “Marxist economists” have tended toward property-based theories and exploitation reductionism, which locate the foundation of capitalism in the private ownership of the  means of production and in the resulting exploitation of workers. As a result, they have not been able to grasp that the source of the power of the capitalist mode of production lies in economic determinations of form continually generated by a specific form of labor. Hence, in practice, overcoming the capitalist mode of production has been reduced to the mere act of the expropriation of private property by state power. From this perspective, it becomes impossible to grasp the significance of Association as an essential element of Marx’s revolutionary theory. Interpretations of Capital that focus on economic determinations of form had been developed by the Russian scholars Isaak Illich Rubin and Evgeny Pashukanis, “Western Marxists” like György Lukács, and members of the Frankfurt School (most notably Theodor Adorno); the issue was also raised in the 1970s in West Germany and elsewhere within the context of the debates over the value form and derivation of the state. In Japan as well, Samezo Kuruma, his younger colleague Teinosuke Otani, and others extensively analyzed economic determinations of form. Within debates over the value form in West Germany, the analysis of value form was insufficient due to the tendency to understand the concept of value based on the value form rather than the value form based on the concept of value, but Kuruma’s meticulous analysis of what Marx had written 2

 K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), pp. 173–74.

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resulted in perhaps the first coherent interpretation of theory of value form. Kuruma did not systematically present his interpretation of Capital, but it is outlined in the multi-volume Marx-Lexicon zur Politischen Ökonomie that he edited. Chapter 2 of this book basically inherits Kuruma’s interpretation and develops it to be more coherent. The third, and perhaps most significant, difference of this book from other introductory works is its emphasis on the importance of the theory of metabolism to Marx’s later theoretical work. Great progress has been made in recent years regarding the study of Marx’s “excerpt notes” thanks to recent volumes of the new Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe (New MEGA). Representative works of such scholarship include Kevin Anderson’s Marx at the Margins, which deals with premodern community and non-Western society; Kohei Saito’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism, which introduces Marx’s ecological views; and Heather A. Brown’s Marx on Gender and the Family, which focuses on gender. Chapter 3 draws on the results of such scholarship to trace the development Marx’s thought later in life centered on the concept of metabolism. Western Marxism has tended to focus on economic determinations of form within the capitalist mode of production in order to criticize the “Marxist” interpretations that neglected the unique character of the capitalist mode of production as a result of viewing the private ownership of the means of production as the basis for exploitation and class struggle. What was at stake, in other words, was to separate the form (Form) from the material (Stoff) by criticizing the fetishism that takes the adhesion of material and form for granted. Of course, Marx brilliantly accomplished the separation of material and form, but that is not the only point that is important with regard to his critique of political economy. The fundamental problem for Marx was to grasp the various contradictions within the capitalist mode of production as conflicts and contradictions between its determination of form (Formbestimmung) and metabolism (Stoffwechsel), thereby clarifying the prospect for transformation of this mode of production. His view of communism is not merely a society that consciously controls production and distribution, and that realizes human freedom, but also (as he wrote) a society in which the “associated producers” will “govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, […] accomplishing this metabolism with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.”3 From this perspective, it becomes clear that 3  K.  Marx, Marx’s Economic Manuscript of 1864–1865 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), p. 885.

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the “new social movements,” such as the feminist and ecological movements, are by their very nature an integral part of the class struggle. The concept of metabolism has been attracting increasing attention in recent years, as humanity faces a climate crisis, pandemics, and risks related to biotechnology. As we try to envisage a new society beyond capitalism, Marx’s critique of political economy remains our most valuable theoretical tool. My hope is that this introductory book will lead many readers to examine (or re-examine) Capital and other works by Marx. * * * This book is an English translation of Karl Marx: “Shihonshugi” to tatakatta shakaishisoka (Karl Marx: The Social Thinker Who Fought “Capitalism”), published by Chikuma Shobo in 2016. The English edition is an expanded version of that earlier Japanese edition. Footnotes, which were not included in the Japanese edition, have been added, and the text was enlarged. In particular, the description of relative surplus value and capital accumulation in Chap. 2 has been substantially enhanced. The English edition also includes two appendices (not included in the original book) to provide additional discussions that may be of interest to scholars of Marx or to Marxists. Appendix A deals with Marx’s theoretical methodology, while Appendix B looks at the theoretical structure of Book One of Capital. The appendices are an opportunity to explain in more theoretical terms some points that could not be treated in detail within the book’s main text, given its introductory nature. Ideally, this edition would have also included an appendix on the theory of value, but that would have required too much space. Readers interested in that subject can consult a German article I co-wrote with Kohei Saito titled, “Abstrakte Arbeit und Stoffwechsel zwischen Mensch und Natur,” Beiträge zur Marx-­ Engels-­Forschung. Neue Folge 2013, 2015. Finally, let me mention that this English edition has been prepared through my collaboration with the translator, Michael Schauerte. I became aware of Michael through his previous translations of works by Samezo Kuruma and Teinosuke Otani. Michael and I were able to work closely throughout the several rounds of revising his draft translation. In this sense, I also bear responsibility for the end result. We both hope that this English edition conveys the book’s intended meaning in a form that is as accessible and “readable” as possible. Tokyo, Japan

Ryuji Sasaki

Preface

What this book aims to convey, above all, is that Marx’s ideas remain our greatest theoretical weapon today for transforming the society in which we live. Marx’s theories have been subject to all sorts of abuse, both in academia and in the realm of public opinion. Quite a few people imagine that his ideas form a hardened ideology that is outdated and irrelevant or that they were the cause of the despotic political systems in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. But consider for a moment what has occurred under capitalist globalization since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Has capitalism in the years since then overcome crisis to rejoice in prosperity? Haven’t we seen instead the advanced capitalist nations suffering from prolonged economic stagnation and swelling national debt? Hasn’t the “financialization” of the economy created one bubble after another, each with its painful aftermath? Consider also what has become of the policies based on market fundamentalism introduced around the world to break through economic stagnation. Have those policies reignited competitiveness to generate prosperity, narrowed economic disparities, or lowered poverty? That fact is, as Marx so powerfully demonstrated in Capital, such phenomena in the real world are historical tendencies of the capitalist mode of production. Some may point out, in response, the failure of all the communist movements that raised the banner of Marxism. Indeed, the political parties and groups composed of self-styled “Marxists” have been in steady decline or in many cases have completely dissolved. But there is a xvii

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difference between the theories of the Karl Marx, the individual, and the doctrine of “Marxism” created by those who came after him. This was pointed out already more than half a century ago but has become even clearer in recent years through the advances in scholarship on Marx’s manuscripts and notes. The latest scholarly discoveries reveal that Marx’s conceptions of social transformation are a far cry from the doctrines of Marxism—and in some cases the very opposite. If our sights are set on the future, not the past, the object to reconsider is not failed “Marxism” but the real image of Karl Marx himself. What this book examines is not “Marxism,” but the theories of Marx, particularly their significance to the transformation of society. The book’s focus is on Capital, but it is not intended to be a mere introduction to that great work. In order to grasp the significance of Capital for social transformation, we must also understand why Marx took political economy as his primary object of study, and what conception of social transformation he constructed on the basis of the theoretical understanding gained through writing Capital. The content of Capital is explained in Chap. 2, which is preceded, in Chap. 1, by a look at the ideas of the young Marx, describing the intellectual journey that took him from a youthful interest in literature to the study of political economy. Chapter 3 then shifts the focus to the way Marx, in his later years, deepened and expanded his conception of social transformation on the foundation of the theoretical understanding gained from struggling to complete Capital. Chapter 3 draws on the most recent research on Marx’s manuscripts and notes in an attempt to clarify the theoretical endeavors of his final years. The image that emerges from those last years is of Marx’s relentless quest to uncover the concrete logic of the metabolism between human beings and nature, and the magnificent conception of social transformation that arose, encompassing ideas related to ecology, the premodern community, and gender.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues Hideto Akashi, Kohei Saito, Soichiro Sumida, and Tomonaga Tairako, who have inspired me over the past 15 years with so many ideas; Marcello Musto, the editor of the “Marx, Engels and Marxisms” series, for encouraging me to publish this book; and Masato Takeda for his help in creating this English version. I am also grateful to Michael Schauerte for his tremendous work on the translation. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the late Teinosuke Otani, who prompted me to pursue a career in Marx studies and taught me the importance of grasping Marx’s theories from the perspective of human history. This book is published as a volume of Rikkyo University College of Economics Series, with a grant from the Rikkyo University College of Economics.

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Contents

1 The Path Toward Questioning Capitalism (1818–1848): The Young Marx and “New Materialism”  1 The Real Karl Marx   1 A Sensitive University Student   4 From Literature to Philosophy   6 Encounter with the Young Hegelians   7 The Young Hegelians   8 Impact of Bauer on Marx  11 The Move to Journalism  14 From the Critique of Religion to That of Politics  15 Critique of Hegel’s Theory of Right and the Modern State  16 Influence of Feuerbach  18 Limits of Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right  19 Marx’s Two Articles in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher  21 Transformation of Marx’s View of Social Change  23 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844  25 Private Ownership and “Alienated Labor”  26 Going beyond the Enlightenment Vision  28 Meeting Engels Again and the Split with Bauer  30 Toward a Criticism of Feuerbach  31 “Theses on Feuerbach” and the “New Materialism”  33

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CONTENTS

Breaking Away from Philosophy  35 New Concept of Social Change: The Materialist Conception of History  39 The Limits of the Bourgeois Mode of Production  41 “Association” as the Condition for Freedom  42 Toward a Critique of Political Economy  44 2 A Changing View of Capitalism (1848–1867): Marx’s Critique of Political Economy 47 From the Upheaval of 1848 to the Heart of Capitalism  47 Days of Researching Political Economy  49 Capital as a “Critique of Political Economy”  51 Mystery of the Commodity  51 Source of the Power of Money  71 The Power of Capital and the Specific Way of Working of Wage Labor  80 Capital Accumulation and Property  97 Why Do Crises Occur? 107 The Origins of Capitalism and Its Fate 118 3 How to Fight Against Capitalism (1867–1883): Concept of “Metabolism” Within the Later Thought of Marx123 Marx’s Changing Vision 123 Appreciating Reformist Struggles 125 Communist Society as “Association” 129 Key Concept of “Metabolism” 133 The Major Premise that “Human Beings Are a Part of Nature” 134 Capital’s Disturbance of Metabolism 136 Metabolism as the Bastion of Resistance 138 Marx’s Notes on Social Transformation Later in Life 141 Problem of Ecology and Theory of Metabolism 144 Metabolism and the Theory of Climate Change of the Agronomist Fraas 145 From Metabolism to Research on the Community 148

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Letter to Vera Zasulich as the Culmination of Marx’s Theory of Community 153 From Research on the Community to Gender 157 Marx Interest in Gender Later in Life 161 Marx’s Final Struggle 163 Appendix A: Marx’s Method169  Appendix B: Marx’s Theory of Reification and the Theoretical Structure of Book One of Capital183 Index

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table B.1 Table B.2 Table B.3

Marx’s excerpt notebooks written after the publication of Volume One of Capital  143 Theoretical structure of Chapter One of Capital190 Logical structure of Part One of Capital198 Theoretical structure of Volume One of Capital209

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CHAPTER 1

The Path Toward Questioning Capitalism (1818–1848): The Young Marx and “New Materialism”

The Real Karl Marx In considering the life and thought of Karl Marx one should never forget that he was a revolutionary who dedicated himself to the transformation of society. Granted, he was not the leader of a revolutionary movement active on the world historical stage like Lenin, Mao, or Fidel Castro. The moments when Marx was on the historical scene as a leader of a social movement only made up a fraction of his lifetime, limited mainly to the 1848 revolution and the period around the founding of the First International. Readers more familiar with the life of Marx may have a stronger image of him as an intellectual who frequented the British Museum Library and as the author of Capital. Yet he was not a scholar who devoted himself to research in a tranquil setting. Although Marx was respected for his scholarship and intellectual capacities from the time he was a university student, his radical political standpoint prevented him from obtaining an academic position. After graduating from university, Marx managed to secure employment editing a liberal newspaper, but was driven out when the publication was banned by the Prussian government. Forced into exile soon after, he endured several twists and turns connected to the revolutionary turmoil of the time before finally being cast ashore in London. With no stable profession, Marx faced many difficulties during his poverty-­ stricken life in the capital. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52950-5_1

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Over a period of roughly two decades, amidst the struggles of his daily life, Marx labored to complete the first volume of his chief work, Capital. Soon after he finished that volume, he wrote to his friend Siegfried Meyer: I thus had to make use of every moment when I was capable of work to complete my book [Capital] to which I have sacrificed my health, happiness, and family…. If one wanted to be an ox, one could, of course, turn one’s back on the sufferings of humanity and look after one’s own hide. But I should really have thought myself unpractical if I had pegged out without finally completing my book, at least in manuscript.1

The letter reveals Marx’s feelings at the time. And he did indeed sacrifice “health, happiness, and family” to the completion of his book. The wretched living conditions forced upon his family by poverty resulted in the deaths of three children, while the tremendous effort made to bring Capital to completion, far beyond the capacities of an ordinary person, took a physical toll that was manifested in frequent illness. Why did Marx go to such an extreme to complete Capital? The simplest answer is that he did so for the sake of the praxis to transform society. Capital was written for the purpose of transforming a society in which human beings suffered poverty and were robbed of the ability to display their full potential. His aim was not simply to arrive at some scholarly truth, but to contribute to the practical struggle to change society. Within Capital, we can find the traces of this struggle waged by a man who dedicated his entire life to social change. In this sense, Leon Trotsky was right to point out in “Nationalism in Lenin” that, “The whole of Marx can be found in The Communist Manifesto, in the preface to his Critique, and in Das Kapital. Even if he were not the founder of the First International, he would forever remain what he had been till now.”2 Saying that Capital was written for the sake of social change does not mean that it is political propaganda for communism. Granted, many communists who came after Marx revered the book as a sort of bible that “demonstrates” the inevitable collapse of capitalism and the arrival of socialism, and used its prestige for the sake of their own partisan propaganda. But for Marx, praxis has a more radical significance than such limited political activity, as it concerns the root of social relations. In the 1  K. Marx, “Marx to Sigfrid Meyer in New York: Hanover, 30 April 1867,” in MECW, vol. 42, p. 366. 2  L. Trotsky, Lenin: Notes for a Biographer (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1971), p. 104.

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Preface to the first edition of Capital, Marx describes the book’s practical significance as follows: Even when a society has begun to track down the natural laws of its movement—and it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society—it can neither leap over the natural phases of its development nor remove them by decree. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.3

As Marx points out here, the ultimate aim of Capital is to “reveal the economic law of motion of modern society.” But no matter how successful the effort to reveal that law might be, it will not in itself remove the ills of society because “it can neither leap over the natural phases of its development nor remove them by decree.” However, that does not mean that Capital lacks practical meaning, since grasping the “economic law of motion of modern society” shortens and alleviates the “birth-pangs” necessary for a new society to be born out of the existing society. Capital was written to facilitate the birth of a fundamentally new society that will emerge out of the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s theoretical aim, in other words, is not to inculcate a belief in socialism and change society thereby, nor is it to “demonstrate” the advent of socialism and convince people to adopt the standpoint of socialism. Rather, by clarifying the laws of movement of the capitalist system, his theory indicates the direction for transforming the system and the sort of praxis necessary to “shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.” Our image of the practical significance of Capital based on the passage quoted above is likely to be somewhat vague, however, since Marx’s explanation is a highly condensed expression of the theoretical stance he arrived at after many years of struggle and research. Numerous points remain to be explained, such as why Marx chose the metaphor of birth, and why theoretically “revealing” a law can only “shorten and lessen the birth-­ pangs” but not change society on its own. In explaining those and other points, I am going to take the roundabout approach of first tracing the intellectual trajectory of the young Marx.4 This seems necessary because  K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 92, emphasis added.  Most of the biographical information presented in this book, except when it concerns theoretical descriptions, is general knowledge, so footnotes have not been inserted for each point. For the biographical descriptions, in addition to the writings of Marx and Engels, the author mainly referred to the following works: M. Heinrich, Karl Marx and the Birth of 3 4

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his thought was tempered by the fierce debates in which he took part over a tumultuous period of history. The ideas that emerged from this struggle laid the theoretical foundation for Capital.

A Sensitive University Student Marx began to become aware of the task of social change as a university student, although he was hardly a fervent activist at the time. He was born in the German city of Triers on March 5, 1818, the son of a Jewish lawyer, Heinrich Marx. After studying for five years in the local gymnasium, he entered Bonn University in October 1835. Heinrich sent his son to Bonn with the expectation that Karl would study law to take over from him in the future. Marx had intended to meet that expectation by zealously pursuing his legal studies, but upon entering university it was poetry, not law, that absorbed his attention. Marx’s love of literature is well known. As a boy, he was introduced to works of literature by his father’s friend, Ludwig von Westphalen, whose daughter Jenny he would later marry. Under this tutelage, Marx became able to recite by heart many passages of Homer and Shakespeare. At gymnasium, he belonged to a circle of poets and thereby came in contact with a wider range of literary works. This early love of literature remained even after he became an active theoretician of communism, and Marx also strongly influenced the poet Heinrich Heine, whom he befriended. The pages of Capital are replete with characters and passages from the literary works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, and other writers, along with Marx’s own parodies of them, bringing a richness and luster to the work. Marx became so absorbed in literature during his university days that he entertained the notion of becoming a professional poet or novelist and wrote a number of poems and stories. But he was not holed up in his room studying and writing poetry all day long. Even though Marx did not join Modern Society: The Life of Marx and the Development of His Work (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019), M.  Musto, Another Marx (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), David McLellan, Karl Marx, His Life and Thought (London: Macmillan, 1973), S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (New York and London: Clarendon Press, 1976), T. Carver, Marx (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), J.  Sperber, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (New York: Liveright, 2013), Mohr und General: Erinnerungen an Marx und Engels hrsg. v. Institut für MarxismusLeninismus beim ZK der SED (Berlin: Dietz, 1964), F. Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (London: Routledge, 2003).

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any political organization, he became one of the 30 or so members of the Trier Students’ Club and served as its secretary. Marx and his friends in the club drank heavily at their parties and sometimes quarreled with students from other regions of Germany. At one point, he was even suspended from school for a day as a result of his drunken hijinks. The student movement was largely stagnant during the period Marx attended university, amidst the repressive atmosphere of the time. Universities had been granted a fair degree of freedom and autonomy in the late 1820s to early 1830s, just prior to Marx entering university, and students had the right to organize political groups. In 1832, amidst a growing movement demanding unification and democracy, students from Bonn University attacked the Rhine Province Assembly. In response, the university banned political organizations and cracked down on student activities. This was the situation that greeted Marx upon his arrival at Bonn University, so naturally it was difficult for him to become involved with any political group. The central Prussian government established Bonn University as a means of unifying the Rhineland that had been occupied by France. The hope was that having the youth of the Rhineland interact with the sons of Prussian aristocrats would turn them into good Prussians themselves. But this contact in many cases only created more friction between the two sides. Marx was the secretary of the Trier Table Society, which often clashed with the Prussian aristocratic youth of the Borussia Corps. In his role as secretary, Marx felt obliged to challenge a member of the Prussian group to a duel fought with sabers, an encounter that left him with a scar above his left eye. These student escapades affected Marx’s relationship with his father, who had held such high expectations for his son’s legal career. In his letters, Heinrich Marx often remonstrated Karl for his “wild goings-on in Bonn”5 and spendthrift ways. Familiar with his son’s tendency to overconcentrate, Henrich also frequently reminded him to be reasonable in his studies and look after his health. Marx’s curt replies to these letters only further raised his father’s ire. When Marx transferred to Berlin University, after finishing two semesters during his year at Bonn, Heinrich hoped that escaping the rowdy atmosphere would enable Karl to pursue his studies more calmly. But it was in Berlin that he took the first steps toward becoming a revolutionary. 5  H. Marx, “Heinrich Marx to Karl Marx in Berlin: Trier, December 9. 1837,” in MECW, vol. 1, p. 689.

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From Literature to Philosophy Even after moving to Berlin, Marx’s zealous composition of poetry continued. His poetic enthusiasm reflected more than just a literary interest. During a trip back to Trier, after leaving Bonn, he had entered a secret engagement with Jenny von Westphalen. Winning the heart of the brilliant young Jenny brought Marx great joy but also tremendous pressure, since he was just an 18-year-old university student, four years younger than his fiancé, who was, moreover, born into a family of aristocrats. Marx informed his father Heinrich of the engagement, but the young couple kept it a closely guarded secret from Jenny’s parents. Another year went by before Marx made a formal request for their daughter’s hand. Living so far from his fiancé Jenny brought Marx great anguish at times. In letters to his parents, Marx often expressed his jealousy and impatience. His emotional outlets seem to have been writing poetry and ardently studying the law. Unlike his days in Bonn, Marx was no longer prone to drinking bouts with friends and quarrels. “After my arrival in Berlin,” he informed his father in a 10 November 1837 letter, “I broke off all hitherto existing connections, made visits rarely and unwillingly, and tried to immerse myself in science and art.”6 But the impatient efforts of the young Marx did not turn out well, as he explained in the same letter: “Busy with these various occupations, during my first term I spent many a sleepless night, fought many a battle, and endured much internal and external excitement. Yet at the end I emerged not much enriched.”7 During this period in Berlin, Marx wrote a vast amount of romantic lyrical poetry as well as some stories, but none satisfied him in the least, as he explained to his father: “I caught sight of the glittering realm of true poetry like a distant fairy palace, and all my creations crumbled into nothing.”8 Marx had to conclude that he lacked any great literary talent. His legal studies also were not proceeding as hoped. Several times he undertook the challenge of constructing his own legal system, but “was once more compelled to recognize that it was wrong, like all my previous efforts.”9 6  K. Marx, “Letter From Marx to His Father in Trier: Berlin, November 10 [11, 1837],” in MECW, vol. 1, p. 11. 7  Ibid., pp. 17–18. 8  Ibid., p. 17. 9  Ibid.

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Encounter with the Young Hegelians In the summer of 1837, Marx fell ill as the outcome of mental and physical exhaustion. Upon the advice of his doctor, he went to the resort town of Stralow to recuperate. This marked an important turning point, since it was there that Marx, who had been something of a recluse in Berlin, formed friendships with some Berlin University students and private lecturers. He  then encountered members of the so-called Young Hegelian group. Marx joined the Doctor’s Club, which was the locus of the youthful group, and stimulated by this milieu quickly absorbed Hegelian philosophy. This was a way for Marx to escape the narrow confines of the romanticism and idealism in which he had been trapped and regain the bearings he had lost when his poetic pursuits and legal studies came to naught. His new resolutions are expressed in a letter he wrote to his father in November 1837: From the idealism, which, by the way, I had compared and nourished with the idealism of Kantian and Fichte, I arrived at the point of seeking the idea in reality itself. If previously the gods had dwelt above the earth, they became its center. I had read fragments of Hegel’s philosophy, the grotesque craggy melody of which did not appeal to me. Once more I wanted to dive into the sea, but with the definite intention of establishing that the nature of the mind is just as necessary, concrete and firmly based as the nature of the body. My aim was no longer to practice tricks of swordsmanship, but to bring genuine pearls into the light of day.10

Marx, who had once been too romantic and idealistic to grapple with Hegel or bend his ear to that “grotesque craggy melody,” now sought to go beyond his previous standpoint. Dissatisfied with the pursuit of ideals separate from reality, he wanted to seek the idea (Idee) within reality itself. The great significance of Hegel’s philosophy for Marx was its grasp of the idea penetrating reality, rather than a separation of the two. This turning point was far more than just an intellectual change: it meant that, instead of pursuing artistic or scholarly ideals detached from reality, ideals must be sought within reality itself. For Marx, this was a completely new way of looking at the world, wherein the confrontation with reality becomes the vital task.  Ibid., p. 18.

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While Marx’s way of thinking was undergoing this transformation, his relations with his father steadily worsened. Heinrich was a liberal-minded man who was influenced by the French Enlightenment, to the point where he could recite passages from Voltaire and Rousseau, and was involved in the movement for liberty in the Rhineland. As is clear from his letters, he was not a father who imposed his views upon his son. At the same time, though, he was a loyal Prussian citizen, who took a common-sense approach to life. It was exasperating for him to see Karl plunging into the world of art and scholarship without any concern for those around him, despite having no social standing, even after entering an engagement with the daughter of an aristocrat. Although Marx loved and respected his father, he had no interest in cultivating himself into the sort of practical man that this father hoped he would become. Equipped with a rare intellect, Marx was stepping into a vast world of the sort his father could hardly imagine. In his November 1837 letter quoted from earlier, Karl informs his father, in a vivid literary style, that he is setting out on a journey toward a new world: “There are moments in one’s life which are like frontier posts marking the completion of a period but at the same time clearly indicating a new direction.”11 His father responded harshly, on 9 December, telling Karl that he had caused his “parents much vexation and little or no joy.”12 This response must have made Marx aware of the estrangement with his parents. Within half a year after writing this letter, Heinrich died in Trier. Marx was unable to return from Berlin for the funeral.

The Young Hegelians What sort of group were the Young Hegelians who brought about such an important turning point in Marx’s life? During the 1820s, the philosophy of Hegel exerted a tremendous influence in Germany, becoming the quasi-official philosophy of the Prussian state through the support of Baron von Altenstein, the Minister of Culture. Prussian leaders sought to make use of Hegel’s philosophy, which viewed (or was thought to view) the constitutional monarchy of Prussia as the perfect form of freedom. After Hegel’s death in 1831, the  Ibid., p. 10.  H. Marx, “Heinrich Marx to Karl Marx in Berlin: Trier, December 9. 1837,” in MECW, vol. 1, p. 689. 11 12

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Hegelian school was formed by his followers, who set about spreading his doctrines and editing his collected works. Before long, the school split into two factions, however. Breaking away from the conventional followers, who supported a conservative interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy, was a younger group that launched their own, more radical interpretation—and came to be known as the “Young Hegelians.” Two main factors underlie the split. First, following the revolution of July 1830, a liberal movement arose in Germany demanding freedom of speech and other rights. The movement took place against the backdrop of the rise of the bourgeoisie that was accompanying the development of capitalism and the growing demand for a unified political state better suited to the capitalist system. The tariffs and restrictions on the freedom of movement, resulting from the divided state of Germany, had become a fetter to the further development of capitalism, and the bourgeoisie required freedom of speech to achieve its demands. In the face of this liberal movement, the Prussian government strengthened its repressive measures, making liberals aware of the need for a counter ideology. The second factor behind the split was the ambiguity within Hegel’s philosophy. One direct expression of this is the famous line, “What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational,”13 from the Preface to the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Hegel, as is well known, explained the development of reality as the unfolding of reason. Since reason manifested its shape by becoming reality, reality must itself be penetrated by the rational. Taken literally this would seem a logic affirming the status quo. But it can be the logic of transformation as well, since the statement, “What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational,” suggests the possibility of transforming reality through reason. Hegel had drawn on the philosophy of Kant, who had posited reason independent of nature and emotion, but instead of detaching reason from reality, he saw it as the principle behind actual developments. Kant, too, of course, had recognized reason as the active force that establishes human cognition, but to make the use of reason more tangible, he sought to establish rigorous limits to it. In the case of pure reason, for example, only the phenomenal world, as it presents itself to human sensibilities, is the object of cognition; whereas the cognition of the “thing-in-itself” beyond 13  G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 20.

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it must be abandoned. In contrast, Hegel thought in terms of an active, dynamic reason that was always overcoming itself to develop toward a higher state, mediated by the moment of negativity, which is to say, self-reflection. Although Hegel saw this development reaching its apex in the modern constitutional monarchy, he was only confirming the status of contemporary society, and it was not inevitable that constitutional monarchy would always remain the highest stage. Thus, although Hegel’s philosophy was conservative in appearance, it included elements that were potentially radical. These are the elements that the Young Hegelians seized upon. The Young Hegelians—who were hardly monolithic, containing instead a variety of viewpoints—directed most of their criticism at religion, initially. Readers from non-Western countries may wonder why the critique of religion was considered so important, but this was natural at the time considering the situation in Germany, where the state and religion were closely linked, and where criticizing religion was safer than aiming a criticism directly at the realm of politics. Bruno Bauer played a decisive role in the Young Hegelian critique of religion. At an early age, Bauer was recognized by Hegel as a brilliant student and became the leader of the Doctors’ Club. Bauer exerted a key influence on Marx’s acceptance of Hegel. Prior to Bauer, David Strauss already had presented a critique of religion, but it centered merely on the dispute over the historical veracity of the life of Jesus. In contrast, Bauer engaged in a bold criticism of Christianity itself. Here we need to a look at Bauer’s interpretation of Hegel and his critique of religion.14 In the Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel had insisted that truth must be grasped not merely as substance but also as subject. In plainer terms, substance is the foundation of all things and becomes the basis of their existence. Spinoza, who strongly influenced Hegel, viewed god  =  nature as the only substance, whereas Hegel re-grasped this as 14  The descriptions here of Bruno Bauer’s philosophical theory are based on his own works: An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed: A Recollection of the Eighteenth Century and a Contribution to the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002) and The Trumpet of the Last Judgement Against Hegel the Atheist and Antichrist: An Ultimatum (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989); as well as David McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London: Macmillan, 1969) and the following Japanese language books: N. Watanabe, Kindai hihan to Marx [The Critique of Modern Society and Marx] (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1989), Chikara Rachi, Hegel-saha to shoki Marx [The Left Hegelians and the Young Marx] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1987).

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subject  =  self-consciousness. For Spinoza, substance was static, whereas for Hegel it was dynamic and living. Substance first reaches the level of truth by means of the subject = self-consciousness always reflecting upon itself and seeking to overcome what it had been hitherto. This theory of substance = subject is the basis for Hegel’s principle that reason develops through the mediation of the moment of negation, as touched on earlier. According to Bauer, however, this theory falls into self-contradiction because Hegel posits, on the one hand, substance itself as truth for subject  =  self-consciousness, and self-consciousness as merely a “moment” (constituent part) of this substance, while on the other hand insisting that subject creates substance. If the subject creates substance, Bauer argued, it would mean that the subject is in fact the basis of truth. Bauer thus rejected the view of substance as exterior to self-consciousness, insisting instead that the self-consciousness of human beings is the true substance. In Bauer’s view, human history is formed and develops through self-­ consciousness. The philosophy of self-consciousness is the esoteric philosophy concealed behind the conservative outward appearance of Hegel’s philosophy. This philosophy of self-consciousness was the basis for Bauer’s criticism of Christianity. The Gospels, he argued, were not a record of accurate historical truth, but rather a manifestation of the essence of a still immature self-consciousness in a religious form—a mere product of human self-­ consciousness. Yet within religion, self-consciousness is placed in opposition to the essence of self and looked down on as something passive. In other words, although religion is generated by self-consciousness, it becomes something estranged from self-consciousness and, as such, subordinates self-consciousness to itself. Thus, according to Bauer, religion is nothing more than the alienated form of the essence of self-­ consciousness. He sought to bring this alienated essence back to human beings and liberate them through a critique of religion that would expose this inversion.

Impact of Bauer on Marx Bauer’s philosophy, as outlined above, may seem exceedingly abstract and fastidious, but for Marx, who had overcome his previous idealistic standpoint and was striving to assimilate the philosophy of Hegel, the impact of these ideas was enormous. At the Doctor’s Club, he was greatly influenced by Bauer’s philosophy of self-consciousness. And Bauer immediately

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recognized Marx’s intellectual abilities. Despite the ten-year difference between them in age, the two became close friends. Marx was once suspected of being the author of Bauer’s book, The Trumpet of the Last Judgement against Hegel the Atheist and Antichrist, in which he adopted the guise of a Christian opponent of Hegel to launch a critique of religion. Bauer and Marx also formed a plan to publish a treatise titled, “Hegel’s Hatred of Religious and Christian Art and the His Dissolution of all Positive State Laws,” although it was never completed. The powerful influence of Bauer can be seen in Marx’s doctoral thesis, “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.” As the title indicates, Marx examined the philosophical differences between Epicurus and Democritus, but this way of posing the problem adheres to the approach of Bauer, who had likened the situation of the Young Hegelians to that of post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy. Marx, in clarifying the intellectual significance of the post-Aristotelian philosophy of Epicurus, similarly attempted to demonstrate the intellectual significance of the Young Hegelians who came after Hegel, particularly the significance of their philosophy of self-consciousness: Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subsiding and absolutely free heart, will ever grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus: “Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious.” Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus: “In simple words, I hate the pack of gods” is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. It will have none other beside.15

From the point of view above, Marx evaluates the philosophy of Epicurus in the following way. Epicurus and Democritus are often identified with each other because both explained nature through an atomic theory, but in fact the philosophy of nature of Epicurus is not a mere copy of that of Democritus. In his atomic theory, Democritus insisted on the deterministic character of nature, noting that the movement of atoms and their union and division are based on a necessity posited from the outside. 15  K.  Marx, “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature,” in MECW, vol. 1, p. 30.

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Epicurus, in contrast, emphasized the contingency of the movement of atoms, arguing that atoms do not move linearly but rather veer from a straight line depending on the nature of each, leading to accidental collisions between them. Marx saw in this deviation of atoms from a straight line, the moment of subjectivity overcoming natural necessity. In this sense, the philosophy of nature of Epicurus was, for Marx, precisely the “physics of self-consciousness” insofar as it provides a basis for an autonomous subject not subordinated to external natural necessity; which is to say, self-consciousness. Marx would later describe Epicurus as “the true radical Enlightener of antiquity” in The German Ideology.16 Marx was not a mere epigone of Bauer, however. In his dissertation, we can already glimpse unique conceptions that resemble ideas he would later develop. Moreover, the level of his research on Epicurus was so high that an Epicurean scholar in the twentieth century said, “Looking back on his [Marx’s] work now it is almost astonishing to see how far he got considering the materials then available.”17 Nevertheless, it seems valid to describe Marx’s position at the time as basically adhering to Bauer’s philosophy of self-consciousness. The reception of Hegel via Bauer was of decisive importance to Marx and would continue to influence the structure of his theory, although later he would repeatedly criticize the philosophy of Bauer and move beyond it. Through Bauer’s influence, Marx rapidly assimilated the philosophy of Hegel and began to distinguish himself among the Young Hegelians, while heading left politically. The Young Hegelian Moses Hess offers the following description of Marx at the time. Dr. Marx—this is the name of my idol—is still a very young man, hardly 24 years old; but he will give the final blow to all medieval religion and politics; he combines the deepest philosophical seriousness with a cutting wit. Can you imagine Rosseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine, and Hegel combined—not thrown together—in one person? If you can—you have Dr. Marx. (2 September 1841 letter to Auerbach.)18

Marx astounding talents and uncompromising willpower was already evident to everyone, and it seemed as if his future as a scholar was assured.  K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, in MECW, vol. 5, p. 141.  C.  Bailey, “Karl Marx on Greek Atomism,” Classical Quarterly, vol.  22, no. 3 and 4 (July–October 1928), p. 205. 18  M. Hess, Briefwechsel, hrsg. v. E. Silberner, (Gravenhage: Mouton, 1959), p. 80. 16 17

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But that was not to prove the case in the end. The Young Hegelians began to lose their foothold in the university as the Prussian government became increasingly conservative.

The Move to Journalism The death of his father aggravated Marx’s financial situation, while weakening the ties between the Marx and Westphalen families, placing Jenny in an even more difficult position. This forced Marx to seriously consider the need to find employment. The career path he had in mind, naturally, was to secure a university position as a professor of philosophy, since by then his interest had shifted to that field from literature and law. Although rarely able to finish a written work quickly, given his thoroughly uncompromising character, Marx managed to complete his dissertation in just a year and a half, following the advice of Bauer, who told him to “stop your hesitation at last.”19 Marx submitted the dissertation to Jena University, where it was relatively easy to obtain a doctoral degree, graduating from Berlin University in March 1841 and receiving his degree on 15 April. But at the very moment Marx faced the vital task of securing a university post, the position of the Young Hegelians within the academy was deteriorating. The increasingly radical critique of religion by Bauer and others raised the ire of the government. Moreover, the period coincided with the death of the defender of Hegelianism, Baron von Altenstein, who was replaced as Minister of Culture by an opponent of Hegelianism, J. A. F. Eichhorn. Bauer had already been forced to transfer from Berlin University to Bonn University, and Marx later went there to join him. In Bonn, Marx prepared the additional paper needed to receive a university position, while engaging with Bauer in the critique of religion. But the universities were ousting one Young Hegelian scholar after another. In March 1842, Bauer lost his post, effectively ending Marx’s hope of gaining a university position and compelling him to earn a living as a journalist. In February of that year, Marx had contributed an article on government censorship to the journal Deutsch Jahrbücher, edited by Arnold 19  B. Bauer, “Bruno Bauer an Karl Marx in Berlin: Bonn, 1. März 1840,” in Marx-EngelsGesamtausgabe, Ab. III, Bd. 1 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1975), S. 341. Hereinafter the abbreviation “MEGA2” is used for passages from Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, followed by the section and volume number, and then the page number.

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Ruge, another Young Hegelian. Ruge had concentrated on the philosophy of right within Hegel’s philosophy and progressed beyond a mere critique of religion to also criticize politics. Marx was in close collaboration with Ruge for roughly two years, before they parted ways. After his hope for gaining an academic position had been dashed, Marx lived for a time in Cologne, where he came into contact with the liberal movement that was to exert a great influence on his future course. The Rhineland that encompasses Cologne, as mentioned earlier, was once ruled by France. This region had a relatively high degree of commercial freedom and was one of the largest industrial zones in Europe. But the bourgeoisie in the Rhineland did not have an adequate say in political matters; a situation that gave birth to a robust liberal movement. In January 1842, the Young Hegelians in Cologne began publishing the Rheinische Zeitung, after persuading liberal-minded capitalists to back the newspaper. In Cologne, Marx’s talents were again recognized and soon he became a central figure in the liberal movement. Although he left the city for a time, he involved himself with the internal issues of the Rheinische Zeitung around the summer of 1842, and by October had become the editor-in-­ chief. Marx excelled in that position, and before long the paper had more than doubled its circulation.

From the Critique of Religion to That of Politics The period of working as a journalist and editor greatly influenced the development of Marx’s thought. Having to comment on concrete social issues as a journalist led him away from the critique of religion, toward politics. Armed with his philosophical knowledge, Marx called for the freedom of publication and speech, such as disclosing the minutes of government proceedings to the public. Confronting real issues made him aware of the insufficiency of a critique centered on abstract philosophy or notions of an ideal state. In particular, encounters with issues that touched on real economic interests, such as the debates over the law on wood theft or free trade and protectionism, made Marx painfully aware of the impotence of his standpoint to date. In his article “Debates on the Law of Thefts of Wood,” Marx criticized a new law that punished as theft the gathering of dead trees, which was a long-recognized custom among the peasantry. This controversy was a collision between premodern property rights and modern exclusionary property rights (discussed in the following chapter). Already in this article,

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Marx reveals the upside-down nature of modern private ownership, in which a thing, wood, is revered at the expense of human beings. Marx’s critique of this inverted relation did not yet progress beyond the perspective of Hegel’s idealized conception of the state, however. Instead of accounting for how or why the inverted situation arose to begin with, he simply juxtaposed the law that protected the particular private interests of the forest owners with an ideal state that should be the embodiment of universality. Nevertheless, by engaging with that concrete problem, his interests began to move from the realm of abstract philosophy toward actual society. As the editor of Rheinische Zeitung, Marx also was forced to confront the emerging intellectual current of communism. It may come as a surprise, but Marx at the time was critical of communism. In his role as editor-­in-chief, battling with government censors every day, he took a cautious approach toward radical ideas that went beyond the issues of the day. But that was not the only reason for his opposition. Since he had become keenly aware of the need to analyze social relations concretely, Marx perceived that communistic thought in Germany was too abstract and unrealistic. He realized that the problems of communistic thought should be approached from the more realistic perspective of social relations. Having thus become keenly aware of the need to embark on a new line of research, and facing increasing pressure from the government, Marx resigned his editorship of Rheinische Zeitung in February 1843, at the age of 24, and “withdrew from public life to his study.”

Critique of Hegel’s Theory of Right and the Modern State Withdrawing from public life to pursue his studies was all fine and good, but it left Marx without a profession. Meanwhile, amidst the intensified repression of free speech, Bauer and the other Young Hegelians in Berlin were sinking deeper and deeper into abstract philosophical discussions, far removed from Marx’s own interests. And the increasing government repression made it difficult for Marx to continue working as a journalist addressing real issues. He sought new possibilities for action with Arnold Ruge, who wanted to continue grappling with the realm of actual politics. The two arrived at a plan to publish a monthly journal in France, seeking to realize the idea proposed earlier by some Young Hegelians of creating

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links with France, where socialist thought was emerging. The result was the journal Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, financed by Ruge, who brought on Marx as the co-editor. Having secured a means of livelihood, Marx could finally marry Jenny, in June 1843, culminating their seven-year engagement. The newlyweds first lived in Bad Kreuznach, where Marx was preparing the Deutsch-­ Französische Jahrbücher and critically examining Hegel’s philosophy of right. The notebook he wrote at the time came to be known as A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Through a confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy of right, Marx sought to elucidate the basis for the phenomenon of inverted relations. This was the first step toward building his own theoretical edifice. In his notes, Marx presents a critique of Hegel, pointing out that, although Hegel recognized the clash of private interests within civil society and the various contradictions that thereby arise, such as poverty and economic crises, he believed these contradictions could be overcome and dissolved by means of the modern political state. Hegel thought that the state, as the embodiment of universality, could bring together the competing private individuals who pursue their own interests within civil society, so as to form what he called an “ethical community.” Hegel thus viewed the modern state as a social system capable of bringing about genuine freedom. For Marx, however, this view is a beautification and distortion of the reality of the modern state. Far from being the embodiment of universality, the modern political state is composed of a bureaucracy and parliament that acts in accordance with the specific private interests of a particular segment of society; this is precisely why the state enacts legislation far removed from universality, such as the law on wood theft. Marx argued that the task was not to locate the perfection of liberty in the modern duality between civil society and the state, but to overcome that duality. How did Marx imagine that this duality could be overcome? In his view, the state operates in line with particular interests, rather than embodying universality, because many people are cut off from the public realm of politics. Indeed, the constitutional monarchy that Hegel praised is a system established through the estrangement of the majority from politics. Participation in the public realm through democratic systems, in which working people vote in general elections, was seen by Marx as a means of overcoming the duality. He believed the division between private

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individuals in civil society could be overcome through involvement in a public realm characterized by universality. He sought to go beyond the modern duality through such “democratic systems.”

Influence of Feuerbach Here we need to look at the influence on Marx of Ludwig Feuerbach, a prominent Young Hegelian and controversial author of The Essence of Christianity. In that book, Feuerbach criticizes Christianity, insisting that “God is the manifested inward nature, the expressed self of a man.”20 According to his view, people suffering in the real world are unable to perceive their own innate power as human beings, and instead project themselves outward upon religion, so that religion is the alienated human essence or alienated species essence. Feuerbach sought to break through that alienation by means of a critique of religion. At first glance, the outlook of Feuerbach may seem to follow the same conception of the problem as the philosophy of Bauer; however, a fundamental difference is that Feuerbach aims his critique not merely at religion but at philosophy as well. His critique of philosophy is presented in Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, published just prior to the time Marx was writing A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Marx paid little attention to Feuerbach’s critique of religion, but his views on philosophy influenced him enormously.21 What were the characteristics of Feuerbach’s critique of philosophy? Plainly speaking, he criticized philosophy for brandishing abstract principles and logic. In juxtaposition to such philosophical abstractions, Feuerbach posited living, sensuous human beings. Human beings are more than just thinking beings with self-consciousness, he argued; they are also living, breathing sensual beings, who eat, love, and procreate; and they are thinking through those sensual activities. Feuerbach, in other words, criticized philosophy for its inability to grasp real, living, 20  L.  Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (London: Trübner and company, 1881), pp. 12–13. 21  Marx would later write in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: “Feuerbach’s great achievement is: (1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned” (MECW, vol. 3, p. 328).

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sensual beings—whether it be Hegel’s notion of an absolute spirit or Bauer’s philosophy of self-consciousness. This is precisely why both religion and philosophy are alienated expressions of the human essence, Feuerbach argued. Feuerbach’s philosophy is often described as “materialism,” but it differs somewhat from typical materialism. Generally, materialism seeks to grasp the world from its material elements, as opposed to the idealist view that bases its explanation on spirit and idea (Idee). This is a standpoint, simply put, that insists on the primordial nature of matter. Feuerbach was not satisfied with such materialism, however. He argued that a conception of “matter” that was detached from the sensuous reality of human beings would be a mere abstraction. His own outlook was a sensuous philosophy, at the center of which were sensual human beings, with concrete desires and love for others. In this sense, his outlook was above all a philosophy of humanism. The influence on Marx of this philosophy can be seen in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, where he argues that Hegel’s theory of the state is the mere product of abstract logic that has jettisoned real human beings. Human beings are looked down on in that theory on as a  “phenomenon” of abstract logic: “Family and civil society are the premises of the state; they are the genuinely active elements, but in speculative philosophy things are reversed.”22 Marx sets out to turn this upside-­ down situation right-side up again, by making the subject actual human beings, rather than the idea. His conception of a “democratic system,” alluded to earlier, precisely concerns bringing about a society in which real human beings themselves are the aim in itself.

Limits of Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Marx’s struggle with Hegel’s philosophy of right deepened his own awareness, bringing him ever closer to real problems. Yet he remained within the Young Hegelian realm of posing problems as an enlightenment issue of changing consciousness. Both Bauer’s philosophy of self-consciousness, which played an enormous role in Marx’s reception of Hegel, and  K.  Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, in MECW, vol. 3, p. 8. 22

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Feuerbach’s philosophy of sensual human beings, which went beyond the views of Bauer, insisted that the critique of incorrect ideas on the basis of correct ones is the means of altering the structure of society. As we have seen, Bauer insisted that self-consciousness is the true motive force of history, critiquing the outlook that belittled self-consciousness while prioritizing the “substance” alienated from human beings. Feuerbach, meanwhile, held the view that living sensual human beings are the subject that forms society, critiquing the idealistic outlook of society as the unfolding of an abstract logic. Marx was still within the bounds of this enlightenment view at the time, as he revealed in a September 1843 letter to Ruge: Hence, our motto must be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but by analyzing the mystical consciousness unintelligible to itself, whether it manifests itself in a religious or a political form. It will then become evident that the world has long dreamed of possessing something of which it has only to be conscious in order to possess it in reality.23

Clearly Marx had an aversion to the dogmas of the communists at the time, who upheld empty ideals, which is precisely why he analyzed “mystical consciousness” by means of a critique of Hegel’s philosophy  of right to arrive at the conception of change through a “democratic system.” Nevertheless, his conception of a “democratic system” remained idealistic, lacking a real basis for realization. Without such a basis, he could only pin his hopes for change on a change in consciousness through enlightening people. The reason Marx’s conception of a “democratic system” lacked a real basis was that, in A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, he considered the alienation of human beings qua subject of society from the universal public realm (the state) as the greatest contradiction of modern society. For his conception of social change to have a basis in reality, Marx would have had to analyze the civil society that is the locus for human beings as the real subjects to live their daily lives.

 K. Marx, “Letters from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,” in MECW, vol. 3, p. 144.

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Marx’s Two Articles in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher In October 1843, Marx arrived in Paris to publish the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, following a brief honeymoon in Kreuznach. Ruge was already in the city, busily engaged in editing the journal. He appealed to French thinkers to contribute articles, but there was little response. In the end, the journal was Französische in name only since its content came exclusively from German contributors, and after its inaugural issue the publication folded. But the two articles Marx wrote for the journal, titled, “On the Jewish Question” and “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” had great significance within the development of his thought. In these articles, he began to shed his enlightenment outlook.24 Marx again takes up the subject of modern dualism in the articles, but his way of dealing with the problem was more profound. In his earlier work, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx had posed the problem as rooted in the alienation of real human beings within civil society from the universal public realm (the state), requiring a democratic system of universal suffrage to overcome the split. That view is swept aside in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher articles, however. Marx notes in “On the Jewish Question” how his historical studies of the United States and France led him to a far different conclusion:

 Norimasa Watanabe, in his book Kindai hihan to Marx [The Critique of Modern Society and Marx], clearly indicates how Marx, in his two Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher articles, began to break away from the enlightenment approach. Most of the discussions that distinguish the “immature” early Marx from the “mature” late Marx draw the line between the two with the “Theses on Feuerbach” and The German Ideology, the most typical case being that of Althusser. Granted, as we will examine later, there is an undeniable difference between those works and his earlier Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and The Holy Family, but the truly decisive moment in the formation of Marx’s thought was the break from the enlightenment approach, seen in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher articles. The development within the “Theses on Feuerbach” and The German Ideology was not so much a break with his previous position as a deepening of his critique of the enlightenment approach, so that it became more thorough. Simply put, the break from the enlightenment deepened into an aggressive critique of the enlightenment approach. 24

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But, the completion of the idealism of the state was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civil society. Throwing off the political yoke meant at the same time throwing off the bonds which restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society.25

Marx realized that the split between civil society and the state within modern society cannot be ascribed to a lack of universal suffrage and other aspects of political democracy. It is clear from the examples of the United States and France that, even after citizens are granted universal suffrage, the modern dualism remains. In fact, the modern dualism manifests itself in a purer form through political democracy. Political emancipation sweeps aside special privileges based on rank and guilds, so that economic activities within civil society come to be conducted more purely on the basis of profit. The role of the state is merely to guarantee the pure economic activities within civil society, such as protecting individuals’ private property rights. Thus, in civil society, human beings are alienated from their communality and only pursue material interests as private individuals. Marx’s deepening understanding of the modern dualism naturally led him to turn his attention to civil society itself. No longer did he view the structure of the dualism as merely an alienation from the state, but also sought the alienation within civil society itself. The precise embodiment of this alienation within civil society, he argued, is money. In a society where separate private individuals exclusively pursue their own profitable interests, the power that human beings themselves possess is stripped from them, turning into the power of money. As Marx notes in “On the Jewish Question,” “Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.”26 In a civil society composed of private individuals rank-based political power is eliminated, but the power of money grows to become the “ruling power of the world.” This is a society in which money is everything. With it, one can do whatever one likes. The intrinsic value of human beings and nature are evaluated solely from the perspective of money. Marx was able to grasp this alienation within civil society as the source of the contradiction of modern society.

 K. Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in MECW, vol. 3, p. 166.  Ibid., p. 172.

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Transformation of Marx’s View of Social Change Marx’s changing view of modernity altered his conception of social change as well, leading him to begin seeking the basis for change in the sensuous wants of human beings (rather than in political ideas). This can be seen in “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” where Marx writes: “For revolutions require a passive element, a material basis. Theory can be realized in a people only insofar as it is the realization of the needs of that people.”27 Marx did not downplay the role of theory, of course, but he realized that no matter how refined a theory might be, it will have no influence on the real world unless it is connected to the actual desires of human beings. The question then becomes: Who within modern society is seeking fundamental social change? Marx’s answer was: the working class—the proletariat. As the most alienated and afflicted class within civil society, the proletariat will be the bearer of social change. The task was not mere political change, Marx thought, but a fundamental altering of society itself. The change in Marx’s position brought him into sharp conflict with his co-editor, Ruge, who had criticized the June 1844 uprising of textile workers in Silesia. Ruge held that as long as there is a separation from the state as the universal public realm, no social movement could lead to a solution of social problems. What had to be settled first in Germany, in his view, was the political revolution. Marx directly criticized the position of Ruge.28 According to Marx, the universality of the modern state is a narrow universality premised on conflicts between private interests within civil society, whereas the uprising of workers, no matter how partial, is latent with a true universality.29 He recognized that a social transformation would also require political action, but its essence would have to be the transformation of the social system itself. Clearly reflected within this view are Marx’s experiences in Paris, where he came into contact with French socialists and was influenced by their 27  K. Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” in MECW, vol. 3, p. 183. 28  K.  Marx, “Critical Marginal Notes on the Article ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian,’” in MECW, vol. 3, pp. 189–206. 29  “Therefore, however partial the uprising of the industrial workers may be, it contains within itself a universal soul; however universal a political uprising may be, it conceals even in its most grandiose form a narrow-minded spirit” (ibid., p. 205).

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ideas. Also important was his interaction there with the organizations of French workers as well as German workers (who numbered around 100,000 in Paris at the time). It was in France that Marx first witnessed the organized working class. Later, in his notebooks that would come to be known as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, he would write: When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need—the need for society—and what appears as a means becomes an end. In this practical process the most splendid results are to be observed whenever French socialist workers are seen together. Such things as smoking, drinking, eating, etc. are no longer means of contact or means that bring them together. Association, society, and conversation, which again has association as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies.30

From this passage alone we can easily imagine the impact that the French working class had on Marx. The workers did not join together in solidarity merely to satisfy their own individual life demands. Rather, they cultivated their humanity through that unity to the point where social bonds and cooperation became the object of desire in themselves. With this change in his theoretical outlook, Marx began to free himself from the Young Hegelian way of posing problems, moving away from the notion that society could be changed by means of ideas. In “On the Jewish Question,” for instance, Marx directly criticizes Bauer, who had influenced him so greatly, arguing that he had been wrong to claim that human beings would only first be liberated as such once they had been freed from religion. Marx argues that religion is instead the reflection of people’s suffering within the real world. People cling to religious faith and pursue an illusory happiness because of their suffering in the real world and their inability to secure real happiness. This is why Marx describes religion as the “opium of the people”31 that dulls the pain of this world. Thus, emancipation from religion cannot be achieved through a critique of religion alone; rather it comes about through realizing a life worthy of human beings in this world. This is how Marx offered a more fundamental critique  Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 313.   Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Introduction,” p. 175. 30 31

Philosophy

of

Law:

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of Bauer and of the Young Hegelian view of religion, which naturally included his criticism of the enlightenment idea of changing reality through a change in consciousness. However, Marx’s critique of the enlightenment approach was not at the forefront of his articles in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, and rather than negating the critique of religion offered by Bauer and others, he explained it as a starting point for winning emancipation in the real world. Even while positing the sensuous desires of human beings as the foundation of social transformation, Marx continued to see an enormous role for the power of ideals. In “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” he writes: “The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart is the proletariat.”32

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 The Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher ended in complete failure. The journal was banned in Germany and ignored in France. The Prussian government accused Marx of treason and lese majesté, issuing a warrant for his arrest that resulted in his exile from Germany. As Marx shifted from emphasizing political change toward advocating a social transformation, his rift with his co-editor Ruge widened, until the two went their separate ways. After their split, the now-exiled Marx stayed on in Paris, associating with French and Russian socialists, including Proudhon, Bakunin (whom later criticized), and Louis Blanc. These encounters unquestionably led Marx in the direction of communism, but the decisive factor during this period was his rapid progress in the field of political economy. Marx had already begun to study political economy after he arrived in Paris. He was taking notes on works by such well-known economists as Jean Baptiste Say, Karl Wolfgang Schütz, and Friedrich List, while writing articles for the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. His research notes usually took the form of extracts from the works he was reading. Throughout his life, Marx would stick to the method he had adopted as a university student of writing down extracts from books he was studying, to which he added his own comments when necessary. Most of these “excerpt notes” remain today, allowing us to better understand the progress of his research and grasp points of interest that do not necessarily appear in his books or manuscripts.  Ibid., p. 187.

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After the publication of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Marx temporarily set aside his study of political economy, but around May 1844 he began to examine Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. This work inspired him to shape his own understanding by gathering quotes from his excerpt notes and adding his own observations. The materials that he excerpted from and commented on included some new works of political economy by such authors as Wilhelm Schultz, Charles Constantin Pecqueur, and Eugène Buret. Marx also filled notebooks with excerpts and extensive comments on works by Fryderyk Florian Skarbek, Michel Chevalier, Charles Ganilh, John Ramsay MacCulloch, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Trasy, David Ricardo, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. In short, Marx absorbed the ideas of all the prominent economists of his time, while forming his own views through commenting on their works.33 These lengthy comments can be found in the so-called Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Rather than a systematic presentation of his views, this is a work that reveals the process whereby Marx rapidly developed his own thought through a fundamental examination of political economy.

Private Ownership and “Alienated Labor” How, then, did Marx develop his own thought by absorbing these works of political economy? The most important point was the establishment of a core methodology to theoretically grasp alienation within civil society. In his two Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher articles, Marx had already identified the alienation of civil society, wherein money becomes a great power that dominates human beings. But in so doing he was simply following an argument that had been advanced by the Young Hegelian Moses Hess, rather than providing much explanation of why alienation arose in the first place. In the pages of Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, however, Marx makes a groundbreaking advance toward grasping the alienation within civil society. His idea is presented there in a fragmentary discussion of his now-famous concept of “alienated labor.” Marx points out that political economy had taken for granted, as an unquestioned premise, a system made up of privately owned things like 33  For more on the progression of Marx’s thought at the time, see J.  Rojahn, “The Emergence of a Theory: The Importance of Marx’s Notebooks Exemplified by Those from 1844,” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 14 (4) (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 29–46.

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commodities, money, and capital. Most of the socialists who were denouncing economic inequality and poverty also took the system of private ownership for granted and merely called for greater income equality on its basis. What must be called into question, Marx insisted, was the reason commodities, money, and other privately owned things exist in the first place. As long as a system composed of the private ownership of such things continued to exist, problems such as widening economic disparities, poverty, and crisis would be inevitable. In short, rather than treating the system as an unquestioned premise, it had to be held up to scrutiny. Marx pondered why privately owned things, such as commodities, money, and capital, are generated, and he located that fundamental cause in “alienated labor.” Because the manner of labor has become alienated, he argued, privately owned things take on an estranged power from human beings.34 What does it mean to say that the manner of labor is alienated? In his manuscripts, Marx explains this idea in rather abstract, philosophical terms, but more simply it can be explained as follows. In modern society, the vast majority of workers are employed to work for others. This takes the form of wage labor. Although the workers themselves carry out wage labor, it is not done according to their own will, but rather under the direction of the employer. In modern society, therefore, labor is both carried out by the workers themselves but also estranged from them. Marx uses the term “alienated labor” to refer to such labor. Thus, when workers are employed and work under the direction of an employer, they have alienated themselves from the means of production, such as tools and raw materials. Wageworkers do not carry out labor in their own houses, using their own tools, but rather work in a place owned by others, under their direction and using their tools. Therefore, the labor implements that workers use remain under the ownership of others and the new products of labor they produce through processing materials come into the possession of others. Modern workers are thus estranged from both the means of production and the products of labor. Despite workers using the means of production and producing products, those 34  “All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object.” (Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 272). “True, it is as a result of the movement of private property that we have obtained the concept of alienated labor (of alienated life) in political economy. But analysis of this concept shows that though private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is rather its consequence, just as the gods are originally not thee cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion” (ibid, pp. 279–80).

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things have their own independent power as privately owned things and confront the workers as such. This is what Marx at the time viewed as the root of the system of private ownership.35 Marx’s logic was still exceedingly abstract and difficult to understand. Not until completing the first volume of Capital would his explanation become more precise and concrete. Yet the important point to note here is that, even at this early stage, he had established a method for explaining things that people take for granted, such as commodities, money, and capital, by tracing them back to human behavior as the root cause.36 This method would play a decisive role in the formation of Capital.

Going beyond the Enlightenment Vision Another important point to note is that Marx aimed to go beyond the enlightenment vision of social change by fusing Feuerbach’s sensuous philosophy with Bauer’s philosophy of self-consciousness. Marx sought to do this by going beyond Bauer to criticize the philosophy of Hegel himself, specifically Phenomenology of Spirit, which is the birthplace of his philosophy. What had once enthused Marx about Bauer’s philosophy of self-­ consciousness was the revolutionary character of criticizing and seeking to overcome what exists through the ongoing reflection of self-­consciousness. But, as we have seen, Marx eventually rejected the idea of changing society through self-consciousness. He realized that what forms actual society is not abstractions such as self-consciousness but sensuous human beings active within reality, who not only have consciousness but also various desires and emotions and enjoy the world with their five senses. On this point, Marx was strongly influenced by Feuerbach. 35  The explanation above of the fragment on “alienated labor” is fundamentally based on Yukio Arii’s Marx no shakai shisutemu riron [Marx’ Theory of a Social System] (Yuhikaku, 1987), but Marcello Musto makes the same point in Another Marx (pp. 34–41). It is common to connect the concept of alienation to essentialism since the philosophy of Feuerbach, which greatly influenced Marx during this period, was based on a modern image of man, but Marx’s own concept of alienation certainly is not essentialist. This is because for him the concept meant that a subject relates to some sort of object as an “estranged thing” that cannot be controlled and at times becomes hostile. In this sense, alienation can be conceived of without a fixed “essence.” 36  Theoretically speaking, this signified the establishment of the “logic of relating” discussed in detail in Appendix A.

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At the same time, though, Marx was keenly aware of the impotence of praising sensuous man in the manner of Feuerbach. This is because sensuous human beings are alienated not merely from the state but also within civil society, where they are unable to realize their sensuous desires. The system of private ownership within civil society, or what is now called the market economy, generates a vast proletariat, whose members are sunk in poverty. Given these conditions, praising sensuous human beings is an impotent approach. For the sensuous desires of the proletariat to be realized, the dynamic for overcoming the alienation generated by the system of private property must be uncovered. In facing this problem, Marx criticized Bauer’s abstract notion of self-­ consciousness from the perspective of Feuerbach’s sensuous human beings, while using Bauer’s dynamism of self-consciousness to criticize the static nature of Feuerbach’s sensuous perspective. In this way, he sought go beyond the ideas of both. The subject of history for Marx is no longer self-consciousness, but sensuous human beings, as Feuerbach had conceived. These sensuous human beings cannot be cultivated solely through philosophical self-reflection. Instead, sensuous human beings objectify their own potential through labor in reality and continually improve the manner of objectification through their self-refection. That is to say, within the realm of labor, Bauer’s dynamism of self-consciousness was merged with Feuerbach’s sensuous human being. The mode of labor is developed to a higher level by the sensuous, laboring subjects. For instance, human beings once used heavy stones to grind flour, but eventually the stone mortar was invented, and later animals or a water mill were used to power the grinding. Human beings are able to transform the technical level of labor precisely because they have self-­ consciousness. But human beings also transfigure the social nature of labor. For instance, in a community, human beings produce their products as shared things, whereas in modern society the products are produced as commodities (i.e. privately owned things). Because human beings have self-consciousness, they can form certain social relations and also change them in line with historical development, which is why Marx thought it possible to transform the alienated labor of modern society. On this point, Marx even surpassed Hegel. Unlike Bauer, Hegel had emphasized the importance of labor when grasping the dynamism of history. But Marx criticized Hegel for viewing the objectification of one’s abilities in labor as identical to alienation. Reflecting his idealistic standpoint, Hegel saw the estrangement of human beings from things as the

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result of their being unaware that those things are their own products. The means of overcoming this estrangement, therefore, was simply to gain that awareness.37 However, this approach to surmounting alienation will not have the slightest effect on the system of private ownership. The crux of the issue, rather, is the alienating character that human beings actually posit to their labor products. This is the character as private property, which certainly cannot be overcome through consciousness. Marx argued that the reality of alienated labor must be altered, instead, through praxis. In this way, Marx progressed toward a standpoint clearly critical of an enlightenment approach. He no longer felt that a critique based on the ideals of philosophers was of much use to social change. The path to transforming society was rather for laboring human beings to cultivate themselves through their own labor so as to become the subjects of social change.

Meeting Engels Again and the Split with Bauer After finishing the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx for a second time met Friedrich Engels, who was to become his lifelong friend. They first met in 1842, but Marx, viewing Engels as one of the utopian socialists whom he disliked, treated him coolly. However, Marx reconsidered his view after being impressed by Engels’ “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy,” which was published in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. The two met for a second time, on 28 August 1844, at Café de la Régence, the most famous Parisian café of the time. Their discussions stretched on for ten days, marking the beginning of their lifelong collaboration. Engels later recalled that “our complete agreement in all theoretical fields became evident.”38 Although Engels was two years younger than Marx, he was in advance of him in the field of political economy at the time. Extremely erudite, Engels was well acquainted with not only the social sciences but also the 37  “[T]his implies that self-conscious man, insofar as he has recognized and superseded the spiritual world (or his world’s spiritual, general mode of being) as self-alienation, nevertheless again confirms it in this alienated shape and passes it off as his true mode of being—reestablishes it, and pretends to be at home in his other-being as such. Thus, for instance, after superseding religion, after recognizing religion to be a product of self-alienation, he yet finds confirmation of himself in religion as religion. Here is the root of Hegel’s false positivism, or of his merely apparent criticism” (Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 339). 38  F. Engels, “On the History of the Communist League,” in MECW, vol. 26, p. 318.

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natural sciences and military theory, on top of being an accomplished linguist. Engels was a brilliant journalist as well, as he would prove in The Condition of the English Working Class, published in 1845. This outstanding piece of reportage, written when he was barely 24 years old, became a favorite work for Marx. Despite such talents, Engels sacrificed his own scholarly activities to sustain the work of Marx. He recognized the rare genius of Marx, as he explained: Marx stood higher, saw further, and took a wider and a quicker view than all the rest of us. Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented.39

For Marx, the friendship with Engels, who was well informed about capitalism and could grasp his own theory well, had great significance. Moreover, as an employee of his father’s company, Engels was able to provide much-needed financial assistance to Marx, who was often in dire straits. Without that assistance, it is unlikely that Marx would have been able to complete the first volume of Capital. While Marx was making great theoretical strides forward, the Young Hegelians back in Germany were slipping into ever greater disarray. Bauer, who had once exerted such a strong influence on Marx, grew irritated at the utter lack of influence of his philosophy and degenerated to the point of condemning the ignorant masses and calling for a thorough critique of everything on the basis of “pure criticism.” As so often happens to people who seek to transform reality without a realistic basis, Bauer ended up being totally ineffective and embracing an extremely subjective theory. Marx by this time had become clearly aware of his opposition to Bauer. This led him to embark on a sweeping criticism of Bauer in the 1844 work The Holy Family, cowritten with Engels.

Toward a Criticism of Feuerbach After completing The Holy Family, Marx was driven out of Paris. His aforementioned article criticizing Ruge, published by the journal Vorwärts!, had aroused the Prussian government, which exerted pressure on the French government to issue a deportation order. This forced Marx to seek exile in Belgium, in February 1845. The Belgium authorities only 39  F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in MECW, vol. 26, p. 382.

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accepted his entry after Marx had pledged to refrain from publishing any political articles against their government. During his time in Paris, Marx had praised Feuerbach’s philosophy of sensuous human beings and his humanism. He thought it was necessary to adopt the standpoint of sensuous man to criticize Bauer’s abstract philosophy of self-consciousness. But now Marx began to direct his criticism toward the philosophy of Feuerbach. What first motivated him was the criticism aimed at Feuerbach by the Young Hegelian polemicist Max Stirner.40 According to Stirner, both Bauer and Feuerbach exalted an ideal substance estranged from actual individuals in the form of the “universal essence” or “species essence.” On this point, there was no difference between them and Marx, who inherited the philosophical concepts of Feuerbach.41 What needed to be done instead, Stirner argued, was to criticize the substance that is detached from the “ego” as an actual individual. Stirner thus emphasized a thoroughgoing egoism based upon the standpoint of the self, and in this sense can be seen as a forerunner to existentialism. For Marx, who had already begun to move away from the enlightenment approach, Stirner’s criticism was just another type of this approach, with a content that was beside the point. Yet Marx realized that his reliance on the concepts of Feuerbach in his Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher articles and in The Holy Family had created the mistaken impression that he shared the same weaknesses as Feuerbach. His intention had been to use Feuerbach’s philosophy of sensuous man to break free of the enlightenment approach. But Feuerbach himself adhered to the enlightenment approach, since his aim was to enlighten religious believers through the philosophy of sensuous man so that they could liberate themselves from religion. Marx thus realized that clarifying his own position would require a critique of Feuerbach. What pushed him even further in that direction, after arriving in Brussels, was a letter from Feuerbach and a polemic with Hermann Kriege.42 According to Engels, he had written to Feuerbach to call on him to join the movement for communism and received the response  that, “Feuerbach maintains that until he has thoroughly 40  Details on the process about criticism of Feuerbach can be found in the editor’s introduction of MEGA2 I/5 and MEGA2 IV/3. 41  However, in The Ego and its Own, Stirner refers to Marx only indirectly. 42  For details on the debate with Kriege, see MEGA2 IV/3, S. 475–76.

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demolished the religious piffle, he cannot concern himself with communism to the extent of supporting it in print.”43 On top of this, Kriege, who held a position close to that of Feuerbach, was also in Brussels, and through his interaction with Marx a theoretical dispute arose between them. Kriege, in a 19 April 1845 letter to Feuerbach, reported on the nature of this dispute: They [Marx and Engels] try to be humanists and are ardently opposed to the transformation of the proletariat into machines, yet they have a stingy material view of man. Therefore, they have no courage to recognize human beings themselves.44

Kriege’s view was precisely that of the “true socialists”—a tendency that combined French socialist thought with Feuerbach’s philosophy of sensuous man. Rather than looking squarely at the practical social relations through which human beings were active in reality, the true socialists did little more than exalt humankind, using emotional turns of phrase. Marx thus realized the need to fundamentally criticize the philosophy of Feuerbach. He perceived that Feuerbach’s way of praising sensuous man was in fact impeding social change. In one of his notebooks, Marx jotted down several theses under the heading “ad Feuerbach,” well known today as the “Theses on Feuerbach.”

“Theses on Feuerbach” and the “New Materialism” The ideas by Marx in “Theses on Feuerbach” are basically as follows. Feuerbach sought to enlighten people and change their mistaken consciousness on the basis of humanistic ideas. But consciousness, in fact, is the reflection of the real world. The alienation within religious consciousness as well (as Marx had expounded in “A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”) is a reflection of the alienation within reality. Thus, a method that seeks to correct people’s mistaken consciousness based on some “idea” (whether it is self-consciousness, sensuous man, or the ego) is incapable of changing society. What must be

 F. Engels, “Engels to Marx. 22 February–7 March,” in MECW, vol. 38, p. 22.  L. Feuerbach, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 19 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), S.19.

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done, rather, is to theoretically analyze and transform the nature of the real world that gave birth to such consciousness. Not only is the enlightenment approach ineffective for social change, it can even be an impediment. No matter how much the enlighteners might insist on “reality” and “human beings,” they remain satisfied with contraposing their ideals to actual society, rather than engaging in a concrete analysis of actual social systems. Feuerbach and Kriege, for example, contraposed the ideal of sensuous human beings to alienated reality, but paid no attention to the real relations in which sensuous people live and work. Without engaging in an analysis of the actual ways of living and laboring, the specific character of the contemporary system of private property cannot be grasped. As Marx writes in “Theses on Feuerbach”: The highest point reached by intuitional materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the intuition of single individuals and of bourgeois society.45

One example of this is how some people, taken up with enlightenment concepts, will be satisfied by denouncing poverty and class differences from a humanistic standpoint, without questioning the bourgeois society that gave birth to those phenomena. This is precisely why the standpoint of seeking to enlighten people based solely on intuition, even if it is materialist, will not go beyond the intuition of bourgeois society or the intuition of private individuals isolated from each other in that society. Marx’s point is not just the inadequacy of an enlightenment stance, but its fundamental, intrinsic defect of failing to question why and how alienation arises. In his 11th and final thesis, Marx writes: The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.46

This extremely well-known thesis is not meant to simplistically criticize theoretical endeavors and extol praxis. Rather, Marx is seeking to grasp the significance of theory to social change in a manner completely different from that of the Young Hegelians. For Marx, the role of theory is not to interpret the world and uncover some “correct idea” (such as  K. Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in MECW, vol. 5, p. 5.  Ibid.

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self-­consciousness or the sensuous man or the ego), and thereby enlighten those caught up in incorrect principles. Instead, the point is to analyze the actual relations that give birth to the ways of society and its ideologies, and to clarify the conditions that would make social change possible. In plainer terms, the role of theory is not to show what is mistaken and what is correct, but to clarify, from the perspective of the actual relations, how and why alienation has arisen, and thereby suggest where and how a struggle can be waged to change society. One should not have a blind faith in theory. No matter how much one might advocate a “correct” theory, that alone will not change society. Real human beings are the ones who make social change, so it is of decisive importance to analyze the actual relations in which people live and work. Instead of considering “what” is the essence of the world or “what” is correct, we must ask “why” and “how” this world came to exist in its actual form. This is the message Marx seeks to convey in “Theses on Feuerbach.”

Breaking Away from Philosophy Upon arriving at his new standpoint, philosophy was for Marx simply something to be surmounted. He had of course already begun his critique of philosophy in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, but there the object of criticism was the speculative and abstract nature of philosophy. Marx had praised Feuerbach’s philosophy of sensuous man as a new philosophy. But now he was ready to go a step further by thoroughly settling accounts with “philosophical conscience.”47 In The German Ideology,48 cowritten with Engels, Marx critiques philosophy in the following way:

47  K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One, in MECW, vol. 29, p. 264. 48  Marx had not originally intended to publish The German Ideology. Upon arriving in Brussels, his priority was to create a journal to advance the debate with the Young Hegelians, and he planned to collect articles from various contributors, including Wilhelm Weitling and Moses Hess, with whom he later came into conflict. This plan fell into difficulties and was abandoned due to political differences and the publishing situation. Marx and Engels then decided to issue their own manuscripts as The German Ideology, but it was not published in the end. What exists today under that title is their incomplete manuscripts. Readers can consult the editors preface to MEGA2 I/5 for more on the background of this manuscript.

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Feuerbach, like his competitors, believes he has overcome philosophy! The battles against the universal that have suppressed individuals so far summarize Germany’s philosophical critique. We argue that these battles, in the way they are fought, are based on philosophical illusions (for philosophical illusions the universal was a force).49

According to Marx, both Feuerbach and Stirner thought they had overcome speculative, abstract philosophy by contraposing it with sensuous human beings or the ego, but such “battles” with philosophy and that “way” of fighting were based on “philosophical illusions.” Marx thought that such battles were merely struggles against ideas that were based on the illusion that the abstract, universal ideas themselves have the real power to oppress individuals. Thus, the “way” of fighting was to drive out the abstract and universal from the mind or replace it with better ideas, which is to slip into the position of trying to enlighten others. Marx’s critique was not simply aimed at the abstract character of philosophy. Rather, he seeks to clarify, from the practical relations, why abstraction and universality manifest themselves in forms alienated from individuals. This is because such a critique of philosophy can contribute to the transformation of the actual relations. Marx’s evaluation of not only Feuerbach but other thinkers changed dramatically through his critique of philosophy. Since this was an abandonment of the philosophical way of framing problems, it also necessarily led Marx to change his evaluation of Proudhon who based transformational praxis on a philosophical approach. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and The Holy Family, Marx had pointed out the limitations of Proudhon, but was still full of admiration for him. Especially in the latter work, which was published at the time, Marx went so far as to write: Proudhon makes a critical investigation—the first resolute, ruthless, and at the same time scientific investigation—of the basis of political economy, private property. This is the great scientific advance he made, an advance which revolutionizes political economy and for the first time makes a real science of political economy possible.50

49  K. Marx und F. Engels, Deutsche Ideologie, in MEGA2 I/5, S.855. This paragraph is written in Marx’s handwriting. 50  K, Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, in MECW, vol. 4, p. 32.

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In that same work, Marx describes the work of Proudhon as a “scientific manifesto of the French proletariat.”51 He thought that Proudhon, in contraposing the actual poverty and destitution of human beings with private property, contributed greatly to the criticism of economists who had taken private property for granted. Marx’s view of Proudhon changed subsequently, however. Eventually he would criticize Proudhon harshly as, “from top to toe, a philosopher, an economist of the petty bourgeoisie”52 (although this criticism was related to his political opposition to Proudhon). In The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), which was Marx’s comprehensive criticism of Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty, Marx points out that Proudhon was unable to grasp the particularity of private property and its foundation, despite criticizing private property so severely, because he maintained a philosophical standpoint. All Proudhon did in fact, Marx argues, was to contrapose the “freedom” and equality” of commodity buyers and sellers generated by the system of private property to the contradictions of reality. He was thus unable to fundamentally criticize the system of private property, which he instead took, unconsciously, as the premise of his thought. This critique of Proudhon can be seen as the same critique of philosophy that Marx aimed at Feuerbach. In contrast to his negative view of Proudhon, Marx came to highly esteem the Classical economist David Ricardo, accepting his “labor theory of value.” Even though Ricardo was one of the economists who came to exert the strongest influence on Marx, he had harshly criticized Ricardo in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and did not adhere to the labor theory of value at the time. Marx thought that Ricardo’s theory was abstract and contradicted reality. However, in The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx praises Ricardo, saying that he “shows us the real movement of bourgeois production.”53 Although the relation is somewhat complex, it could be said that the drastic change in Marx’s view of Ricardo corresponded to his critique of philosophy and his deepening critique of an enlightenment approach, as expressed in “Theses on Feuerbach.” During his Paris days, when his thought centered on grasping the “reality” of private property from the  Ibid., p. 41.  K. Marx, “Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov in Paris: Brussels 28 December [1846]” in MECW, vol. 38, p. 105. 53  K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in MECW, vol. 6, p. 123. 51 52

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perspective of alienated labor, Marx had thought that Ricardo’s theory of value was merely an abstract view that reduced the system of private property to the law of the equal exchange of labor, thereby overlooking actual crises and the poverty of workers. However, in The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx grasps Ricardo’s theory of value as a theoretical expression of the real production relations that had been abstracted and quantified by the system of private of property. Marx recognized Ricardo’s significance in “objectively” indicating the abstract laws of bourgeois production, despite his limitations as a bourgeois economist. Having already set forth his clear criticism of an enlightenment approach, Marx found more merit in the way Ricardo objectively presented the abstract relations of the bourgeois mode of production than the way Proudhon sought to reform society based on economic categories abstracted from bourgeois relations. Although Marx critiqued and sought to supersede philosophy, that does not mean he rejected its significance. Throughout his life, Marx employed philosophy as an intellectual weapon, just as he continued to use literature as a rhetorical tool even after abandoning the hope of becoming a man of letters. Indeed, Marx made great use of Hegelian logic in  writing the manuscript for Capital, to the point of openly declaring himself a “student of Hegel.” Without understanding Marx’s critique of philosophy, it would be impossible to grasp fully the significance that philosophy had for him.54 In any case, it was during this period that Marx’s theoretical position was basically established. Over the subsequent years he would still develop the content of his theory remarkably, but his basic position on the relation of theory to social change would remain. Marx used the term “new 54  After the death of Marx, Engels and later “Marxists” turned the materialism of Marx into a “philosophy” that was formulized under the name “dialectical materialism” to create a sort of “worldview,” and this had an enormous influence on how the theory of Marx was generally received. This fact was pointed out as early as the 1920s by Karl Korsch in Marxism and Philosophy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009) and Georg Lukács in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), and is also noted by Terrell Carver, in Marx & Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (London: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983) and Michael Heinrich in An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s “Capital” (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012). The vulgarization led to some great successes insofar as “Marxism” served as a comprehensive spiritual guide for the working class and an ideology for political parties, but it impeded at the same time the understanding of Marx’s theory, which lost its significance as “critical and materialist socialism” (K. Marx, ‘Marx to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken: [London,] 19 October 1877, in MECW, vol., 45, p. 284).

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materialism” to describe the standpoint he forged. It is clear from the following passage from the first volume of Capital that he continued to adhere to this standpoint: It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly kernel of the misty creations of religion than to do the opposite, i.e. to develop from the actual, given relations of life the forms in which these have been apotheosized. The latter method is the only materialist, and therefore the only scientific one.55

In other words, simply indicating that human beings are the real-world core of religion does not amount to materialism; rather, the “only materialist method” is to explain the ideological forms as emerging from the actual relations in which human beings live. A monumental achievement of the young Marx was to establish this method of “new materialism” for the radical analysis of social relations.

New Concept of Social Change: The Materialist Conception of History After established his “new materialism,” Marx set forth, over a period of roughly two years, a groundbreaking conception of social change that differed from all other ideas circulating among the Left at the time. Marx surpassed his earlier view of social change presented in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which was still an abstract work, laden with philosophical concepts, establishing a more concrete vision that did not rely on philosophical jargon—known as the “materialist conception of history.” This new conception was worked out in The German Ideology (1845–1847) and presented in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and The Communist Manifesto (1848). Here we will take a closer look at the new way in which Marx conceived of social change. Once Marx had broken free of posing a conception of social change in philosophical terms, he no longer had any need to start from given ideas. That is to say, he no longer conceived of social change through the application of some a priori model or criterion regarding how society should be, since such conceptions could never be realized. The starting point for

 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 494.

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his new conception of social change, rather, was the reproduction of material life. Human beings can be distinguished from animals because of their high level of self-consciousness. Yet, like animals, they cannot live without securing some source of food; nor can they create offspring without procreation. Mental actions like self-awareness and thought cannot be detached from material, productive activities. No matter how high their level of self-consciousness or intellectual pursuits, human beings are still limited by the material conditions necessary to reproduce themselves as living organisms. Thus, in considering human society, our attention must be directed to how human beings reproduce those material conditions of life. The manner of reproducing material life changes depending on the relations connecting human beings in their productive activities, that is, their production relations. Relations between human beings are subject to change, rather than following a sort of herd instinct as in the case of animals. In their production relations under primitive society, for instance, human beings formed a community, and each individual labored as a community member, so that the things produced were their common property. But, with the passage of time, production relations changed, moving on from the primitive community to the slave system, then to feudalism, and finally to capitalism. (At that stage, however, Marx did not yet use the term “capitalism,” nor was his view of historical development as complex or nuanced as it would become.) The motive force behind changes in productive relations, Marx perceived, was the development of productive power. Because human beings possess self-consciousness, they can alter technically the manner of their material reproduction, so as to raise the productive power of labor gradually. The productive power rises until, at some point, it comes into conflict with the existing production relations that are no longer suitable to it. This collision is reflected in the political consciousness of the time, and the production relations are changed to correspond with the higher level of productive power. Take the example of the rise in productive power under feudalism, which led to an increase in “surplus products” (in excess of the life needs of the producers themselves). These surplus products came to be sold as commodities, resulting in the permeation of a money economy, which in turn spurred demand for free commercial activities and the emergence of

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a political movement seeking to abolish feudalism. Production relations were changed by means of political change, such as a citizens’ revolution, giving birth to “bourgeois” (capitalist) production relations.

The Limits of the Bourgeois Mode of Production The new bourgeois production relations that emerged differed in nature from the production relations existing under the primitive community, the ancient slave system, or the feudal system. All of those previous relations had been based fundamentally on direct relations of personal dependence. In contrast, the basis of bourgeois production relations is the pecuniary relations involving commodities and money, which mediate the relations between human beings. All of the bourgeois production relations— whether between buyer and seller, lender and borrower, or employer and wage worker—are mediated by commodities and money. Thus, all of the exploitative relations that had once taken the guise of political or religious authority are replaced in bourgeois society by purely pecuniary relations, so that relations of self-interest are nakedly manifested. The bourgeoisie is always competing to secure a larger profit, and toward that end raising productive power through continual improvements in the implements and methods of production. They also spread the bourgeois mode of production around the globe to expand the sales routes for the commodities produced, creating a global market. Driven by this competition, the bourgeoisie spurs massive global development of productive power on a scale never before possible. Yet under the bourgeois mode of production, just as in the case of feudalism, productive power at a certain stage collides with the relations of production. Capitalism is not able to control the enormous productive power that it has generated, as brilliantly described in The Communist Manifesto: Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trail, each time more threateningly,

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the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder to the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.56

That is the manner in which the expanding productive power under bourgeois society collides with the bourgeois production relations. The bourgeoisie seeks to survive this collision by expanding markets further, but ultimately that only prepares the way for an even broader crisis and limits the means of preventing it. “The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground,” Marx writes in The Communist Manifesto, “are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.”57

“Association” as the Condition for Freedom The bourgeoisie, along with tempering the weapons of their own demise, brings forth the proletariat as the wielders of those weapons. Although not bound by relations of personal dependence, as slaves and serfs had been, the members of the proletariat are, at the same time, property-less, with nothing to sell but their own labor power. The proletariat is most susceptible to the impact of economic changes within bourgeois society and always at risk of falling into poverty. The introduction of machinery and other technology to raise productive power turns the labor of the proletariat into simple labor, weakening its members position as wageworkers and worsening their working conditions.  K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in MECW, vol. 6, pp. 489–90.  Ibid., p. 490.

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But wageworkers, in living as such, learn to struggle together in solidarity and organize themselves, at first temporarily, but gradually in more sustained forms. In limiting competition among themselves, workers are able to demand improved working conditions from the bourgeoisie. These spontaneous combinations formed between human beings can be called “associated” relations, and the term “association” used to describe the organizations resulting from workers associating with each other. In particular, the members of the proletariat form the association of labor unions to protect their own livelihoods. The combinations formed between workers are not permanent and always subject to splits, since workers are continually driven into competition with each other. The victories won through worker solidarity are only temporary. Nevertheless, the experience of struggling to defend their own lives teaches workers the importance of association, as Marx explains in the Poverty of Philosophy: Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages.58

Through the process of forming such associations, wageworkers eventually organize themselves as a class and become aware of the need to wage a political battle against the capitalist class. The collision between productive power and productive relations, mentioned earlier, is reflected within people’s political consciousness, leading more and more people to adopt the political standpoint of the working class. In this way, the political movement of the working class becomes a revolutionary movement. The revolution’s first step, Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto, is “to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”59 Once the proletariat has become the ruling class, it sets about fundamentally transforming modern bourgeois society. First, the  Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 210–11.  Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in MECW, vol. 6, p. 504.

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production system based on private ownership is transformed into a system based on association. Within the new system, people’s productive activities are no longer subject to the whims of the market but rather under the control of the freely associated people. The second fundamental change is directed toward the political system, the modern state, which is based on the modern dualism. The proletariat becoming the ruling class does not mean that a political party supported by workers holds political power. Rather, a more democratic political system must be formed. Marx would later grasp the essence of this new political system through the example of the Paris Commune of 1871. As we will see in Chap. 3, Marx envisaged a transformation toward a political system of direct democracy suitable to Association as a new form society, through such measures as the right to elect and recall bureaucrats, wages for bureaucrats on par with those of workers, and the replacement of a standing army with a people’s militia. With the formation of the new production relations and political system, the need for the proletariat as the “ruling class” would also come to an end, and the social system itself would lose its political character. Marx describes this situation in the following way in The Communist Manifesto: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”60

Toward a Critique of Political Economy Over the course of this chapter, we have seen the stages Marx passed through as a young man, moving from an early obsession with literature to interaction and confrontation with the Young Hegelians, followed by work as a journalist and his early studies of political economy—all of which led him toward a conception of social change founded on the “new materialism.” In the meantime, only 10 years had passed. By this point, Marx had  basically established his perspective for analyzing the social system and his concept of social change. We are now in a position to grasp clearly the significance of the passage from Capital quoted at the outset:  Ibid., p. 506.

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Even when a society has begun to track down the natural laws of its movement—and it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society—it can neither leap over the natural phases of its development nor remove them by decree. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.61

The basis for a social transformation is not something concocted in a person’s mind; rather, it is conceived within the society in which we live, much like a child is conceived in its mother’s womb. The objective element of social change is the collision between productive power and productive relations, while the subjective element is the associations formed by the proletariat. As Marx said of the Paris Commune in The Civil War in France, “they have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.”62 Just as a woman cannot give birth until a fetus has developed to a certain stage, all efforts to “proclaim” a new society by means of political power will fail if the elements of the new society have not yet been formed. But understanding the natural laws of society’s movement, Marx says, has the significance of shortening and lessening the birth pangs. The subjective efforts of human beings are needed to give birth to a new society conceived within bourgeois society, just as a woman must strain to give birth to a child. And like a mother suffering the pain of childbirth, we suffer the “birth pangs” of worsening poverty and class disparities, intensifying economic crisis, and worsening environmental destruction. Moreover, as in the act of childbirth, there is always the risk of miscarriage. Understanding the natural laws of society’s movement reveals the most effective action for social change, reducing the time needed and the pain involved, while lowering the risk of failure, like the role of a doctor to relieve the pain of childbirth and lessen the risk of miscarriage. In this sense, Capital is a sort of medical manual for the birth of a new society. However, we have yet to adequately explain what sort of praxis is needed to “shorten and lessen the birth-pangs,” as this requires a concrete discussion of the content of Capital. Starting around 1850, Marx further developed his theory through the effort to complete Capital, honing his conception of social change. There  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 92.  K. Marx, The Civil War in France, in MECW, vol. 22, p. 335.

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is a widely held misconception that Marx merely wrote Capital to provide economic proof for the conclusions already presented in The Communist Manifesto. But even if it is true that his “guiding thread” was the conception of social change based on new materialism, Marx progressed much further, to the point where he could fully grasp the capitalist mode of production at its foundation so as to reveal the sort of praxis needed to transform this society. Now we are finally ready to take a closer look at the content of Capital.

CHAPTER 2

A Changing View of Capitalism (1848–1867): Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

From the Upheaval of 1848 to the Heart of Capitalism Marx, who was developing a new conception of social change, established the Brussels Communist Corresponding Committee in early 1846, with the aim of contacting German activists living in Paris, London, Cologne, and elsewhere to create a network of communists. The effort to organize activists did not proceed well initially, however. Marx’s harsh criticism of “the true socialists” provoked resentment, and unexpected personal quarrels erupted. He called on Proudhon for co-operation, but was refused, which spurred Marx to critique him in The Poverty of Philosophy. But the effort Marx made was not in vain. He managed to create a network with communists in London, where many German workers were living at the time. German communists had already launched a secret society in Paris called the League of the Just, and when the group moved its headquarters to London, its members called on Marx to assist a reorganization. Marx joined the League in January 1847, along with Engels, on the condition that the organization would democratize its methods. The following year Marx and Engels wrote the program for the new “Communist League” that was formed, which is their famous Communist Manifesto. At the same time, Marx was making steady progress in his organizational efforts by reorganizing the Brussels Communist Corresponding Committee as a branch of the new Communist League and serving as the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52950-5_2

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branch leader, along with creating the German Workers’ Society and the Democratic Association as legal organizations in Brussels. These efforts were suddenly interrupted by the 1848 Revolution, which was revolutionary upheavals throughout Europe caused by the Crisis of 1847. In February of that year, revolution broke out in the heart of Europe, Paris, leading the Belgium government to expel revolutionaries who had been living there in exile. Marx, too, was arrested by the government, on 4 March, and deported the next day. From Brussels, Marx headed straight to Paris. His deportation order was rescinded by the provisional French government formed in the wake of the revolution. In Paris, he took part in the activities of the Communist League and organized the return to Germany of League members. In March, revolution broke out in Germany as well, creating the space for freer activities. Marx issued the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, the successor to the Rheinische Zeitung, and tried to push the revolution forward. Around 5000 copies of each issue were printed, making it one of Germany’s most widely circulating newspapers. Marx also actively participated in the political movement in Cologne, exerting a great influence. Initially, Marx believed a bourgeois revolution was necessary to sweep aside the feudal remnants and unify Germany, and he called on all the democratic forces to come together. However, the repression that stamped out the revolutionary movement in October made Marx realize that the German bourgeoisie lacked the ability to thoroughly carry out a bourgeois revolution. Marx responded to this by emphasizing the importance of the proletariat’s class struggle, and looking with hope to the revolution underway in France. The Prussian government, having regained its confidence as the revolutionary wave subsided, deported Marx again in May 1849. From Germany, he headed to Paris with the hope that revolution was neigh, but the revolutionary wave had receded there, too, and reaction was gaining strength. The French authorities demanded that Marx leave Paris, so he departed for London with his family. During his initial period of living in London, Marx was actively involved in organizing German political refugees, still thinking it quite possible that revolution would erupt again on the European continent in the near future. He set about rebuilding Communist League’s organization in Germany, after being appointed chairman of its reconstituted central committee. Through his research, however, Marx came to recognize that the European economy was entering a boom period, making it unlikely for

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revolution to break out in the short term. His analysis of the situation provoked a debate that led to a split within the Communist League. At the same time, the League was subject to serious repression in Cologne in May 1851, precipitating the organization’s collapse in Germany. In December of that year, Louis Bonaparte seized power through a coup d’état, delivering the finishing blow to the 1848 Revolution. This provoked Marx to write the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in which he recapitulated the revolution in France: Society now seems to have fallen back behind its point of departure; it has in truth first to create for itself the revolutionary point of departure, the situation, the relations, the conditions under which alone modern revolution becomes serious.1

The Communist League was dissolved at its congress in November 1852, upon a proposal submitted by Marx. For roughly the next ten years, Marx would not belong to any political organization, dedicating his energy instead to the study of political economy in London, the heart of capitalism, as he sought to develop his conception of social transformation.

Days of Researching Political Economy Marx resumed his study of political economy upon arriving in London. He obtained a reader’s ticket for the British Museum, which allowed him to read a wide range of books and journals on political economy, creating a vast quantity of excerpt notes. However, the path toward completing Capital was not a straight one for Marx, who was often troubled and dispirited by economic woes and domestic problems. His poverty was particularly severe during the first few years in London. Along with the personal debt he had acquired from the folding of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx lacked steady employment and was too proud to accept aid for refugees. (Granted, as many of his biographers have noted, his poverty was premised on a middle-class Victorian lifestyle that included housekeepers and private tutors.) His plight was alleviated somewhat by receiving inheritance money and aid from Engels, but all the way into the 1860s Marx was plagued by money troubles.

1

 K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in MECW, vol. 11, p. 106.

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Against the backdrop of his poverty, Marx experienced much personal heartbreak. Probably owing to the poor living conditions of the time, two of his three children born in London died soon after birth. Marx also lost his only son, Edgar, at the age of eight, a tragedy that dealt him a tremendous psychological blow. Marx, not physically strong to begin with, also suffered from frequent illness. His tendency to work day and night once engrossed in his writing took a toll on his body as the years progressed. His wife Jenny was prone to illness, too, and household problems arose from her state of mental exhaustion. Marx was able to shake off the worst of his poverty in 1852 by obtaining work as a special correspondent for The New York Daily Tribune. He continued to contribute articles for the next ten years, winning high praise for his writing. This opportunity to analyze the global politico-economic situation was fruitful for Marx, but it prevented him from concentrating on his study of political economy. Despite his struggles to earn a living, Marx did not lose sight of his aims, as he explained to his friend Joseph Weydemeyer in a 1 February 1859 letter: “But I have got to pursue my object through thick and thin and not allow bourgeois society to turn me into a money-making machine.” The study of political economy remained Marx’s priority as the means for developing his conception of social change. The 1857 economic crisis stimulated him to finish in less than a year the astoundingly weighty manuscript of Grundrisse. This work, which is the first manuscript for Capital, is overflowing with ideas. On its basis, Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859, but the content of that book was limited to the analysis of the commodity and money. Marx deepened his research and continued to prepare manuscripts intended for publication as subsequent volumes. His work resulted in the Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863, in which he rearranged his plan for a new theoretical system; and on this basis, he wrote the draft of Capital. Marx continued to ponder questions until he arrived at answers that fully satisfied him. Marx had a “quirk,” as noted in a 28 April 1862 letter to Ferdinand Lasalle, of “finding fault with anything I have written and not looked at for a month so that I have to revise it completely.”2 He was not willing to make any compromise whatsoever in theoretical matters. It was only through a long process of thorough analysis that Marx could finally complete the first volume of Capital. 2  K. Marx, “Marx to Ferdinand Lassalle in Berlin: London, 28 April 1862,” in MECW, vol. 41, p. 356.

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Capital as a “Critique of Political Economy” What is the nature of this work, Capital, into which Marx poured all of his energy? So much has already been said of the book over the years that it is covered with preconceptions like a layer of mold. But I would ask the reader to set aside all preconceptions. What is important to people today is not the interpretation of Marx by some famous scholar or the content of textbooks on “Marxist economics,” but rather the way Marx analyzes the capitalist mode of production in Capital (following his conception of social transformation as a “guiding thread”) and the moments for social transformation found within his analysis. The aim of Capital is often misunderstood as a mere clarification of the mechanisms of exploitation and crisis or a denunciation of capitalism. But Marx in fact seeks to fundamentally criticize political economy, which had treated capitalism as its unquestioned premise, so as to grasp, at the root, how the capitalist mode of production came into existence, and thereby clarify the possibilities and conditions for its transformation. Capital, therefore, is not merely a work of political economy; it is (as its subtitle indicates) a “critique of political economy” that assimilates the findings of previous works of political economy and also thoroughly criticizes them to uproot the view that treats the capitalist mode of production as something self-evident. Capital calls on us to fundamentally change our view of the economic activities we take for granted. This is the great attraction as well as the great difficulty of the book. The pages that follow are an attempt to provide an overview of Capital as a critique of political economy, but since it is not possible to cover the breadth of this work, the focus will be on passages related to Marx’s conception of social change.

Mystery of the Commodity The Riddle of Capitalism is Concealed in the Commodity Capital begins with an analysis of the commodity. Most of the wealth we consume under capitalist society takes the form of commodities.3 Without 3  “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity” (K.  Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 125).

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understanding the commodity, as the fundamental form of wealth, it is not possible to understand money or capital or more advanced economic categories like profit and interest. Thus, we must be aware that the analysis of the commodity is the basis of the analysis of the capitalist mode of production. It is no exaggeration to say that Capital as a whole cannot be understood without understanding the commodity. The crucial importance of this point may be hard to grasp for someone reading Capital for the first time, however. And some may be tempted to skip the seemingly boring discussion of the commodity and move on to such topics as exploitation and crisis. But the only way to gain a fundamental understanding of capitalism is to first clearly understand the commodity. Today a variety of problems related to the economic system exist. Many young people are treated as expendable resources by disreputable firms that subject them to excessively long working hours. And an increasing number of workers are unable to find permanent positions and have to settle for temporary jobs. The finance sector has swelled compared to the real economy, and speculative bubbles periodically expand and then burst, generating mass unemployment. All of these problems are peculiar to capitalism, and the fundamental cause, as touched on in the previous chapter, is an economic system that prioritizes profit. Human lives are sacrificed to money, throwing society into chaos. The distinctive character of this economic system stems from commodity production. The pervasiveness of commodity production is what distinguishes capitalism from other social systems. Although commodity exchange already existed, to a considerable extent, in ancient societies and during the Middle Ages, it did not yet cover the entire society. Only under capitalism does general commodity production emerge so that the vast majority of necessary things are exchanged as commodities. People’s lives are transformed when most of the things they require are produced and consumed as commodities. On the one hand, this expands the material wealth that can be enjoyed by humanity through a sudden leap forward in productive power that results from removing the feudalistic fetters to allow for free competition. But, on the other hand, replacing human bonds with pecuniary relations places the destiny of individuals under the control of a fluctuating economy, creating great uncertainty. The system generates an enormous number of property-less wageworkers who may not even have a place to live if faced with unemployment. Competition between wageworkers intensifies with the introduction of machinery, driving down wages and pushing up working hours. Such

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economic problems are the outcome of the generalization of commodity production. Understanding the commodity is thus crucial to grasping the real contradictions of capitalism. Indeed, the “mystery” of the capitalist system can be said to lie hidden within the commodity.4 For this reason, as far as space allows, I want to carefully look at the theory of the commodity presented at the beginning of Capital. How is the Price of a Commodity Determined? Take a look at any commodity that might be close at hand. Whatever the commodity, it must first of all be useful, somehow, to human beings. Bread, for example, can be eaten, while a computer can be used to access the Internet or send email. Those useful qualities of a commodity are its use value. The next point to notice is that a commodity has a price. As everyone knows, price indicates the amount of money needed to purchase a given commodity, whether this takes the form of a price tag attached to the commodity, a price listed on a display shelf, or an asking price. The price thus indicates the rate at which a commodity can be exchanged, which is its exchange value. For example, if an apple costs two pounds and an orange costs one pound, the apple’s exchange value is equal to the two oranges. As can be intuitively understood from such examples, use value and exchange value are completely distinct from each other. If the apple’s exchange value is equal to two oranges, it does not follow that the apple’s use value is twice that of the orange. In short, a commodity’s exchange value cannot be understood from its use value. How, then, is the exchange value of a commodity determined? Everyone knows that the relation between supply and demand can determine the price of a commodity. If there is something everyone wants, but whose supply is inadequate, its price will rise; just as a price will fall for things for which there is ample supply but little demand. However, supply and 4  “What is also implied already in the commodity, and still more so in the commodity as the product of capital, is the reification [Verdinglichung] of the social determinations of production and the subjectification [Versubjektivierung] of the material bases of production which characterise the entire capitalist mode of production” (K. Marx, Marx’s Economic Manuscript of 1864–1865 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), p. 942).

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demand do not adequately explain of how exchange value is determined. No matter how much demand there might be for chewing gum, for example, its price would never swell to ten million pounds. Conversely, even if there is a great supply of new automobiles, they will not be sold for as little as one pound. The difference in the prices of those two commodities clearly cannot be explained from supply and demand. Moreover, even when supply and demand balance out, the prices of commodities will vary, so the source of differences cannot be accounted for by the relation of supply and demand. Indeed, all that supply and demand can explain is the deviation of a commodity’s price compared to a situation where its supply and demand are in balance.5 How is price determined in a case where supply and demand coincide, so that the relation exerts no influence on price? Prior to Marx, the Classical economist David Ricardo used the term “natural price” to refer to price in such a case, and he said that it was determined by labor. The natural price of a commodity, he argued, will be higher if more labor is expanded on it, while a commodity on which less labor has been expended will have a lower natural price. This conception is referred to as a “labor theory of value.” According to Ricardo’s theory, the apple would have a natural price twice that of the orange in our example because twice the labor was needed to produce an apple than an orange. There are, of course, cases where price is determined without any relation to labor, such as an original painting created by a renowned artist or items that are produced only once or very few times. But the vast majority of commodities traded on the market are produced daily, and Ricardo thought that the labor theory of value applied to them. Capital basically inherits this standpoint, but instead of the term “natural price,” Marx employs the concept of value. This is the most fundamental concept in Capital. Even though the concept of value is not so inherently difficult to grasp, it has been commonly misconstrued. Capital cannot be understood unless value has been correctly grasped, so the concept will be explained carefully here to avoid common misunderstandings. 5  “As soon as demand and supply coincide, they paralyse each other, just as when, say, centrifugal force and centripetal force are at work uniformly and with equal strength, they have no effect at all, and phenomena taking place in these conditions must be explained otherwise than by the operation of these two forces. The truly immanent laws of capitalist production clearly cannot be explained in terms of the interaction of demand and supply” (ibid., p. 299).

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First of all, although it was just noted that Marx employed the concept of value instead of natural price, that is not precisely accurate, because the concept of value has more implications than natural price. Marx’s theory of value overcomes the defects of the labor theory of value within the Classical school of political economy, revealing how far Marx rose above the level of the Classical economist. But since it is not possible to grasp this difference at once, it is sufficient for the moment to understand the concept of value as exchange value in a case where supply equals demand. Next, the reader should note that value and use value are completely separate from each other. Since “use value” contains the word “value,” the misunderstanding could arise that the two concepts overlap, but in fact they are utterly distinct. The magnitude of a commodity’s value does not have any relation to the nature of the use value. We need to be aware that the concept of value in Capital has a special meaning that is semantically different from the everyday use of the term. Furthermore, value is different than exchange value. The rate at which a commodity will be exchanged at a given point in time is its exchange value. And the rate of exchange of a commodity for money is its price. Thus, price is a kind of exchange value. In contrast, value is the center point around which the exchange value or price of a commodity will fluctuate. Unlike the case for exchange value or price, the magnitude of value is determined by the amount of labor expended on the production of a commodity regardless of the relation of supply and demand. The price or exchange value of a commodity will change in relation to supply and demand, but those fluctuations occur around the central point of value. Why is the Magnitude of a Commodity’s Value Determined by Labor? Both the Classical school of political economy and Marx adhered to a labor theory of value, as we have seen. Adam Smith, whose labor theory of value Ricardo inherited and made more logically, explained the determination of the natural price of a commodity in the following way. Human beings, Smith argued, must expend labor in order to produce things, and labor for them is the sacrifice of enjoyment and the expenditure of “toil and trouble.” Thus, when human beings exchange commodities they have produced, the degree of the “toil and trouble” is the standard of exchange. In viewing labor in terms of sacrifice, Smith presented a labor theory of value based on the consciousness of individuals, and in this sense it can be

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described as a subjective labor theory of value.6 But this theory breaks down in a case where someone enjoys work, rather than experiencing it as a sacrifice. Moreover, Smith’s theory is unable to explain the predominant situation under capitalism, where the people who do not labor sell products that they employ others to produce. Smith had to introduce a separate theory to account for that situation, in which value is said to be determined by the amount of “commanded labor.” In contrast to Smith, Marx thought value must be understood from the circumstances of the objective social system, rather than approaching it from the subjective perspective of individuals. The object of his attention was the material reproduction of society.7 In any society, it is necessary, first of all, to appropriately distribute labor for the sake of the society’s material reproduction. For instance, if the population capable of laboring numbers 1000, and on average each person labors ten hours a day, the society would have 10,000 hours of labor available each day. If the main productive sectors are for clothing, food, and lodging, the 10,000  hours would have to be distributed between them depending on social needs. If the distribution was not appropriate to those needs, so that too much labor was distributed to food production, for instance, while not enough labor was directed to clothing production, then there would be an excess of food and a lack of clothing. The next necessity for any society is to appropriately distribute to its members the total products produced. Even if the things required by society are produced, many would be unable to live and society could even collapse if one group of people monopolizes the products, preventing others from obtaining what they need. In the premodern societies that preceded capitalism, some form of communal order existed so that problems related to the distribution of labor and products were decided by the conscious will of human beings or by tradition. The situation is quite different in capitalist society. Since the communal order has basically dissolved in modern society, individuals engage in  “A. Smith considers work psychologically, with respect to the pleasure or displeasure which it gives the individual. Yet it must be something else in addition to this sentimental relation to his activity” (K.  Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58, in MECW, vol. 28, p. 532). 7  “If we wish to define the matter more precisely, we find that the values of products are measured not by the labor which was bestowed on them, but by the labor necessary for their production. Thus not the sacrifice but the labor as the condition of production. The equivalent expresses the condition of their reproduction as given to them by exchange, i.e. the possibility of the renewal of productive activity as posited by its own product” (ibid., p. 533). 6

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production on the basis of the private interests of each, and products are freely exchanged on the market. Thus, no one is thinking about the distribution of the total social labor. Nevertheless, capitalist society is able to continue to exist because the market itself is equipped with a mechanism that allows labor and products to be unconsciously distributed. It is through this mechanism, in fact, that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor.8 However, compared to cases where production is consciously decided by human beings or by tradition, it is much harder to understand how the market system allows society to perpetuate itself. Indeed, the field of political economy arose because the market mechanism was so complicated. We now need to look at the nature of this mechanism. Dual Character of Labor Understanding the market mechanism requires us to first understand the dual character of labor. According to Marx, any sort of labor has the character of being both useful labor and abstract human labor. Labor seen from the perspective of generating a certain use value is “useful labor,” such as the weaving labor to produce cloth or agricultural labor to produce foodstuffs. Labor in this sense is indicated when a person says something like, “the labor to produce this desk is different from the labor to produce that wine.” Next let’s consider “abstract human labor.” Whatever the type of useful labor might be, it requires a certain expenditure of human force and time. Abstract human labor is labor viewed from this perspective. The term may sound difficult, but its meaning is simple. When someone says, “I worked 8  “Despite the diversity of his productive functions, he knows that they are only different forms of activity of one and the same Robinson, hence only different modes of human labor. Necessity itself compels him to divide his time with precision between his different functions. Whether one function occupies a greater space in his total activity than another depends on the magnitude of the difficulties to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. Our friend Robinson Crusoe learns this by experience, and having saved a watch, ledger, ink and pen from the shipwreck, he soon begins, like a good Englishman, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a catalogue of the useful objects he possesses, of the various operations necessary for their production, and finally of the labor-time that specific quantities of these products have on average cost him. All the relations between Robinson and these objects that form his self-created wealth are here so simple and transparent that even Mr Sedley Taylor could understand them. And yet those relations contain all the essential determinants of value” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 169–70, emphasis added).

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more today than I did yesterday” or “a lot of labor is needed to produce a car but not so much to make a loaf of bread,” the person is referring to abstract human labor. In such cases, we abstract from the specific quality of labor to only consider its quantity. After abstracting from the concrete qualities of labor, what remains is its character as a certain expenditure of human force, that is, its character as human labor. Labor viewed from that purely quantitative perspective is abstract human labor. This dual character of labor might at first glance seem an obvious matter of little concern, but Marx was the first to point it out and insisted that it was “the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns.”9 In seeking to understand the significance of this distinction, we need to grasp two points. The first point concerns the relation of productive power. This concept indicates the quantity of products that can be produced with a certain expenditure of labor. More simply put, the concept concerns production efficiency. Productive power increases through such factors as the development of the division of labor, improvements in labor implements, and the introduction of machinery. For instance, a factory producing clothes might introduce machinery that increases productive power twofold, making it possible for one hour of labor to produce twice as much clothing as before. Thus, the utility of one hour of tailoring labor at the factory has doubled from the perspective of useful labor. However, from the perspective of abstract human labor, nothing in particular has changed. No matter how much productive power may change, one hour of labor expended remains one hour of labor. But the relation between abstract human labor and the products produced has changed. If productive power doubles, only half the labor time as before is needed to make one item of clothing. In other words, the abstract human labor needed to produce one item is reduced by half. Meanwhile, from the perspective of useful labor, no change has occurred because (although it is a tautology) the labor to produce one item of clothing remains the labor to produce one item of clothing. When we look at the relation to productive power, the need for grasping the dual character of labor comes into relief. If everything were instead grouped under the single concept of “labor,” confusion would arise. Indeed, economist prior to Marx did not clearly distinguish between the two aspects of labor and fell into various fallacies as a result. 9

 Ibid., p. 132.

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It should be noted, incidentally, that  the quantity of labor expended within a certain period of time is referred to as the “intensity of labor.” This concept expresses the density of labor, which can increase, regardless of production efficiency, depending on how hard a person works. When no special mention is made, a socially average intensity of labor will be assumed (and this applies to the examples above as well). Next let’s consider the relation of the dual character of labor to the distribution of the total social labor. Taking the example above of 10,000 hours of total labor, we could assume that 7000 hours are dedicated to food production, 2000 to clothing production, and 1000 to housing production. For the distribution of labor, it is necessary to consider how much of the total labor should be expended to which sectors to produce the use values society requires. For the question of “which” production sectors, we are considering useful labor, because the focus is on the quality of labor (i.e. what sort of use values labor will produce). In contrast, when we consider “how much” of the total labor is expended in a particular sector, we are thinking in terms of abstract human labor, since here the question concerns the relation between the total quantity of labor and the proportion of it allotted to each production sector. If the total labor were unlimited, the question of “how much” would be irrelevant, but given the limit to the amount of labor that can be carried out in society, the appropriate apportionment of labor is not possible without considering how that limited labor should be distributed to each production sector. Thus, labor will have a dual character in any society with some sort of social division of labor. One aspect of labor is its social significance as useful labor to produce a specific use value required by society, while the other aspect is its social significance as abstract human labor expended as a portion of the limited total labor. In order for human beings to appropriately distribute the aggregate social labor, this dual social character of labor must be considered in some manner or another. The social character of abstract human labor may be easier to understand by using an analogy. Imagine a person who lives on a monthly income of 2000 pounds. If that person uses 500 pounds to purchase food, the money is withdrawn from the 2000 pounds and cannot be spent on other things. Thus, the 500 pounds spent on food is not merely useful for that purpose but also has significance as an expenditure of one part of the total limited income. The same way of thinking applies to abstract human labor. If one portion of the total social labor is expended in a certain

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quantity within one production sector, that amount is deducted from the total labor and cannot be expended elsewhere. For this reason, labor is not merely a certain kind of useful labor, but also has significance as the expenditure of one part of the limited overall social labor. The latter case is the social character of labor as abstract human labor. How Does the Market System Constitute Itself? In the case of premodern societies, where the communal order still exists, it is easy to consider how much of the total labor should be expended in each production sector. But that is not the case for a market system. Under this system, no one is considering the social character of labor because the commodity producers who participate in the market are only concerned with their own private interests. How, then, is labor distributed within the market system? The social distribution of labor is made possible by expressing the social character of labor as useful labor in a commodity’s use value and the social character of labor as abstract human labor in the commodity’s value. In other words, the social character of labor under the market system is considered indirectly through the commodity. This is the reason the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor. Let’s consider this mechanism in more detail, starting with how the social character of useful labor is manifested in a commodity’s use value. Although commodity producers do not consider what sort of labor society needs, they must for their own benefit at least try to produce a commodity with a use value other people want. If their expectation turns out to be wrong, and the commodity is not desired by anyone else, it will not be sold and would not likely be produced much longer. This is the way that commodity producers indirectly consider the social character of useful labor by means of the use values of commodities. This point should not be so difficult to understand. It is necessary, however, to explain in more detail how the social character of abstract human labor is expressed through a commodity’s value. Under a market system, the communal order has already disintegrated, so people are only able to obtain the provisions they need to live through exchanging commodities. Thus, commodity producers seek to produce commodities that will allow them to obtain as many other commodities as possible, which is to say, they want to produce commodities with a favorable exchange rate. If the exchange rate is unfavorable for the

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commodities that they currently produce within one sector, the producers are likely shift to a sector with a more favorable rate and invest their labor there. The standard used in such cases for determining whether an exchange rate is favorable or unfavorable is the quantity of labor expended on a commodity’s production, that is, abstract human labor, since the ultimate cost for producing a commodity is labor. (Here we are setting aside the issue of the means of production, such as raw materials and tools.) Since anyone who engages in labor has to expend a certain amount of effort and time, the amount of labor that commodity producers can expend is limited. Thus, the quantity of labor serves as their standard for determining whether an exchange rate is favorable or unfavorable, and they act accordingly. Let’s assume that it takes eight hours of labor to trap a single beaver, while two deer could be caught in that same period of time, but the current exchange rate on the market is “1 beaver = 1 deer.” Few would be willing to hunt beavers in this case when it would only take four hours of labor to capture a deer that could then be exchanged for a beaver. If that exchange rate remained in effect, no one would be left to hunt beavers, thus preventing an appropriate distribution of labor. However, in reality, the shift of hunters from beavers to deer would change the relation of supply and demand within each sector, altering the initial exchange rate of one beaver to one deer. In this example, the exchange rate that would allow for an appropriate allocation of labor to bring supply and demand into balance, rather than producers inclining toward one production sector over the other, would be one beaver = two deer. This is, in other words, an exchange rate that corresponds to value. This rate would bring about equilibrium with regard to the relative advantages for the hunters of each animal. In the actual market, of course, each of the producers is always free to move between production sectors, so this movement never halts precisely at the point where supply and demand correspond. If the supply of deer is insufficient, for instance, so that its exchange rate to beavers becomes favorable, many beaver hunters would shift at once to hunting deer. The likely result would be to cross over the point at which deer and beavers are exchanged at value, in the opposite direction, so that the supply of deer would be in excess and deer would be exchanged below their value. This would mean beaver hunting had now become more advantageous, so producers would shift to that sector, driving up the supply of beavers to bring

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the exchange rate of deer back in line with value again. This is the manner in which exchange values of commodities (or commodity prices) fluctuate around value.10 Commodity producers, who must obtain the provisions of life through commodity exchange, are compelled to act by determining, on the basis of value, whether the exchange value of their commodity is favorable or not. Thus, when exchange value is in line with value, supply and demand coincide, so that  an appropriate social allocation of labor is realized. If demand exceeds supply due to some circumstance, so that a commodity’s exchange value exceeds its value, the labor expended will be evaluated in the commodity’s exchange value as being a greater quantity than the actual amount, leading to an influx of labor to that production sector. In the opposite case, where supply exceeds demand, exchange value will sink below the commodity’s value, so that the labor expended will be evaluated as being a lesser quantity than actual within the exchange value, resulting in an outflux of labor from the production sector. Simply put, as long as a producer’s labor satisfies a social need, it will be correctly evaluated within the value of the commodities. This is why producers can socially distribute their aggregate labor based on the self-­ interest of each, without any need for someone to coerce them. Private producers thus indirectly consider the social character of abstract human labor through the value of their commodities. The market system, in other words, is a system in which the social character of labor must be considered within the process of commodity exchange through which products are distributed. This is exactly why the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor expended on its production, fluctuating around value.11 10  Paul Sweezy perceived that the essence of Marx’s theory of value is “the investigation of the laws which govern the allocation of the labor force to different spheres of production in a society of commodity producers” (The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1942), p. 34), and appropriately clarified that the concept of equilibrium within Marx’s theory of value concerns the appropriate distribution of the aggregate social labor (similar to the explanation in this chapter). Yet, in his theory of production price, Sweezy basically abandons Marx’s concept of equilibrium in favor of the view of Bortkiewicz, which is based on the notion of equilibrium in the value equation and price equation, and thereby abandons Marx’s theory of value that he had sought to defend. 11  “It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labor in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can

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Significance of the Theory of Value Some may doubt the explanation above because, in actual capitalist society, commodity producers are capitalists, whose standard for action is not the quantity of their own labor expended on production. Indeed, the standard for capitalists, as will be discussed later, is the degree of profit to be gained from the capital invested, so there can be cases where the point around which prices fluctuate does not correspond to value. However, even in such cases, capitalists must consider the social character of abstract human labor because profit will be lower in sectors where supply exceeds demand, and higher in those where supply does not meet demand. Capitalists would tend to withdraw from the former sector and shift to the latter. This movement of capital indirectly regulates the quantity of labor expended in each sector. Since capitalists do not act directly according to value, the central point around which prices fluctuate deviates from value (so that the central point, as will be show later, becomes: production price = cost price + average profit). Still, capitalists must indirectly consider the social character of the abstract human labor expressed in value, and this is precisely why a capitalist society can continue to exist. No matter how much the market system develops and becomes more complex, so that it seems at first glance that the labor theory of value no longer hold sway, in the end this law must penetrate the system. As long as capitalist society continues to exist, the exchange rate of commodities cannot be determined independently of the social distribution of aggregate labor. The great Classical economists intuitively arrived at a labor theory of value, but they were not able to clarify it from the perspective of material reproduction. For this reason, they could not account for the noticeable divergence between the labor theory of value and the phenomenal forms of capitalism, and this led to the decline of Classical political economy. What emerged to take its place was “vulgar economics,” a school of thought that abandoned the labor theory of value to concentrate solely on relations of cause and effect between those phenomenal forms. This is the change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labor asserts itself in a state of society in which the interconnection of social labor expresses itself as the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the exchange value of these products” (K. Marx, “Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover: London, 11 July 1968,” in MECW, vol. 43, p. 68).

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same standpoint as the flourishing field of “economics” today, which has almost no understanding of the significance of Marx’s theory of value. However, it is the labor theory of value that allows us to understand the market system as a set of production relations, which in turn makes it possible to grasp the connection between market transactions and productive activities. Even if the capitalist system becomes endowed with a sophisticated financial system, it is still ultimately restrained by the real economy, as we will see later. The direct expression of this is the collapse of a bubble economy and a financial crisis. Let’s now sum up some of the main points: In a market system, the social character of labor is not directly manifested. Rather, labor’s social character as useful labor is expressed in the commodity’s use value, while its social character as abstract human labor is expressed in the commodity’s value, making the social distribution of labor possible. Within this system, therefore, labor generates use value through its character as useful labor and value through its character as abstract human labor. In addition, the quantity of abstract human labor can be expressed as labor time of average intensity, under socially average conditions. Thus, the magnitude of a commodity’s value is determined by the labor time socially necessary for its production, that is, socially necessary labor time. One point that needs to be emphasized is that abstract human labor and value are not the same thing. Abstract human labor is a concept that strictly concerns the character of labor, expressing its character as the expenditure of human labor power. In contrast, value concerns the exchange power of a commodity, determined by the quantity of abstract human labor expended on the commodity. Therefore, value can be described as “objectified abstract human labor.” That is to say, under the market system, the degree of abstract human labor expended on the production of a commodity, which is a condition that concerns human beings, becomes a social attribute of the product produced by labor and is considered indirectly in that form.12 12  The relation between value and abstract human labor presented above is not easy to understand from the perspective of our everyday economic ideas. In contrast, the relation between useful labor and use value is exceedingly clear since anyone can see, for example, that the useful labor of joinery creates furniture as a use value. Things become complicated as soon as we turn to the relation between abstract human labor and value. Outside of the market system, the social character of labor as abstract human labor is directly considered in some way or another, so it is never objectified as an attribute of the product of labor. But, under the market system, abstract human labor becomes an attribute of labor products, and

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Why Does the Commodity Exist? Having outlined the theory of value above, we can consider a more fundamental question: Why does the commodity exist in the first place? Crucial to Marx’s method (as shown in the previous chapter) is that he does not merely pose the question of what but also considers why and how. Those two questions are of fundamental importance to understanding the commodity. Usually we do not consider why and how commodities exist since we take their existence for granted. The classic example of this is the understanding of Adam Smith. He believed that human beings, unlike animals, have a “natural propensity to truck, barter, and trade” for the sake of their in that sense is “objectified” in the product. Although it is “objectified,” the value is not something that is visible to the eye and only has a “phantom-like objectivity” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 166). Here we have the difficulty in grasping the commodity, as emphasized by Marx, and later we will consider its significance in more detail. Grasping the relation between abstract human labor and value has been difficult not only for everyday consciousness but for much scholarship as well, which has often treated the two as nearly synonymous. Michael Heinrich, for example, falls into this fatal error in his otherwise outstanding explanation of Capital. He adopts the position of viewing not only value but also abstract human labor as something historically specific to commodity production. See M. Heinrich, An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012), p. 50. The meaning of “abstract human labor” grasped as something historically limited is not clear, however, and in the end the concept seems to be identical to that of “value.” Heinrich’s argument is not without basis, since the character of labor as abstract human labor can only be clearly recognized in a society where commodity production is widespread. As Marx pointed out, “the equality and equivalence of all kinds of labor because and in so far as they are human labor in general, could not be deciphered until the concept of human equality had already acquired the permanence of a fixed popular opinion. This however becomes possible only in a society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of labor….” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 152.) In premodern society, as we have seen, the social character of labor could be considered directly, and the character of labor as useful labor and as abstract human labor were inseparably linked. This was because commodity production had not yet fully penetrated and a status-based system was dominant, which made the social allocation of total labor non-fluid. Thus, it was not easy to recognize the social character of labor as abstract human labor separate from useful labor. However, we need to be careful to distinguish between the conditions necessary to recognize a thing and its actual existence. As long as there is a social division of labor and the distribution of social total labor is necessary, labor has a social character as abstract human labor, regardless of human recognition. For more on this point, see R. Sasaki and K. Saito, “Abstrakte Arbeit und Stoffwechsel zwischen Mensch und Natur,” Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung. Neue Folge 2013 (Hamburg: Argument, 2015).

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own interests; and that it was from this propensity that commodity exchange and the division of labor arose so as to form the market. From this standpoint, there is nothing strange about human beings exchanging commodities, which is seen as a perfectly natural act like eating when one is hungry. Commodities do not in fact emerge from the mere act of exchange, however. For instance, a person who has finished reading a comic book might swap it for a friend’s comic book. Certainly, this is an example of exchange done for a person’s own interest. Nevertheless, the comic book exchanged in this example does not have the aforementioned character of a commodity. In other words, the commodity cannot be understood from exchange alone. As is clear from the explanation thus far, the commodity is linked to a particular manner of production. The commodity first appears when the communal order breaks down, so that separate individuals labor in pursuit of their own interests. Here, for the first time, producers appraise and exchange each other’s products. Simply put, the secret of the commodity is labor carried out privately, that is, private labor.13 The term “private” here does not mean that labor is carried out without any social contact, but that it is carried out at the discretion of private individuals while at the same time forming a part of the total social labor. Let’s reconsider the example of exchanging a comic book. That is not a case where a product is exchanged after being appraised. The two individuals involved are friends, so the relationship is not one where each person is trying to beat out the other for personal gain. Rather, the exchange occurs because they are already friends, instead of a relationship being formed through exchange for the sake of economic gain. In addition, since what they are exchanging is an already-read comic book, their lives will not be impacted by the rate of that exchange. Although the two persons are able to obtain some benefit through the exchange, the method of exchange is quite crude, not requiring any exact appraisal of worth. The situation for exchange between private producers is quite different. They are not acquaintances and have no shared interests. The exchange is not occurring because of a pre-existing personal relation. Rather, each enters the relation with the other person out of a need to obtain a product. 13  “As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labor of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other” (MECW, vol. 35, p. 83).

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The only thing that connects the producers who perform private labor is the relation between their respective products. They give no thought to the other person and want to obtain the desired thing at the most favorable exchange rate possible. In addition, unlike the case of the already-­ read comic book, they are exchanging things they produced with their own labor, so they will not be able to make a living without exchanging their products at an appropriate rate. Thus, an exchange between private producers who perform private labor must always take place on the basis of an appraisal of value. In such exchange based on appraisal, private producers recognize an independent social power of products that is distinct from their use values. Use value cannot be the standard for exchange, since the use values of products are all different. Indeed, exchange would not occur in the first place if the use values were the same. In comparing two products and appraising their worth, the two different products come to be treated as having a common character or common social power. Marx uses the term value to refer to this social power that products have. Products that differ from each other can be compared and exchanged precisely because of their common attribute of value. When we speak of a commodity as having a certain “worth,” this is a vague way of expressing the commodity’s value. But in such cases, we are not aware of the significance of value, nor are we aware of why and how commodities can have value. This is because we are not consciously dealing with the products of private labor as things of value. If we did consciously deal with them as such, the explanation above would be unnecessary. As long as individuals labor privately, separate from each other, instead of engaging in common labor, the only way for them to come into a social relation with each other is through the connection between their labor products. And the only way for their labor products to come into that relation is for the products to be treated as things of value. Through this situation, private producers are compelled to unconsciously treat labor products as things of value. Thus, in a society in which the social division of labor is constituted on the basis of private labor, products of labor take on the social attribute of value. Useful things that take on this attribute are called commodities. Although it was stated at first that a commodity has use value and exchange value, it is more correct to say that a commodity has use value and value. The attributes of use value and value express, respectively, the social character of useful labor and of abstract human labor (as already explained),

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and thus exercise an important role for the social distribution of the total labor. Value plays a definite role in the social distribution of labor by serving as the standard for commodity exchange. Reification and Fetishism We have seen, then, that products of labor obtain the attribute of value and become commodities because the producers who carry out private labor treat their products as things of value. But some supplemental explanation may be necessary, as this point can be difficult to understand. The key thing to note is that the social power of value only arises when human beings treat their products of labor as things of value. The use value of a commodity is derived from the original attribute of the product itself, whereas value is a purely social attribute. Thus, a product of labor never has value without the private producers relating to the products of labor as things having the power of value. As long as human beings behave in that way, however, products of labor will manifest themselves as having the social power of value with regard to human beings and in fact exert this power over them. This is similar to the subjects of a monarchy acknowledging “individual A” as their king, thereby allowing that person to manifest himself as someone with the power of a king who is able to exercise that power over them in reality. In a society where people are connected through products, the products (rather than human beings) wield social power.14 Rather than human beings controlling the products, it is the products with value (i.e. commodities) that have control over human beings. As we have seen, instead of human beings socially deciding for themselves how to carry out production, they adjust their production post factum, after looking at the fluctuations in the exchange values of commodities on the market. 14  “The sum total of the labor of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labor of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact until they exchange the products of their labor, the specific social characteristics of their private labors appear only within this exchange. In other words, the labor of the private individual manifests itself as an element of the total labor of society only through the relations which the act of exchange establishes between the products, and, through their mediation, between the producers. To the producers, therefore, the social relations between their private labors appear as what they are, i.e. they do not appear as direct social relations between persons in their work, but rather as material relations between persons and social relations between things” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 165–66).

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Since people within a market system can only perform economic activities through their dependence on the power of products, the relations between products become independent and people’s lives are placed at the mercy of those relations. This independence of the relations between products is why people speak of the “business climate,” as if it exists separate from themselves. Marx used the term Sache (reified thing)15 to refer to objects that gain the power to establish social relations, and the term Versachlichung (reification) to describe the inverted situation wherein human activities are at the mercy of relations between products. Such upside-down phenomena can be seen throughout capitalist society, in which the vast scope of human existence is subsumed by the market. Consider the case of agricultural producers who destroy a large portion of their crops to maintain prices at a certain level. Another example is how, despite society’s ample productive power, there are unemployed who lack adequate food after being dismissed by companies that were seeking to be more competitive. The pursuit of profit also leads some companies to release harmful substances into the environment. Under the capitalist society in which we live, the movement of abstract value mobilizes, controls, and often destroys people’s lives, the natural environment, and other concrete things. This reification is a characteristic that distinguishes capitalism from other forms of society. Once reified relations take hold, it becomes ordinary for products of labor to be treated as commodities. It seems natural that products have value and become commodities even though products of labor only have the attribute of value as a result of specific human behavior. This way of looking at things reaches the extreme of people even thinking that the value of a commodity is inherent to the product of labor itself. The illusion arises that value is a natural attribute, whereas in reality it is an attribute posited to products of labor by particular human behavior. This illusion is referred to as fetishism. Once this illusion becomes prevalent, people do not find it strange at all that products are commodities. In this way, reification results from private labor, as a particular form of labor, and from the particular behavior emerging from that labor. Fetishism, in turn, is the outcome of reification. Thus, if such human 15  The expression “reified thing” may sound odd, but I use this term to distinguish between the concepts of Sache and Ding in German. In English, both can be translated as “thing,” but in Capital, Sache, unlike Ding, often indicates something with an economic determination of form (e.g. commodity, money, capital, etc.).

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behavior vis-à-vis the products of labor were to change, reification would come to an end, and fetishism would vanish as well. Indeed, as noted several times above, products of labor would not have value and become commodities in a society in which the social division of labor is constituted on communal rather than private labor. A look back at history reveals that in classical antiquity and in feudal society, where the communal order predominated, most products of labor were not commodities. This is the perspective from which Marx identified an association of free laborers as the means of overcoming reification. One final point that must be emphasized is that reification, as should be clear from the foregoing, is the outcome of human behavior compelled by certain circumstances, rather than resulting from human consciousness.16 In a society with a social division of labor constituted through private labor, the labor of human beings does not have a directly social character, so social relations are formed through human beings treating the products of their labor as things of value. But human beings do so unconsciously, under compulsion from social conditions in which the social division of labor must be constituted through private labor.17 Products of labor do not, therefore, take on value as the result of people consciously thinking of them as things of value. Rather, in the course of actually exchanging their commodities, human beings become aware of the value character of commodities. We always have an interest in the prices of commodities, which express value (as will be discussed in more detail later), and without that interest we could hardly live our daily lives. But that is not the case with the value. As commodity production relations developed, people did become aware of the value character of commodities, but prior to Marx no one had theoretically understood the

16  This is pointed out by Michael Heinrich and I. I. Rubin (Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1973)), although the terminology they use differs somewhat. Teinosuke Otani, in A Guide to Marxian Political Economy (Berlin: Springer, 2018), clearly distinguishes between reification and fetishism in the same manner as in this book. 17  “In order to relate their products to one another as commodities, men are compelled to equate their various labors to abstract human labor. They do not know it, but they do it, by reducing the material thing to the abstraction, value. This is a primordial and hence unconsciously instinctive operation of their brain, which necessarily grows out of the particular manner of their material production and the relationships into which this production sets them.” (K.  Marx, “The Commodity. Chapter One, Volume One, of the first edition of Capital,” in Value: Studies By Karl Marx (London: New Park Publications, 1976), p. 36.)

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significance of a commodity having value. This is why no one had been able to distinguish value from exchange value. Explained in this way, some may wonder what “value” is, exactly. What sort of existence is this invisible value that does not necessarily reach the level of a person’s conscious awareness? Simply put, value is a social power. In a society of private production, where personal relations between people are severed, social relations can only be formed through relations between things. Thus, regardless of the subjective outlook of individuals, products of labor come to exercise a social power over human beings. No matter what views people might hold regarding the value of commodities, they are dependent on the power of products as value, and their social relations can only be formed through that power. Moreover, they must make decisions about production in line with the power of products as value. Thus, regardless of what opinions individuals might have about value (or even if they have no opinion whatsoever), products of labor possess and exert a social power within these social relations. This social power is value.

Source of the Power of Money Value, as we have seen, is the social power that commodities have when exchanged. Value itself is purely a social power and not visible, so it may have been difficult to understand. But this social power of value possessed by commodities is materialized in the form of money, visible to everyone. In our daily life, we exercise the power of value through money. This power is enormous in today’s society. Money allows us to not only buy the things we need but also wield influence over others. Just by virtue of possessing a huge amount of money, a person will also have an enormous social power. Why is it that money has so much power? Here we need to consider the mystery of this power of money. In Marx’s own era, various debates were waged on the topic of money. The founder of modern anarchism, Proudhon, argued that the cause of the instability and inequality of the market economy could be located in money. He called for the abolition of money, while at the same time believing that private production was necessary for individual liberty. Adam Smith and the Classical economists, meanwhile, thought of money simply as one type of commodity that served as a tool for circulation, viewing it as a creation of human beings, who selected one commodity as money to make circulation operate more smoothly. These days hardly anyone is

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calling for the abolition of money as Proudhon had done, but the mainstream view of money remains that of the Classical economists. This view has a number of variations, but fundamentally it characterizes money based on its function as a means of circulation, that is, its function to mediate commodity circulation. Simply put, this is the idea that money is a convenient tool for facilitating commodity exchange. Marx took a completely different approach to money. He focused on the “attaching of a price tag” prior to commodity exchange. If we look at actual transactions, we can see that a price must be attached in one way or another for the exchange of commodities. Marx thought that money is generated, above all, from this necessity for a price tag. Explaining money from this perspective allow us to unravel the mystery of money’s power. What does it mean to say that money is generated from the necessity of the price tag? This problem, which we will consider next, concerns the “theory of the value form,” one of the most difficult parts of Capital. Mystery of the Price Tag Let’s begin by considering why a price tag is always necessary. Since the use value of a commodity cannot be the standard for exchange, as already explained, exchange is instead carried out according to the value of a commodity. But the value of a commodity is a purely social thing that is not directly visible.18 If value cannot be seen directly by the other person involved in exchange, exchange could not be carried out. Commodity value must be expressed visibly, therefore, in order for commodities to be exchanged according to the standard of value. What makes this possible is the price tag. The next thing we must consider is the mechanism of value expression through the price tag. This may seem so obvious, from an ordinary perspective, as to require no further explanation, since we know, for instance, that if a price tag of 10 pounds is attached to a book, it indicates that the book’s value is ten pounds. There is nothing difficult about this at all. But what does the term “pound” mean in the first place? Originally (although 18  Marx explains the elusive nature of value as follows: “The objectivity of commodities as values differs from Dame Quickly in the sense that ‘a man knows not where to have it’. Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values; in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous objectivity of commodities as physical objects. We may twist and turn a single commodity as we wish; it remains impossible to grasp it as a thing possessing value.” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 138)

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it is no longer the case under the system of inconvertibility), “pound” was a unit name indicating a certain weight in silver or gold. Under the gold standard, prior to World War Two, one pound was equivalent to 7.32 g of gold. Thus, in the case of our example, a book with a tag of ten pounds would signify that the book was equivalent to 73.2 g of gold, so that anyone with that amount of gold could obtain it. The price tag of a commodity was thus originally an expression of the magnitude of a commodity’s value through a weight in gold. But this is a bit strange, upon closer inspection, since gold itself is just another commodity, like any other, and no matter how closely one may scrutinize this metal, its value cannot be perceived directly. Yet, as soon as gold is written on a price tag, it comes to express the value of that commodity. As inhabitants of capitalist society, there is a deeply ingrained assumption among us that gold has a special sort of “value,” so it does not seem so strange that value is expressed through the particular commodity gold. So let’s consider a case where a commodity other than gold is written on the price tag. A look back at history shows that human beings used various other products to express value prior to gold and silver, so it seems acceptable to consider some other product here. For example, “1 shirt” could be written on the price tag of “5 kg of rice,” expressed in the equation: 5 kg rice = 1 shirt. The commodity on the left of the equation is the one to which the price tag is attached, while the commodity on the right is the commodity written on the price tag. In this equation, then, the value of 5 kg of rice is expressed through a price tag on which “1 shirt” is written, so that the shirt expresses the value of the rice. The shirt, however, is just another commodity, like the rice, and its own value is not directly visible. How is it that this mere commodity, a shirt, can express the value of rice as soon as it is written on the price tag? Here we have the mystery of the price tag. In considering this mystery, the quantity of the products on either side of the equation does not enter into the question, so for simplicity sake we can think in terms of the equation: rice = shirt. Mechanism of the Price Tag In seeking to sell rice, we could attach a price tag to that commodity with “shirt” written on it, which would mean that anyone willing to part with a shirt could acquire the rice. The shirt, by being written on the price tag, is thus able to exert the power of value directly vis-à-vis the rice. The

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owner of the rice needs the price tag to express the value of the rice and exchange it. In contrast, the shirt, as the commodity written on the price tag, can wield the power of value directly without its own price tag. The shirt can thus exercise its power as value, without a price tag, to obtain the rice. The rice in this example, by equating the shirt to itself, is effectively saying to the shirt, “You can be exchanged with me,” thus positing the shirt with that character.19 Within this relationship, the shirt is able, as is, to exercise its power as value without having a price tag attached to itself. Therefore, the shirt in itself embodies the value. The commodity posited with this character is the “value body” (Wertkörper). The rice can express its own value through the shirt posited as the value body. The commodity written on the price tag embodies value much like a metal weight used on a balance to express the heaviness of another object embodies weight. In becoming the value body by being written on the price tag, the shirt attains direct exchangeability with the commodity to which the price tag is attached. This direct exchangeability makes it possible, if so desired, to surely come into possession of the other commodity—the rice, in our example. Meanwhile, the rice does not have that power of direct exchangeability, since it can only be exchanged for the shirt if the owner of the shirt desires the rice. In other words, only the commodity listed on the price tag has the special power of direct exchangeability. The explanation above basically clarifies the mystery of the price tag. But the equation “rice = shirt” is not yet a complete expression of value since it only expresses the value of the rice vis-à-vis the owner of the shirt. Since value is by nature a social power that brings every product of private labor into a reciprocal relationship, the example above cannot be considered the true expression of value. We need, therefore, to expand the equation beyond “rice = shirt.” In the example above, the shirt is simply the material used to express value, so any other thing of value can be used in

19  This explanation of Marx’s theory of the value form is based on the interpretation of  Samezo Kuruma presented in Marx’s Theory of the Genesis of Money: How, Why, and Through What Is a Commodity Money? (Leiden: Brill, 2017). In Capital, Marx explains the respective roles of the two commodities as follows: “But these two qualitatively equated commodities do not play the same part. It is only the value of the linen that is expressed. And how? By being related to the coat as its ‘equivalent’, or ‘the thing exchangeable’ with it. In this relation the coat counts as the form of existence of value, as the material embodiment of value, for only as such is it the same as the linen.” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 141)

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its place, and we can place every commodity besides rice on the right side of the equation: =shirt =shoes rice =pencil =notebook =etc.

Through this expanded expression of value, all of the commodities come into a relationship with the  rice. If the producer of the rice happens to want a shirt, then “shirt” could be written on the price tag of the rice; or if the desired commodity is a pair of shoes, that commodity could be written instead, and so on. In this way, it is possible for rice to be exchanged with every commodity. However, this expression of value is also insufficient in that, rather than having a unified value expression, the value of each commodity is expressed separately, which makes it difficult to mutually compare the value of commodities and exchange them. Given this situation, a common expression of value for all commodities is necessary. If we consider the case where rice is exchanged with every other commodity, we can see that this expanded expression of value already contains within itself the opposite expression of value, where the value of every other commodity is expressed through rice:20 shirt = shoes = pencil =   rice notebook = etc. =

20  In Japan a huge debate arose over the shift from the expanded value form to the general value form, but the matter is not so difficult. When Marx writes that, “the expression 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat, includes its converse: 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen” (ibid., p. 140), what he is saying can be paraphrased more precisely as follows: The exchange between the 20 yards of linen and 1 coat can be carried out not only in the value expression of “20 yards of linen = 1 coat” but also in the opposite value expression of “1 coat = 20 yards of linen.” Therefore, what makes the shift from the expanded value form to the general value form possible is that, within the exchange relations that constitute the expanded value form, there is the possibility of the general value form as the opposite expression of value.

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In this expression of value, all of the commodities other than rice have a unified expression of value. Having rice as their common equivalent allows the other commodities to gain a common expression of value, bringing them into a mutual relationship so that we can compare their values to each other through the rice. This type of value expression is referred to by Marx as the “general equivalent form,” and the commodity that is written on the price tags of all the commodities other than itself is called the “general equivalent.” The Power of Money Rice happens to be selected as the general equivalent in our example, but in the course of human history, gold was eventually chosen for that role. This was because gold had the physical attributes best suited to the general equivalent, such as a homogenous quality and ability to be quantitatively divided or recombined in any desired proportion. Once the general equivalent came to be affixed to gold, gold become money. The expression of commodity value through money is referred to as price, which is the general expression of value best suited to value. When “shirt” is written on the price tag for rice, the shirt only has direct exchangeability with the rice; whereas in the case of value expression via price, gold has direct exchangeability with all the other commodities because it is written on their price tags. Money thus has the power to obtain any other commodity. But commodity owners cannot attain money unless the money holder happens to want their particular commodity, so that money alone has the special power of direct exchangeability with all commodities. Therefore, the power of money emerges neither from the material substance of gold itself nor from some sort of human decision. The power is rooted instead in commodity production, inevitably arising from the commodity’s need for value expression. This is why the power of money increases steadily as commodity production becomes more generalized in society. People use money as the embodiment of value to express the value of commodities, and by acquiring money through the sale of commodities they can use its power, as the value body, to obtain whatever they want. This overcomes the difficulties of barter, wherein people cannot carry out an exchange unless each happens to want the other’s commodity. In commodity exchange mediated by money, the exchange is divided into the two acts of sale and purchase.

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The indication of value through price also makes it possible that the expression of value will diverge from the actual magnitude of value. A look at actual markets clearly shows that even if the value of a commodity remains unchanged, its price is always fluctuating. This divergence of value from price is what regulates the relation between supply and demand, which makes the social division of labor possible. The extreme case of the divergence of value from price is things that have prices without being products of labor. Human beings are able to turn such things into commodities by using money to attach a price tag to them. Uncultivated land, for instance, which is the product of no human labor, can be given a price and sold. Thus, the expression of value in price not only allows price to diverge from value but can even transform things with no value into commodities.21 Still, some may imagine that gold is no longer money since the gold standard has been abolished and the Bretton Woods system of dollar convertible to gold also collapsed. Certainly, in our everyday lives, what represents “money” are the banknotes issued by central banks, which are no longer convertible to gold. But central banknotes are a substitute for the original value body. Even if there is no longer a need for convertibility, the central bank is not able to supply banknotes and create purchasing power regardless of the real economy. Doing so would lead to the “depreciation” of paper money, generating inflation. We will not be able to understand the essence of the contemporary managed currency system unless we grasp it as a development from gold money, as explained above. The centrality of gold can be perceived from the fact that, even under the system of non-convertibility, gold accounts for around 60% to 70% of foreign currency reserves. Even after the convertibility of gold was ended, severing the direct link of gold to the monetary names, gold remains the commodity best suited to be the general equivalent and continues to be money in this sense.

21  In order to actually establish the functions of money, briefly outlined above, institutional mediation is necessary, including laws enacted by the modern state. This point, which is of decisive importance to Marx’s critique of political economy, is not touched on here to prevent the discussion from becoming too complex, but this point is examined in Appendix B.

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Personification of Reified Things The examination thus far has shown that commodities are necessary as long as private labor is carried out, and that money is necessary as long as commodities exist. In other words, as long as private producers treat their labor products as things of value, it is definitely necessary (regardless of the intentions or desires of human beings) for value to be expressed through price. In any society, no matter its culture or climate, money will certainly exist if the people within that society generally exchange their labor products as commodities. Holding on to commodity production while abolishing money, as Proudhon had hoped to do, is impossible. Value and price as its expression are unconsciously generated by human beings to establish social relations between private producers. Because the act is unconscious, considerable thought is needed to unravel it. This is much like how people can speak their native language fluently without consciously knowing its grammar. In order to understand the system of grammar that we use unconsciously, it is necessary to enter into a consideration of the language itself. From that perspective, the preceding discussion is a grammatical explanation of the “language of commodities.”22 However, the commodities and money that emerge through our unconscious behavior come to exercise an enormous influence over our consciousness and desires, transforming them completely. Different types of consciousness and desires are generated by the human creations: commodities and money. No matter how reified and upside-down the relations that emerge, commodities and money remain unable to move by themselves. The actual transactions involving them are handled by human beings, equipped with will and desires. In acting as the personal bearers of reified things (commodities and money), people are influenced by the logic of those things, 22  As indicated by the expression “the language of commodities,” which is used in Capital, commodities have a logic that is independent of the will and desires of human beings (i.e. the logic of value), and this is what gives birth to money. This is the reason that the commodity is sometimes described as the subject, in anthropomorphic terms, as in the discussion of the problem of the price tag. In a society where private labor constitutes the social division of labor, it is the products of labor, rather than human beings, that have social power, thus turning the relation between human beings and labor products on its head. It is precisely because such reified relations are formed in reality that we can speak of the logic created by the commodity itself as subject, which is the “language of commodities.” Under the reified relations, human beings, unbeknownst to themselves, create the logic of value that restricts their own behavior and according to which they must act.

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transforming their own personalities. Marx explained this phenomenon using the concept of the personification of reified things. Here we will look at three specific examples of this phenomenon.23 The first example is when a new desire emerges through a human being acting as the personification of money. Whereas there is a limit to the desire for use values (e.g. no matter how hungry a person might be, he or she can only consume so much food in one day), the desire for money is boundless. Not only can money be used to acquire any commodity, but it can also transform anything into a commodity. Because of this extremely abstract social power of money, no matter how much money a person has, it can never be enough. This gives birth to an unquenchable desire to hoard money, transforming the desire of human beings to have necessary things into the greedy pursuit of accumulating wealth in general. The second example is how ownership is transformed by the actions of people as the personification of commodities and money. Within reified relations, ownership of a thing is not recognized without the power of reified things, as we will discuss in more detail later. The final example, on the ideological level, is the illusion whereby people equate the notions they have of “liberty, equality, and property,” in their role as the personified bearers of reified things, with the inherent human view of those three concepts. As the personified bearers of reified things, people are free to choose a commodity from the market and equal insofar as anyone with money can purchase a commodity, and it is only within their role as the personified bearers of reified things that their right to property is recognized (i.e. one must sell a commodity to possess money, and pay with money to possess a commodity). Within this illusion, the three concepts are idealized and thought to correspond to the intrinsic conceptions of liberty, equality, and property. A theoretical expression of this view can be seen in the works of Milton Friedman, the central figure of the Neo-Classical school of economics.24

23  One of the few scholarly works to focus on Marx’s idea of the “personification of reified things” is I. I. Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value. 24  M. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

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The Power of Capital and the Specific Way of Working of Wage Labor What is Capital? Now that we have looked at the commodity and money, we can finally begin to consider capital. Up to now our basic premise has been that, in the buying and selling of commodities, one “sells in order to buy,” as expressed in Capital by the formula C–M–C (with C signifying “commodity” and M signifying “money”). In other words, after selling one’s own commodity, money is obtained that is used to purchase the desired commodity. However, as already mentioned, when human beings begin to use money in commodity exchange, new desires spring up. Instead of just wanting money as a means of obtaining use values, money itself becomes a wanted object, generating the desire to obtain as much money as possible. One might work diligently, to begin with, and frugally save up money by selling as much and purchasing as little as possible. But this method of hoarding money by not using it comes up against a limit, since money can only exercise its power by being used. A more efficient, rational method is needed. And that method is “buying in order to sell,” expressed in the formula, M–C–M. In other words, the money possessed is used to purchase commodities that are then sold to regain money, with the influx of money from the sale greater than the initial money possessed. The characteristic of this process is that its aim is “valorization,” that is, the augmentation of value. Of course, even under the “selling in order to buy” approach, it is possible to increase the amount of money through diligence and frugality. But no value is augmented thereby because the process merely involves saving up the value already generated by not using it. In contrast, “buying in order to sell” is a process in which the original value is augmented; that is, value is increased through the power of value itself. In the process of buying to sell, value is no longer simply necessary as the standard of exchange, but also becomes the subject that augments through its own power. This “self-augmenting value” is capital. Of course, as in the case of commodities or money, capital requires a personal bearer to actually carry out the action of buying in order to sell, and the personification of capital is the capitalist. Instead of acting moderately, the capitalist actively throws money into circulation to augment it. This is the augmentation of value through value.

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The great difficulty presented by buying in order to sell, however, is to understand how value can be augmented through equivalent exchange. In some cases, of course, a commodity could be sold at a higher price than its value, but this is simply a contingent occurrence—not something that holds sway for society as a whole. So, in approaching the problem, we must assume exchange according to value and then consider how value could be augmented in that circumstance. Capitalists overcome the apparent difficulty of augmenting value through equivalent exchange by purchasing labor power as a commodity and consuming it to augment value. This is possible, as we will now examine in more detail, because labor power is the only commodity capable of generating value. Capitalists Purchase Labor Power (Not Labor) What must be emphasized, first of all, is that the capitalist buys labor power, not labor itself. Wageworkers sell the right to use their labor power on an hourly basis, and then it is up to the capitalist whether to make use of that right or not. When the capitalist does make use of that right, labor is actually carried out. This is similar to how if we buy an automatic vacuum cleaner, we have purchased the right to use this device, rather than purchasing “cleaning” itself. We can either use the vacuum cleaner right away or set it aside without using it. Similarly, labor occurs when the ­labor-­power commodity is consumed, while what is sold on the market is only labor power. The labor-power commodity exists in capitalist society in the first place because the vast majority of workers directly involved in production do not possess the means of production, such as the tools for labor and raw materials. Without the means of production, they are unable to labor by themselves to produce commodities. At the same time, because the communal order has already dissolved in modern society, useful things necessary for one’s life cannot be obtained without selling some sort of commodity to obtain money. This leaves the property-less workers, who do not possess the means of production, with no option but to sell their own capacity to labor. Wageworkers are thus compelled to sell their labor power precisely because they cannot sell the fruit of their labor. Although it may seem that wages are compensation for labor, they are in fact payment for labor power.

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How, then, is the value of the labor-power commodity determined? In the case of an ordinary commodity, its magnitude of value is determined by the socially necessary labor time to produce it. However, since labor power is not the product of labor, how can we approach this issue? As we have seen, the quantity of labor determines the value of a commodity because it is necessary for continued production, that is, reproduction. Likewise, the magnitude of the value of labor power is determined by the possibility of reproducing labor power. But what does the possibility of reproducing labor power mean? Basically, it is nothing more than the maintenance of the person who owns that capacity to labor. Thus, the magnitude of the value of labor power is determined by the magnitude of the value of means of livelihood (food, clothing, housing, etc.) needed to maintain the owner of labor power. In other words, the labor time socially necessary to produce the commodities needed to reproduce labor power determines its value. In short, the value of labor power is decided by the reproduction cost of labor power. Whether wages take the form of hourly wages or piecework wages, both are a manifestation of the reproduction cost of labor power. If the daily cost to reproduce labor power is 100  pounds, and a worker has a ten-­hour working day, the hourly wage will be ten pounds. Likewise, in the case of piecework wages, 100 pounds would be divided by the daily average amount produced to calculate the payment per product produced. If a piecework wage happened to exceed the overall reproduction cost of labor power, because a worker labored harder to produce more products, there would be a tendency for the capitalist to reduce the payment for each piece produced. The reproduction cost of labor power includes not only the cost of reproducing the individual wageworker, but also the cost of raising the worker’s children or training costs necessary for a worker to acquire vocational skills. The means of livelihood necessary to reproduce labor power are certainly not fixed. Because the means of livelihood are necessary to maintain the possessor of labor power in a normal state, they are influenced by the place where the worker lives, its climate, and other natural factors. Even in the same region, the necessaries of life will differ depending on cultural practices and the development of needs. Thus, the value of labor power (unlike a typical commodity) encompasses historical and social elements.

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Mechanism of Producing Surplus Value How are capitalists able to make use of the labor-power commodity to augment value? Let’s assume a society in which the labor power of workers can be reproduced for 100 pounds per day, on average, and that a capitalist hires a worker for that daily price to produce shirts. Let’s also assume that one hour of labor generates a value expressed in a price of 20 pounds (setting aside the cost of the means of production such as sewing machines and cloth). In this case, the capitalist has the right to freely use the wageworker’s labor during a period of one day. Consider a case, first of all, where the capitalist has the worker labor for three hours, so that three hours of value, worth 60  pounds, are generated. Since labor power was purchased for 100  pounds, the capitalist would end up losing 40  pounds, making it meaningless to have purchased the labor power. If the worker is made to labor for five hours, the labor power would generate a value of 100 pounds, allowing the capitalist to break-even but not augment the original capital. An eight-hour working day, however, would generate 160 pounds, thus creating an additional value of 60 pounds. Value can thus be augmented even though a capitalist engages in equivalent exchange. The augmented portion of value is called surplus value. If the capitalist in our example manages to sell the shirts produced by the worker’s eight hours of labor, 160 pounds could be obtained from an original investment of 100 pounds. What makes this augmentation possible? The answer lies in the ability of labor power to produce value through the exertion of labor. Labor power can thereby create a magnitude of value that exceeds its own value. In the final example above, labor power created three hours of value in addition to its own five hours of value. This distinctive use value of the labor-power commodity allows capitalists to augment value despite engaging in equivalent exchange. Conversely, from the perspective of wageworkers, the outcome of their labor is exploited even though they engaged in equivalent exchange based on their own will. Unlike the premodern slave-based or feudal systems, capitalists are not exploiting workers through direct coercion based on personal rule. Rather, they are exploiting the labor of others to obtain surplus value on the basis of free transactions in the marketplace. Exploitation under capitalism can thus be more severe than in any other form of society. This is because the surplus labor of others can be obtained based on their own initiative,

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rather than extracting it from them by force. In his manuscript for Capital, Marx vividly depicted this situation as follows: [T]he slave only works under the impulse of external fear, but not for his own existence, which does not belong to him and yet is guaranteed. The free worker, in contrast, is driven by his wants. The consciousness (or rather the notion) of free self-determination, of freedom, makes the one a much better worker than the other, as well as the feeling (consciousness) of responsibility bound up with this; for, like every seller of a commodity, he is responsible for the commodity he provides, and he must provide it at a certain quality, if he is not to be swept from the field by other sellers of commodities of the same species. The continuity of the relation between slave and slave holder is preserved by the direct compulsion exerted upon the slave. The free worker, on the other hand, must preserve it himself, since his existence and that of his family depend upon his constantly renewing the sale of his labor capacity to the capitalist.25

On this basis, it becomes possible for capital, “[a]s an agent in producing the activity of others, as an extractor of surplus labor and an exploiter of labor-power,” to surpass “all earlier systems of production, which were based on directly compulsory labor, in its energy and its quality of unbounded and ruthless activity.”26 The explanation of surplus value above does not take into consideration the means of production actual required for commodity production. The value of the means of production used up in producing a product are transferred to the product; this includes the value of raw materials utilized as well as the value equivalent to the wear and tear on the tools and machinery. Since the capital invested in the means of production is merely transferred to the product, rather than augmented, Marx refers to it as constant capital.27 The capital invested in labor power, in contrast, augments value, and is therefore labeled variable capital.  K. Marx, “Results of the Direct Production Process,” in MECW, vol. 34, p. 435.  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 425. 27  Already, in the section on the commodity, we dealt with the relation between the dual character of labor and productive power, as well as the distribution of the aggregate social labor, but the dual character of labor is also related to the addition and transfer of value. That is, abstract human labor adds value to the product, and useful labor transfers the value of the means of production to the product. This is of decisive importance to Marx’s theory of value because it makes it possible to criticize the dogma of Adam Smith regarding the reproduction of the aggregate social capital, and to consider the theory of value from a different per25 26

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The value of a commodity thus encompasses not merely the labor directly necessary to produce it but also the value of the means of production necessary for its production. Therefore, commodity value equals the “value of the transferred means of production” plus the “value added by labor power.” If we subtract the value of labor power from the value added by the use of labor power, we are left with the surplus value. Extension of Working Hours Capitalists are not satisfied with merely obtaining surplus value. Their aim is to use the money they possess to obtain as much additional money as possible; which is to say, they want to obtain as much surplus value as possible. Toward that end, capitalists completely transform the manner of labor and the methods of production. First of all, capitalists attempt to extend working hours to the greatest extent possible. Since surplus value is the difference between the value created and the value of the labor-power commodity, it can be augmented by having workers labor for longer hours. Marx uses the term absolute surplus value to refer to the surplus value generated by extending working hours. If working hours are extended beyond a certain limit in reality, however, it drives up the value of labor power. If working hours are too long, it increases the costs needed to reproduce the labor power. For instance, if working hours are long, workers might have to rely on ready-made products and services instead of doing housework or cooking themselves. But even in that case, as long as the value obtained by extending working hours is greater than the increase in the value of labor power, capitalists will not refrain from seeking to extend working hours. The unpaid overtime forced on wageworkers in Japan every day reveals how capitalists strive to avoid paying for the added value of labor power. Outside of Japan, as well, the increase in telework through the development of information and communication technology has effectively generated unpaid overtime. As capitalists pursue the generation of absolute surplus value, working hours expand far beyond the level of earlier eras. Granted, merciless exploitation existed under the slave-based and feudal systems as well, in pursuit spective than the Sraffian-like equilibrium theory, which argued that value could be directly determined by the current technical system and real wages. Marx argued that the value of the means of production (and more exactly their production price) is the given prerequisite for current production, and therefore the precondition for current competition between capitals.

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of obtaining necessary use values, but the extension of working hours was not without limit, since the desire for use values had an upper boundary. The situation is completely different under capitalism. In this society, where the bulk of the necessities of life take the form of commodities and the power of money extends to every corner of society, the aim of production is value—and the desire for value is limitless. Capitalists seek to augment and obtain as much value as possible, following their boundless desire, which leads them to seek the maximum extension of working hours. From the perspective of the wageworker, as the seller of labor power, the extension of working hours is a restriction of free time. The excessively long working hours imposed on wageworkers by capitalists strip them of the time necessary to lead a decent human life. Excessive working hours can even threaten the lives of workers. If wageworkers are unable to rest after expending their labor power, this can deteriorate their mental and physical health and in some cases be fatal. In Capital, Marx quotes from the reports of factory inspectors to portray clearly the conditions of overwork in England in the mid-nineteenth century, but the same sorts of problems can be seen today in East Asia, developing countries, and elsewhere. If nothing is done to curb long working hours, the damage to the health of wageworkers could even threaten the existence of capital itself. The capitalist system cannot survive unless society as a whole reproduces wageworkers. Yet capitalists still seek the maximum extension of working hours; their only concern is to augment value to the greatest extent possible by extracting surplus labor. In the case of slave-based and feudal systems, whose foundation was personal dominance, the personal reproduction of the slaves and serfs was of decisive importance to the power of the rulers. But capitalists’ rule is based on the power of money, so there is no need to consider the personal reproduction of wageworkers. If capitalists destroy the physical condition of the wageworkers they have hired, they can always hire other wageworkers. Even if the movement of capital threatens the existence of wageworkers, which in turn threatens the existence of capitalist society itself, capitalists still call for “economic growth” and do not cease to pursue augmented value. Their motto is, “Après nous le deluge!”—as Marx explains: Capital, which has such “good reasons” for denying the sufferings of the legions of workers surrounding it, allows its actual movement to be determined as much and as little by the sight of the coming degradation and final

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depopulation of the human race, as by the probable fall of the earth into the sun. In every stock-jobbing swindle everyone knows that some time or other the crash must come, but everyone hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in secure hands. Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Capital therefore takes no account of the health and the length of life of the worker, unless society forces it to do so.28

Unfortunately, more than 150 years after it was written, this passage from Capital still applies to countries around the world today. There are of course well-intentioned capitalists who may be pained by worsening labor conditions, but even they must continue to pursue valorization. Capitalists are compelled to do so under the force of mutual competition. Ceasing to pursue maximum valorization would be to lose out in that competition and cease to be a capitalist. What is able to apply a brake to the destructive movement of capital is society, particularly the wageworkers, who must protect their own labor power from destruction in order to live. The struggle of workers to establish a normal working day led to the introduction of various restrictions on working hours. These restrictions not only protect the labor-power commodity from destruction but also provide workers with more physical and mental leeway, creating the conditions that allow them to engage with society. This is why Marx emphasized the importance of restricting working hours. In his “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council: The Different Questions,” he declares that a “preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must probe abortive, is the limitation of the working day.”29 In present-day Japan, there is essentially no limit on the working day, since the country’s Labor Standards Law includes the loophole of the so-­ called “36 Agreement” that allows companies to file for the right to impose overtime on workers. A look at the miserable state of Japanese society today, particularly the stagnation of the Left and of social movements, shows just how true Marx’s declaration was.

 Ibid., pp. 380–81.  K.  Marx, “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council. The Different Questions,” in MECW vol., 20, p. 187. 28 29

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Development of Productive Power The other method for augmenting surplus value is to raise productive power. Capital can augment surplus value by raising productive power through the division of labor and introduction of machinery. An increase in productive power, as explained earlier, influences useful labor, not abstract human labor, increasing the amount of use values produced by a certain amount of labor. Doubling productive power does not alter the quantity of value produced in one hour, but it does double the quantity of products that can be produced in that time, thereby reducing by half the value added to each product. The value of each product thus declines as productive power increases. Therefore, if productive power rises in the industrial sector producing the means of livelihood consumed by workers (or the sector producing the raw materials and machinery used in that sector), the value of the workers’ means of livelihood will decrease. Since the value of labor power is its reproduction cost, determined by the value of the means of livelihood consumed by workers, its value decreases along with a decrease in the value of the means of livelihood. This is how an increase in productive power can lower the value of labor power. The result is an augmentation of surplus value even if working hours remain unchanged. For example, if the working day is eight hours, while the value of labor power is equivalent to the value generated by four hours of labor, reducing the value of labor power by two hours would increase the quantity of surplus value from four to six hours. Marx refers to the surplus value generated by lowering the value of labor power as relative surplus value. Individual capitalists are not, however, directly aiming for relative surplus value by raising productive power. The relative surplus value generated from a general rise in productive power is merely an outcome of the efforts of individual capitalists to raise productive power. The reason capitalists seek to raise productive power is that reducing the quantity of labor needed to produce their own commodities allows them to outcompete other capitalists. The value of a commodity is not determined by the quantity of labor actually required by an individual capitalist, but rather by the amount of labor necessary under socially average conditions. Thus, if a capitalist introduces more efficient production methods ahead of other capitalists, making it possible to produce a commodity using productive power that

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exceeds the social average, that capitalist will be able to sell the commodity at magnitude of value that exceeds the quantity of labor actually expended on its production. Capitalists who raise productive power first can thus obtain a greater magnitude of surplus value than that of other capitalists by pocketing the difference between the value of the commodity and the actual labor expended on it. Marx calls the surplus value obtained from that difference extra surplus value. Capitalists who raise productive power before other capitalists can sell a commodity for less than its value but more than the quantity of labor expended on it, thereby obtaining extra surplus value while also underselling their competitors and expanding market share. Here we have the reason why individual capitalists are always seeking to raise productive power. Since capitalists are in competition with each other, none can survive without continually striving to raise productive power to maintain or expand market share. Capitalists are compelled by competition to raise productive power. Herein lies the inevitable tendency for capital to raise the productive power of society as a whole and generate relative surplus value. This is why capitalist society expands productive power far more rapidly than previous societies. Co-operation Raising productive power requires a transformation of production methods. Here we will take a brief look at the methods employed by capital to increase productive power. The first method that capital uses is co-operation. This refers to labor involving the planned collaboration of many workers. Co-operation is able to raise productive power through economizing the means of production, based on sharing the means of labor, stimulating the workers through a mutual competitive spirit, and raising efficiency by carrying out the same task at the same time (e.g. a bucket relay). Co-operation requires direction to bring together the work of the individuals involved, but in the case of the capitalist production process, that direction is carried out by a capitalist. This gives direction a new character because the capitalist must not only harmonize the cooperative work but make possible the self-augmentation of capital. Thus, the direction carried out by a capitalist must harmonize the work of individuals to make co-­ operation possible, on the one hand, and suppress the resistance of the wageworkers and prevent them from engaging in a slowdown, on the

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other hand. In actually performing the function of direction, however, it is not possible to separate those two functions. Direction under a capitalist thus has the character of suppressing and supervising wageworkers, but at the same time co-operation between the wageworkers could not be smoothly carried out without direction. In order to carry out co-­operation, wageworkers have no choice but to follow the direction of a  capitalist, whose character is hostile to them. Therefore, in the capitalist production process, the production method of co-operation encourages the subordination of wageworkers. Furthermore, only those with a certain amount of money (i.e. capitalists) are able to organize co-operation under capitalist production relations. People are separated as private individuals under those production relations, with no one other than the capitalists possessing the money needed to organize co-operation. Wageworkers do not carry out co-­operation of their own free will through a mutual association. Rather, wageworkers are combined by the capitalist who purchases their labor power, under whom they engage in co-operation. Since the wageworkers are not able to carry out co-operation without selling their labor power to the capitalist and being combined by capital, the social power of the labor realized through co-operation appears as the inherent productive power of capital. Division of Labor Within Manufacture The second method capital uses to raise productive power is the division of labor within manufacture. In the case of manufacture, the co-operation organized by a capitalist is carried out as a division of labor within the worksite, but technically speaking it is based on the same handicraft skills of the workers as before. The division of labor within manufacture leads to the specialization of tasks, which in turn makes each task fixed and also saves time by not requiring workers to change locations or switch back and forth to different tools. All of this raises productive power. Manufacture exerts the following influences on workers. First, manufacture exerts an influence through the specialization of work, breaking down formerly independent jobs into various partial operations. Each worker adapts to a particular task and is only able to perform simple operations. This sort of specialization reduces the training costs for workers, driving down the value of labor power. When the simplification of labor through specialization reaches a certain point, workers lose their own independent productive power as

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producers. Wageworkers must sell their labor power to capitalists in the first place because they lack the means of production necessary to produce commodities on their own, but once specialization proceeds to that point, their labor power cannot be useful without being purchased by a capitalist and integrated into the division of labor. Independent craftsmen once had a knowledge and discernment regarding production, even if limited, and had to respond to various unforeseen circumstances. In contrast, workers in manufacture are stripped of that mental ability. The necessary knowledge and discernment for production are concentrated within capital, which organizes the systematization of partial operations, manifesting itself as a power that rules the wageworkers. The second influence of manufacture results from the combination and systematization of specialized operations. When co-operation is carried out as a combination of the operational tasks, labor intensity is raised. In the case of a work process where one person cuts cloth and someone else sews it, unless the cutter is able to perform that work at a certain pace, the other person is not able to commence the sewing and the work will be stalled. Thus, manufacture requires a continuity and regularity of work, which in turn increases the intensity of labor. Machinery Within Large-Scale Industry The third method of capital to raise productive power is the introduction of machinery within large-scale industry. A machine is composed of a motor mechanism, a transmission mechanism, and a tool machine. In contrast to a mere tool operated by a human being, a machine is a means of labor that operates a tool through its own force and processes the object of labor. In large-scale industry, co-operation is carried out by machines, and a division of labor is constituted by machines. When this system obtains its motive force from a central automatic device, an automatic system of machinery is established. Clearly, machinery increases productive power. Since machinery makes it possible to utilize enormous natural power, it dramatically reduces the labor necessary in production, raising the productive power of labor by ten- or a hundred-fold. The main influences of machinery on workers in large-scale industry are as follows. First, introducing machinery further reduces the need for workers’ expertise. For production carried out by machines, the role of human labor is secondary. Although manufacturing already had simplified

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operations through the division of labor, the skills and expertise of individual workers remained significant. In contrast, under large-scale industry, workers only play the role of assisting the movement of machines. The skills and expertise of workers lose their significance, further reducing the training costs of workers and driving down the value of labor power. In stripping workers of their skills and expertise, they are also robbed of a foundation for resistance. As long as production depends on the skills and expertise of individual workers, as in the case of manufacture, the initiative for production lies with the workers, making it more difficult to hire replacements. But workers in large-scale industry are only needed to assist the system of machinery, so the initiative for production lies with that system, making it is easy to hire replacements. The second main influence occurs when a factory organized as a system of machinery becomes a huge automatic apparatus. Such systems of automatic machinery compel workers to work with even more continuity and regularity, thereby intensifying labor considerably. As the utopian socialist Charles Fourier cleverly wrote, factories become “mitigated jails”30 for workers. The third influence of the introduction of machinery is that it reduces the need for manpower, resulting in mass unemployment. Marx uses the term “relative surplus population” to refer to the workers unnecessary to capital’s movement of self-augmentation, and the existence of this relative surplus population weakens the position of workers hired by capital. The larger the surplus population, the more intense the competition between workers. In some cases, machinery is introduced to directly counter the resistance waged by workers through strikes and other actions. The fourth way in which large-scale industry impacts workers is by extending the working day and introducing shift work. On the one hand, with the introduction of large-scale machinery, a considerable period of time is needed to pay off the cost of the labor means, raising the danger that they will wear out before being paid off, and this spurs the extension of working hours to shorten the amortization period. On the other hand, stripping workers of their productive capabilities under large-scale industry weakens their resistance and makes it easier to compel them to work long hours.

 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 553.

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Effect on Wageworkers of Raising Productive Power As is clear from the explanation above, capital is able to subordinate workers to itself by transforming the production methods to raise productive power. In short, capital raises productive power by transforming the technical conditions of production, but by so doing, it more forcefully imposes the logic of valorization on wageworkers. First of all, by purchasing labor power from wageworkers, capital gains the right of command over the workers, subordinating them to its own activities to augment value. This is what Marx calls the formal subsumption of labor under capital. Although this does not yet entail a change in production methods, it brings about a fundamental change in the internal relations of the production process. Reification emerges within the production process subsumed by capital, like the reification of production relations that arises when private producers form economic relations. This occurs because the production process becomes organized according to the logic of valorization. Insofar as use values are produced, the production process of capital is no different from other economic systems. However, the aim for capital is not the production of use values per se, but valorization. Capital subordinates production entirely to that end. This results in a change in the relation between the means of production and workers. From the perspective of the production of use values, their relation is one in which workers make use of the means of production (e.g. raw materials and tools) to create products. Here the worker is the subject and the means of production are quite literally a “means.” However, the relation between the two is reversed, from the perspective of valorization. In this case, the aim is valorization, and workers are merely a means toward that end. In fact, wageworkers have to always pay attention to the means of production that are the bearers of capital value so as to efficiently transfer this value to the products while adding value to them. They have to labor in a way that suits the means of production; or conversely, the means of production have significance as capital value precisely because workers treat them as such, allowing the logic of valorization to penetrate the production process. One clear example of this is the case of around-the-clock operations, which were introduced to shorten the amortization period and reduce equipment costs. Thus, capital runs a two- or three-shift system even if it damages the health of the workers who are forced to work late at night to suit the needs of the machines.

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In this manner, the means of production, which are the bearers of value and absorb the value generated by labor power, become the subject of capital’s production process, whereas workers are just a means for that process. Here we have the reification of the production process. Initially, this inverted relationship is merely formal, but in raising productive power, capital forces the technical conditions of labor to conform to itself, making the upside-down relationship something substantial, as Marx explains: Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labor process but also capital’s process of valorization, has this in common, but it is not the worker who employs the conditions of his work, but rather the reverse, the conditions of work employ the worker. However, it is only with the coming of machinery that this inversion first acquires a technical and palpable reality. Owing to its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labor confronts the worker during the labor process in the shape of capital, dead labor, which dominates and soaks up living labor power. The separation of the intellectual faculties of the production process from manual labor, and the transformation of those faculties into powers exercised by capital over labor, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by large-­ scale industry erected on the foundation of machinery.31

Capital appropriates from workers technology and expertise, as well as the knowledge and insight needed for production, turning those traits into its own. By organizing a division of labor, capital simplifies labor actions, turning workers into persons only capable of producing once incorporated into the division of labor. Further, in the case of large-scale industry, the means of production become machinery and thereby acquire a real active quality, turning workers into a mere appendage and stripping individual workers of their productive power. Contrast this with the example of the yeomanry in the Middle Ages, who were able to produce with their own hands most of the things required in their simple lives. This is quite different from the situation today, where we hardly produce anything we need by ourselves. On top of the lack of money that prevents us from securing raw materials and means of labor, we also do not know how to go about producing things. Purchasing labor power with the power of money, and thereby obtaining the right to use that labor power, is not enough to solidify the rule of  Ibid., pp. 548–49.

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capital over wageworkers. Capital is unable to control and dominate the production process as long as the knowledge and skills related to production are monopolized by the workers who handle the means of production in the actual production process. Therefore, capital’s dominance of labor can only be realized by depriving workers of their production-related knowledge and skills. Thus, capital subsumes labor not only formally but also substantively. This is what Marx calls the real subsumption of labor under capital. This real subsumption, as we already noted, increases the intensity and length of labor by weakening the position of wageworkers with regard to capital. In premodern societies, where the aim was to produce use values, not value, an increase in productive power would basically bring about a reduction in the length and intensity of labor. But in capitalist society, where the aim is to produce surplus value, an increase in productive power increases labor time and the intensity of labor. Under capitalism, as will be examined later, the reduction of labor through a rise in productive power does not take the form of reducing labor time for each worker, but rather reducing the number of workers so as to expand the ranks of the unemployed. Moreover, along with worsening labor conditions, the rise in productive power to generate surplus value also destroys the natural environment—and the following chapter will examine Marx’s views on this subject. Technology Gives Birth to Technical Education A mode of knowledge emerges within large-scale industry that makes it possible to strip workers of productive knowledge. This is technology. In the premodern period, knowledge and skills related to production were the exclusive possession of those engaged in a particular occupation. Production know-how was linked to specific individuals, as in the classic example of the guilds, which handed down their trade secrets from generation to generation. Production knowledge was monopolized by one group of people and hidden from society, but at the same time, that knowledge was under the workers’ control, rather than being independent of and hostile to them. For example, a guild of craftsmen did not allow its members to introduce new production methods without permission and curbed competition that would threaten the stability of the members’ own lives.

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The connection between production knowledge and workers was severed by large-scale industry, which gave birth to the new mode of knowledge known as “technology.” Within large-scale industry, workers were stripped of the knowledge and skills they had previously possessed, which were then systematized into technology as a modern science.32 Technology transforms the production methods without consideration for the actual producers, forcing them to adapt their own behavior to suit the new methods. However, large-scale industry does not merely seek to separate workers from knowledge and skills. Because large-scale industry is characterized by the continual transformation of production methods through technology, it requires workers with more generalized knowledge and skills who are capable of adapting to such changes. This leads the state to begin offering technical and vocational education. Such public education is quite insufficient, however. Since capitalism can only survive through the subjugation of workers, the system cannot allow workers to gain comprehensive productive capability.33 Nevertheless, Marx thought that vocational and technical education demanded by large-scale industry was the enzyme of social transformation. No matter how insufficient such education might 32  Harry Braverman regarded the essence of Taylorism as a management method to mediate this deprivation of workers’ mental capacities. See H. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974). 33  “That monstrosity, the disposable working population held in reserve, in misery, for the changing requirements of capitalist exploitation, must be replaced by the individual man who is absolutely available for the different kinds of labor required of him; the partially developed individual, who is merely the bearer of one specialized social function, must be replaced by the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions are different modes of activity he takes up in turn. One aspect of this process of transformation, which has developed spontaneously from the foundation provided by large-scale industry, is the establishment of technical and agricultural schools. Another is the foundation of ‘écoles d’enseignement professionel’ in which the children of the workers receive a certain amount of instruction in technology and in the practical handling of the various implements of labor. Though the Factory Act, that first and meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining elementary education with work in the factory, there can be no doubt that, with the inevitable conquest of political power by the working class, technological education, both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in the schools of the workers. There is also no doubt that those revolutionary ferments whose goal is the abolition of the old division of labor stand in diametrical contradiction with the capitalist form of production, and the economic situation of the workers which corresponds to that form.” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 618–19)

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be, it can be the basis for the workers—who have been stripped of productive capability—to regain knowledge and skills. Marx thought that, enhancing workers’ vocational and technical education through expanding their social and political capabilities would allow them to regain knowledge and resist the real subsumption of their labor under capital.

Capital Accumulation and Property What is Property? Property is not the same as having something. For instance, even if you use the same desk every day at the office, it does not necessarily mean that the desk is your property. And if you grab the pen of a person next to you who is not looking, that pen would not be your property. In order for those things to be your property, your right to possess things must be recognized by others. The realm of property is only entered when the thing you have is recognized to be yours by others. Property, in short, is recognized possession.34 However, the manner of recognition that constitutes property varies depending on the social relations. In premodern societies, as Marx explains in detail in Grundrisse, property was fundamentally based on personal relations. The right of a feudal lord to own land, for example, was based on his position in society, just as the right of a guild master to own the tools of production was based on social position. Going back even further in history, we can see that in the old communal society, a person’s right to ownership was recognized on the basis of being a member of the community. The basis for the ancient Roman citizen’s right to privately own land was membership in the Roman community. In contrast, property under capitalism is constituted according to a completely different principle. Namely, the power of commodities and money as reified things constitute property. Private producers can come into possession of money through exchange because their products have value, and the purchasers of those commodities can possess them because they have money. In a capitalist society, where the communal personal bonds no longer exist, people recognize each other as property owners by 34  “Property” is the English equivalent of Eigentum, which in this context means property right and a thing as property. In this book, the term “ownership” is also used to convey the meaning of Eigentum.

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relying on the power of reified things, rather than being mediated by personal relations.35 This recognition is accepted as valid since it takes the form of mutual recognition based on the free will of possessors of commodities and money. Even if the seller of a commodity is a total stranger, as long as you pay the amount of money indicated on the price tag, the seller will likely recognize your right to private ownership of the commodity. And that right of ownership will also be socially valid. Conversely, no matter how poor and desperate someone might be, unless that person sells some commodity to receive money, so as to be able to purchase another commodity, no right to own a commodity will be recognized. And within society, this state of affairs is unlikely to be viewed as unjust. This is why, in a society of widespread commodity production, mutual recognition based on the power of reified things becomes the standard for valid property. From this situation emerges the idea that competition in the market is the epitome of freedom and equality. Because people in the market behave freely as the possessors of commodities and money, freely entering into contracts based on their own free will, the property recognized within that realm is viewed as justified. Conversely, the idea emerges that property not mediated by the market and competition is unwarranted. These ideas constitute the illusion of homo oeconomicus that was pointed out in the discussion of the “personification of reified things.” The reified validity within capitalist society is the argumentative basis for those who preach “self-responsibility” and bash anyone receiving public aid. Under capitalism, we thus encounter, on the one hand, a criticism of property not mediated by the market and competition, and on the other hand, a justification for non-property mediated by the market and competition. Marx called the modern right of ownership based on reified things the “property rights of commodity production.”

35  “In order that these objects may enter in to relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and alienate his own, except through an act to which both parties consent. The guardians must therefore recognize each other as owners of private property. This juridical relation, whose form is the contract, whether as part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills which mirrors the economic relation. The content of this juridical relation (or relation of two wills) is itself determined by the economic relation. Here the persons exist for one another merely as representatives and hence owners, of commodities” (ibid., pp. 178–79).

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Capital Accumulation and Widening Class Differences Modern property rights based on the power of reified things, which is to say the “property rights of commodity production,” are transformed into the right to appropriate the labor of others. This is because, in a case where the owners of reified things want each other’s things and enter a contract for purchase, the only issue that concerns them is whether the value of the respective things are equivalent or not. Let’s assume that there is a capitalist who wants labor power and a wageworker who needs money in order to live. Based on their mutual desires, the two sides enter an exchange relation. For instance, if the value of a day of labor power is 100 pounds, the capitalist pays 100 pounds to purchase labor power. And the worker who sells the labor power receives 100 pounds. In this case, an exchange based on the free will of both sides is carried out, and things of equal value are exchanged. All of this is perfectly justified according to the property rights of commodity production. But what about the result of this transaction? The capitalist in consuming the labor power purchased from the wageworker is able to obtain the results of another person’s labor. If the monetary expression of the value generated by labor power in one day is 200 pounds, the capitalist obtains this value, thus pocketing 100 pounds in surplus value. Meanwhile, the wageworker, unable to obtain the results of the labor, merely receives a wage sufficient to reproduce the worker’s own labor power. What makes this state of affairs possible is modern property based on the power of reified things. Whatever result ensues from the use of a commodity that a person owns is justified as long as the property is based on free exchange. Within the equivalent exchange between capitalist and wageworker, the property right of commodity production is thus transformed into the right to appropriate the labor of another person. As long as the principle of modern property that reified relations necessarily generate is followed, the capitalist is perfectly justified in exploiting and appropriating the labor of another person. On top of this, in order to survive amidst constant competition with each other, capitalists must expand the quantity of capital they can use. Therefore, they must reinvest a portion of their surplus value as capital, without consuming it. This transformation of surplus value into capital is capital accumulation. Capital transforms the fruit of the labor of others into a social force, making it possible to exploit the labor of even more people. Here the “property right of commodity production” is

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transformed into the right to appropriate the labor of others by the labor of others. “As long as the laws of exchange are observed in every single act of exchange taken in isolation,” Marx explains, “the mode of appropriation can be completely revolutionized without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to commodity production.”36 Capitalists are thus able to obtain even more surplus value through capital accumulation and are then spurred to accumulate yet more to obtain greater surplus value. In this way, wealth gives birth to wealth, and capital grows and grows. The wageworker, meanwhile, is only paid for the reproduction of labor power, unable to break free of a property-less situation. Herein lies the inevitable tendency within capitalist society for an ever-widening economic gap between capitalists and wageworkers. The period of rapid economic growth in the 1950s through to the 1960s seemed to negate this tendency, but that was a mere exception. From the 1970s, the class divide widened again, as indicated by various statistics. A wealth of data verifying this fact is presented by Thomas Picketty in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published a few years ago (although his theoretical standpoint differs from that of Marx).37 Absolute Poverty in Modern Society Modern property based on the power of reified things does more than just justify capitalists’ exploitation of the labor of others. It also gives birth to and justifies poverty of a different nature than that of premodern society. In the premodern community, people were naturally able to own land as members of the community. Ancient Romans, for example, were granted the right, from birth, to privately own land as members of the  Ibid., p. 733.  Piketty elucidates a tendency under conditions of low growth for the rate of return on capital to greatly exceed the growth rate, thereby widening the economic divide. “When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy (as it did through much of history until the nineteenth century and as is likely to be the case again in the twenty-first century), then it logically follows that inherited wealth grows faster than output and income. People with inherited wealth need save only a portion of their income from capital to see that capital grow more quickly than the economy as a whole. Under such conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime’s labor by a wide margin, and the concentration of capital will attain extremely high levels—levels potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies” (T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2014), p. 26). 36 37

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state commune. Some readers may point out that the ownership rights of slaves and serfs in premodern society were denied; but despite their subordinate position and lack of freedom, the de facto right of slaves and serfs to use the means of production was recognized. Thus, although they were bound to the existing relations of dominance and subordination under which they were exploited, slaves and serfs were able to live without having to sell commodities on the market. Since they were not yet completely cut off from the primary ownership of the means of livelihood and production, their existence was guaranteed. Such a priori property, founded on the communal order, ceased to exist in the modern era, however. Property rights can only be obtained today through entering a contract mediated by commodities and money. And it is up to chance whether commodity exchange will in fact occur. Until a commodity reaches the market, it is not certain whether it will be sold, and even if it is sold, the price may be inadequate. Moreover, there is no certainty that the necessary thing one intends to buy will be available on the market at a purchasable price. For such reasons, people’s very existence within capitalist society, where the market is widespread, is in the hands of chance. Yet, as long as modern property based on reified things is considered to be justified, this state of affairs will not seem unwarranted. This contradiction appears in a concentrated form in the case of wageworkers. Unlike premodern slaves or serfs, wageworkers are separated from land and the other means of production. Quite literally they are property-less. Although slaves and serfs were not legally recognized owners, they could still be the de facto owners of land and the other means of production. In the case of modern property, however, which is only recognized based on the power of reified things, ownership has an exclusive character, allowing capitalists to exclusively own the means of production they purchase. The wageworkers who actually use those means of production are not able to be the de facto owners, and so, in order to live, must continually sell their labor power as a commodity. Whether they will be able to do so in fact is a matter of chance. Once they fail to sell their labor power, they are unable to buy the provisions to live and could even be driven from their homes. This forces wageworkers to exert every effort to sell their labor power to capitalists. If jobs are hard to come by, workers may have to accept inferior conditions like low pay and long working hours. And once a job has been found, workers must do their utmost to hold on to it. This raises the paradoxical situation in capitalist society of workers striving to be

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exploited by capital. As Marx noted in the passage quoted earlier, unlike the slaves whose existence is guaranteed even though their free personality is negated, “free workers” must labor at a far greater intensity, and therefore in a more subordinate manner, since they must continually maintain their existence through the sale of a commodity that is prey to chance. Wageworkers are thus forced to be voluntarily subservient. Marx uses the term “absolute poverty” to indicate laboring individuals separated from the means of production and forced to live as property-less persons. Under capitalism, along with the quantitative gap between rich and poor, there is a qualitative poverty based on reification. The existence of workers compelled to continue living under absolute poverty—that is, the property-less laborers who make up the “working poor”—is a unique product of capitalist society. Relative Surplus Population Places Additional Constraint on Wage Labor The permanent existence of unemployment that accompanies capital accumulation worsens the labor conditions and life environment of wageworkers; and here we will briefly outline the underlying process. With the advance of capital accumulation, capital changes its composition. First, it is clear that a rise in productive power increases the quantity of the means of production vis-à-vis the number of workers using them in production. This increases the proportion of the value of constant capital (i.e. capital invested in the means of production) to the value of variable capital (i.e. capital invested in labor power). The rise in productive power reduces the value of not only labor power but also the means of production that compose the constant capital. Thus, the rise in the quantity of the means of production does not correspond exactly to the increase in the magnitude of the value of constant capital. However, the overall tendency is for the value of constant capital to rise as the physical quantity of the means of production increases, thereby increasing the proportion of the value of constant to variable capital.38 Marx calls this rise in the value of constant to variable capital—resulting from technical changes—a rise in the organic composition of capital. To begin with, let’s consider a case where capital accumulation progresses without a rise in the organic composition of capital. Here the  Regarding this point, see also footnote 48.

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accumulation of capital will increase the variable capital commensurately. Demand for the labor-power commodity is thus increased, raising the price of labor power (i.e. wages). But the rise in wages does not continue indefinitely. If wages rise too high, invested capital will be unable to obtain an adequate quantity of surplus value. Therefore, once the price of labor power reaches a certain point, capital accumulation begins to decline, which in turn lowers wages by diminishing demand for the labor-power commodity. Wages cannot rise to the point where they threaten the obtainment of surplus value, since that is the reason for purchasing labor power. Next, we can consider a case of a rising organic composition of capital. This is the typical case of capital accumulation, since it accompanies the development of productive power. Here the accumulation of capital occurs alongside a decline in the proportion of variable to constant capital. The increase in the number of workers resulting from capital accumulation is offset by the proportional decrease of variable capital. Even though the progression of capital accumulation accompanied by a rise in the organic composition of capital can lead to an absolute rise in demand for labor power, that demand is always decreasing, relatively speaking. This decrease of variable capital relative to constant capital amidst capital accumulation necessarily produces a relative surplus population unneeded for capital valorization. This occurs because the population of wageworkers generated by the progression of capital accumulation cannot be absorbed by capital whose organic composition of capital continues to rise. The term “relative” means that it is a surplus with regard to the valorization of capital, not a simple case of a surplus population. In this way, capitalist society continually generates unemployed persons who want to work but do not have the opportunity. This is a phenomenon that could not arise in a pre-capitalist society. This relative surplus population is vital to capital, strengthening its control over workers. First of all, the relative surplus population forms an “industrial reserve army” for capital, having great significance as a pool of labor power for capital to access whenever it seeks expanded accumulation. If the industrial reserve army is large, it allows capital to carry out a large-scale expansion of production without raising wages. Moreover, the existence of a relative surplus population puts capital in a more advantageous position toward wageworkers, since a large relative surplus population of the unemployed basically constitutes many competitors to those currently employed. The unemployed seeking any sort of

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employment will be willing to accept inferior working conditions. And the already employed may accept lower wages, longer working hours, or a higher intensity of work to avoid being replaced by the unemployed. In such ways, working conditions worsen overall, and the domination of workers by capital is strengthened. This can be seen in Japan, where there has been an increase of the irregularly employed in a state of “semi-­ unemployment” and a proliferation of super-exploitative companies.39 In resisting this strengthening rule of capital, social security for the unemployed is of crucial importance. But in Japan and other countries the insufficiency of unemployment insurance and other benefits keeps wageworkers in a weak position. Reification of the Reproduction Process and the General Laws of Capitalist Accumulation Here I want to theoretically summarize the points discussed in this section. As we have seen, a social condition for capitalist production is the separation of labor power from the means of production. However, considering capitalist production as a continual process, which is to say, a process of reproduction, we can see that wage labor continually reproduces that separation, which is its own premise. The wageworker carries out his own labor as functions of capital, that is, as wage labor, and thereby he “constantly produces objective wealth, in the form of capital, an alien power that dominates and exploits him.”40 Through such a “power that 39  Working conditions are getting worse in Japan every year, with “irregular workers” now accounting for nearly 40% of the entire workforce. One in three young people are members of the “precariat,” facing irregular employment and low wages. Their contracts are easily terminated due to a company’s circumstances. One of the biggest reasons for this situation is that irregular workers have been ignored by major Japanese labor unions and given no protection. This problem appeared in early 2000s after Japanese economic crisis in the previous decade, and “full-time irregular workers” have become a social problem since then. Moreover, the new labor problems have spread to regular workers in recent years through the emergence of so-called burakku kigyo (“sweatshop companies”) that hire young people fresh out of university and treat them as disposable resources. Such companies hire many young employees and then weed them out, resulting in toxic workplaces that cannot be endured over the long term. Under such conditions, over 30% of university graduates who join the workforce leave their job within three years. Japanese labor unions are organized by each company, not by each industry, and unions are subordinated to their companies. That is one reason why Japanese companies face almost no restrictions on how they treat workers. 40  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 716.

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dominates and exploits” the wageworker, capitalist rules and subordinates him, thereby reproducing the separation of labor power from the means of production. In short, under capitalist society, workers are ruled by a power produced through their own behavior. In this capitalist process of reproduction, reification encompasses not only the production relations and the production process but also the entirety of the reproduction process pertaining to people’s lives. For example, a single day of a wageworker can be divided between the working day and free time, but in the process of reproduction such a distinction is only relative. The reason is that wageworkers’ individual consumption and rest are always aspects of the production and reproduction of capital, since those activities depend on the wage paid to workers by capital and involve the reproduction of the labor power vital to capital. But, unlike the production process it directly organizes, capital does not need to directly intervene in the reproduction process of labor power. As long as capital pays a wage equivalent to the value of the labor power it uses, the reproduction process of labor power can also be composed in a way that that suits capital’s own valorization.41 Within capitalist production relations, wageworkers depend on the sale of labor power to obtain the means of livelihood they need in the process of living, so they must reproduce their own existences in a manner appropriate to the labor-power commodity. Even in their own life processes, which should be their “free time,” wageworkers are necessarily aware of their own conditions of existence as such. Thus, “the working class, even when it stands outside the direct labor process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the lifeless instruments of labor are.”42 Indeed, under the capitalist mode of production, “the worker exists to satisfy the need of the existing values for valorization, as opposed to the inverse situation, in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development.”43 This is the reification of the reproduction process in which that inverted relationship is established through the continual repetition of wage labor. 41  Of course, capital is not able to get by without some sort of intervention for the sake of reproducing labor power. Capital utilizes the state to actively intervene in the process to reproduce labor power, seeking to regulate individual consumption and leisure so that it suits capital’s aim of reproducing the labor-power commodity. In Capital, Marx looks only at the restrictions and management of the movement of labor power, but the state also intervenes in a variety of realms, including public sanitation, city planning, social welfare, and the tax system. 42  Ibid., p. 719. 43  Ibid., p. 772.

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The reification of the reproduction process deepens when the reproduction process is carried out on an expanded scale through the accumulation of capital, exerting a huge influence on the employment and lives of wageworkers. As long as the movement of capital accumulation is the subject that forms social reproduction, it will be the independent variable, while wages will be the dependent variable, determined by it. As we have seen, rapid capital accumulation can result in a sharp rise in wages, causing surplus value to drop suddenly, which leads to a decline in capital accumulation. Wage increases are thus confined within the limit that does not threaten capital accumulation. On top of this, capital always generates a relative surplus population through the rising organic composition of capital that accompanies capital accumulation, and that surplus population places severe competitive pressure on wageworkers to make them even more submissive. While hiring an ever-larger scale of workers, capital at the same time forces some of them into unemployment, which keeps the level of wages within a certain limit and places competitive pressure on employed workers to compel them to work even longer hours. The long working hours in turn generate more unemployed workers. The potential poverty that is created as a result transforms workers into subjects even more subordinate than slaves. This “despotism of capital” is how capital creates the conditions for its own accumulation. In the manner above, the mechanism of capitalist accumulation always holds the relative surplus population in equilibrium with the extent and energy of capital accumulation, maintaining the conditions needed for capital accumulation. This is the general law of capitalist accumulation. However, workers discover this mechanism eventually  and  come to realize that in order to safeguard their own lives, the lives of the unemployed must be protected. Indeed, the craft unions of the nineteenth century created their own mutual aid associations to provide security to the unemployed and thereby prevent their own working conditions from worsening.44 As unskilled workers became the majority of the working class in the late nineteenth century, the labor unions demanded that the state create and fund a public system to protect people’s lives. This led to 44  “[B]y setting up trade unions, etc., they try to organize planned co-operation between the employed and the unemployed in order to obviate or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalist production on their class….” (ibid., p. 793)

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unemployment insurance as well as the social security system that covers various other “risks.”

Why Do Crises Occur? Capitalism Cannot Avert Crisis The contradictions of the capitalist mode of production lead not only to poverty, the class divide, and labor problems, but also to periodic economic crises that imperil social reproduction. Phenomena arising from economic crises are general overproduction, decreased demand for the means of production and labor power amidst the decline in productive activity, and a further contraction of demand due to mass unemployment. Capital serves as a powerful theoretical tool for clarifying these phenomena concerning crisis. It is true that the phenomenal forms of crisis have changed significantly since Marx’s own day. At that time, it was common for a crisis to break out at the end of the industrial cycle every ten years or so, but from the twentieth century the industrial cycle was not as clear as before. Moreover, after the Great Depression the increase in state intervention based on Keynesianism, and the mass production and consumption that characterizes Fordist accumulation, resulted in crisis no longer occurring in such a dramatic form as before. Still, the Fordist accumulation later stalled, and under stagflation Keynesian intervention lost its effectiveness during the economic crisis of the 1970s. In recent years, economic crises have occurred following the collapse of speculative bubbles, such as the 2008 financial crisis. That capitalism has not freed itself from crisis is unmistakably clear. Here we will take a look at the issue of crisis by referring not only to the completed first volume of Capital but also to the manuscripts for the incomplete second volume (that Engels later edited as volumes two and three). Why Does a Crisis Occur? Why does a crisis occur in the first place? Economic crises did not occur in societies prior to capitalism. As we have seen, under pre-capitalist economic systems, problems related to the social distribution of labor and products were solved on the basis of

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tradition or custom or by some communal decision. In such societies, the phenomenon of producing more products than society needed was hardly possible, and it was even less likely for unemployment or poverty to arise from such overproduction. Most disturbances to social reproduction in those societies were due to warfare, the spread of disease, harsh weather conditions, climate change, and so on. In contrast, producers under the economic system of capitalism do not distribute labor and products based on tradition and customs or according to the decision of the community. Rather, they undertake productive activities with only their own private interests in mind. As long as production is carried out in this anarchic manner, rather than being under direct social control, crises seem able to occur. But that alone is not enough to say that a crisis can occur. This is because, as noted already, the market mechanism in capitalist society is able to solve the problems of labor and product distribution. How is it then that a crisis can occur despite this self-­ adjusting character of the market mechanism? A key factor in considering this issue is the existence of money, which is vital to the expression of a commodity’s value. As Marx writes in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “crises cannot occur without circulation of money.”45 Many economists in Marx’s day were influenced strongly by “Say’s Law,” formulated by Jean-Baptiste Say, which stated that supply generates the same amount of demand because producers produce commodities to obtain the commodities they need. According to this logic, an abundant supply of goods means that there is an abundant demand for them. Thus, even though the supply of individual commodities could happen to exceed demand, overproduction for society as a whole was said to be impossible. Marx thoroughly critiqued Say’s Law, pointing out that it is based on a misconception of the nature of money. Economists influenced by Say’s Law believed that money was simply a convenient tool for commodity exchange. If a producer of wheat wanted to exchange that commodity for iron, for example, such barter exchange would only be possible in the rare case that the iron producer also wanted wheat, so economists believed that money was introduced to facilitate exchange. According to this view, money cannot disrupt commodity exchange because it is just a means to facilitate the exchange of goods. In thus treating the circulation of commodities as essentially the same as barter exchange, economists viewed the sale of one commodity as equivalent to the purchase of another commodity.  K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in MECW, vol. 29, p. 353.

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However, as we saw earlier, money is not just a tool to facilitate commodity exchange. In order for products of private labor to be exchanged, they must be treated as things of value, that is, as commodities; and in order for products to be treated as commodities, their value must be made visible. Money is necessary for this. Unlike commodities in general, money is the embodiment of value, so that its value has direct currency without the attachment of a price tag. In other words, money is the value body, and every other commodity must express its own value using money as such. Therefore, only money has direct exchangeability vis-à-vis every other commodity. Any commodity can be obtained as long as one possesses the amount of money indicated on the price tag. Money is not merely a tool for exchange, but a special thing with the power of directly exchangeability with every other commodity. It is true that commodity exchange is more convenient, thanks to the use of money, and that it can develop further and further as a result. However, money does more than just facilitate exchange. The special power of money generates a new contradiction when the exchange of commodities is split into sale and purchase. Anyone who has money can make a purchase, but the holder of the commodity will not necessarily be able to make a sale. As Marx says, the commodity is obliged to take a “fatal leap” to become money. With the split of commodity exchange into sale and purchase, the idea of Say’s Law that “the sale of one commodity equals the purchase of another commodity” is no longer tenable, since it is possible to sell a commodity and not use the money obtained to purchase another commodity. The split of commodity exchange into the oppositional acts of sale and purchase generates the possibility of crisis. The ability to sell a given commodity will depend on whether someone desires to purchase it. But even if a person sells a commodity to come into possession of money, it is not absolutely necessary to use the money obtained to purchase another commodity. Since money has direct exchangeability, it can be used whenever a person desires to make a purchase. The question of when the money will again enter circulation depends on the circumstances at the time. A person may decide to hold on to the money if there does not happen to be a desired commodity on the market. Once the circulation of commodities has been interrupted, a chain reaction can occur, whereby the inability to sell one commodity prevents the owner from purchasing some other commodity, rendering the sale of

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that commodity impossible. An inability to sell can spread throughout society in that way, resulting in a crisis. Of course, this is only a general explanation of the potential for a crisis; that is, an explanation of the possibility of crisis. Understanding why a crisis actually occurs, which concerns the reality of crisis, requires us to consider the movement of capital accumulation. The Profit Rate as the Standard for Capital Movement Up to now, we have considered the gain of capitalists based on the concept of surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the value created by the labor power that the capitalist purchases and the value of that labor power. However, the gain that a capitalist obtains through the investment of capital appears in reality to be the product of the investment of capital, rather than the product of labor power. This is because the capitalist, in actually carrying out production, must invest capital not only in labor power but also in the means of production and the issue that concerns the capitalist, therefore, is how much gain can be generated from the entire capital invested. The term profit refers to surplus value conceived as the product of the total invested capital. For an actual capitalist, surplus value always appears in the form of profit. Here we will abbreviate “surplus value” as s, “variable capital” (i.e. capital invested in labor power) as v; and “constant capital” (i.e. capital invested in the means of production) as c. The rate of surplus value, which indicates how much surplus value is obtained from variable capital, can thus be expressed as vs , which shows the degree to which workers are exploited. The higher the rate of surplus value, the more profit the capitalist obtains. But what directly interests the capitalist is not the rate of surplus value, but how much surplus value can be obtained from the total invested capital. This is the rate of profit, indicated as cs  + v. The profit rate constitutes the standard of action for the capitalist. A capitalist, for example, determines which industry sector to invest in and how much can be accumulated based on the profit rate of each sector. The movement of actual capital cannot be understood without considering the profit rate, which is the primary factor determining the actions of capitalists as they continually seek to maximize their own profit.

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General Rate of Profit and Price of Production In order to maximize profit, capitalists act using the profit rate as their standard. Their actions equalize the rate of profit, thereby forming a general rate of profit. If every commodity were exchanged at a price corresponding to its value, clearly the rates of profit between different production sectors would be different. For instance, in a sector like manufacturing, where the expenditures on facilities and materials are far greater than personnel costs, the portion of constant capital (c) within the invested capital (c  +  v) is larger than that of other sectors. Since the proportion of the variable capital, which produces surplus value, is lower in that sector, the rate of profit (cs  + v) is also lower. In contrast, for the service sector, which has a high proportion of personnel costs, the proportion of the overall capital invested in variable capital is larger than in other sectors. Since this sector has a higher proportion of variable capital, which produces surplus value, its rate of profit is also higher. The proportion between c and v (cv ), which reflects the technical conditions, is referred to as the organic composition of capital, so if we assume that price is in accordance with value, industries with a high organic composition of capital would have a lower profit rate, while industries with a low organic composition of capital would have a higher profit rate. Therefore, if the commodities in every industry were exchanged at a price fully corresponding to value, the distribution of the total labor of society would not be possible. Since the capitalists who organize actual social production act in order to obtain the highest rate of profit possible, capital would be concentrated in industries where the profit rate is higher due to the low organic composition of capital, whereas capital would unlikely to be invested in sectors with a lower rate of profit due to a high organic composition. However, this does not mean that the distribution of the total labor of society becomes impossible when private producers become capitalists and act in line with the profit rate. In fact, it is by acting in accordance with the rate of profit that capitalists end up distributing the aggregate social labor. But here, the law of value is “modified” by the differences in production conditions between industries. In the explanation below, it will be assumed for simplicity sake that the rate of surplus value is constant. In industrial sectors with a high organic composition of capital, it is more costly for capitalists to supply the labor to meet social demand than

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in other sectors, because even if the same amount of labor is supplied, a greater amount of production means is needed. As already noted, if commodities produced in such sectors are sold at a price corresponding with their value, the rate of profit would be lower than the average rate of profit within society, so that capitalists would not invest in the sector and adequate labor would not be supplied. But this in turn would mean that not enough commodities would be produced in the sector to meet social demand, driving up the price above value. Such a price rise would continue until capital could obtain a profit at an average rate and meet social demand for commodities in the given sector.46 The commodity price that allows capital to obtain this profit at an average rate of profit is called the price of production. Conversely, industrial sectors with a lower composition of capital would be able to supply labor at a lower cost compared to other sectors. Thus, if the commodities in those sectors were sold at their value, the profit rate would be higher than the average rate of profit, leading to the concentration of capital in those sectors and generating an excess of labor. In such a case, commodities would be an oversupplied in those sectors, driving down the commodity prices below value. The fall in prices would continue until it reached a price whereby capital could obtain an average rate of profit, that is, the price of production, and thereby eliminate the oversupply of commodities. Such movements of capital in pursuit of maximum profit create a relation of supply and demand centered on the price of production, thereby equalizing the rates of profit between production sectors. The average rate of profit established through the equalization of each rate of profit is called the general rate of profit, and the profit obtained at this general rate is called average profit. As is clear from our discussion thus far, the general rate of profit is determined by the rate of profit for the capital with an average organic composition. The price of production of a commodity is the cost expended by the capitalist on its production, that is to say, the cost price (cost of raw materials, depreciation cost of machinery and tools, and the cost of labor power) plus average profit. With the equalization of rates of profit to form a general rate of profit, the central point around which a commodity’s price fluctuates is not value but the price of production. However, what occurs is not a qualitative 46  The wording of this sentence is for the sake of convenience since, as in the case of value explained earlier, static equilibrium cannot be achieved.

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change, but only a quantitative divergence. As we have seen, the price of production is quantitatively different than value, but the two are the same insofar as they express the social character of abstract human labor. This is because in using the rate of profit as their standard for action, capitalists bring about the distribution of the aggregate social labor to the various production sectors. This means that the law of value still penetrates insofar as the social distribution of the total labor of society limits the price of production. Indeed, without this perspective, we are not able to clarify how the phenomenal forms of capitalism relate to people’s practical behavior, especially productive activities. This is precisely why, even though the price of production is the point around which the prices of commodities actually fluctuate, in analyzing the internal relations of the capitalist mode of production we must assume that price quantitatively matches value.47 Profit Rate Falls in Capitalist Society In a capitalist society, the general rate of profit tends to decline. The evident trend toward a falling rate of profit from the eighteenth to nineteenth century led to attempts by economists to account for this phenomenon. Adam Smith tried to explain it from intensifying competition among capitalists, while David Ricardo sought the cause in wage increases that result from rising grain prices related to the law of diminishing returns. Competition between capital can explain the equalization of the rate of profit, but not its tendency to fall. Meanwhile, the law of diminishing returns itself is invalid—and even if a rise in wages occurs, it can only explain a fall in the rate of surplus value, not a fall in the rate of profit. Marx, in contrast, explained the phenomenon of a tendential fall in the profit rate from a rising organic composition of capital. As explained earlier, he argued that productive power inevitably rises under the capitalist mode of production; this is accompanied by a rise in the organic composition of capital, which is precisely what leads to a fall in the profit rate.

47  The so-called “transformation debate” has been waged over many years with regard to the relation between value and price of production. Readers can refer to the following two works on this controversy: F. Moseley, Money and Totality: A Macro-Monetary Interpretation of Marx’s Logic in Capital and the End of the “Transformation Problem” (Leiden: Brill, 2015) and A.  Kliman, Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006). As those books demonstrate, a mistaken interpretation of Marx lies at the foundation of the transformation debate itself.

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We can examine this issue using a mathematical formula. If the rate of surplus value (vs ) is abbreviated as s’ and the organic composition of capital (cv ) as k, then the rate of profit (cs  + v) can be written as s ’ + 1. If k rises, k the denominator naturally increases, resulting in a lower rate of profit. But, as is immediately apparent, this formula at the same time indicates that the fall is only tendential, since a rise in productive power generates relative surplus value as well, so that the numerator (s’) also rises. Moreover, the rise in productive power lowers the value of commodities that constitute constant capital, thus moderating the increase of k. In this way, a rise in productive power augments not only k but also s’ and brings down the value of commodities that constitute constant capital (c), thus impeding the fall in the profit rate. This is why the falling rate of profit is a tendency, not a unilateral movement.48 This general tendency toward a fall in the general rate of profit that accompanies the development of the capitalist mode of production is referred to as the law of the tendential fall in the profit rate. Although individual capitalists raise their productive power to maximize profit and outcompete rivals, their individual actions to maximize profit have the overall effect of bringing down the general rate of profit in society as a whole. 48  Sweezy and others argued that the tendential fall in the rate of profit was not demonstrated because the increase of s’ is not necessarily tendentially lower than the rise of k. Yet, as Marx indicated, there is a limit that cannot be exceeded with regard to compensating for the falling rate of profit through an augmentation of m’. This is because regardless of s’, the increase of productive power will lower v +c s that forms the upper limit for the fluctuation of the rate of profit. In response to this, Nobuo Okishio offered the following counter-criticism. Capitalists will only seek to introduce new technologies that reduce cost price, but if that condition is met there cannot at the same time be technologies that bring down the rate of profit, assuming that real wages do not change. However, this argument is premised on Okishio’s “value equation” that bears no relation to Marx’s own argument. Considered on the basis of Marx’s theory, there is no way for the decrease of the invested constant capital (c) to tendentially exceed the reduction in added value (v+s) through an increase in productive power, since the former is always the result of the latter, and there is a certain time lag. In other words, v+s is the result of the labor of the current period, but c is from the labor of previous periods. Of course, there is the “moral depreciation” of c, which is the deprecation of fixed capital due to the obsolescence of the means of labor, but this “depreciation” is the result of the previous or earlier increase of productive power because no capitalist is able to use the goods currently being produced for the production of goods. Rather, since the value of capital already invested cannot be retroactively reduced by the moral depreciation, it will bring about a fall in the rate of profit through making it difficult to compensate for the value of the fixed capital.

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Indeed, in contemporary capitalism as well, the general rate of profit continues to fall tendentially. This fact can be seen directly in the phenomenon of low interest rates. Low rates of interest have become the norm in advanced capitalist countries worldwide. Japan in particular has very low interest rates. The low interest rates today are due to the low rates of profit and inactive capital accumulation, which lower demand for money. The cause of the fall in the profit rate that generates this situation is fundamentally explained by Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. Fall in the Profit Rate Makes Crisis a Reality The law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit is important for the enormous influence it exerts on the movement of capital accumulation, thus making economic crisis an actuality. In his manuscript for Book Three of Capital (Volume Three in Engels’ edition), Marx sketches out this process more or less as follows. The starting point of the industrial cycle (or so-called “business cycle”), according to Marx, is the “moderate activity” that comes after breaking through the period of stagnation that follows a crisis, marking the starting point of a new industrial cycle. In order to reach that stage of moderate activity, new markets have to be opened up, new use values developed, and new technologies uncovered. Conversely, if those conditions are not fully in place, it will be difficult to escape stagnation, and even if a new industrial cycle begins, it will be feeble. In the phase of such moderate activity, new technologies are introduced, raising productive power, which in turn raises the organic composition of capital. At this stage, however, the general rate of profit does not yet fall. In fact, it rises because extra surplus value is actively obtained during this phase and demand expands through the opening of new markets and development of new use values, leading to rising market prices of commodities. Stimulated by the high rate of profit, capital is actively accumulated, bringing the industrial cycle into the phase of “prosperity.” Demand for the means of production and labor power rises, which increases demand for the means of consumption, further activating capital accumulation. However, it is precisely this activation of capital accumulation that begins to lower the general rate of profit near the end of the period of prosperity. This is because the spread of new technologies drives the organic composition of capital even higher, hindering the obtaining of extra surplus value. But during this phase of the industrial cycle, the absolute quantity of profit

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continues to expand. As long as capital accumulation outpaces the fall in the rate of profit, the quantity of profit can continue to increase. At times, capital tries to break through the fall in the rate of profit, which is its own self-limit, by using credit (in the forms of bank loans, etc.) to accelerate accumulation. Under this situation, not every individual capital is able to continue increasing profit. Amidst the fall in the general rate of profit, some capitalists become unable to secure the minimum quantity of capital required, which is the minimum amount of money they must utilize as the personal bearers of capital (e.g. if 100 pounds in money is invested as capital but only brings a small profit, the person would not be able to continue as a capitalist). Such cases clearly increase as the rate of profit falls. Money that had operated as capital is no longer able to function as such through normal operations. Smaller capital is left with no choice but to take out loans for expanding the scale of capital or to engage in business ventures and speculative activities in pursuit of larger profits. The result is an economic “bubble” and an increasingly booming market. In this manner, to break through the limitation of the falling profit rate, capital must accumulate even more rapidly or engage in ventures and speculation. This overheats the economy, bringing the business cycle into the stage of “overproduction.” Once this point has been reached, the increasing pace of accumulation drives up the price of the means of production and wages, which lowers the rate of profit even further. As long as social demand remains robust, the decline in the rate of profit can be offset by rising commodity prices. Moreover, the active expansion of commercial capital (retailers, wholesalers, etc.) creates “fictitious demand,” while an economic bubble can lead to the appreciation of assets, making it easier to procure investment funds. Thus, despite overproduction, a situation persists where it seems, at least on the surface, that everything is proceeding just fine. But the increased supply of commodities resulting from the enormous accumulation meets even the swollen social demand, making it difficult to offset the rising cost prices with higher commodity prices. Furthermore, the wageworkers who make up the vast majority of the population within capitalist society fundamentally only receive payment for the reproduction cost of their own labor power, so that even though wages increase as the business cycle heats up, effective demand remains limited. And commercial capital and credit cannot conceal overproduction for so long.

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This is how, at a certain stage, accelerated accumulation during a period of overproduction brings about a situation where accumulation ends up reducing the quantity of profit. That is to say, increasing the quantity of invested capital leads to a rapid fall in the rate of profit, contracting the amount of profit. Marx describes this situation as the “absolute overproduction of capital.” When it occurs, accumulation stalls and demand for the means of production falls rapidly, leading to mass unemployment in that production sector, which in turn rapidly decreases demand for goods in the sector producing the means of consumption. The rate of profit thus falls even further. In this way, crisis becomes a reality. A crisis is more than just a disturbance of social reproduction, however. For capital, crisis is also a period of adjusting production for the recovery of the rate of profit. This is possible because the fall in social demand lowers the prices of the means of production and wages, thereby lowering production costs. Still, there is no way to automatically throw off the stagnation that follows a crisis. As noted earlier, capital is only able to initiative a new industrial cycle on the foundation of the technical level and markets obtained in the previous industrial cycle and through the discovery of elements for further development. Thus, as the industrial cycle repeats itself, capital confronts increasingly large difficulties.49 The above is of course simply an explanation of an archetypal case of the industrial cycle based on one part of Marx’s manuscript for Capital, rather than an explanation of his entire theory of crisis. Moreover, this overview does not clarify every sort of real crisis. However, what is particularly important is that Marx reveals that the fundamental cause of real economic crisis or stagnation is not the financial market (although finance can of course exacerbate or alleviate a crisis), but the real economy, that is, the movement of capital invested in the actual industrial sector.50 In advanced capitalist countries like Japan, for example, capitalist development has lowered the general rate of profit and matured markets. This is precisely why capital accumulation is not active in such countries, which cannot escape stagnation. Even if government spending and financial policies can restrict or alleviate a crisis, this cannot lead to active capital 49  The explanation of crisis here relies heavily on the views of Samezo Kuruma. Readers can consult his Marx-Lexikon zur Politischen Ökonomie, Bd. 4–5 (Vaduz: Topos Verlag, 1977). 50  “The superficiality of political economy shows itself in the fact that it views the expansion and contraction of credit as the cause of the periodic alternations in the industrial cycle, whereas it is a mere symptom of them.” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p, 786)

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accumulation. If one sought to forcibly impel economic growth in such a situation, it would be brought about by increasing the rate of surplus value (exploitation) through expanding the length or intensity of labor, or commercializing fundamental social services that had been outside the market (e.g. education, nursing care, daycare, healthcare, etc.), causing even more turbulence for social reproduction.

The Origins of Capitalism and Its Fate In this chapter, we have seen that the behavior of human beings themselves generates and reproduces the capitalist mode of production. When labor is carried out as private labor, the private producers relate to the products of labor as things of value, which gives birth to commodities. The commodity, in order to express value, necessarily generates the general equivalent, which becomes money. And further, when private labor is carried out as wage labor under the coercion of the power of those reified things, self-valorizing value, or capital, is generated. In short, within modern society, the particular form of labor (i.e. private labor carried out as wage labor) reproduces the capitalist mode of production every day. Therefore, the historical birth of the system of capitalism required the generation of this particular form of labor. Conversely, the future transformation of the system will require private labor and wage labor to be transformed. Here we will consider how the capitalist mode of production emerged and how it is likely to be replaced by a new social system. Marx concludes the first volume of Capital by discussing the historical origins of the capitalist mode of production and its fate. Many economists prior to Marx had sought the origins of capitalism in the temperance and frugality of hard-working persons. This is the idea that people who accumulated wealth by working diligently became capitalists, which gave birth to capitalism. However, as Marx points out, “[i]n actual history, it is a notorious fact that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, in short, violence, play the greatest part.”51 Capitalism also was born out of the womb of the old feudal society, with violence as the “midwife.” The birth of capitalism came about through stripping the peasants of the land that was their de facto property and formed the basis for a nearly self-sufficient life, transforming them into wageworkers with nothing to sell but their labor power. Marx calls this process of birth primitive accumulation.  Ibid., p. 874.

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This process first unfolded in England, where it took its archetypal form. Feudal lords there sought to produce wool for export to obtain revenue in the form of money, which gradually was becoming important. They used violence to force the peasantry off the land, strip them of their common land, and turn agricultural fields into grazing land for sheep. Moreover, the land become the exclusive property of those who forcibly acquired it, based on the power of money rather than the premodern relations of personal dependence, so that the peasants were completely excluded from the land. This exclusionary process is referred to as “enclosure.” The feudal common order was dissolved, generating a huge mass of property-less, private individuals. Since these individuals had not yet been subjected to modern discipline, they did not voluntarily sell their labor power to perform arduous labor under the direction of others. Instead, they became beggars, bandits, and vagrants. The force of law was required to compel these individuals to perform wage-labor. Thus were the agricultural folk first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded and tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws into accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage-labor.52 Centuries are required before the “free” worker, owing to the greater development of the capitalist mode of production, makes a voluntary agreement, i.e. is compelled by social conditions to sell the whole of his active life, his very capacity for labor, in return for the price of his customary means of subsistence, to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage.53

This historical process created a huge number of wageworkers employed by private producers. At the same time, the commodity economy took deeper root, as the destruction of their once self-sufficient lives forced many people to become wageworkers. Meanwhile, the landowners who had enriched themselves through enclosure and colonial rule and successful wealthy farmers became capitalists. The above is an overview of primate accumulation, a process in which, as Marx describes, “capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every

 Ibid., p. 899.  Ibid., p. 382.

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pore, with blood and dirt.”54 That was the way capitalism was born, but how will it disappear from the scene when a new society takes its place? Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production provides us with many hints about the future, but he did not write much about that topic per se, only leaving us a few brief descriptions, such as the following: Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by a few, other developments take place, such as the growth of the co-­ operative form of the labor process on an ever-increasing scale, the conscious technical application of science, the planned exploitation of the soil, the transformation of the means of labor into forms in which they can only be used in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and, with this, the growth of the international character of the capitalist regime. Along with the constant decrease in the number of capitalist magnates, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production which has flourished alongside and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.55

Marx also summarizes the process of the birth and demise of capitalism: The capitalist mode of appropriation, which springs from the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of its proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a natural process, its own negation. This is the negation of the negation. It does not re-establish private property, but it does indeed establish individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: namely co-operation and the pos-

 Ibid., p. 926.  Ibid., p. 929.

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session in common of the land and the means of production produced by labor itself.56

The self-employed peasants near the end of the feudal period were de facto private landowners, and in this sense they freely related to the means of production, allowing them to polish their “manual skill, ingenuity, and free individuality” just as “a virtuoso is the free proprietor of his instrument.”57 That way of relating to the means of production was destroyed through the primitive accumulation that gave birth to the capitalist mode of production and generated property-less private individuals compelled to perform wage labor. However, capitalism itself, through its internal mechanisms, combines the wageworkers and socializes their labor. The rebellion of workers against the contradictions generated by capitalism also grows, creating an active movement toward free association. Moreover, as a result of worsening working conditions, environmental destruction, the falling rate of profit, and economic crisis, productive power increases to the point that it is difficult for society to survive under capitalism. This ushers in the time when the capitalist mode of production must be transformed. On the basis of the development of productive power, socialization of labor, and the striving toward associations during the capitalist era, individual property is re-established. The proprietor is not the state or society, but the free individuals, who unite through their free association. They revive a free way of relating to the means of production, much like the independent farmers and craftsmen of the premodern era. This abolishes the private labor carried out as wage labor, bringing the capitalist mode of production to an end. What is born to take its place is a society based on an association of free individuals.

 Ibid.  MEGA2 II/7, S.677–78.

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CHAPTER 3

How to Fight Against Capitalism (1867–1883): Concept of “Metabolism” Within the Later Thought of Marx

Marx’s Changing Vision Marx finally completed the manuscript for the first volume of Capital in April 1867. Although his manuscript for the second volume at the time was still a rough draft (on which he would continue to work but never finish), his vision of a social transformation already had become far more concrete than before. In a sense, he had fundamentally revised the view he formerly held. The change was not solely due to his study of political economy. As noted earlier, Marx had spent around ten years, starting from 1852, writing articles for the New York Daily Tribune to earn income. In his articles, he not only examined the situation in Europe, but observed, from a global perspective, events in India and China as well as the US Civil War. The knowledge he gained thereby widened and developed his outlook as a theorist. In addition, Marx was actively involved with the International Workingmen’s Association (“the International”), founded in 1864. This was the world’s first international organization of workers. Although the International only existed for ten years, it exerted a strong influence during that time. Marx did not lead the effort to establish the organization, but he was selected as one of the members of the rule-drafting committee and wrote the organization’s inaugural address, its provisional rules, and nearly all of its official documents thereafter. Marx, who had been away from practical activities, returned as a member of the International’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52950-5_3

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General Council and played a guiding role. Moreover, as the organization’s corresponding secretary, he was involved with the workers’ movement in Germany. Such practical activities had an important influence on Marx’s theory. The unfolding of his conception of social transformation was the product of theoretical work carried out in close relation to reality. But how did his vision of transforming society change over the years? The most important change was that he abandoned a crisis-based theory of revolution and came to emphasize the importance of long-term struggles for improvements. At the time he wrote The Communist Manifesto, as we saw in Chap. 1, Marx grasped the ultimate basis for revolution in the contradiction between productive power and the production relations, and thought that revolution would occur when this contradiction erupted in a crisis. An economic crisis did in fact trigger the revolution of 1848, and when the economy recovered the revolutionary wave receded. Two years later, in looking back on the revolutionary process, Marx wrote: “A new revolution is only possible in consequence of a new crisis. It is, however, just as certain as this crisis.”1 This was his crisis-based theory of revolution. However, by the time Marx finished Capital, he no longer adhered to that simplistic position. His view changed for a number of reasons. First of all, although the subsequent economic crisis of 1857 to 1858 shook the political establishment, it did not set off a revolution. Faced with this reality, Marx had to at least abandon the thesis that revolution is “just as certain” as crisis. At the same time, as noted in Chap. 2, Marx became more deeply aware, theoretically, of the strength of capitalism. Around the time of writing The Communist Manifesto, he had thought that capitalism’s destruction of the existing feudal relations, and the replacement thereby of illusory personal ties with purely monetary ones, would bring into stark relief the interest-based relations between people, thus facilitating the transformation of society. Around the time of writing Capital, however, Marx moved away from that simplistic outlook. He came to understand that productive relations between humans are concealed behind relations between reified things as a result of the reification of production relations under the capitalist mode of production, so that people are dazzled by fetishism. Moreover, as a result of behaving every day as the personal bearers of reified things, the logic of reified things and  K. Marx and F. Engels, “Review: May to October [1850],” in MECW, vol. 10, p. 510.

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the logic of value unconsciously transform the nature of people’s desires and their notions of justice, so that they accept, without qualms, the homo oeconomicus image of human beings. Even though contradictions like crisis intensify with the development of capitalism, the power of reified things over people also expands to the point where it penetrates their personalities, making it difficult to resist this power. Recognizing this power of capitalism, Marx could no longer declare that a crisis necessarily leads to revolution. In the process of writing Capital, Marx also acquired a more comprehensive understanding of the contradiction between productive power and the relations of production. As noted in Chap. 2, the contradiction between the two, continually generated by the capitalist mode of production, is manifested not only in crisis but in a variety of phenomena, such as the destruction of the reproduction of labor power and the deterioration of the natural environment. This positioning of crisis in a more relative manner seems another reason why Marx moved away from a crisis-based theory of revolution.

Appreciating Reformist Struggles When Marx abandoned the optimistic, crisis-based view of revolution, he began to place more emphasis on long-term struggles for improvements. The classic example of this is the struggle for laws to limit the working day, mentioned in Chap. 2. Marx emphasized this struggle as a way for wageworkers to secure free time away from the rule of capital. In Grundrisse, he writes: “Free time—which is both leisure and time for higher activity—has naturally transformed its possessor into another subject.”2 Conversely, if workers are subject to long working hours under capital, making it impossible to secure free time, it is harder for them to constitute themselves as subjects capable of resisting the power of capital. This is why Marx emphasized the importance of limiting working hours, as in the following: “A preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.”3

 K. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58, in MECW, vol. 29, p. 97.  K.  Marx, “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council. The Different Questions,” in MECW vol. 20, p. 187. 2 3

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In addition, forcing capital to restrict the working day ripens conditions for transforming society by compelling capital to develop productive power.4 Since its own aim is merely to produce surplus value, capital will thoroughly make use of premodern elements as long as it is rational with regard to exploitation, such as forming combinations with older modes of production like the cottage industry. The historical tendency of capital to develop productive power, and thereby socialize labor and ripen the objective conditions for the higher social form of Association, is premised on the pressure exerted by the class struggle.5 As in the case of limiting the working day, Marx emphasized the importance of vocational training and technological education. In speaking of “education,” he was including not only physical and mental education, but also occupational skills training. As noted in the previous chapter, both vocational training and technological education were necessary to large-scale industry, but they have the significance of enabling wageworkers to regain production knowledge and acquire power to resist capital. Whereas limiting working hours is a strategy for resisting the formal subsumption of labor under capital, vocational training and technological education is a strategy for resisting its substantial subsumption. Viewed in this context, we can understand why, in his manuscripts for Capital and writings for the International, Marx moved toward a more favorable view of the movement for cooperatives. He certainly did not think that cooperatives alone could bring about a social transformation. He recognized that even though producer cooperatives are, in a sense, an association composed by the producers, as long as a cooperative exists as a single enterprise in competition with other capitals, it remains a private producer. Still, through the activities of cooperatives, it becomes possible for workers to cultivate the power to organize production without relying on the power of capital. To that extent, the cooperative movement can raise the capabilities of wageworkers over the long term.

4  “By maturing the material conditions and the social combination of the process of production, it matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of that process, and thereby ripens both the elements for forming a new society and the forces tending towards the overthrow of the old one” (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 635). 5  This significance of the class struggle is emphasized by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, who note the importance of automation to the realization of a post-work society in their book, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work.

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In addition, Marx positioned labor unions, which he already viewed positively, as playing an extremely important role, as he wrote in the “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council: The Different Questions”: “If the Trades’ Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labor, they are still more important as organized agencies for superseding the very system of wages labor and capital rule.”6 The difference, compared to his earlier stance, was in how he positioned labor unions within the reformist struggles. In addition to his earlier idea that the working class would have to organize itself strongly through labor unions before being able to seize political power, he now emphasized the importance of reformist struggles to union organizing. That is to say, he appreciated the long-term significance of movements for reforms, such as limiting the working day, with regard to cultivating the conditions needed to organize workers into labor unions.7 Marx’s appreciation for reformist struggles over the long term did not mean that he was “moderating” his views, however. Rather, it was the outcome of the different perspectives from which he was approaching capitalism: as a journalist observing it from a global perspective, as an activist confronting its strength, and as a theorist more deeply analyzing its foundation as a mode of production. His new emphasis on the importance of long-term reformist struggles to the fundamental transformation of the capitalist mode of production stemmed from an acute awareness that private labor, carried out as wage labor, continually generates the powerful force of reified things. 6  Marx, “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council. The Different Questions,” p. 191. 7  “The political movement of the working class naturally has as its final object the conquest of political power for this class, and this requires, of course, a previous organisation of the working class developed up to a certain point, which arises from the economic struggles themselves. But on the other hand, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and tries to coerce them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory, or even in a particular trade, to force a shorter working day out of the individual capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. The movement to force through an eight-hour law, etc., however, is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing general, socially binding force. Though these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are in turn equally a means of developing this organisation” (K. Marx, “Marx to Friedrich Bolte in New York: [London,] 23 November 1871,” in MECW, vol. 44, p. 258).

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A social transformation involves a fundamental change in the mode of production, so merely grabbing political power through a political revolution is insufficient. The transformation requires the associated workers to be able to administer society through their own power, without relying on the power of market. In The Civil War in France and his first draft for that work, Marx offers the following descriptions: [The working class] know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.8 The working class know that they have to pass through different phases of class struggle. They know that the superseding of the economical conditions of the slavery of labor by the conditions of free and associated labor can only be the progressive work of time, (that economical transformation) that they require not only a change of distribution, but a new organization of production, or rather the delivery (setting free) of the social forms of production in present organized labor (engendered by present industry) of the trammels of slavery, of their present class character, and their harmonious national and international coordination. They know that this work of regeneration will be again and again relented and impeded by the resistances of vested interests and class egotisms. They know that the present “spontaneous action of the natural laws of capital and landed property”—can only be superseded by “the spontaneous action of the laws of the social economy of free and associated labor”, by a long process of development of new conditions, as was the “spontaneous action of the economic laws of slavery” and the “spontaneous action of the economical laws of serfdom.”9

We can see that Marx’s conception of a social transformation has become more concrete and realistic. He severely criticized the distortion of movements through the peculiar dogmas of political sects. His standpoint is that general principles are extracted from the analysis of the capitalist mode of production, whereas the more concrete policy for the movement should be derived from praxis. Still, within Capital, we can get a basic idea of what can be done through praxis to “shorten and alleviate the birth 8  K.  Marx, The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association, in MECW, vol. 22, p. 335. 9  K. Marx, “First Draft of The Civil War In France,” in MECW, vol. 22, p. 491.

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pangs.” We are no longer at the level of thinking in terms of the working class awaiting a crisis to then seize political power and rapidly carry out a social transformation. Rather, Marx argues that before the political revolution, associations must be formed through reformist struggles to limit the power of capitalism. That is to say, workers must resist their formal and substantial subsumption under capital, honing their own power to resist the force of market, which is the capability to administrate society without relying on the market. Even after the political revolution, workers must continue the effort to form associations and limit the power of the market. Such praxis is precisely what shortens and alleviates the birth pangs. But the development of Marx’s conception of social transformation went even further. Later in life, he elaborated a richer conception, based on the theory he had unfolded in Capital.

Communist Society as “Association” Before we examine the new conception of social transformation that Marx arrived at in his later years, let’s first take a quick look at his view of a future society. The typical textbook understanding of Marx’s conception of socialism is that he advocated communists grabbing political power so that the state could nationalize the means of production and carry out a planned economy aimed at equal distribution. The general criticism of socialism, based on this understanding, is that the state swells under socialism, leading to bureaucratism, economic inefficiency, and the suppression of democracy—all of which were factors underlying the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. But this view of “socialism” has nothing in common with Marx’s actual view of socialism as a post-capitalist society. First, socialism is not something that can be achieved through a group or political party gaining power and then declaring the nationalization of the means of production. The transformation of any mode of production is a task of human history that cannot be brought about arbitrarily by certain individuals or a group. The realization of a socialist society requires the ripening of the objective and subjective conditions, and is premised on the historical processes that we examined earlier. Some of the preconditions include the high development of social productive power, intensifying collisions between productive power and the capitalist production relations, and the strength of the working class growing to the point where workers can manage the economy without relying on the power of the market.

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Second, the capitalist mode of production cannot be uprooted by merely nationalizing the means of production and carrying out a planned economy. What fundamentally determines the manner of a mode of production is the form of labor. As long as human beings remain divided as private individuals, no degree of nationalization can fundamentally change the private character of production or abolish commodities and money. Moreover, nationalization of the means of production, on its own, merely shifts the bearers of capital from private individuals to state bureaucrats, and would not alter the workers’ existence as wageworkers. Therefore, even if the means of production were nationalized and brought under the management of state-run enterprises, they would still remain capital. This should be clear from the example of the Soviet Union, which did, in fact, nationalize the means of production and carry out a planned economy. At best, nationalization and the introduction of a planned economy can do nothing more than create another version of capitalism. Moreover, the planned economy under nationalized means of production impedes the full functioning of competition between capitalists, and thus retards the production of relative surplus value and leads to widespread inefficiency. This is one reason why the Soviet model of capitalism inevitably collapsed.10 The key to transforming a mode of production is the transformation of the form of labor. Private labor must be turned into the communal labor of associated free workers, and wage labor separated from the means of production must be transformed into labor based on a fundamental unity between the means of production and the producer. It is precisely the association of workers that brings this transformation about. In the Civil War in France, Marx writes: If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the Capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production—what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, “possible” Communism?11

10  For a fundamental analysis of Soviet society, see P. Chattopadhyay, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience: Essay in the Critique of Political Economy (West Port: Praeger, 1994). 11  Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 335.

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As directly indicated here, Marx’s idea of “possible” communism is not a planned economy run by the state, but rather a system where production is regulated through an alliance of cooperative unions as workers’ associations. In such a system, the associated producers themselves, based on their own volition, carry out the distribution of labor and products, thereby regulating production, so that commodities and money have no need to exist. Also, since the associated producers, as associated individuals, realize individual property with regard to the means of production, there is no exploitation of the labor of others. The result is truly “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”12 Furthermore, as shown in Chap. 1, the modern state dissolves in a society created on the basis of Association. The bureaucratic system that sits atop society as a governing apparatus and the legislative body that justifies the rule of that apparatus are transformed into a governing system of direct democracy, wherein those chosen to play a political function in society are subject to recall.13 The standing army that monopolizes violence is also dissolved, replaced by a militia. Today the notion of a militia seems to lack reality, but one can think in terms of a society in which there is extremely strong civilian control. It should be clear at a glance that his view of a future society is completely different from so-called “actually existing socialism,” with its swollen state apparatus and military expansion. Marx gained a concrete image of the dissolution of the modern state from the example of the Paris Commune of 1871. From 18 March to 28 May of that year, an autonomous government of workers and the people was established in Paris. The Commune opposed the national government over the peace treaty concluded after the Franco-Prussian war and appealed to international assistance when Paris was besieged by the Prussian army. Marx wrote The Civil War in France at the time as an appeal of the International. In it, he noted the positive elements within the efforts of the workers and activists who rose up in Paris and saw in their actions the prospect for the dissolution of the modern state. Later in life, Marx spoke of two stages of communist society (Association) in his “Critique of the Gotha Program,” which criticizes the political  K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in MECW, vol. 6, p. 506.  For a critique of representative democracy, see E.  M. Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 12 13

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program of the German Social Democratic Party. In it, Marx writes that the new society of Association, at the time it is born, still has the “birthmarks” from the bourgeois society that was its womb. By that stage, labor already is performed through the volition of free individuals, rather than carried out under the compulsion of the need for money, but there is still the remnant of the awareness of “bourgeois rights,” so that people do not labor without compensation. Under this lower stage of communism, social production must therefore be organized in a manner whereby people obtain products in line with their quantity of labor. At first glance, it seems that equal rights have been established, but there lingers a “bourgeois limitation” because income is determined one-dimensionally, according to the quantity of labor, without considering the various concrete circumstances of each individual. For instance, one person might be married, while another is not; or one person might have five children, whereas another only has one. Such circumstances are not taken into consideration. “Thus, given an equal amount of work done, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, etc.”14 In a society of Association, however, this limit eventually is overcome: In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and thereby also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of common wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!15

When labor is not carried out solely to obtain the provisions of life, but rather because it is a joy in itself, there will no longer be any need for society to incentivize and organize labor by providing compensation for it. This is how Marx envisaged a future society in which people labor freely and obtain the products they require.

 K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, in MECW, vol. 24, p. 87.  Ibid.

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Key Concept of “Metabolism” How, then, did the “late Marx” elaborate his conception of social transformation based on the perspective of a future society outlined above? One of the key concepts for understanding how his conception evolved is “metabolism.” These days the term “ecology,” coined in 1866 by the biologist Ernst Haeckel, is used to denote the interaction between organisms and the natural environment. But prior to that, chemists and physiologists had denoted the same phenomenon with the concept of “metabolism.” The term was used from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but gained wider currency after being employed by the famous agricultural chemist Justus von Liebig, which led to its introduction in other fields as well. The concept of metabolism as an organic circular life activity in physiology was transferred to political economy to describe the cyclical, organic human activity of production, distribution, and consumption. Marx was one of those influenced by the concept of metabolism. He became aware of the concept in 1851 through an exchange with his physician friend Roland Daniels.16 Along with incorporating the concept of metabolism into his own economic research, Marx at several times in his life focused on the research of Liebig, who employed the concept of metabolism in the realm of physiology. It may be surprising to some that Marx’s study of political economy was not limited to the field of economics alone, but encompassed a broad range of other fields as well, including agricultural chemistry, organic chemistry, technology, geology, and anthropology. Initially, Marx used the concept of metabolism, which explains the cyclical life activity of an organism, as an analogy with regard to the circular activity of an economic society as an organism. But gradually he came to use the term additionally in the sense of a material cycle between human beings and nature. In particular, in the 1860s, when he established his theory of reification through deepening his research on political economy, Marx began to focus on how the material cycle between human beings and nature is disturbed by the capitalist mode of production, often using the concept of metabolism in that context. He thus came to focus on metabolism from what today might be called an “ecological” perspective. 16  K. Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), pp. 72–73.

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In so doing, Marx relied heavily on Liebig’s Organic Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology. According to Liebig, in order to appropriately manage agriculture, it is necessary to consider the “law of replenishment,” which concerns the necessity of soil nutrients for plants. More concretely, it is necessary to replenish the nutrients that are deprived from the land upon harvesting, which requires the functioning of the metabolism through which nutrients absorbed in the soil by plants and then ingested by animals return back to the earth by plants and animals decaying and decomposing. At the time, however, since a large portion of the agricultural produce from rural villages was consumed in London and other large cities, the nutrients from the soil were not adequately returned to the earth. Moreover, as a result of the pursuit of short-term profit, land was not left fallow and continuous cropping was practised. As a result, the normal metabolism vital to agriculture was disturbed, so that the soil was exhausted. In order to compensate for this soil exhaustion, a huge quantity of the fossilized bird droppings called “guano” was imported from South America and used as fertilizer, until its supply was depleted. Liebig severely criticized such “robbery agriculture” from the standpoint of agricultural chemistry. Marx held the ideas of Liebig in high esteem, and in the first volume of Capital wrote: “To have developed from the point of view of natural science the negative, i.e. destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig’s immortal merits.”17 The critique made by Liebig of robbery agriculture remains relevant today in our globalized age of expanding free markets for agricultural goods.

The Major Premise that “Human Beings Are a Part of Nature” Marx did not limit his use of the concept of metabolism to ecological problems. Although I purposely did not discuss the theory of metabolism in Chap. 2, it is no exaggeration to say that it is a fundamental perspective underlying the entirety of Capital. In Volume 1 of Capital, for instance, Marx defines labor as “first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 638.

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himself and nature.”18 In considering labor, Marx’s major premise is that human beings are a part of nature. Like any other organism, human beings must live through interaction with nature. Human beings breathe and take in oxygen, expel carbon dioxide; ingest food and water, and excrete feces and urine. Meanwhile, on the side of nature, the emitted carbon dioxide is converted into oxygen through plant photosynthesis, while urine and feces fertilize the soil to foster plant growth. Marx described this cycle between human beings and nature as their “metabolism.” Like other living organisms, human beings are a part of nature, and their life is maintained through this metabolism. But the necessary relation of human beings to nature extends beyond that. Human beings also produce clothes to keep warm, cultivate the food they consume, and build homes as secure living spaces. In short, human beings alter nature through their actions so that their metabolism with nature can be smoothly carried out. We can say that such activities “mediate” the metabolism between human beings and nature in the sense of regulating and controlling that metabolism. Although the activities of human beings are far more diverse and complex than those of other organisms, there is still a commonality between them. For instance, beavers build dams using branches and mud, which is indeed a mediation of the metabolism with nature. Both animals and human beings maintain their existence by keeping a normal metabolism with nature through their own actions. However, there is a decisive difference between human beings’ mediation of the metabolism with nature and the mediation by other organisms, insofar as the former is done consciously, whereas the latter is only done instinctively. (Of course, animals other than human beings do have a certain consciousness, but there is a significant difference in degree compared to human consciousness.) In laboring, human beings first have a concept of what needs to be done, based on which action is taken to realize the concept. Therefore, the human mediation of the metabolism with nature is very much a conscious, and thus an intellectual, act. For Marx, “labor” refers to this conscious mediation of the metabolism with nature, unique to human beings. In other words, labor is precisely the human mediation, regulation, and control of the metabolism with nature through conscious acts. Because the human mediation of the metabolism is carried out consciously, unlike the case of animals, the labor that mediates the metabolism  Ibid., p. 283.

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is highly diverse and changes over time. In line with the differences and changes, the metabolism between human beings and nature also changes. For example, human beings must build housing to secure a safe living space, but such housing changes over time and is significantly different from region to region. Even if the same product is produced, the production methods can differ. Human beings develop better and more efficient ways to produce things. The manner of mediating the metabolism changes not only depending on the type of product or production technology, but also on the production relations, which are the social relations between people engaged in production. In particular, the character of the mediation of the metabolism changes significantly under capitalist production relations, wherein the private producers are connected via reified things; as compared to communal production relations, in which productive activities are based on personal ties. In the latter case, labor is organized in accordance with tradition or direct orders, in order to produce use values; whereas under capitalism, it is organized through the market, in order to produce value, and more precisely, surplus value. The difference in the mode of labor according to production relations greatly influences the nature of production technology and the way the social division of labor is carried out, which in turn greatly alters the metabolism between human beings and nature.

Capital’s Disturbance of Metabolism In light of the concept of metabolism, let’s take another look at some points examined in Chap. 2. Under capitalist relations of production, labor is carried out as wage labor to augment value for capital. Thus, capital aims to extend working hours to the greatest extent possible to maximize surplus value, while at the same time seeking to raise productive power to outcompete other capitals and obtain extra surplus value. In both cases, how to have wageworkers labor or organize productive activities are considered solely from the perspective of valorization of capital. Organizing labor from the one-dimensional perspective of valorization necessarily disturbs the metabolism between human beings and nature by forcing the excessive expenditure of labor power and also upsetting the natural cycle between human beings and the land, as Marx explains:

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Capitalist production collects the population together in great centers, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil. Thus it destroys at the same time the physical health of the urban worker, and the intellectual life of the rural worker…. Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility…. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth— the soil and the worker.19

A similar thing can be said about the crises inevitably caused by capitalist production. As human society develops, so that a social division of labor comes into operation, products are distributed or exchanged between people. Marx refers to such a social circuit of products as a social metabolism, but capitalist production brings about various disturbances in the social metabolism. This is because capitalist production is aimed at the producing surplus value, not use values, so that it breaks through society’s consumption limits so as to accumulate capital. Since this social metabolism involves the metabolism between human beings and nature, or its mediation, a disturbance in the social metabolism also upsets that metabolism. Capitalist production is production aimed at augmenting the power of the economic form “value” on the basis of its own power; that is, production carried out according to the logic of valorization, which is the logic of capital. As far as capital is concerned, nature (like labor power) is just a means to valorization. At the same time, for any productive activity to be continually carried out, it must follow the logic inherent to the metabolism between human beings and nature, such as the “law of replenishment” that Liebig emphasized in the case of agriculture. This is why capitalist production aimed at valorization runs up against the logic of metabolism and disturbs the metabolism between human beings and  Ibid., pp. 637–38.

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nature. If the tendency of capitalist production is left to itself, capital will destroy labor power and the natural environment through its limitless pursuit of valorization, threatening not only capitalist society but the very existence of humanity. This is indeed a fundamental problem of capitalist society. The German word for “metabolism,” Stoffwechsel, is composed of Stoff, meaning “material,” and wechsel, meaning “exchange.” In this sense, metabolism expresses the interaction between various materials, so that the character of metabolism is determined by the nature of the materials involved. Thus, expressed more abstractly, the fundamental problem of the capitalist mode of production is the opposition between the form of value and Stoff; or between the logic of the valorization of capital and the logic of the stofflich world.

Metabolism as the Bastion of Resistance The metabolism between human beings and nature is not merely organized and disrupted by the logic of capital one-directionally, however. Value and capital always require a bearer. For instance, in the case of a commodity, use value must be the bearer of value, and for capital in the production process, the means of production must be the bearer of capital value. Even the purely social entity value is an expression of the social character of abstract human labor and cannot be generated without the material praxis of labor. Thus, although capital is always overcoming the logic of metabolism in its drive to augment value, and disturbing the metabolism as a result, it is not able to break free of its limitations. For instance, the ceaseless extension of working hours to obtain absolute surplus value destroys the labor power that generates surplus value. This leads wageworkers, who are the bearers of the labor-power commodity, to seek limits on the extension of working hours so as to be able to sell their labor power again on the following day, which brings about legal limitations to the extension of working hours. Furthermore, raising productive power to obtain relative surplus value and subordinate wageworkers goes against the realization of more rational productive power. Capital seeks to strip wageworkers of knowledge and skills as much as possible by raising productive power, but at the same time, in order to rationally enhance productive power, it needs knowledgeable wageworkers capable of continually responding to technological innovation. This compels capitalist society to offer technological and vocational education to some

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extent, although it remains inadequate. In the realm of agriculture as well, temporarily increasing production without considering soil exhaustion may generate short-term profits, but in the end the exhaustion of the soil lowers productive power. Thus, capitalistic agriculture that disturbs the metabolism and exhausts the soil invites the criticism of farmers and agronomists seeking a more rational agriculture, so that such destructive practices are brought under social control. A similar dynamic is at play with regard to crisis. An increase in productive power to obtain more profit brings the limitation of a lower profit rate for capital, which seeks to break through this limitation through even more capital accumulation. Under expanded capital accumulation, credit swells and the movement of commercial capital becomes more active, generating the illusion within society that the material limitations of the real world can be overcome to maintain such a business boom. Eventually the illusion is shattered. Capital accumulation runs up against the material limits of the labor-power population, driving up wages. Moreover, it faces the material limits of consumption within society. Even if people have money, they do not purchase things they do not want. When such factors burst the bubble, so that the economy falls into crisis, society begins to sober up and criticize the unbridled financial transactions, not backed by reality, that had provoked the bubble. At times there is even an eruption of criticism aimed at the capitalist mode of production itself, as in the case of the global crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But a crisis, as noted in the previous chapter, puts in place the conditions needed for the beginning of a new industrial cycle by destroying existing capital and lowering wages so as to restore the profit rate. In this sense, crisis itself does not disintegrate capitalism. Yet with each new industrial cycle, capital must expand markets through the development of new use values, the introduction of new technologies, and globalization, while increasing the quantity of capital invested in order to break through the limit of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. Markets thus become increasingly ripe, with less space for further expansion. The material limitations placed on capital increase over time, making further capital accumulation more and more difficult, as seen in the low profit rates among advanced capitalist countries that is reflected in their low interest rates. Thus, no matter how capital may try to alter the material world to suit itself, using the purely social power of value, it is always limited and pulled back by the logic of the material world or the logic of metabolism. Similarly, no matter how deeply people may be penetrated by the logic of reified

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things, in the end they must defend the logic of metabolism for the sake of their own survival. Marx found within the logic of metabolism the ultimate grounds for the transformation of society, as he explains in Capital: But by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism, which originated in a merely natural and spontaneous fashion, capitalist production compels the systematic restoration of metabolism as a regulative law of social production, and in a form adequate to the full development of the human race.20

Now we can understand what Marx means when he says that capitalist relations of production are a fetter to the development of productive power. As we have seen, he defines labor as the conscious mediation of the metabolism between human beings and nature, and productive power as the capability of regulating and controlling that metabolism. Productive power is certainly not synonymous with production technology, since no matter how far production technology might develop, if it ends up disturbing the metabolism between human beings and nature, it cannot be considered the “development” of productive power. Marx insisted that under capitalist production relations, which prioritize the augmentation of value, it is not possible to realize productive power that allows for a sustainable metabolism between human beings and nature. A social transformation is thus necessary, without which human beings and nature will be destroyed. This threat compels human beings to carry out the transformation. Here we have fundamental grounds for social transformation in Marx’s mind. What would make it possible to systematically restore metabolism as a “regulating law of social production” and in a “form appropriate to the full development of the human race”? The answer, as we have already touched on, is a free association of human beings, as Marx explains: In fact the realm of freedom begins only when labor determined by necessity and external expediency comes to an end; it lies by its very nature beyond the sphere of material production proper. Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. The realm of natural necessity expands with his development, because his needs do too; but the productive forces to satisfy these  Ibid., pp. 637–38.

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expand at the same time. Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern their metabolic interaction with nature rationally, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing this metabolism with the smallest expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature. But this always remains a realm of necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day is the basis requisite.21

Earlier we looked at Marx’s theory of a future society, but there is more to his conception. In order to realize true freedom, which is the “development of human powers as an end in itself,” it is not enough for the individuals that form the  associated mode of production to distribute their labor and products according to their needs; it also is necessary for “socialized man, the associated producers, [to] govern their metabolic interaction with nature rationally, bringing it under their collective control,” thereby “accomplishing this metabolism with the smallest expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.” Bringing about such a humanistic and rational sort of productive power would lead to a remarkable shortening of the working day, ushering in “true freedom” independent of the necessities of the metabolism. The future society that Marx envisaged was one which would realize this sort of true freedom based on the rational and humanistic control of our metabolism with nature.

Marx’s Notes on Social Transformation Later in Life Marx’s perspective broadened through the theory of metabolism, allowing him to grasp capitalism more comprehensively. He came to understand capitalist contradictions as a conflict between the logic of capital and the logic of metabolism, and within the latter located a basis for resistance to capitalism. From this viewpoint, the late Marx studied in detail the metabolic logic in a wide range of fields that included agricultural chemistry and geology as well as research on the premodern community, as he

 Marx’s Economic Manuscript of 1864–1865, Brill, 2016, pp. 885–86.

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sought to uncover the possibilities for resistance to the logic of capital. Out of his insatiable quest emerged a new conception of social change. However, if we look only at Marx’s published works, it is difficult to understand how his interests broadened later in life. And even his unpublished manuscripts and letters, where some related descriptions can be found, only present a portion of his widening perspective. We need to look at his study notes, often referred to as his “excerpt notes,” to appreciate his expanded interests and new concept of social transformation. In a letter that the 19-year-old Karl Marx sent to his father from Berlin (mentioned in Chap. 1), he noted his habit of copying passages from nearly all the books he was reading. Marx kept this habit throughout his life. Indeed, in his final years, the quantity of his output of notes increased, so that around a third of all the notes he produced come from the last ten years of his life. However, due to ill health, almost none of those excerpt notes were used as the basis for manuscripts or books. The notes are thus a vital clue to the theoretical development of Marx over his final years. All of the excerpt notes are to be published in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (known as “new MEGA” to distinguish it from the previous, unfinished Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe). Here I have created a table (Table 3.1) displaying an overview of the excerpt notes that Marx wrote from the time of publishing the first volume of Capital.22 The broad range of Marx’s interests should be clear from this table alone. Indeed, the range is so broad that David Riazanov, the editor of the first MEGA, raised the following criticism: “Why did he waste so much time on this systematic, fundamental summary, or expend so much labor as he spent as late as the year 1881, on one basic book on geology, summarizing it chapter by chapter? In the 63rd year of his life—that is inexcusable pedantry.”23 Given the level of research on Marx at the time, it is understandable that the significance of his excerpt notes would not be understood. But his effort cannot be written off as mere “pedantry.” In Marx’s notes, we see the traces of the effort made in his final years to thoroughly pursue the metabolic or stofflich logic that resists the logic of capital or the logic of form. Marx’s conveys to us a message through his notes, even though his effort did not bear fruit as published works. 22  I participated in the editing of MEGA2 IV/18 (published in 2019) as a member of one of the groups of MEGA editors in Japan. 23  D. Riazanov “Neueste Mitteilungen über den literarischen Nachlass vonKarl Marx und Friedrich Engels,” in Archiv fur̈ Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, 11. The translation of this quote is based on Kevin B. Anderson’s Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

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Table 3.1  Marx’s excerpt notebooks written after the publication of Volume One of Capital Vol. Date of writing 18

19 21

22 23 24 25

26

27

28

29

30 31

Overview of the content of works excerpted by Marx

1864/2–1868/8 Political economy, agriculture, and agricultural chemistry, with a focus on rent (including works by Liebig, Fraas, Maurer, and others). 1868/9–1869/9 Political economy (particularly related to the money market and economic crisis). 1869/10– The Irish question, activities of the International Workingman’s 1874/12 Association, and the Paris Commune, as well as the rural commune, common ownership of land, and the land system in Russia. 1875/1–1876/2 Russia (particularly its development after the liberation of the serfs). 1876/3–6 Physiology and the history of technology; history (Russia, England, and Ancient Greece). 1876/5–12 History of land ownership and the history of legislation in Europe (Spain, etc.) and outside Europe, and works by Maurer. 1877/1–1879/3 Political economy, the banking and financial system, and merchant arithmetic, economic and social development, the land system in Russia, works by Owen, French history; Kaufmann’s Theory and Practice of Banking, and works on Leibniz and by Descartes. 1878/5–9 Geology, mineralogy, pedology, agriculture, agricultural chemistry, agricultural statistics, history of the Earth, history of global trade, and abstracts of statistical data from the United States. 1879–1881 Chronological details of Indian history (England’s rule and enslavement of India, etc.), resources and documents regarding rent, land relations in general, rural commune in Russia (Kovalevsky, etc.), archaic history, the history of the family system, ethnology (Morgan’s Ancient Society and works by Phear, Maine, Lubbock, and others). 1879–1882 History of Russia and France (particularly agrarian relations), economic development in Russia (particularly after the 1861 liberation of the serfs), memorandum on the liberation of the serfs in Russia, and marginal notes on Adolph Wagner’s Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie. 1881–1882 Chronological summary of historical events in Europe and the contrastive chronological table of homochronous world historical facts. 1863, 1878, Mathematics (particularly trigonometry, differentiation, and 1881 algebra). 1879–1883 Organic and inorganic chemistry.

The table was created while referring to Marx no bassui noto kara Marx wo yomu [Reading Marx Based on his Excerpt Notes] (Tokyo: Sakurai Shoten, 2013) edited by Teinosuke Otani and Tomonaga Tairako.

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Here, using the excerpt notes as well as his manuscripts and letters as clues, I want to look at the development of Marx’s conception of social change near the end of his life in relation to ecology, the premodern community, and gender. Since much research remains to be done in this field, it is not possible to provide a complete overview, but from a few important studies that have appeared in recent years we can at least arrive at a general image of Marx’s pursuits.

Problem of Ecology and Theory of Metabolism Up to now, there has been a deep-rooted view that Marx paid scant attention to ecological issues because his thought centered on productive power. It is true that the younger Marx barely mentions specific environmental problems. By the 1850s he had read some works of agricultural chemistry in order to criticize Ricardo’s law of diminishing returns, but he expressed little interest in the descriptions of “robbery agriculture” therein. From reading his excerpt notes, we can see that Marx at the time seemed to think that merely applying modern scientific measures could raise agricultural productivity without exhausting the soil. By the time he wrote Capital, however, Marx had overcome that level of understanding. He realized that the problem of soil exhaustion could not be solved through the mere application of modern science. Marx came to understand that scientific methods under capitalism are applied according to the logic of obtaining surplus value, thereby disturbing the metabolism between human beings and nature. In this way, he overcame his earlier productivism to clarify the impossibility of rational productive power under capitalism. Marx was not unique for his time in dealing with environmental issues. Many contemporary economists were discussing the same issue. For example, the famous German economist Wilhelm Roscher, strongly influenced by the works of Liebig, emphasized the need for sustainability in agriculture, livestock, fisheries, and forestry. The leftwing economist Eugen Dühring, later severely criticized by Engels, also focused on Liebig’s ideas and advocated the “conscious control of material distribution.” In the United States, Henry Charles Carey discussed the problem of soil exhaustion and robbery agriculture, while in England, William Stanley Jevons attracted attention for a pamphlet warning of resource depletion. In short, environmental issues were already an extremely relevant, practical problem for economists. Obviously, Marx was influenced by such

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arguments that he encountered over the course of his intensive study of books and journals related to political economy. Indeed, alongside his effort to complete the first volume of Capital, he was studying the works of Roscher and Dühring. Marx did not simply echo the views of other economists, however. He was not satisfied with the abstract proposition that the metabolism disturbed by anarchistic production activities should come under social control. What was crucial to Marx was not to indicate the existence of environmental problems in general, but to concretely grasp how the metabolism is transfigured or disturbed by the logic of capital, or how the logic of capital is constrained by the logic of metabolism, and thereby clarify the possibility of resistance to capital. In the process of writing Capital, Marx carefully excerpted and examined in detail the ideas of not only Liebig but many other agricultural chemists.

Metabolism and the Theory of Climate Change of the Agronomist Fraas After the publication of the first volume of Capital, Marx’s interest in the concrete logic of metabolism steadily increased. He felt the need to research agricultural chemistry further to complete his theory of rent, original planned for volume two and later published in the third volume edited by Engels.24 Marx continued his tireless effort to concretely grasp metabolism, to the point where he saw the limits of Liebig’s standpoint that he had once so highly regarded. In a January 1868 letter to Engels, Marx writes: I would like to know from Schorlemmer [a famous chemist who Marx had befriended] what is the latest and best book (German) on agricultural chemistry. Furthermore, what is the present state of the argument between the mineral-fertilizer people and the nitrogen-fertilizer people? (Since I last looked into the subject, all sorts of new things have appeared in Germany.) Does he know anything about the most recent Germans who have written against Liebig’s soil-exhaustion theory? Does he know about the alluvion theory of the Munich agronomist Fraas (Professor at Munich University)?25

 Unfortunately there is not adequate space in this book to examine this theory.  K.  Marx, “Marx to Engels in Manchester: [London,] 3 January 1868,” in MECW 42, p. 507. 24 25

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From this letter, we can see that Marx was not satisfied with the position of Liebig and sought out the views of agronomists who were critical of him. In fact, after writing this letter, Marx intensely made excerpt notes on the work of Karl Fraas, whom he had mentioned to Engels. Although the name Karl Fraas is hardly remembered today, he was a talented professor at the University of Athens and director of the State Agricultural Experiment Station, who argued against Liebig with regard to the cause of soil depletion and the benefits of inorganic fertilizer. In another letter to Engels, written two months later, Marx writes: Very interesting is the book by Fraas (1847): Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit, eine Geschichte beider, namely as proving that climate and flora change in historical times…. He claims that with cultivation—depending on its degree—the “moisture” so beloved by the peasants gets lost (hence also the plants migrate from south to north), and finally steppe formation occurs. The first effect of cultivation is useful, but finally devastating through deforestation, etc…. The conclusion is that cultivation—when it proceeds in natural growth and is not consciously controlled (as a bourgeois he naturally does not reach this point)—leaves deserts behind it, Persia, Mesopotamia, etc., Greece. So once again an unconscious socialist tendency! … We must keep a close watch on the recent and very latest in agriculture. The physical school is pitted against the chemical.26

Clearly, the works of Fraas had a great influence on Marx. Fraas argued that, with the passage of time, climate, and plant life change, primarily under the impact of human cultivation of the land. People’s relation to nature through cultivation, particularly the clearing of land, caused temperatures to rise, and as a result, plants shifted from southern to northern regions, and from lowlands to highlands, altering the plants themselves. In this manner, “the ‘moisture’ so beloved by the peasants gets lost,” leaving desolation behind. Fraas demonstrates this phenomenon in his book with past examples from Ancient Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, but in so doing issued an advance warning of the problem of climate change that we confront in the modern world. At the time, the problem of soil depletion that Liebig was drawing attention to was more pressing than climate change, so the warning Fraas issued went unheeded. But Marx praised the historical perspective of Fraas 26  K. Marx, “Marx to Engels in Manchester: [London,] 25 March 1868,” in MECW 42, pp. 558–59.

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and enthusiastically excerpted passages from his works. Although the examples of climate change pointed to by Fraas were in ancient society, it was probably clear to Marx that the problem of climate change would be far more severe under capitalism. In ancient society, low productivity and limited scientific knowledge led to the failure to control the metabolism with nature and the spread of desertification. In capitalist society, by contrast, the enormous productive power generated in pursuit of short-term profit alters the metabolism on a global scale, resulting in large-scale environmental destruction. Marx’s strong interest in Fraas suggests his concern that climate change—even if it occurred over the long term—would lead to a drastic level of environmental destruction. In reading Liebig, Marx’s interest had been soil depletion and the debate over necessary agricultural nutrients (“between the mineral-­ fertilizer people and the nitrogen-fertilizer people”). But now, instead of being satisfied with the view of the “chemical school” that the metabolic disturbance in agriculture was a mere problem of insufficient soil nutrition, Marx began to focus on the “physical school” of Fraas and others, who analyzed the climate change brought about by human cultivation of the land. By carefully examining the works of Fraas, Marx came to a more nuanced understanding of metabolic disturbance.27 Fraas himself was not able to discover policies to solve the problem of climate change. But Marx saw in his ideas an “unconscious socialist tendency” in the sense that Fraas argued that cultivation without conscious control had brought about climate change, which disrupted metabolism in turn, thereby suggesting the need to bring metabolism under social control. Whereas Marx had an aversion to “socialists” who only spouted empty ideals, no matter how popular they might be among the masses, he highly praised scientists who, through a concrete analysis of reality, clarified the logic of the metabolism, even if they had no general influence on the public. Marx sought to build a strong base of resistance to capital by accumulating solid facts and concretely elucidating metabolism, rather than employing abstract ideals. Unfortunately, Marx had almost no opportunity to write about his theory of rent thereafter, so no direct mention of Fraas is made in his manuscripts. However, one sign of the influence exerted by Fraas on Marx can be found in a 1868 manuscript that includes many excerpts from the work of the agricultural economist Friedrich Kirchhof, who had pointed 27  For a detailed discussion of Marx’s study of Fraas, see Kohei Sato’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism.

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out the deforestation that can result over the long term from the neglect of forest conservation when the forestry industry is operated by capital to generate immediate profit. Grappling with the work of Fraas is just one example of how Marx pursued the logic of metabolism. In the 1870s, he continued to read works about deforestation and soil depletion and studied relations between capitalism and the livestock industry. He also had a prolonged interest in issues related to natural resources. During that same decade, his interests expanded to include geology, mineralogy, botany, and organic chemistry. The late Marx made an enormous number of excerpt notes from works in those fields, giving us some idea of the broad perspective from which he sought to grasp the logic of metabolism.

From Metabolism to Research on the Community Marx’s pursuit of the logic of material metabolism went beyond the realm of the natural sciences. He began to research the premodern community after being stimulated by the works of Fraas, who had highly praised the legal historian Georg Ludwig von Maurer, acknowledging Maurer’s view that early Germanic villages were formed in such a way as to not impair the improvement of fertility. Marx had engaged in research on the community numerous times before, but now he was approaching the subject from the perspective of the rational control of the metabolism, which led him to greatly alter his view of premodern societies and of the non-Western societies not yet absorbed into capitalism. As a young man, Marx quite clearly held a low opinion of premodern communities, viewing them as social forms (as seen in slavery or serfdom) that fettered human freedom. In The Communist Manifesto, he passionately criticized capitalism, but also praised it for destroying the old community and liberating humanity from its shackles. For example, in the midst of the 1848 Revolution, Marx wrote the following for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: But we say to the workers and the petty bourgeois: it is better to suffer in modern bourgeois society, which by its industry creates the material means for the foundation of a new society that will liberate you all, than to revert

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to a bygone form of society, which, on the pretext of saving your classes, thrusts the entire nation back into medieval barbarism.28

The young Marx favorably regarded capitalist globalization for precisely the same reason he held a negative view of the premodern community. Although he already foresaw the destructive impact free trade would have on wage labor, Marx still supported it. Moreover, even though Marx condemned the inhumane character of the English colonialism that destroyed premodern Indian society, he still held a basically favorable view of that development, as he wrote for the New York Daily Tribune in 1853: [W]e must not forget that these idyllic village-communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies…. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances.29

On top of holding this view of the Indian community, Marx evaluated its destruction by English colonialism as a “social revolution” that brought about modernization, writing that, “whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.”30 Marx gradually revised his view, however. By 1857, just four years after writing the article for the New York Daily Tribune quoted above, his view had already begun to change. That year he wrote articles clarifying an anti-­ colonial stance and expressing support for the Chinese resistance movement during the Second Opium War and for the Indian Rebellion of 1857. In Grundrisse, written around the same time, Marx also developed a detailed theory of the premodern community, portraying its positive elements. The crux of the theory of community presented in Grundrisse was to grasp the difference between premodern and modern property so as to clarify the significance of primitive capital accumulation. From an abstract perspective, premodern and modern property are the same insofar as both  K. Marx, “Montesquieu LVI,” in MECW, vol. 8, p. 266.  K. Marx, “The British Rule in India,” in MECW, vol. 12, p. 132. 30  Ibid. 28 29

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are socially recognized possession, but in fact they have completely different content. First, in the case of all premodern, original property—whether in the Asian, Roman, or German forms—the producers relate to the conditions of production as their own conditions. This manner of “relating” is alien to the image of modern private property, where the right to property is established through individuals, as the possessors of commodities or money, recognizing each other as the personification of those reified things. By contrast, in original property, producers spontaneously relate to the natural conditions of production as their own property from the outset. In that sense, the producer relates to his natural conditions of production “as natural presuppositions of himself, which constitute, as it were, only an extension of his body.”31 Second, under original property, the individual is presupposed to be a member of a commune or community. Since property is a social determination, its nature is essentially determined by relations between human beings. It is only through the mediation of being members of the commune or community that human beings can possess the land and other conditions of production as their original property. There is a diversity, of course, in the nature of a community, but in every case, the original property of the community members exists in one form or another. Even in secondary, transmuted forms of original property, such as property under the systems of serfdom or slavery, “the original conditions of production appear as natural presuppositions, natural conditions of the existence of the producer” because “labor itself, both in the form of the slave and of the serf, is placed along with the other natural beings such as cattle as an inorganic condition of production, as an appendage of the soil.”32 In that sense, the serfs and slaves are not separated from their own conditions of the existence. Clearly, the premodern forms of property are completely different in nature from the modern form of private property premised on reification. Under original property, individuals are recognized from birth as members of the commune or community, and thus relate fundamentally to the land and other means of production as their own property. No such original property exists in modern society, however. One can only be a proprietor by entering into a contract mediated by reified things. Therefore, the  Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58, p. 415.  Ibid., p. 413.

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transition from premodern to modern property requires a fundamental change in the relation between human beings and nature. Simply put, this is the destruction of “the unity of living and active human beings with the natural, inorganic conditions of their metabolism with nature,”33 and the separation of the two. The commune or community based on the original unity of human beings and the earth is dismantled, and human beings are individualized, “stripped of all qualities”34 except their existence, and thrown out into society. Historically speaking, the formation of modern, private property was at the same time the establishment of the relation between capital and wage labor. This was, in other words, the creation of “unprotected and rightless proletarians”35 through the complete dissolution of the original relation of producing individuals to their conditions of existence. Here the possibility of workers exercising their own labor power depends on arbitrary, reified relations, placing them in the position of potential “paupers.” Marx uses the term “absolute poverty”36 to refer to this situation where individuals are cut off from the original relation to the conditions of existence; that is, “poverty, not as shortage, but as a complete exclusion of objective wealth.”37 Such absolute poverty is normalized under modern capitalist society. Marx’s sympathy, as expressed in Grundrisse, for the social form of community that differed from capitalist society became even stronger in the 1860s, as he became more acutely aware of the power of capitalism through the process of completing Capital. By the time he finished the first volume of Capital, in 1867, Marx had overcome his unilinear, modernistic view of history, which had positioned the premodern community merely as a stagnant society that had to be overcome. Marx no longer believed that premodern or communal relations were in contradiction with freedom, as he explains in his 1861–1863 manuscripts: Nothing could be more incorrect than to conceive the medieval system of corporations and guilds, in which the division of labor amongst particular handicrafts forms at once the basis of a social and political organization, as something “unfree.” It was the form in which labor emancipated itself from  Ibid.  Ibid., p. 399. 35  Marx, Capital. vol. 1, p. 876. 36  Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58, p. 222. 37  Ibid. 33 34

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landed property, and definitely the period in which labor stood at its highest point, socially and politically.38

The guild system that Marx is discussing here is the form of property that supplemented the communal relations. This system, which was inevitably dismantled during the formation of capitalist production relations, was formed through strong personal restrictions placed on reification (e.g. inherited transmission of skills, limits on the number of craftsmen, rules regarding product prices, etc.). Under such personal restrictions and rules, labor was not only free of land ownership based on relations of personal subordination but also free of reified relations, so as to stand “at its highest point, socially and politically.” Here there is no modernist notion that freedom is liberty from personal restrictions. Rather, Marx sees that it is through a communal connection that human beings are able to be free in their labor. As Marx became aware of the seriousness of reification under capitalism, his former optimistic evaluation of the emancipatory nature of capitalism was eclipsed. He began to emphasize that capitalism does not destroy premodern elements but combines with them to create a hideous sort of exploitation, as he explains in Capital: “But as soon as peoples whose production still moves within the lower forms of slavelabor, the corvée, etc. are drawn into a world market dominated by the capitalist mode of production, whereby the sale of their products for export develops into their principal interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are grafted onto the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom etc.”39 Marx’s understanding of the community developed even further subsequently, so that he did not only display sympathy toward the premodern community, but positioned it as a positive element within his conception of social transformation. Marx began a full-fledged study of the community from the new perspective of metabolism, starting with his excerpt notes in 1868 on the work of Maurer, and turned his attention to the vitality of non-Western communities and their power to resist colonialism.

 K. Marx, Economic Manuscript of 1861–1863, in MECW 33, p. 444.  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 345.

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Letter to Vera Zasulich as the Culmination of Marx’s Theory of Community A direct expression of Marx’s deepening theory of the community can be found in his 1881 letter to the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich and his drafts of it. Zasulich had written Marx to solicit his view on the question debated in Russia at the time as to whether the Russian commune was doomed to perish by inevitable historical laws (as the Russian “Marxists” insisted) or could rather develop in the direction of socialism when emancipated from the yoke of despotism. In seeking to answer her question, Marx drafted three separate, relatively long responses, but in the end sent a simpler version. In the drafts and the letter, Marx touches on three essential points. First, Marx reveals that he had clearly rejected the unilinear, modernistic view of history. As we saw in the previous chapter, the theory of primitive accumulation in Capital shows how capitalistic private property based on the exploitation of the labor of others was generated through the appropriation of the premodern private property founded on one’s own labor. Marx partially revised this part of Capital for the French edition (1872–1875), limiting the applicability of the theory of primitive accumulation to Western Europe: “It [the expropriation of the agricultural producer] has been accomplished in a radical manner only in England. … But all the countries of Western Europe are going through the same development.”40 Marx cited this passage to indicate his view of the possibility of a different path of historical development for societies with strong remnants of communal property. In addition, Marx completely renounced his earlier view of the 1850s that English colonialism, no matter how brutal, had been progressive insofar as it destroyed the premodern social system in India: “As for the East Indies, for example … the suppression of communal landownership out there was nothing but an act of English vandalism, pushing the native people not forwards but backwards.”41 The second key point is that Marx pointed to the vitality of the premodern community as the basis for denying its inevitable dissolution. Of course, the premodern commune is not uniform, since there are various types and developmental stages. Marx highly praised the type of 40  T. Shanin, ed. Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the ‘Peripheries’ of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), p. 135, emphasis added. 41  K. Marx, “Drafts of the Letter to Vera Zasulich,” in MECW, vol. 24, p. 365.

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community found in Russia, which he called an “agricultural commune.” The agricultural commune emerged out of the more archaic type of primitive community, but differed from that earlier form in that it “was the first social grouping of free men not held together by blood-ties.”42 Moreover, whereas land in the primitive community was cultivated through communal labor, land in the agricultural commune, although communally owned, was “periodically divided between members of the agricultural commune in such a way that everyone tills the fields assigned to him on his own account and appropriates the fruits thereof as an individual.”43 Marx saw that the “dualism inherent in the constitution of the agricultural commune”44 (i.e. inheriting the communal property of the primitive community but cultivating the land and obtaining of the result on an individual basis) was able to “endow [the agricultural commune] with a vigorous life.”45 In order to understand why Marx held this view, we first must understand the vitality of the primitive community that precedes the agricultural commune. Marx writes that “the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies.”46 The agricultural chemist Fraas, introduced earlier, examined in detail how the cultivation of the land in the “Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies” resulted in climate change and soil exhaustion, which in turn led to the decline of those societies, and Marx was naturally aware of this view. Environmental destruction seems to have become a serious problem in those societies because private ownership of the land was the fundamental form, weakening communal regulations on cultivation. In contrast, private property did not exist at all in primitive communities, where robust communal regulations were in place. This prevented the disturbance of the metabolism between human beings and nature, so that the communities had greater vitality than “Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies,” which is to say, a greater potential for sustainability. Those communities also are more sustainable than capitalist society, needless to say, which in a very short period of time disturbed the metabolism on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, however, those primitive communities were based on narrow blood  Ibid., p. 366.  Ibid. 44  Ibid., p. 377. 45  Ibid. 46  Ibid. pp. 358–59. 42 43

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ties, which prevented the development of the individual as well as productive power. In short, Marx evaluated the agricultural commune as having a “vigorous life” precisely because it inherited the primitive commune’s vitality through the communal ownership of land, while developing individuality and raising society’s productive power through the division of arable land and individual acquisition of the result. Marx went so far as to say that the “new commune,” by inheriting those characteristics of the agricultural commune, became the “sole center of popular liberty and life throughout the Middle Ages.”47 However, since divided arable land and individual acquisition are factors that create private property, in some cases those factors can transform the agricultural commune into a commune that is based on private property. Whether human beings can maintain an agricultural commune, or will instead move toward a commune based on private property, depends on the historical conditions. The third key aspect was Marx positioning the “rural commune,” which is almost synonymous with the agricultural commune, as the “fulcrum” for Russia’s social revival: “[T]his commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia, but in order that it may function as such, it would first be necessary to eliminate the deleterious influences which are assailing it from all sides, and then ensure for it the normal conditions of spontaneous development.”48 Marx thought that removing the state exploitation that stifled and afflicted the Russian commune would create the conditions for its normal development in the direction of communism. The basis for Marx’s argument was that the Russian agricultural commune, which remained as the foundation for peasant life under the great Russian empire, existed parallel to Western European capitalist societies that had achieved great productive power; this created the possibility for Russia to obtain that higher productive power without the destruction of the agriculture commune, unlike Western Europe, which had only been able to do so by destroying the commune and developing capitalism. Moreover, even though arable land was individually divided under the agricultural commune, its collective elements were predominant, so that cooperative labor was carried out “in the tedding of the meadows and such communal undertakings as the land drainage, etc.”49 In this sense, it was an appropriate  Ibid., p. 366.  Ibid., p. 371. 49  Ibid., p. 368. 47 48

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form for the sort of collective cultivation thought to be agronomically rational (e.g. large-scale cultivation using machines). Thus, Marx thought that a higher level of productive power could be achieved in a sustainable way by removing the harmful influence of the state and introducing the latest agricultural knowledge from capitalism to further develop the communal elements of the agricultural commune. Marx also found grounds for the development of the rural commune in the impasse of the capitalist mode of production: The best proof that this development of the “rural commune” is in keeping with the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak, a crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type—collective production and appropriation.50

Marx’s criticism of the capitalist mode of production that prevailed in Western Europe and the United States is much harsher than before, and he notes that the “capitalist system … now finds itself … in Western Europe as well as in the United States, engaged in battle both with the working-class masses, with science, and with the very productive forces which it engenders.”51 The capitalist mode of production, whose goal is to maximize surplus value, comes into conflict not only with the working masses but also with science aimed at sustainable ways of controlling the metabolism with nature. In this sense, capitalism opposes the rational development of productive power. Clearly, Marx sought to discern the historical significance of the agricultural commune from the perspective of metabolic control. Marx’s positive evaluation of the Russian agricultural commune is based on a vast amount of research on Russia he pursued in later years, as evidenced by his excerpt notes. But these notes also reveal that his positive evaluation of the premodern community was not limited to the Russian agricultural commune. Through the research he pursued in his later years on history and communities, Marx’s attention was drawn to the vitality of communities over a wide range of regions, including India, Algeria, Latin America, and Indonesia. The works he studied included Communal Land  Ibid., p. 357.  Ibid., p. 353.

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Ownership (M.  M. Kovalevksy), Analytical History of India (Robert Sewell), and Java; or, How to Manage a Colony, Showing a Practical Solution of the Questions Now Affecting British India (J. W. B. Money). In his excerpt notes on such works, Marx concentrated on passages pertaining to the vitality of the commune and its power to resist colonialism, while tending to ignore passages that described the conservative elements of the commune.52 This raises the strong possibility that the position he expressed in his letter to Vera Zasulich was not limited to Russia. Not only did Marx come to renounce his earlier view of modernization, he seems to have converted to the strategy of seeking to contain the power of capital through the vitality of the premodern commune.

From Research on the Community to Gender Marx’s theoretical interest that developed from the theory of metabolism to encompass the community broadened even further to include the issue of gender. The works on the premodern community that the late Marx studied include some interesting passages regarding relations between men and women that he focused on. No animal is able to leave offspring and reproduce itself as a species without reproductive activity. This is a situation that remains for human beings no matter how advanced our intelligence or complex our civilization. Like many other living organisms, human beings engage in sexual reproduction, and it is only through the reproductive process, childbirth, and child-raising that we are able to live and maintain ourselves as a species. In that sense, these activities are one part of the metabolism between human beings and nature. But there is a fundamental difference between human beings and animals with regard to reproduction because, just as in the case of labor, the manner of reproduction, birth, and child-raising changes depending on the level of productive power and the form of society, with the relations between men and women also changing as a result. The concept of “gender” examines such socially formed relations between men and women and the socially formed differences between the respective role of each. Marx’s main works contain no systematic depiction of gender. Some feminists have criticized Marx for overlooking gender on this basis. It is true that he shared the moralistic viewpoint of the Victorian era in which 52  For more on this issue, see K.  B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

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he lived and was not free of gender bias. Marx did seek to be a good family man (unlike most of the revolutionaries of his age) and for the most part was. But his household was not free of the typical paternalism of a middle-­ class family of the time. In Capital as well there are passages that reflect a gender bias that is problematic from today’s perspective. On the other hand, from a young age, Marx had a strong interest in the relation between men and women, and actively supported the participation of women in the International and other activities. In that sense, he had an interest in gender in the broad sense of the term. For instance, in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, he writes: [T]he relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behavior has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence—the extent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him.53

Although his manner of expression is abstract, Marx is noting how the degree of development in human relations is directly expressed by the relations between the sexes. If the relations between human beings are coercive and discriminatory, the relations between men and women will be as well—and vice versa. In the following passages from his early work, The German Ideology, in which Marx already had discarded “philosophical phraseology,” he clarifies the connection between social relations and procreation: The third circumstance which, from the very outset, enters into historical development, is that men, who daily re-create their own life, begin to make other men, to propagate their kind: the relation between man and woman, parents and children, the family. The family, which to begin with is the only social relation, becomes later, when increased needs create new social relations and the increased population new needs, a subordinate one.54 The production of life, both of one’s own in labor and of fresh life in procreation, now appears as a twofold relation: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relation—social in the sense that it denotes the co-­

 K. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in MECW, vol. 3, p. 296.  K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, in MECW 5, pp. 42–43.

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operation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end.55

In the first passage Marx argues, rather simply, that the family is socially formed on the basis of the relations between the sexes, but that as productive power and needs expand, communal social relations are generated on a larger scale, turning the family into a “subordinate” social relation. He also suggests in the second passage, in speaking of the “twofold relation” of procreation as both a natural and a social relation, that even within familial relations the natural relations will change as a result of changes in social relations. This is the perspective from which Marx argued that the proletariat was deprived of the family and that the bourgeois family would dissolve in the future: “On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”56 In the first volume of Capital, Marx indicates how the capitalist mode of production played a “progressive” role in developing the relations between the sexes. Differences in gender are not an immediate concern for capital as long as surplus value can be obtained. That trend was accelerated by technical innovations within large-scale industry, making it possible to mobilize the labor power of women. The value of labor power was driven down as a result, expanding the relative surplus population and dissolving the existing family relations, but this trend generated a “new economic foundation” for a “higher form” of gender relations. However terrible and disgusting the dissolution of the old family ties within the capitalist system may appear, large-scale industry, by assigning an important part in socially organized processes of production, outside the sphere of the domestic economy, to women, young persons and children of both sexes, does nevertheless create a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and of relations between the sexes. It is of course just as absurd to regard the Christian-Germanic form of the family as absolute and final as

 Ibid., p. 43.  K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in MECW 6, p. 501.

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it would have been in the case of the ancient Roman, the ancient Greek or the Oriental forms, which, moreover, form a series in historical development.57

Capitalism at the same time makes use of differences between wageworkers and premodern discrimination in order to divide them. As noted earlier, capitalism not only destroys premodern elements but also fuses with them to generate a more hideous sort of exploitation. This is why there is a reinforced trend within capitalism to reproduce the premodern discrimination against women and compel women to labor under inferior working conditions. The degree to which the socialization of women’s labor by capital can be a positive element thus depends on the level of the struggle against premodern discrimination. Despite such references to gender issues, Marx has been subject to criticism by feminists for the following passage from Capital on the reification of the reproduction process: The maintenance and reproduction of the working class remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave this to the worker’s instincts of self-preservation and propagation.58

What Marx is indicating here is the reification of the reproduction process wherein capital, in paying a wage corresponding to the value of labor power, not only obtains the right to command that labor power, but at the same time can rely on the “instincts” of workers to reproduce the labor power that is indispensable to valorization so that no more than the cost of wages has to be borne. Marx’s argument is able to account for how the reification of the reproduction process places all labor not directly connected to the production of surplus value in a socially inferior position, such as the non-wage household labor embedded in the life process, thereby weakening the position of women forced to do that household work. However, as Silvia Federici insists,59 establishing a reified reproduction process requires disciplining not only the wageworkers involved in social production but also the mode of activities in the realm of labor-power reproduction. This was clearly illustrated during the historical process of  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 620–21.  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 718. 59  See S. Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2004). 57 58

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modernization in the frequent occurrence of terrorism that took the form of “witch hunts” against women who possessed knowledge regarding procreation. Without disciplining this realm of reproduction, capital is not able to “safely leave it to the worker’s instincts of self-preservation and of propagation.” In the theory of primitive accumulation presented in Capital, there is no description of such witch hunts, and in this sense the feminist criticism of Marx seems justified.

Marx Interest in Gender Later in Life In the realm of gender as well, Marx did not remain forever at the level he had reached in Capital. Near the end of his life, he took up the issue of gender seriously through his study of the community. Although we can only refer to his excerpt notes, since he did not leave any books or manuscripts on the subject, there are still a number of points to mention regarding his position on gender.60 First of all, in excerpt notes written near the end of his life, Marx focuses on gender itself. Although previously he had looked at the issue of gender broadly, it was always in relation to the capitalist mode of production. In contrast, Marx looks at gender in non-capitalist societies in his later excerpt notes on the premodern community, which shed more light on his approach to gender. For example, Marx carefully excerpted passages from Morgan’s famous work Ancient Society to consider the historical development of the familial form in ancient times. Morgan sought to elucidate ancient society on the basis of fieldwork on the Iroquois tribe during his own time, examining their mode of existence and familial form. Although many of Morgan’s views are thought to be invalid today,61 his grasp of the historical forms of the family (e.g. the consanguineous, punalean, syndyasmian, and patriarchal familial forms) and way of contrasting them to the modern family exerted a great influence on Marx. We can glimpse this influence in his excerpt notes on John Lubbock’s The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man and Henry James Sumner Maine’s Lectures on the Early History of Institutions, where

60  My analysis of Marx’s excerpt notes regarding gender is based on H. Brown, Marx on Gender and the Family: A Summary, Monthly Review Press, 2014. 61  See M.  Bloch, Marxism and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship (London: Oxford University Press, 1983).

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Marx mocks their “modern prejudice” of taking the patriarchal family as a self-evident premise. The second thing that can be said about Marx’s view of gender, as reflected in his excerpt notes, is that it differs from the view of Engels, who reduced the cause of gender discrimination to the existence of private property. Like Marx, Engels enthusiastically examined the works of Morgan and referred to Marx’s notes to write The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. This was considered the classic Marxist book on family and gender since Marx never wrote a work on those subjects. However, there is a clear difference between the argument Engels presents in his book and the tone expressed in Marx’s notes. Engels sought the cause of the “the world historical defeat of the female sex” in the establishment of private property. His view, simply put, was that as productive power rises, a gap between rich and poor emerges, and that the development of private property erodes the matriarchal system, which is replaced by a patriarchal system that makes it possible for men to inherit the property of their fathers. In other words, private ownership and class differences are posited at the root of gender discrimination. However, Marx did not hold such a simplistic view, judging from his excerpt notes. He did, of course, recognize that the clan society that preceded the emergence of private property displayed relatively more gender equality than the societies that followed, but Marx noted that even in the clan society gender discrimination existed. To take one example, while recognizing that the power of women was great among the Iroquois, Marx wrote that “the husbands demanded chastity of the wives under severe penalties, but they did not admit the reciprocal obligation,” and that “polygamy” was “universally recognized as the right of males”—and he underlined the phrase “under severe penalties” and the word “polygamy.”62 Marx also focused on how the position of women rose relatively even in societies that had established private property. For example, from Morgan’s work, Marx excerpted passages that showed how women’s position was higher in Ancient Rome than it had been in Ancient Greece. Materfamilias was mistress of the family; went into the streets freely ohne restraint by her husband, frequented with the men the theaters and festive banquets; in the house not confined to particular apartments, nor excluded

 K. Marx, The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), p. 117.

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from the table of the men. Roman females daher mehr personal dignity u. independence als griechische….63

While emphasizing, on the one hand, the influence that the social form of private property has had on gender relations, Marx (unlike Engels) began to develop an awareness that gender relations could not be reduced to the issue of private property. This is directly demonstrated in the attention he paid to how gender discrimination could exist independent of private property or how the position of women could rise even under private ownership. The interest of the late Marx in gender relations stemmed clearly from his view of metabolism. In writing Capital, Marx found the logic of metabolism as a basis for opposing the power of capitalism. This was the beginning of his great undertaking to countervail the abstract logic of reified things with the concrete logic of metabolism. He studied agronomy to understand the metabolism between human beings and nature, and in order to grasp that metabolism more firmly he ardently researched geology and organic chemistry. Furthermore, in seeking a social form that would allow for the metabolism between human beings and nature to function sustainably, he began a serious examination of communities around the world. In his exploration of the metabolic relations within those communities, he examined the relations between human beings for the reproduction of the next generation—that is, gender relations. From this perspective, it is natural that Marx did not seek to reduce gender issues to property forms and economic relations, but focused instead on gender as a specific, irreducible relation. Rather than positing the economic system as the cause of gender discrimination, Marx identified gender as a particular relation, with the power to resist the capitalist mode of production. If he had been able to positively develop his view of gender, it is likely that it would have differed significantly from that of Engels.

Marx’s Final Struggle By 1873, the International was moribund as a result of its internal divisions over organizational issues and the evaluation of the Paris Commune, combined with repression from various governments. From around that  Ibid., p. 121.

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time, Marx basically retired from the public stage. He continued to be involved in the German labor movement, but mainly through his theoretical contribution, as if a sort of thinktank. His personal interactions also narrowed to his family circle and a few scholarly friends. Marx was forced to spend a great deal of time in convalescence as his health, which had suffered under the strain of working for the International and writing Capital, grew even worse. Yet Marx did not cease his effort to bring Capital to completion. He continued working to complete the manuscript for volume two up to 1882, the year before his death. In the eighth manuscript of Book 2 of Capital, written from 1877 to 1881, he had overcome the limits of his previous understanding to complete his theory of “reproduction of the total social capital” (which this book, unfortunately, does not have adequate space to address). Some argue that Marx’s creative power diminished in his final years, but right up to the end he continued his work and even made advances. Moreover, he sought to broaden his critique of political economy through the mediation of the theory of metabolism, assimilating elements of the natural sciences with regard to the concrete logic of metabolism in agriculture, geology, mineralogy, botany, organic chemistry, and other fields. In order to deepen his research on the premodern community, he went so far as to learn Russian from scratch when he was already in his fifties. Despite the limitations posed by his poor health, Marx did not cease his efforts to hone his theory and make it more comprehensive and concrete. The efforts Marx made in his final years did not mean that he had abandoned the idea of workers transforming society to focus instead on ecological issues and the premodern community. Indeed, a letter that Marx and Engels sent to the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party in 1879 included the following: “For almost 40 years we have emphasized that the class struggle is the immediate motive force of history and, in particular, that the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is the great lever of modern social revolution.”64 He continued to maintain that the “emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.” Given that the form of labor is the fundamental determinant of the mode of production, as explained in Capital, it was natural that Marx continued to emphasize the labor movement. 64  K. Marx and F. Engels, “Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Barcke and Others,” in MECW, vol. 24, p. 269.

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At times, though, Marx expressed his frustration with the institutionalization of the labor movement, as in a letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1878, where he went so far as to write: “The English working class had gradually become ever more demoralized as a result of the period of corruption after 1848, and had finally reached the stage of being no more than an appendage of the great Liberal Party, i.e. of its oppressors, the capitalists.”65 After 1848, Marx became aware, both theoretically and practically, of the strength of capitalism, appreciating the need not only for reformist struggles by the labor movement over the long term but also for the working class to obtain allies because social transformation was not possible solely through the class struggles of the working class in a narrow sense. Indeed, the development of Marx’s view of social transformation in his later years, mediated by the theory of metabolism, was the result of seeking allies for the working class, which he can be said to have located in three areas. First, Marx looked to social minorities as allies of the working class. Already in the first volume of Capital, he pointed out: “In the United States of America, every independent workers’ movement was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.”66 For this reason, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves. Marx later showed a similar understanding with regard to Ireland, as he explained to Engels in a 10 December 1869 letter: For a long time I believed it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy…. Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. This is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general.67

He expressed a similar idea in a 29 November 1869, letter to Ludwig Kugelman:

65  K. Marx, “Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Leipzig: [London,] 11 February 1878,” in MECW, vol. 45, p. 299. 66  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 414. 67  K. Marx, “Marx to Engels in Manchester: London, 10 December 1869,” in MECW, vol. 43, p. 398.

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I have become more and more convinced—and the thing now is to drum this conviction into the English working class—that they will never be able to do anything decisive here in England before they separate their attitude towards Ireland quite definitely from that of the ruling classes, and not only make common cause with the Irish, but even take the initiative in dissolving the Union established in 1801, and substituting a free federal relationship for it.68

Slavery in the United States and the rule of Ireland by England not only strengthened the exploitative system of the ruling class, but rendered the workers movement dysfunctional by dividing the working class through racial and ethnic discrimination. Marx began to adopt the view that the workers movement would need to actively address the issues of racism and ethnicity to overcome this situation. The focus on gender in his late excerpt notes can be considered in this context. Although he did not clearly express this in his written works, Marx seems to have believed that the labor movement could not become powerful without overcoming gender discrimination. Instead of being satisfied to reduce the issue of social minorities to the issue of class, Marx concretely analyzed how both were intertwined with capitalist production relations, finding potential among social minorities to resist the capitalist mode of production. In light of how social movements unfolded subsequently, Marx was certainly a pioneer. The second area in which Marx sought allies was the premodern community. The late Marx moved away from his earlier view that no matter how brutal colonial rule had been, it was revolutionary insofar as it swept away the old feudal system of oppression. Instead of that earlier view, Marx came to position the premodern community as a bastion for resisting capital. This positive evaluation of the premodern community was not based on any sort of romanticism, however. Rather, it was the outcome of Marx’s deepening theoretical understanding, including an awareness of the increasing power of capitalism, which he gained through the effort to finish Capital; his witnessing of the tragic results of the colonial expansion of capitalism; and his understanding of the vitality of the premodern community gained through vast research on the subject. In his

68  K. Marx, “Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover: London, 29 November 1869,” in MECW, vol. 43, p. 390.

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preface to the second Russian edition of The Communist Manifesto, Marx writes: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that the two complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for communist development.69

This conclusion was limited to Russia, but by studying Marx’s excerpt notes we can see the strong possibility that he saw this thesis as having wider applicability. Today, as the globalization of capitalism has taken full shape, hardly anything remains of the premodern community. Yet, no matter how far the power of capitalism penetrates society, it is not able to eliminate local communities, traditional cultures, and ecological practices that people have built up over a long period of time. In this sense, today’s social movements still have lessons to learn from Marx’s view of the power of premodern elements to resist capital. The third area in which Marx sought allies for the working class concerns the metabolism between human beings and nature, as well as the overall related metabolism; that is, all life activity on the planet. Marx sought the concrete logic of metabolism, and as his knowledge grew, he become convinced that capitalist production relations had come into conflict with the overall activities of life on Earth in various aspects and areas. His interest in the logic of metabolism, as in the case of the community, was not idealistic. For instance, he did not adopt a position akin to “deep ecology,” where modern society is criticized from an ideal view of nature. Rather, Marx focused on the concrete logic and diversity of metabolism clarified by contemporary natural science, although limited somewhat by his own era. The late Marx nearly devoured the results of such research. Looking at his vast excerpt notes on concrete scientific insights, one is amazed by his attention to detail and strong interest in a diverse range of specific issues. He gained thorough knowledge in how inherent metabolic qualities in a variety of areas served as strong points of resistance to the abstract movement of capital accumulation. This broad perspective of Marx was not limited to an interest in ecology. He also suggested the possibility of what might be referred to as an 69  K, Marx and F. Engels, “Preface to the Second Russian Edition of The Manifesto of The Communist Party,” in MECW 24. p. 426.

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alliance between natural scientists and the working class. As in the case of today’s climate and anti-nuclear movements, the accumulation and deepening of scientific knowledge enables us to clarify the concrete logic of metabolism and thereby gain a strong basis for resisting capital. In his critique of political economy, Marx also drew on the concrete natural sciences in such fields as agriculture and geography to criticize the extremely abstract grasp of metabolism reflected in such theories as the “law of diminishing returns.” The late Marx ended up quite far from his earlier view that Association would be formed by the deracinated subjects who are generated through capital’s complete destruction of the premodern order. Instead, he sought to secure a realm outside of the reified world subsumed by capital. Marx appreciated the labor movement’s effort to maintain and expand a realm outside of capital by limiting working hours and obtaining vocational and technological education. In the field of agriculture, Marx envisioned a limitation to capital’s disruption of metabolism by agricultural science clarifying a concrete metabolic logic. He emphasized the solidarity between the working class and social minorities to resist the tendency of capital to strengthen its own rule by sowing divisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender. And, looking outside of the Western world, he put forth a vision of containing the power of capitalism on the basis of positive elements from the premodern community. In short, the late Marx’s conception of social transformation was to resist the power of capitalism in a number of different realms, based on the particularity and diversity of metabolism, and thereby expand the scope of possibilities for workers to form associations. Marx did not have enough time, in the end, to bring these conceptions to completion, but he never compromised. Instead of complacently spending his final years finishing up manuscripts at hand so as to systematize their contents, Marx engaged in a tireless quest to present the enormous scale of his unfinished vision of social transformation. This was the final struggle of Marx as he worked intensely despite his worsening health. How we can inherit and develop these great achievements of Marx will depend, of course, on our own efforts, bearing in mind his famous line that the point is not to interpret the world, but to change it.



Appendix A: Marx’s Method

The two appendices of this book deal with Marx’s theoretical method, which could not be fully examined in the main body of the book, given its introductory nature. Here, in Appendix A, the focus is on Marx’s grasp of society on the basis of labor, while Appendix B examines the theoretical structure of Book One of Capital. The conventional view, expressed in histories of social thought, is that Marx learned from Hegel to view labor as the human essence, which led to his labor-centered grasp of society. However, such an understanding is inappropriate, considering that nowhere in the writings of Marx can we find him asserting that labor is the essence of human beings. For example, in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx writes: Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern political economy. He grasps labor as the essence of man—as man’s essence which stands the test: he sees only the positive, not the negative side of labor.1

As we can see, Marx certainly does indicate that Hegel grasped “labor as the essence of man,” but he points this out within the context of criticizing him for overlooking the negative aspect of alienated labor within modern society, which generates the system of private ownership. Marx 1

 K. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in MECW, vol. 3, p. 333.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52950-5

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criticizes Hegel for committing the same error as the Classical economists like Adam Smith in treating private property as a self-evident premise. Although Marx in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts generally grasps labor as the generating principle within human history (and praises Hegel for understanding labor in that way), he does not adopt Hegel’s position of equating labor with the “essence of man.” Indeed, in the manuscript for Book 3 of Capital, Marx identifies “true freedom” as beyond the realm of necessity, that is, the realm of labor: But this always remains a realm of necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis.2

Such a passage should make it clear that Marx did not, in fact, adhere to the notion that labor is the human essence. At the same time, it can also be stated clearly (as Chap. 2 demonstrates) that Marx starts from labor in attempting to theoretically grasp society. Why did Marx seek to understand society on the basis of labor if he did not view it as the “essence of man”? This is a key question that will be examined here from three perspectives.

Marx’s “New Materialism” Marx, in examining society, of course adopted materialism as his fundamental perspective. But the connotations of “materialism” for him have not generally been well understood. Misinterpretations have been due, in no small part, to the influence of the philosophical materialism and dialectics of nature systematized by Engels (independent of Marx), in response to the practical needs of the labor movement of the time; and to the influence of “dialectical materialism” as a popularization of Engels’ theory within the doctrine of so-called “Marxism-Leninism.” If we are to appreciate the significance of Marx’s labor-based grasp of society within his critique of political economy, we need to first properly understand his materialistic grasp of society. The following characteristics come into view when we examine what Marx actually wrote about his “new materialism.” First and foremost, his new materialism is inextricably linked to a practical conception of transforming society. The young Marx, who began his 2

 K. Marx, Marx’s Economic Manuscript of1864–1865 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 885–86.

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theoretical endeavors under the influence of the Young Hegelians, initially shared their enlightenment stance of seeking to change consciousness through ideas. However, as a newspaper editor for the Rheinische Zietung, he found himself in the “embarrassing position” of “having to discuss what is known as material interests.”3 This led Marx to a critical investigation of Hegel’s philosophy of right. In “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction,” Marx concluded that “revolutions require a passive element, a material basis” so that “theory can be realized in a people only insofar as it is the realization of the needs of the people.”4 Marx thus shifted toward seeking the basis for social transformation in the real life of human beings, rather than in ideas, as he later expressed in The German Ideology: Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the now existing premise.5

The second key characteristic of Marx’s new materialism is that it is, in essence, a critique of the enlightenment approach. Not only did Marx break away from his earlier enlightenment position, but he launched a positive critique of it in “Theses on Feuerbach.” There he criticized the fundamental flaw inherent in the enlightenment approach, which seeks to transform society by changing people’s incorrect consciousness on the basis of certain ideas: Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice.6

3  K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One, in MECW, vol. 29, pp. 261–62. 4  K. Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction,” in MECW, vol. 3, p. 183. 5  K. Marx, The German Ideology, in MECW, vol. 5, p. 49. 6  K. Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in MECW, vol. 5, p. 5.

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Feuerbach sought to liberate human beings by critiquing religious illusions through his praise of “sensuous human” and “species-being.” But it proves impossible to transform society by changing human consciousness on the basis of such ideas, since every idea is, itself, a product of actual relations that cannot exert an autonomous force separate from its real foundation. In order for us to change society, we must instead transform the practical relations that constitute the real foundation for generating ideas. The materialistic question to ask is not what is an illusion’s secular foundation, but rather why and how the illusion was generated from its secular foundation.7 The precise standpoint of Marx’s new materialism is this focus on “why and how,” as he later explained in the first volume of Capital: It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly kernel of the misty creations of religion than to do the opposite, i.e. to develop from the actual, given relations of life the forms in which these have been apotheosized. The latter method is the only materialist, and therefore the only scientific one.8

The third characteristic of new materialism is that its standpoint is “human society, or social humanity,” and that it fundamentally criticizes the “old materialism” that is based on the standpoint of “civil society”9 (meaning “bourgeois society” in this context). In “Theses on Feuerbach,” Marx explains that “[t]he highest point reached by intuitive materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is intuition of separate individuals and of civil society.”10 Here Marx seems to have in mind how Feuerbach merely exalts sensuous intuition over religious illusions, and how the French materialists passively grasped sensibility, overlooking the sensuous praxis that reproduces and transforms the living environment.11 Anyone who adopts a theoretical standpoint that 7  “[H]ow did it come about that people ‘got’ these illusions ‘into their heads’? Even for the German theoreticians this question paved the way to the materialistic view of the world, a view which is not without premises, but which empirically observes the actual material premises as such and for that reason is, for the first time, actually a critical view of the world” (Marx, The German Ideology, p. 236). 8  Marx, Capital, p. 494 9  Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” p. 5. 10  Ibid. 11  “The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that the educator must himself be educated” (ibid., p. 4).

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overlooks the sensuous praxis of human beings, which continually reproduces the real social relations, will end up (even if based on materialism) taking the existing relations for granted. This, in turn, makes it impossible to go beyond the standpoint of those relations, which is the standpoint of separate, private individuals, i.e. the standpoint of bourgeois society. Existing relations can only be transformed by transforming the life praxis of individuals, not through the enlightenment activities of philosophers or the external institutional changes made by educators. As Marx points out, “[t]he coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”12 The possibility of such revolutionary practice is conditioned by human activities and the environment reproduced through those activities. Thus, only the theoretical method of “new materialism,” which asks the questions why and how, can clarify the possibility of and conditions for a social transformation. In sum, the new materialism established by the young Marx, through his encounter with various theoretical perspectives, seeks the ultimate basis for transforming society within the living processes of human beings, aims to transform the activities of life that continually reproduce the existing relations, and clarifies the possibility of and conditions for such revolutionary praxis by fundamentally considering “why” and “how” the current relations exist. This materialistic view of society is precisely what led Marx to grasp society on the basis of labor, because the activity of labor lies at the root of the human activity described above, which is the praxis of life.

Labor Form and Economic Determination of Form Marx viewed labor as the praxis at the root of human activity because it is the comprehensive act that constitutes the starting point of material reproduction. In The German Ideology, where he presents his materialistic view of history, Marx writes: The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination.13

 Ibid.  Marx, The German Ideology, p. 31.

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The first of these real premises is the life process of human beings, and therefore the “first historical act, a fundamental condition of all history,” is the “production of material life itself”14; because “life involves before everything else eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other things” and “the first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs.”15 Such productive activities are carried out collaboratively by human beings, so they always form certain social relations. The same idea is developed in more detail in relation to consumption, distribution, and exchange in his introduction to Grundrisse, where, Marx notes: “Individuals producing in society—hence the socially determined production by individuals is of course the point of departure”16; this is because an “individual produces an object and by consuming it returns again to himself; he returns however as a productive individual and an individual reproducing himself” so that “consumption thus appears as a moment of production.”17 “Distribution itself,” Marx also notes, “is a product of production, not only with regard to the object, [in the sense] that only the results of production can be distributed, but also with regard to the form, [in the sense] that the particular mode of participation in production determines the specific forms of distribution, the form in which one shares in distribution.”18 Finally, with regard to exchange, he writes: “(1) [There is] no exchange without division of labor, whether this is naturally evolved or is itself already the result of an historical process; (2) private exchange presupposes private production; (3) the intensity of exchange, its extent and nature, are determined by the development and structure of production.”19 Marx concludes that a “definite [mode of] production thus determines a definite [mode of] consumption, distribution, exchange, and definite relations of these different moments to one another.”20 Marx, of course, is not merely saying here that consumption, distribution, and exchange are determined by production in the material sense. That is to say, rather than merely pointing out that use values can only be consumed, distributed, and exchanged after labor has first generated those  Ibid., p. 42.  Ibid., pp. 41–42. 16  K. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, in MECW, vol. 28, p. 17. 17  Ibid., p. 31. 18  Ibid., pp. 32–33. 19  Ibid., p.36. 20  Ibid. 14 15

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use values, Marx is emphasizing that production is the comprehensive moment within the process that formally determines consumption, distribution, and exchange. He notes that the “structure of distribution is entirely determined by the structure of production,” as in the example where an “individual whose participation in production takes the form of wage labor receives a share in the products, the results of production, in the form of wages.”21 The form of exchange is also determined by the form of production, as can be seen in how the private exchange of products (i.e. commodity exchange) is premised on private labor. In short, the social form of people’s material reproduction, and therefore the production relations, are determined by the socially determined productive activity; which is to say, determined by the form of labor. Labor has a certain social form because the laboring individuals exist as “individuals producing in society,” rather than lacking all prerequisites. The starting point, in other words, is the labor of individuals who exist under certain social conditions, which posit their labor with a certain social form. Certain production relations are then formed and reproduced from that starting point of labor. The social conditions spoken of here are continually reproduced by labor, as are the production relations. However, unlike the production relations, the social conditions are not social relations formed by laboring individuals, but rather a historically formed presupposition  for these individuals,  which  constitutes  an element of their labor, as Marx explains: If it is said that, since production must begin with a certain distribution of the instruments of production, it follows that distributions at least in this sense precedes and forms the presupposition of production, then the reply must be that production does indeed have its determinants and preconditions, which form its moments.22

In other words, labor can only exist as labor with a social determination, having certain social conditions as its moments, and such labor forms the starting point of the reproduction of material life. Historically formed social conditions thus posit labor with a certain social determination, and labor, with that determination, then forms certain production relations and at the same time reproduces the social conditions that are its own precondition.  Ibid., p. 32.  Ibid., p. 34.

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Clearly, Marx is criticizing the view that the property form of the means of production is the foundation of production relations. He insists, instead, that the foundation is labor with a certain social form. For example, the exclusionary ownership of the means of production by capitalists and landowners constitutes the social conditions that posit labor with a specific social formal determination as wage labor, but that is not the foundation of production relations because such specific social conditions can only be reproduced through the specific labor form of wage labor. Granted, the specific social conditions the selves are created through historical processes, such as the primitive accumulation of capital that generated capitalists’ exclusionary ownership of the means of production. Nevertheless, what reproduces the social conditions is the specific form of labor. Social conditions could not be reproduced without labor being carried out in a specific form. This is precisely why society must be grasped on the foundation of labor, rather than on the basis of the social conditions that are its prerequisite; this is also why social conditions must be seen as a moment of labor carried out in a specific social form. If one were instead to view social conditions as the foundation of production relations, it would mean that the same form of labor would always be generated, and therefore the same production relations would always be reproduced. One would have no choice, in that case, but to look outside of the production relations for a motive force to transform the mode of production, such as some idea or political power. That sort of perspective is obviously different than the new materialism of Marx, who sought the basis for social transformation in the contradictions and friction within people’s life processes, and aimed to transform living praxis itself. The precise reason that Marx looked to an association of wageworkers (rather than some idea or political power) as crucial to overcoming capitalism is that he identified the deepest foundation of this mode of production as the specific form of labor, not the social conditions that form the prerequisite of labor. This manner of starting from life praxis (and labor in particular), rather than static social conditions (i.e. property), is the consistent approach throughout Marx’s entire critique of political economy, starting from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, where his outlook was expressed abstractly in the concept of “alienated labor,” up to the works of his later years.23  This is why it is mistaken think that the basis of Marx’s concept of “alienated labor” is the separation of workers from the means of production. In fact, the basis is “alienated labor” as the form of labor that reproduces this separation. 23

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The nature of Marx’ theoretical grasp is closely related to the following manner of expression that he employed in works spanning from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts to Capital: S verhält sich zu O als N. / S bezieht sich auf O als N. (The subject (S) relates to the object (O) in the manner of N.)24

Using this type of expression, Marx sought to indicate that the social determination of an object is formed through the active behavior (Verhalten) of the subject, resulting in a certain relationship. For example, if person A is in the role of a king vis-à-vis person B, it is only because B relates to A as being the king; in other words, the specific behavior of B toward A posits A with a specific character (i.e. the social power as king), thus forming the specific relationship between the two persons (i.e. a power relationship between king and subject). Social relations are not some sort of vague existence but rather are formed through such behavior by individuals. Various scholars have claimed that Marx’s theory is a one of relations and structures, the most obvious example being the structuralism of Althusser. This is the idea that human beings do not have some fixed essence to begin with, but are rather limited by relations and structures; and that, at the same time, individuals restricted in this manner, are the ones who create the relations. However, Marx did not think merely in general terms of such a mutually determining relationship between structure and subject. What Marx sought to clarify, above all, was not the general character of human action but why and how specific relations arise. In order to answer those questions, he had to consider the manner of “behavior.” And, at the deepest level, the action that determines the behavior of human beings is labor. As seen in Chap. 2, the behavior (Verhalten) of private producers toward the products, in carrying out their private labor, posits them with value, generating the relations of commodity production. Then, on the basis of commodity-production relations, the behavior of the wageworkers toward the means of production, in carrying out their wage labor, makes the self-valorization of value possible, thereby generating the 24  See Appendix 2 of Chapter 3 of Teinosuke Otani, Marx no Association-ron [Marx’s Association Theory] (Tokyo: Sakurai Shoten, 2011).

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relations of capitalist production. Such behavior is the basis for the reproduction of the private individuals with social desires (who form the social conditions presupposed by commodity production relations) and for the reproduction of the separation of the direct producers from the means of production (which forms the social conditions presupposed by capitalist production relations). Thus, labor gives birth to the power of reified things (commodity, money, and capital) and generates certain production relations.

Metabolism and Labor Marx’s reason for emphasizing labor is not limited to the praxis that generates certain production relations. Labor also has decisive significance to the metabolism (Stoffwechsel) upon which human beings depend for their material reproduction. “Metabolism” is a concept first used in the early nineteenth century within the field of physiology that later gained wider currency through the work of the well-known chemist Justus von Liebig and others, becoming a more broadly encompassing term that included not only the chemical changes that individual organisms undergo but also the interaction between living organisms and their surrounding environment.25 The term metabolism began to influence not only the natural but also the social sciences, and was used analogously within political economy to refer to the circular, organic activity of human beings involved in production, distribution, and consumption. Under the influence of Roland Daniels, Marx first used the term metabolism in a March 1851 work titled Reflection, as an analogy to explain the cyclical activity of economic society as an organism. All the way through to his writing of Capital, Marx continued to consistently use the term in the sense of organic economic activity. However, Marx’s use of metabolism was not limited to that meaning. Gradually, he began to use the term to express the material circulation between human beings and nature. This is the precise sense in which Marx defines labor as “first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.”26 Of course, other living organisms mediate their metabolism  K. Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), p. 70.  K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 284.

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with nature, but only human beings do so self-consciously, rather than instinctively. Therefore, the human mediation of the material metabolism through labor can be described as a conscious mediation of the material metabolism between human beings and nature. Using the concept of metabolism to define labor brings into clearer focus what was confirmed in the previous section. Now it should be evident that labor is the starting point of the material life process because, as the mediating activity, it clearly determines the manner of the metabolism between human beings and nature. Moreover, because this mediation is carried out by human beings consciously, rather than instinctively, they are able not only to develop the mode of labor in the material sense, but also transform it in the formal sense, so as to create different production relations. In particular, the nature of labor changes significantly depending on whether it is carried out as communal labor under conditions of personal ties between laborers within a community, or as wage labor carried out by property-less workers hired by capitalists who exclusively own the means of production through the power of money. In the former case, labor is organized on the basis of tradition, commands, and other such methods in order to produce use values; whereas in the latter case, labor is organized via the market in order to produce surplus value. This difference in the form of labor exerts a huge influence on the character of production technologies and the mode of the social division of labor, thus leading to enormous changes in the metabolism between human beings and nature. Let’s now try to grasp capitalist production relations from this perspective. In the case of capitalist relations of production, in which the aim of the entire process is the valorization of capital and the means of production as the bearers of capital value dominate workers within the production process, we are not merely dealing with a situation where the social character of private labor can only be considered in the attributes of commodities (as in the case of commodity production relations). In addition, capital actively intervenes in the labor process to fundamentally alter it through the logic of valorization. Moreover, in so doing, capital, for its own advantage, makes active use of the situation in which the necessary moments for social reproduction can only be considered in relation to the twofold social character of private labor expressed by value and use value, and transforms this situation into its own strength. For example, the fact that the production cost considered in commodity production relations is merely the abstract labor expended by the individual private producers is manifested

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in the maximizing of the use of gratis natural power to increase productive power so as to obtain relative surplus value. Once the commodity is purchased, so as to become one’s own private possession, no matter how one might use it, the monetary amount expended in its purchase will not change, and from this circumstance the material “elasticity” of the commodity purchased will be maximized for the sake of obtaining surplus value. Since the movement of capital thus organizes the material world in line with its own abstract logic of valorization, it inevitably is inconsistent with, and causes disruptions to, the various concrete metabolisms. But it is not the case that the metabolism is only one-directionally organized and disrupted according to the logic of capital. Both value as well as capital as its subjectification always require some material as their bearer. For example, use value is the bearer of value in the case of the commodity, and the means of production are the bearer of capital value for capital within the production process. Even value, which is purely social, is an expression of the social character of abstract human labor and cannot be generated without the material praxis of labor. Therefore, although capital always seeks to overcome the logic of metabolism to maximize surplus value, and thus collides with and disturbs the metabolism, ultimately it is unable to free itself from the metabolic logic. One example is how the limitless extension of working hours to obtain absolute surplus value destroys the labor power that generates surplus value. This compels wageworkers, who are the bearers of the labor-power commodity, to seek limits to the working day so that they will be capable of selling their labor power again the following day, culminating in the introduction of legal regulations on working hours. Thus, no matter how capital might seek to organize the material world in a manner that best suits itself by using the purely social power of value, it is constantly constrained by the logic of metabolism and ultimately pulled back by it. No matter how deeply people are penetrated by the logic of capitalism, they must, ultimately, defend the metabolism in order to safeguard their own existence. As seen in Chap. 3, Marx identified this logic of metabolism opposing the logic of capitalism as the ultimate basis for social transformation. After finishing the first volume of Capital, Marx began to pursue the concrete logic of metabolism more fundamentally, looking not only at technology and agriculture but also the fields of geology, mineralogy, botany, and organic chemistry. The traces of this endeavor can be found in the extensive excerpt notes from his final years. This was an attempt by Marx

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to identify points of resistance to capital in a wide range of areas through the pursuit of the concrete logic of metabolism. As explained above, Marx grasped labor not merely as the appropriation of nature to satisfy needs but as the activity that mediates the metabolism between human beings and nature, which gave him the perspective needed to understand various contradictions generated by the capitalist mode of production—such as the ecological crisis, overwork, and poverty—as disturbances to the metabolism. In so doing, Marx clarified that these disturbances stem from the particular form of the mediating action. This is why Marx, in envisaging a future society, looks not only to the regulation of the distribution of labor and products by associated individuals, but also to the “associated producers” to “govern their metabolic interaction with nature rationally, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing this metabolism with the smallest expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.”27

 Marx’s Economic Manuscript of1864–1865 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), p. 885.

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 Appendix B: Marx’s Theory of Reification and the Theoretical Structure of Book One of Capital

The aim of this appendix is to clarify the theoretical structure of Book One of Capital from the perspective of the theory of reification, premised on the theoretical method of Marx discussed in Appendix A.1 Capital was written for the sake of social transformation, as noted many times in this book, but that is not because it theoretically “demonstrated” the inevitability of socialism or serves as propaganda for the political left in exposing the exploitation committed by the capitalist class. Rather, the primary reason Capital is a book for transforming society is that it equips us with the theoretical basis for boldly and freely considering the praxis needed to replace the capitalist mode of production that has become a fetter on humanity with a new society based on Association.2 Marx wrote Capital to “shorten and lessen the birth-pangs” for communist society to emerge from the womb of capitalism. Passages throughout Capital touch on the class struggles of the past and present, while making suggestions about possible future struggles. In 1  “Book” refers to the division of Capital based on content, while “volume” is the division for publication. Since “Book One” was published as a single volume, it corresponds to “Volume One.” 2  For more on Marx’s understanding of Association, see Teinosuke Otani, Marx no asoshiēshon-ron [Marx’s Theory of Association] (Tokyo: Sakurai-Shoten, 2011); Paresh Chattopadhyay, Marx’s Associated Mode of Production: Critique of Marxism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52950-5

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addition to clarifying that the development of the capitalist mode of production generates the material conditions necessary for it to be overcome, Marx elucidates that the decisive elements necessary to ripen the conditions for social transformation are the struggles of the direct producers, who are exploited, deprived, and continually face impoverishment under the capitalist system.3 Some traditional “Marxists” placed their hopes in the “civilizing influence of capital,” but reality shattered that illusion.4 The modern and contemporary history of the world provides us with many examples of how social progress cannot be made without the struggles of the working class and social minorities. The theory of reification, which is the focus of this appendix, cannot be detached from this core problematic in Capital. The inverted reified structure peculiar to the modern society, as the young Marx already clarified as the starting point of his research on political economy,5 stems from the particular behavior of human beings, most notably within their productive activities. The specific form of labor under capitalism, which Marx would later define as “wage labor,” is certainly not some sort of “natural” behavior, as the Classical economists and contemporary economists have asserted. Marx’s theory of the primitive accumulation of capital shows that wage labor is an extremely specific mode of social activity first generated through the brutal terrorism exerted by the ruling class upon the direct producers. The fundamental problem regarding reification is not, therefore, the “illusion” that a social attribute of a thing is a natural, inherent attribute, or the concealment, behind the circulation process, of the exploitation in the production process. Rather, what is fundamentally at issue is the praxis of human beings and the life processes formed by that praxis. The crux of the matter, in other words, is that the extremely specific character of human beings’ own productive activities generates an inverted, reified structure that comes to dominate them; that those specific actions are inevitably stamped with “alienation”; and that the inverted structure reproduced by those actions disturbs their life processes. This is why the 3  Harry Cleaver was one of the first to point this out in his book Reading Capital Politically (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), which examines Capital from the perspective of the class struggle. 4  For Marx’s changing view on the emancipatory effect of capitalism, see K. B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 5  See the fragment “Estranged Labor” in Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844, in MECW, vol. 3.

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class struggle accompanies the entire unfolding of Capital; or to borrow the expression of Michel Foucault, “where there is power, there is resistance.”6 If we understand the significance of reification in the manner above, then the theory of reification could be described as a core issue of Capital. The aim of this appendix is to clarify the logical structure of Book One of Capital from the perspective of this theory. This appendix will not, of course, apply the theory of reification to the object as a “philosophy,” in a phallogocentric manner; nor will it reduce the diversity of the material to the concept of reification. Marx’s theory of reification is something that emerges from the particular logic of the capitalist mode of production, as a specific object, not from some philosophical perspective of an a priori “theory of reification.” His theory, unlike a philosophical theory of “reification” or “alienation,” is not something that can be universally applied to every social system. Nevertheless, it is necessary to focus attention on the theory of reification itself because Marx’s “method is much less in evidence”7 in Capital, as a result of trying to make Capital easier for the general public to understand—as is clear to anyone who has seriously studied the manuscripts that Marx wrote for Capital but never published. The problematic regarding the theory of reification is “much less in evidence” in Capital than it had been in his rough drafts and in Contribution, so if we hope to correctly grasp the theoretical structure of Book One of Capital we must examine this method and use it as an “auxiliary line.”8

6  M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 95. 7  K.  Marx, ‘Marx to Engels in Manchester: [London] 9 December 1861, in MECW 41, p. 333. 8  In examining Marx’s unpublished manuscripts, a “symptomatic reading” (Althusser) is necessary to uncover the new concepts and problems posed within the complex appearance founded on the old way of conceiving concepts and posing problems. Conversely, when reading the first volume of Capital as a completed work meant to popularize Marx’s ideas, we need to identify the method concealed behind the clear descriptions and grasp the theoretical structure of those descriptions from the method.

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Reification of Production Relations (Part One of Capital) Part One of Book One of Capital deals with the commodity and money, which is to say, commodity production relations abstracted from capitalist production relations.9 Marx does more here than merely examine the reification of production relations at the foundation of the capitalist mode of production. Each of the three chapters of Part One (on the commodity, exchange process, and money) corresponds, respectively, to the following three aspects that play a decisive role throughout Capital: (1) reification, (2) the personification of reified things, and (3) institutions and laws. We need to be careful to note here that the three aspects should not be posited as some sort of “philosophy” or “theoretical method” independent of the capitalist mode of production that constitutes our object of analysis. Private Labor and Reification (Chapter 1) Capitalist production relations are always historically premised on specific social conditions, and the same is true of the commodity production relations abstracted from capitalist production. In the case of the latter, the required condition is a social division of labor among private producers. Although the private producers are freed of the communal relations of personal dependence to become mutually independent persons, they still require each other’s labor to satisfy their respective needs. This specific social condition, which did not exist in premodern society, is the prerequisite for commodity production relations abstracted from capitalist production relations. Thus, what Marx examines in Chap. 1 on the commodity is not the “market” in general, which existed in premodern society as well, but the specifically modern production relations wherein the total social labor is organized via the market.10 9  The concept of “capitalist production relations” focuses on the relations formed through the way of relating (behavior) of individuals under the capitalist mode of production. 10  The commodity under pre-capitalist modes of production also appears in Capital, of course, but in nearly every case only as an example related to the consideration of the commodity under capitalism (rather than an object of consideration in itself). However, this does not mean that there is nothing in common between commodity exchange in the capitalist mode of production and commodity exchange in premodern societies. A certain commonality exists between both phenomena insofar as they are described using the same term of “commodity exchange.” As will be explained in more detail below, since commodities are the product of private labor, the degree to which a product of labor will display the fundamental character of the commodity form (i.e. the character the commodity has under the capitalist

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Under such social conditions, private producers require a social division of labor, but their own labor does not have direct social currency since it takes the form of private labor performed by private individuals, rather than labor carried out on the basis of personal ties between human beings. Thus, instead of being able to mutually relate their labor directly, the producers seek to establish a social division of labor by relating the products desired by “others” to each other and exchanging them. However, since exchange can only be established between products with different use values, they run up against the difficulty of what standard can be used for exchange between completely different use values. In facing this difficulty, the private producers unconsciously relate to the products of private labor in a manner that posits them with a common social attribute separate from use value; namely, the attribute as the objectification of abstract human labor. Exchange is carried out on the basis of this social attribute. Marx uses the term “value” to refer to this social attribute: “Only what transforms mere objects of use into commodities can relate them to one another as commodities and thus set them in a social rapport.  But this is their value.”11 At the same time, value expresses “the social character of labor, insofar as it exists as expenditure of ‘social’ labor-power.”12 For social reproduction to be feasible, no matter the form of society, the limited total labor of society must be distributed to each of the production sectors. This is why labor—along with its social character as useful labor (in the sense of producing useful products)—has a social character as abstract human labor (in the sense of being a certain quantity of labor expended from the finite amount of society’s overall labor). Under commodity production relamode of production) will depend on the strength of the private character of production, which is the extent to which production has been freed of the communal regulations of tradition, ethics, religion, and so on. Thus, in analyzing an actual society or history, it is possible and also necessary to grasp the extent to which the society is penetrated by the rule of the commodity form (=reification) and the law of value. Therefore, even though, as David Graeber notes, positive elements exist within the premodern market that do not contradict mutual aid (e.g. popular credit), those elements are not in opposition to Marx’s theory of the commodity. What Marx called the abolishment of the commodity form certainly does not mean the abolishment of exchange between individuals. What is important to note here is that commodity exchange should not be viewed as synonymous with the exchange of wealth in general. 11  K. Marx, Das Kapital, Bd. 1, Erste Auflage, in MEGA2 II/5, S.38. 12  K. Marx, “Marginal Notes on Adolph Wagner’s Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie,” in MECW 24, 551.

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tions, this social character as abstract human labor is objectified as a purely social attribute of the products of private labor, taking the form of value. But since abstract human labor is an abstract attribute with no fixed sensuous form, separated from the particular form of useful labor, its value objectivity is merely an “abstract objectivity”13 or “phantom-like objectivity.”14 This objectivity must be given visible expression through the use value of another commodity. In order to express its own value, a commodity must relate to another commodity as its equivalent, thereby positing the other commodity as the “body of value” (i.e. the commodity, in its immediate sensuous form, with currency as value). As unfolded in Marx’s theory of the value form, this expression of value develops up to the general value form, where a single commodity becomes the body of value for every other commodity (“general equivalent”). When the general equivalent is affixed to gold, it becomes money, and the general value form becomes the price form. In this way, private producers under commodity production relations bestow the social power of value upon things and make them commodities and money, and relations between the producers are formed that depend upon that power. The private labor of the private producers is only first demonstrated to constitute one part of the total social labor, and thus obtain a social character, through the relations between products of labor. The labor of these individuals does not have a directly social character because their social connection is formed through products, rather than through persons. What has a social character is the products of the producers’ labor, instead. This is the reification of production relations. The social character of labor, in this case, is only indicated post factum through the mediation of a reified connection. Unless that reified connection is established, labor cannot gain a social character. Therefore, within commodity production relations, an inverted relationship is established wherein the relations of labor appear as relations between things, and the movement of things determines people’s actions. “In exchange value,” Marx explains, “the social relationship of persons is transformed into a social attitude of things; personal capacity into a capacity of things.”15 Because private labor thus generates relations dependent on things, it also

 Marx, Das Kapital, Bd. 1, Erste Auflage, S. 30.  K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 128. 15  K. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, in MECW, vol. 28, p. 94. 13 14

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reproduces its own premise; namely, the specific social condition wherein atomized private producers are mutually dependent. Moreover, within the reified relations, social relations between human beings are always manifested as social relations between reified things, so that this appearance solidifies into the inverted cognition that products have the power of value as a natural attribute. This is fetishism, which conceals that value actually is generated from a certain way that private producers relate to products of labor. As long as private producers engage in productive activities through a specific form of private labor under particular social conditions, they cannot enter mutual relations without bestowing upon labor products the social power of value and depending on that power. For products to be exchanged as things of value, their value must be expressed through the general equivalent. Although these economic determinations of form are generated by individuals’ specific manner of behavior (or relating), they are established regardless of human will or consciousness under certain assumed conditions. Thus, the will and desires of human beings are framed and transformed by the economic determinations of form that they themselves unconsciously generate. This already suggests that the source of the power that dominates people under the capitalist mode of production is an economic determination of form, and what fundamentally generates this formal determination is private labor. It is not possible, therefore, to transform this mode of production without overcoming private labor. Personification of Reified Things (Chapter 2 of Capital) In the chapter on the exchange process, Marx, taking reification as his premise, introduces human persons equipped will and desire, and considers the actions of those involved in commodity exchange. As we saw in “Private Labor and Reification (Chapter 1)” of this appendix, human beings under reified relations are restricted by reified things such as commodities and money since they can only enter social relations as the personified bearers of reified things. At the same time, the reified relations cannot be established without the subjective actions of human beings, based on their will and desire. This situation in which commodities and money require personal bearers, and human beings act as their personal bearers, is referred to as the “personification of reified things.” It is within the realm of the personification of reified things, where the

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Table B.1  Theoretical structure of Chapter one of Capital Relating (behavior)

Relation formed through relating

Phenomenon of relation

Inverted cognition of the phenomenon

Theory of fetish character

Private labor of private producers (relating to the products as value)

Phenomenon of the product of private labor qua commodity

Fetishism

Theory of the value form

A commodity’s equating another commodity to itself (relating to another commodity as equivalent)

Indication of the social character of private labor in a product of labor Value relation

Expression of value through the body of value

Confusion of value expression with value; fetishism of money

behavior of persons toward material (Stoff ) is treated as a problem in itself, that the adherence of the general equivalent to gold can first be clarified. When human beings act as the personal bearers of reified things, a change is brought about in their desire for things, their way of acting toward the means of production, and even their manner of acknowledging property. The logic of the economic determinations of form, which is created unconsciously by the private producers themselves, in turn changes human desires, the manner of labor, and the nature of property. It also, more broadly speaking, alters the overall metabolism between human beings and nature. Let’s take a look at just a few examples of this within commodity production relations. First, the nature of property as socially recognized possession is altered through the actions of human beings as the personal bearers of commodities and money. Under reified relations, no right to property is acknowledged without the power of money and commodities. This is the modern form of property. In other words, the property right, which is the claim to and the legitimacy of property, becomes dependent on the power of money and commodities. Since this right is based on a relation between the wills of the personal bearers of commodities and money, it must be distinguished from the concept of “law” enacted by the state.

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Second, as Marx explains in the chapter on money, the “value thing” (Wertding)—and money in particular as the embodiment of value—brings about a change in the nature of human desires. In addition to the desire for use values, a desire for money as the embodiment of value arises from commodity production relations, making human desires boundless. Moreover, just as reification gives birth to fetishism, the personification of reified things generates the illusion that “freedom, equality, and property,” as the personal bearers of commodities and money, are somehow equivalent to the fundamental concepts of freedom, equality, and property. This is the illusion that the ideal or natural meaning of “freedom, equality, and property” is the following: freedom in the sense that anyone can freely exert the power of money and commodities (=the ability to freely choose commodities in the marketplace); equality in the sense that everyone is equal as the bearers of money and commodities (=anyone with money can purchase a commodity); and property in the sense that only the property of the bearers of money and commodities is recognized (=to come into ownership of money one must sell a commodity, and to come into ownership of a commodity one must spend money). The “homo oeconomicus illusion” is the term used to refer to the illusion that arises from the personification of reified things.16 Institutions and Laws (Chapter 3 of Capital) Chapter 3 in Capital examines how money actually functions under commodity production relations, premised on the elucidation of the genesis of money in the first two chapters.17 In order for money to function as a measure of value, as a means of circulation, and as a means of payment and so on, it is necessary to have institutions and laws mediate between reified things and persons or the material world.18 There are two reasons for this necessity. 16  This term is borrowed from Teinosuke Otani’s A Guide to Marxian Political Economy (Berlin: Springer, 2018). Marx does not conceptualize this idea himself but in Capital he mentions the inverted consciousness that arises from the personification of reified things. 17  When reading Chapter 3 of Capital, one can consult the chapter on money in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which has nearly the same structure but goes into even more detail. 18  The term “institution” does not appear in the chapter on money in Capital but I use it to conceptualize this third aspect, drawing hints from institutional economics, particularly the regulation school that applied an institutionalist approach to Marxian economy. Here “institution” refers first of all to customs, artificial organizations, and laws, but the focus is

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First, money is not able to function adequately only on the basis of its attribute as the product of reification and personification of reified things, which is its character as gold affixed to the general equivalent form. For example, in order for money to actually function as a measure of value it is necessary from a technical standpoint for there to be a standard of measurement for measuring the quantity of gold; as Marx explains in Chap. 3: Hence, in spite of the confusing variety of the commodities themselves, their values become magnitudes of the same denomination, gold-magnitudes. As such they are now capable of being compared with each other and measured, and the course of development produces the need to compare them, for technical reasons, with some fixed quantity of gold as their unit of measurement. This unit, by subsequent division into aliquot parts, becomes itself the standard of measure.19

But this standard of measurement is not directly derived from the character of gold affixed to the general equivalent. Even before gold becomes money, it has a standard of measure as a metallic weight. As Marx notes, “the names given to the standard of money or of price were originally taken from the preexisting names of the standards of weight,”20 and the establishment of such standards of weight is of course mediated by custom of some sort. The standard of measure of gold as money and the standard of measure of gold as weight began to diverge from each other for various reasons, but since the measurement standard of money is not derived from the nature of the general equivalent, it must be determined by custom. For this reason, various custom-mediated measurement standards of money exist side by side. Meanwhile, in order for money to fully function as a measure of value, the measurement standard of money must be unified within national boundaries. “Since the standard of money,” in this sense, “is on the one hand purely conventional, while on the other hand it must possess universal validity, it is in the end regulated by law.”21

on the mediation of the friction or contradiction between reification and the personification of things, and is only considered to that extent. Therefore, the object of considerations is not the internal logic of institutions themselves, but the relation of determination between reification and the personification of things. 19  Marx, Capital, vol.1, p. 191. 20  Ibid., p. 192. 21  Ibid., p. 194.

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Also, within the circulation of money, a “relatively worthless object”22 is able to function as the means of circulation. Insofar as it functions as such, money is only the transiently objectified reflection of the prices of commodities, functioning as a mere symbol: [C]ustom turns a certain, relatively worthless object, a piece of leather, a scrap of paper, etc. into a token of the material of which money consists, but it can maintain this position only if its function as a symbol is guaranteed by the general intention of commodity owners, in other words, if it acquires a legal conventional existence and hence a legal rate of exchange.23

Custom is the first institutional mediation that makes it possible for “relatively worthless objects” to become symbols of value. Maintaining the existence of such symbols further requires them to be guaranteed by the general will of commodity owners, but since the owners are private individuals this is only possible through the state bestowing a “legal conventional existence” upon the symbols. Thus, here too, customs and laws, which are not directly derived from the character of gold affixed to the general equivalent form, have a certain role to play. Moreover, when money functions as a means of payment, it is also necessary for technical reasons to have institutional mediation, such as an “artificial system for adjusting”24 chains of payment. “Special devices for this type of balancing arise,” Marx notes, “even if no credit system has been evolved, as was the case in ancient Rome.”25 The second reason institutions and laws are necessary concerns the fact that persons equipped with will may not always act as the personification of reified things. For example, the function of money as a means of payment requires, in addition to artificial facilities to offset payments, other sorts of institutional intervention. This is necessary because, for this function of money, the buyer is a mere symbolic representative of money; as Marx explains: Just as formerly money was represented by a token of value, so now it is symbolically represented by the buyer himself. Just as formerly the value22  K.  Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One, in MECW, vol. 29, p. 350. 23  Ibid. 24  Ibid., p. 378. 25  Ibid., p. 377.

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token as a universal symbol entailed a State guarantee and a legal rate, so now the buyer as a personal symbol gives rise to private, legally enforceable, contracts among commodity owners.26

If the buyer does not settle his debt through the payment of money, the force of the state can be used so that “his goods will be sold compulsorily,”27 thereby recovering the debt. Modern property itself requires institutional mediation as well, as Marx suggests in Chap. 2 on the exchange process. As we have seen, modern property depends on the power of commodities and money, but some persons do not adhere to property rights and instead use violent means to snatch commodities and money for themselves. This makes it necessary for the modern property rights to be guaranteed through the force of the state. Since reification and the personification of reified things are not sufficient in themselves for money to function in reality, as already explained, laws and institutions are always necessary to mediate and supplement that insufficiency. The limits of the personification of reified things (i.e. the gap and friction that remain between reified things and the material world that includes persons) are regulated by the mediation of laws and institutions. Thus, the manner of the laws and institutions is determined by the nature of reification and the personification of things, even if they are not the sole determinants. For example, state paper money cannot be established without the mediation of the state, but this does not mean that paper money is arbitrarily generated through such state intervention. Rather, paper money can only first be established on the basis and through the mediation of the formal determination of money as a means of circulation, which is the determination in the sense that, insofar as money functions as a means of circulation, it is a mere symbol of money. Similarly, the institutional mediation that guarantees the recovery of debts in a legal form is premised on the relation between creditor and debtor, and is nothing more than the legal guarantee of that relation. However, if one focuses only on the fact that the functions of money are first actually feasible through the support of institutions and laws, the idea emerges that money and its functions are the product of institutions and laws. More generally stated, this is the idea that the attributes of reified things, and modern property rights based upon them, are generated  Ibid., p. 372.  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 234.

26 27

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by the institutions and laws; whereas in reality, institutions and laws merely supplement the functions of reified things and modern property. Marx critically referred to this overestimation of the power of laws as the “juridical illusion,”28 but here the term “institutional illusion” is additionally used to indicate the overestimation of institutions in general. The following two examples illustrate the institutional illusion presented in the chapter on money in Capital. First, the determination of a standard of measurement for money by the state is mistakenly thought to affix the value of a certain quantity of gold: Thus the queer notion arose that gold is estimated in its own material and that, unlike other commodities, its price is fixed by the State. The establishing of names of account for definite weights of gold was mistaken for the stablishing of the value of those weights.29

This inverted notion takes an extreme form in the illusion that a change in the measurement standard of money by the state is capable of increasing social wealth.30 Second, the state can circulate paper money with monetary names indicating a certain quantity of gold by giving them compulsory currency, but this generates the illusion that the state can, at any time, bestow that paper money with currency as the general equivalent, with the same value as that quantity of gold: The state, whose mint price merely provided a definite weight of gold with a name and whose mint merely imprinted its stamp on gold, seems now to transform paper into gold by the magic of its imprint.31

Granted, no one can stop a state from forcefully circulating a great quantity of paper money and printing a given monetary name upon that money. 28  “Eden should have asked, whose creatures ‘the civil institutions’ were. From the standpoint he adopts, that of juridical illusion, he does not regard the law as a product of the material relations of production, but rather the reverse: he sees the relations of production as products of the law” (Ibid., p. 766). 29  Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One, pp. 312–13. 30  “Some theorists had fantastic notions of raising or lowering the ‘mint-price’ of money by getting the state to transfer to greater or smaller weights of gold or silver the names already legally appropriated to fixed weights of those metals, so that for example ¼ ounce of gold could be minted into 40 shillings in the future instead of 20” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 195). 31  Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One, p. 353.

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This makes it seem as if the economic law no longer holds sway where the aggregate price of circulating commodities determines the quantity of circulating money (rather than the contrary). However, “the power of the State is mere illusion,”32 Marx points out. Even though the state is able to print any monetary name on paper currency and forcefully circulate any amount it desires, such paper money, as a token of value, only can perform the function of money as a means of circulation. In other words, outside of circulation, state paper money cannot take the place of gold. For this reason, if state paper money is issued in quantities exceeding the amount of gold necessary for circulation, the amount of gold represented by the total quantity of the paper money circulating will be contracted to the same amount of gold necessary for circulation, so that the monetary name printed on the paper money will represent less than the amount of gold that its monetary name represented originally. This is the “depreciation of paper money.” This inflationary phenomenon is not the abandonment of economic laws but rather “a forcible assertion by the process of circulation of a law which was mechanically infringed by extraneous action; i.e. the law that the quantity of gold in circulation is determined by the prices of commodities and the volume of tokens of value in circulation is determined by the amount of gold currency which they replace in circulation.”33 No matter how strong the power of institutions and laws might seem, they can only mediate reification and the personification of reified things, not directly generate, through their own force, the power of things and their functions. Moreover, the power and functions of money and commodities cannot be abolished solely through the force of institutions and laws without altering the production relations that generate reification. Marx criticized John Gray in the following way for his notion that a national bank could treat commodities as products of immediately social labor: The dogma that a commodity is immediately money or that the particular labor of a private individual contained in it is immediately social labor, does not of course become true because a bank believes in it and conducts its

 Ibid., p. 354.  Ibid., p. 355.

32 33

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operations in accordance with this dogma. On the contrary, bankruptcy would in such a case fulfill the function of practical criticism.34

Marx’s criticism of such institutional illusions is not merely aimed at the failure to understand the formal determination of money; it is at the same time a criticism of the sort of “socialists” who steer clear of the class struggle to imagine that some “institutional reform” scheme could dissolve the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. Relations Between the Three Aspects Now let’s attempt to clarify the relations between each of the three aspects examined above. The first point to note is that the three aspects are not parallel to each other, but rather in a layered relation of determination. Logically speaking, reification determines the personification of reified things, and both determine laws and institutions. Therefore, the generally accepted theoretical schema positing an interactive relationship between individuals and institutions is incorrect. In modern society, the relation between individuals and institutions is mediated by an economic determination of form and by the personification of reified things based upon it. Without grasping this point, it is impossible to understand the foundation for the generation of existing institutions.35 The second important point is that each of the three aspects generates, respectively, the following cognitive inversions: fetishism, the homo oeconomicus illusion, and the institutional illusion. Each of these three illusions not only operates at the level of everyday consciousness but also functions as a systematic ideology. The first two illusions erect a worldview suited to mainstream economics by reducing the social attributes of things to the natural attributes of the things themselves, thereby making the behavior of private producers as the personification of reified things seem to be the “natural” behavior of owners of things in general. The third illusion, meanwhile, is systemized in the “property fundamentalism” that views private ownership of the means of production as the base of the capitalist  Ibid., pp. 322–23.  It should also be noted that the theory of reification only clarifies the relation of the reified determination of institutions, whereas a study of the institution itself has to be conducted separately with that relation as the premise. Readers can consult the research of Joachim Hirsch with regard to this issue. 34 35

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Table B.2  Logical structure of Part One of Capital Generative basis Chapter 1 Private labor Chapter 2 Reification Chapter 3 Reification and personification of reified things

Situation generated

Cognitive inversion

Reification Personification of reified things Mediation by customs and laws

Fetishism Homo oeconomicus illusion Juridical illusion; “institutional illusion”

mode of production (a view that Moishe Postone labeled “traditional Marxism”), and in institutional economics, which grasps the capitalist mode of production as intertwined with institutions.

Reification of the Production Process Wage Labor and the Reification of the Production Process (Part Three of Capital) Capitalist production relations presuppose the separation of the means of production from the direct producers, which involves the dissolution of the original unity between producers and the means of production, and the disciplining as wageworkers of the direct producers who have become property-less. The premise, in other words, is the existence of persons as “capitalists” who have gained exclusive ownership of the means of production through the power of money (rational money accumulators) and of persons as “wageworkers” (disciplined persons lacking property). These social conditions are formed historically through primitive accumulation. Grasped theoretically, commodity production relations are the foundation of capitalist production relations. In the course of actual history, however, the full-scale establishment of commodity production required the commodification of labor power. This was because commodity production could only be fully realized once the means of livelihood of the overwhelming majority of people had become commodities. Moreover, in order for labor power to be commodified, the serf, yeoman, or other peasants living in self-subsistency had to be driven off the land. Once stripped of the land, these individuals became the “free” and “right-less” proletariat, obliged for the first time to sell their own labor power as a commodity.

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Producers relating to their own labor power as value and selling it as a commodity does not yet constitute wage labor. In addition, the producers must come under the direction of capitalists and carry out their labor as functions of capital. Labor in this specific form is what generates value exceeding the value of labor power (i.e. surplus value), thereby establishing the movement of capital as self-valorizing value. Thus, the issue here concerns more than just property. In order for wage labor to be possible, it takes more than just the existence of a proletariat without property and capitalists who exclusively own the means of production. What is crucial, rather, is the form in which wageworkers perform labor under the command of capitalists. If we abstractly consider the labor process in general, wage labor is no different from any other form of labor insofar as it is a natural process carried out through producers actively working upon the means of production. However, wage labor only does so as a function of capital. How, then, do workers behave in the case where their personal functions fulfill the functions of capital? Since wageworkers have already handed over to capitalists the right to dispose of their labor power, naturally they must labor under the capitalist’s direction. But that alone is not enough for the functioning of capital. For example, if a capitalist orders a wageworker to massage his back, the capitalist has certainly consumed labor power, but that labor power does not fulfill the function of capital. What sort of behavior on the part of wageworkers is necessary for their labor to function as capital? This occurs by wageworkers relating to the means of production in a way that makes them capital. Although wageworkers, unlike slaves, are not in a relation of personal dependence, they subordinate themselves to capital based on their own free will in fulfilling a labor contract, treating the means of production as capital. Along with consuming them in a way that “benefits” capital and transferring the value of those means of production into products, they always treat the results of their own labor as belonging to capital and generate surplus value. Through this behavior, wageworkers relate to the means of production (which are the bearers of capital value) as capital, establishing capital’s movement of valorization. Thus, as soon as wageworkers, through their subordinate way of relating to the means of production, bring forth capital as the self-valorizing movement of value, an inverted relation is generated between producers and the means of production. Just as private labor generates value and

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reifies the production relations, wage labor generates capital and inverts the production process: [I]t is different as soon as we view the production process as a process of valorization. The means of production are at once changed into means for the absorption of the labor of others. It is no longer the worker who employs the means of production, but the means of production which employ the worker. Instead of being consumed by him as material elements of his productive activity, they consume him as the ferment necessary to their own life-process, and the life-process of capital consists solely in its own motion as self-valorizing value.36

Here the wageworker must, indeed, constantly pay attention to the means of production, which are the bearer of capital value, and add value to them while transferring their value to the product without unnecessary waste. Precisely because workers treat the means of production as capital in that way, the means of production actually have significance as capital, and the logic of valorization penetrates the production process. In the “Results of the Immediate Process of Production,” Marx notes: Even if we consider just the formal relation, the general form of capitalist production, which is common to both its more and its less advanced forms, we see that the means of production, the material conditions of labor, are not subject to the worker, but he to them. Capital employs labor. This in itself exhibits the relationship in its simple form and entails the personification of things37 and the reification [Versachlichung] of persons.38

This inverted relation between the means of production and workers is the reification of the production process. Within this relation, capital is not merely the purchaser of the labor-power commodity, but also gains “command over labor, i.e. over self-activating labor-power, in other words the worker himself” in order for labor to be intensified, making valorization possible. Further, this develops into “a coercive relation” that “compels

 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 425.  When Marx uses the expression “personification of things,” contrasted with the “reification of persons,” the former is not used in the sense discussed in Section “Reification of Production Relations” of this appendix, but rather is almost synonymous with reification. 38  K. Marx, “Results of the Direct Production Process,” in MECW, vol. 34, p. 457. 36 37

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the working class to do more work than would be required by the narrow circle of its own needs.”39 What is already suggested here is that the power of capital within this inverted production process is generated by wage labor, which is a way of relating to the means of production as capital. This is why transforming the capitalist mode of production requires overcoming wage labor itself. The conditions for overcoming wage labor are not posited in Part Three of Capital, of course, where the reification of the production process is examined, but Marx does indicate there that the conditions for a transformation can be created by limiting the command of capital over labor through the struggle for a standard working day. Capital’s exhaustive pursuit of absolute surplus value necessarily comes into contradiction, materially, with the reproduction of labor power, sparking resistance among wageworkers. They insist on their rights as the sellers of labor power, seeking to limit to the working day on the grounds of the “law of commodity exchange.” Working excessive hours destroys their labor power, making it impossible for them to be the bearers of the labor-power commodity. The capitalists, for their part, as the personal bearers of money, also evoke the “law of commodity exchange” to insist on their rights as the purchasers of labor power and seek to use it to the maximum extent. Although each of those rights arises from the law of commodity exchange, they are in opposition, owing to the particular quality of the labor-power commodity, which involves the wageworker selling a portion of his or her  own life activity. “Between equal rights,” Marx explains, “force decides,”40 so the standardization of the working day is the product of the class struggle. By waging a long struggle, the working class did in fact establish a standard working day, which is the right to limit the use of labor power to a working day through which the labor-power commodity can be reproduced. This right was written into the laws of the state and embedded in the institutions. It is important again to emphasize that the standard working day was not the product of laws and institutions. What is crucially important is that the workers’ rights as the personal bearers of the laborpower commodity—inevitably arising from the conflict between capital’s logic and the material logic—were only socially recognized through the

 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 314.  Ibid., p. 344.

39 40

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class struggle.41 Laws and institutions are just the mediation of such social legitimacy; as Marx notes in Capital: “Their formulation, official recognition and proclamation by the state were the result of a long class struggle.”42 In a society such as contemporary Japan, where the rights of the personal bearers of the labor-power commodity are not duly recognized as a result of a paralyzed class struggle, illegal acts on the part of capital are rampant. The establishment of a standard working day makes it possible not only for the working class to expand its “[f]ree time—which is both leisure and time for higher activity,”43 but also teaches workers solidarity. As the young Marx already pointed out, “as a result of this association, they acquire a new need—the need for society”44 so that “the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than wages.”45 At the same time, the establishment of a standard working day forces capital to develop the productive power of capital, which “matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of the production process, and thereby ripens both the elements for forming a new society and the forces tending towards the overthrow of the old one.”46 The development of productive power, examined in Part Four of Capital, is inevitable under the capitalist mode of production, but it is premised on the resistance of workers, since capital is willing to combine with premodern factors, such as domestic labor, and will thoroughly make use of them as long as these factors benefit exploitation. Substantialization of the Reification of the Production Process (Part Four of Capital) The inverted relation between the means of production and workers is at first merely formalistic, but capital eventually transforms the technical conditions of labor themselves so as to conform with its own social form, making the inversion real:

41  The rights of the personal bearers of the labor-power commodity that are in conflict with the logic of capital have come to be widely recognized as “social rights.” 42  Ibid., p. 395. 43  Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, in MECW, vol. 29, p. 97. 44  Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844, p. 313. 45  K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon, in MECW 6, p. 211. 46  Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 635.

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Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labor process but also capital’s process of valorization, has this in common, but it is not the worker who employs the conditions of his work, but rather the reverse, the conditions of work employ the worker. However, it is only with the coming of machinery that this inversion first acquires a technical and palpable reality.47

This is the change from the “formal subsumption of labor under capital” to its “real subsumption.” Wageworkers are no longer merely subordinated to capital through the power of money, but also subordinated through the material conditions organized by capital. By organizing the division of labor within a workplace, capital simplifies labor, transforming workers into persons only able to produce through incorporation into this division of labor. Further, within large-scale industry, the means of production are turned into machines, thus becoming active from the material perspective, whereas workers are a mere appendage to the machines. Simply put, workers lose the productive knowledge they once had to control the production process. Capital thus uses the technical transformation to subordinate wageworkers, substantially establishing its rule over them. Therefore, not only is the development of productive power by capital propelled by the purely economic motive of obtaining relative surplus value, but it also is inseparable from the class struggle. For example, machinery can be introduced into production to suppress strikes and other worker actions, even if it brings an economic cost burden in the short term. Conversely, no matter how rational a measure might be with regard to developing productive power, it will not be taken if it is disadvantageous from the perspective of the class struggle. For instance, large-scale industry, as a conscious application of modern science to the production process, calls for “fully developed human beings,” and technical and vocational schools emerge as corresponding institutions. Nevertheless, such education always remains insufficient, as Marx explains in Capital, “because those revolutionary ferments whose goal is the abolition of the old division of labor stand in diametrical contradiction with the capitalist form of production, and to the economic situation of the workers which corresponds to that form.”48

 Ibid., p. 548.  Ibid., p. 619.

47 48

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The capitalist mode of production is thus even in contradiction with the principles of the large-scale industry it generates. From the opposite perspective, as Marx also suggests, if the class struggle of the workers forces the institutional development of occupational and technical education, even if insufficient, workers can regain the productive knowledge they were stripped of through modern technology and thereby resist their real subsumption under capital. The substantial reification of the production process does not merely affect workers; it also has a serious impact on the overall metabolism between human beings and nature by altering the manner of labor that mediates the metabolism, but this point has already been discussed in detail in Chap. 3 of this book and in Appendix A, so there is no need to discuss it further here.

Reification of the Reproduction Process (Part Seven of Capital) Reification of the Reproduction Process within Simple Reproduction (Chapter 23 of Capital) As we have seen, the social condition that makes the wage labor that forms capitalist production relations possible is the separation of the objective labor conditions from the subjective labor power. However, if we grasp production as a continual process, that is, as reproduction, wage labor reproduces not only the capitalist production relations but also the separation of the means of production and labor power that form their premise. Marx writes: [T]he worker himself constantly produces objective wealth, in the form of capital, an alien power that dominates and exploits him; and the capitalist just as constantly produces labor power, in the form of a subjective source of wealth which is abstract, exists merely in the physical body of the worker, and is separated from its own means of objectification and realization; in short, the capitalist produces the worker as a wage laborer.49

The wageworker, in carrying out labor as a function of capital, “constantly produces objective wealth, in the form of capital, an alien power that  Ibid., p. 716.

49

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dominates and exploits him,” and the capitalist, in dominating and subordinating the wageworker by the power that the wageworker himself generates, produces the separation of labor power and the means of production. Here it is clear, although Marx only suggests this in Part Three of Capital, that wage labor itself reproduces the capitalist production relations, so that the transformation of those relations must involve fundamentally replacing wage labor with free labor under a unity between labor and the means of production. What is important here, additionally, is that in this capitalist reproduction process, not only the social production relations and production processes, but also the entire reproduction process that encompasses all human life are reified. In other words, not just the circulation realm that socially mediates private production and the production process of capital, but the entire life process is organized according to the logic of capital because capitalist production relations are continually reproduced through wage labor, making capital the subject that organizes social production. In Part Three, Chapter 10, where Marx discusses the working day, the 24 hours in a wageworker’s day are divided between the working day and free time, but in the reproduction process that distinction becomes relative. That is to say, as long as a worker’s personal consumption and rest during free time depend on the wages paid by capital and are directed toward the reproduction of the labor power indispensable to capital, that constitutes “an aspect of the production and reproduction of capital.”50 Unlike capital’s direct organization of the production process, it has no need to directly intervene in the reproduction process of labor power. As long as the requisite social conditions have been historically formed,51 “the capitalist may safely leave this [reproduction of labor power] to the worker’s drives for self-preservation and propagation.”52 This does not merely mean that the life processes of workers are at the same time the reproduction process of labor power. Since wageworkers depend on selling their labor power to obtain the means of livelihood, their life processes must allow them to reproduce themselves in a way that suits the labor-power commodity. As long as capital only pays enough  Ibid., p. 718.  As seen in Chapter 3 the generation of the capitalist mode of production requires the disciplining of not only the wageworkers who bear the social production but also the modes of activity concerning the reproduction of labor power. 52  Ibid. 50 51

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money to allow the purchase of commodities needed to reproduce labor power, it can arrange the reproduction process of labor power in a way that is appropriate to its own valorization; here the “working class, even when it stands outside the direct labor process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the lifeless instruments of labor are.”53 This is why Marx notes that the capitalist mode of production “cannot be otherwise in a mode of production in which the worker exists to satisfy the need of the existing values for valorization, as opposed to the inverse situation, in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development.”54 The reification of the reproduction process is what establishes this inverted relation in the process of reproduction through the constant repetition of wage labor. That does not mean, however, that capital finds no need to intervene in some way in the reproduction of labor power. Capital makes use of the state to actively intervene in the overall reproduction process of labor power, and regulates the personal consumption and rest of workers so that those processes conform to its aim of reproducing labor power. Chapter 23 directly deals with the limits and control placed on the transfer of labor power, but beyond that, public security and health, urban functions, the social welfare system, and so on all play a role in guaranteeing the reproduction of labor power indispensable to the capitalist mode of production. Still, as in the case of the standard working day, workers through their struggles expand their rights as the bearers of the labor-power commodity and are able to improve such institutions to make them more advantageous to themselves. Deepening Reification of the Reproduction Process through Capital Accumulation (Chapter 25 of Capital) Given the aim of the capitalist mode of production to maximize surplus value, the capitalist reproduction process is not just simple reproduction but rather reproduction on an expanded scale, which is to say, a process of capital accumulation. The reification of the production process in this case does not manifest itself solely as the “economic bondage”55 of the working class to the capitalist class. The movement of capital accumulation manifests itself as the subject that organizes the entire process of reproduction.  Ibid., p. 719.  Ibid., p. 772. 55  Ibid., p. 723. 53 54

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Here the reification of the reproduction process is deepened so as to exert a huge influence on the employment and life of wageworkers. First of all, as long as the movement of capital accumulation is the subject organizing social reproduction, the magnitude of capital accumulation is the independent variable, whereas the magnitude of wages must be the dependent variable determined by it—as Marx explains: “If the quantity of unpaid labor supplied by the working class and accumulated by the capitalist class increases so rapidly that its transformation into capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labor, then wages rise and, all other circumstances remaining equal, the unpaid labor diminishes in proportion. But as soon as this diminution touches the point at which the surplus labor that nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quantity, a reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalized, accumulation slows down, and the rising movement of wages comes up against an obstacle. The rise of wages is therefore confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalist system, but also secure its reproduction on an increasing scale.”56 Second, capital is continually generating a relative surplus population through the rising organic composition of capital, exerting intense competitive pressure on wageworkers, thereby placing them in a more subservient position. Capital hires workers on an ever-greater scale while continually forcing some into unemployment to keep wages within a certain limit. The pressure of competition with the unemployed forces the employed to work longer hours, which in turn, generates more unemployed. The potential poverty that wageworkers thus face transforms them into subjects even more subservient than slaves.57 This “despotism of capital” allows capital to create conditions for its own accumulation. However, workers eventually see through this mechanism to realize that protecting their own lives requires safeguarding the lives of the unemployed, and “by setting up trade unions, etc., they try to organize planned co-operation between the employed and the unemployed in order to obviate or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalist production on their class.”58 In Marx’s time, craft unions were predominant, and workers in those unions donated money to create a system of mutual aid to assist the unemployed. By the end of the nineteenth century, when  Ibid., p. 771.  See the second section of  Chap. 2 of this book. 58  Ibid., p. 793. 56 57

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unskilled workers had become the majority, labor unions began calling on the state to create a public system of social security, and such a system was indeed created to cover a variety of risks through measures that included the provision of unemployment insurance. Just as workers sought laws to restrict the working day in order to protect themselves from capital’s pursuit of absolute surplus value and strived for vocational training to resist capital stripping them of production knowledge, they also sought and succeeded in institutionalizing social security systems to resist capital creating a relative surplus population. Of course, the creation of such institutions does not dissolve the contradictions of capitalism. The formation of the institutions of a “welfare state” restrains capitalist contradictions and protects the lives of the sellers of the labor-power commodity, but this is only maintained as long as the system contributes to the continuation of capitalism. Still, even if it only partially mitigates the contradictions of capitalism, the welfare state has had a certain significance, just as the limitation of the working day has had a very positive significance for the formation of working-class associations. In societies like present-day Japan, where workers are strangled by long working hours, stripped of their productive knowledge to perform subservient labor, and placed under the despotism of capital through fear of unemployment or semi-employment, it is extremely hard for workers to actively form associations. Without workers building up the experience of winning various rights and institutions through their struggles, it is not possible to advance the movement toward Association.

Conclusion Finally, I want to summarize the argument unfolded above. First, reification is generated primarily by the particular form of labor. On the basis of the reified production relations generated by private labor, wage labor is carried out, thereby bringing into existence the movement of capital valorization and generating the reification of the production process. The wage labor that gives birth to the reification of the production process reproduces the capitalist relations of production so as to bring about the reification of the entire reproduction process. Second, on the basis of reification, the logic of value and of capital penetrate through the actions of people as the personification of reified things. Through their actions as the personification of commodities and money, the practical attitude unique to modern society is formed that

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Table B.3  Theoretical structure of Volume One of Capital Generative basis

Situation generated

Resistance strategy

Part One

Private labor

Forming associations

Part Three

Wage labor

Part Four

Reification of the production process

Reification of production relations Reification of the production process (formal subsumption of labor under capital) Substantialization of reification of the production process (real subsumption of labor under capital)

Part Six

Particularity of the Transformation of labor-power commodity value of labor power into price of labor Reproduction through Reification of the wage labor reproduction (life) process and resulting change in the reproduction process

Part Seven

Primitive accumulation

Creation of wage labor as private labor through primitive accumulation, (creation of the realm for reproducing labor power, which makes wage labor possible)

Capitalist mode of production

Establishment of a standard working day; fight against racism Enhancing of occupational/ technical education; the feminist movement; environmental movement Wage policies of labor unions Freedom of movement, social security for the unemployed, (enhancing various types of social security), (feminist movement) Restoring the fundamental unity with the means of production by the associated free individuals

justifies the exclusionary modern property dependent on the power of commodities and money and pursues value as a desired object. Workers are deprived of their productive knowledge in the process of production through the real subsumption of labor under capital and transformed into more subservient subjects in the reproduction process through the fear of unemployment.

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Third, organizing people—and therefore their metabolism with nature—according to the logic of value and capital comes into contradiction with maintaining a sustainable metabolism and rationally developing productive power, triggering as a response the struggles of wageworkers: the pursuit of absolute surplus value leads to the struggle to establish a standard working day and shorten working hours; the real subsumption of labor under capital leads to the struggle to improve systematic occupational education; the disruption by capital of the material metabolism between human being and nature leads to the struggle for environmental regulation; and the continual creation of a relative surplus population leads to the struggle for a system of social security. Fourth, the conditions for social transformation are ripened through the clash between reification and workers’ class struggles. The institutional reforms won by workers resisting the advances of reification do not dissolve the contradictions of capitalism and can always be undercut by capital, but those reforms improve the conditions of workers’ lives and weaken the power of capital, and through the struggles for improvements workers build up the experience of solidarity, which increases their capability to form associations. Meanwhile, the institutional reforms won by workers are immediately incorporated by capital, which seeks to break through those limits by increasing productive power. However, such an increase in productive power encounters new contradictions, necessarily bringing forth worker resistance. In the midst of this battle, while the social productive forces develop and push forward the social combination of workers, their own ability to form mutual associations or self-governance develops. In this manner, the objective and subjective conditions for a social transformation ripen. The above could be considered Marx’s conception of social transformation presented through the unfolding of his theory in Book One of Capital.

Index1

A Absolute overproduction of capital, 117 Absolute surplus value, 85, 138, 180, 201, 208, 210 Abstract human labor, 57–64, 64–65n12, 67, 70n17, 84n27, 88, 113, 138, 180, 187, 188 Agricultural commune, 154–156 Alienated labor, 26–30, 38, 169, 176, 176n23 Alienation, 18, 20–22, 26, 28n35, 29, 30, 33–35, 184, 185 Althusser, Louis, xii, 21n24, 177, 185n35 Anderson, Kevin B., xiv, 142n23 Arii, Yukio, 28n35 Association, xiii, 24, 42–45, 70, 90, 106, 121, 126, 129–132, 140, 168, 176, 183, 202, 208, 210

B Bauer, Bruno, 10–14, 10n14, 14n19, 16, 18–20, 24, 25, 28–32 Birth-pangs, 3, 45, 129, 183 Bortkiewicz, Ladislaus, 62n10 Bourgeoisie, 9, 15, 37, 41–43, 48, 159, 164 Braverman, Harry, 96n32 C Capital, xv, 1, 27, 28, 43, 52, 53n4, 63, 69n15, 70n17, 96n33, 99, 100, 100n37, 102–106, 105n41, 110–120, 114n48, 125–130, 136–139, 141, 142, 145, 147–149, 151, 157, 159–161, 164, 166–168, 176, 178–181, 183n28, 184, 199–210, 202n68 Capital accumulation, xv, 97–107, 110, 115, 117, 118, 139, 149, 167, 206–208

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52950-5

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INDEX

Chattopadhyay, Paresh, 130n10, 183n2 Civil War in France, The (Marx), 45, 128, 131 Commodity, 27–29, 37, 40, 41, 50–89, 66n13, 69n15, 70n17, 72n18, 74n19, 78n22, 84n27, 91, 97–103, 98n35, 105, 108–116, 118, 119, 130, 131, 138, 150, 175, 177–180, 186–196, 186–187n37, 198–202, 202n68, 205, 206, 208, 209 Communism, xiv, 2, 4, 16, 25, 32, 33, 130–132, 155, 171 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx), 2, 39, 41–44, 46, 47, 124, 148, 167 Constant value, 102, 111 ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’ (Marx), 21, 23, 25, 171 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Marx), 18, 20 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx), 50, 108 Co-operation, 47, 89–91, 120, 158–159, 207 Crisis, xv, xvii, 27, 42, 45, 50–52, 64, 104n39, 107–110, 115–118, 121, 124, 125, 129, 139, 156, 181 Critique of philosophy, xii, 18, 35–38 Critique of political economy, xiii–xv, 44–121, 164, 168, 170, 176 ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ (Marx), 131 D Daniels, Roland, 133, 178 ‘Debates on the Law of Thefts of Wood’ (Marx), 15

Democritus, 12 Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 17, 21–22, 25, 26, 30, 32 Direct exchangeability, 74, 76, 109 E Ecology, xviii, 133, 144–145, 167 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx), 26, 35 Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858 (Marx), 56n6 Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863 (Marx), 50 Economic Manuscript of 1864-1865 (Marx), xivn3, 141n21, 170n2, 181n27 1848 Revolution, 1, 48, 49, 148 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Marx), 49 Engels, Friedrich, 3n4, 30–33, 35, 35n48, 38n54, 47, 49, 107, 115, 144–146, 162–165, 170 Enlightenment, 19–21, 21n24, 25, 28–30, 32, 34, 37, 38, 171, 173 Epicurus, 12, 13 Exchange value, 53–55, 62, 67, 68, 71, 188 Extra surplus value, 115, 136 F Federici, Silvia, 160 Feminist, xv, 157, 160, 161 Fetishism, xiv, 68–71, 124, 189, 191, 197 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 18–20, 28, 28n35, 29, 31–37, 171, 172 Formal subsumption of labor under capital, 93, 126, 203 Fraas, Karl, 145–148, 154 Friedman, Milton, 79

 INDEX 

G Gender, xiv, xviii, 144, 157–163, 166, 168 General equivalent, 76, 77, 118, 188–190, 192, 195 General equivalent form, 76, 192, 193 General rate of profit, 111–115, 117 German Ideology, The, 13, 21n24, 35, 35n48, 39, 158, 171, 173 Graeber, David, 187n10 H Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 7–13, 15–21, 28, 29, 30n37, 33, 169–171 Heinrich, Michael, xiii, 3n4, 6, 8, 38n54, 65n12, 70n16 Hess, Moses, 13, 26, 35n48 Holy Family, The (Marx), 31, 32, 36 Homo oeconomicus illusion, 191, 197 I Institution, 186, 191–198, 201–203, 206, 208 Institutional illusion, 195, 197 International Workingmen’s Association, 123 Ireland, 165, 166 J Japan, xi–xiii, 75n20, 85, 87, 104, 104n39, 115, 117, 202, 208 Juridical illusion, 195, 195n55 K Kant, Immanuel, 9 Kliman, Andrew, 113n47 Kriege, Hermann, 32–34

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Kuruma, Samezo, xiii–xv, 74n19, 117n49 L Labor power, 42, 64, 81–88, 90–94, 99–105, 105n41, 107, 110, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 125, 136–139, 151, 159, 160, 180, 187, 198–202, 202n68, 204–206, 205n78, 208 Labor theory of value, 37, 54–56, 63, 64 Language of commodities, 78, 78n22 Large-scale industry, 91–92, 94–96, 96n33, 126, 159, 203, 204 Law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit, 114, 115, 139 Lenin, Vladimir, 1 ‘Letter to Vera Zasulich’ (Marx), 153–157 Liebig, Justus von, 133, 134, 137, 144–147, 178 M Manufacture, 90–92 Marx, Heinrich, 3n4, 4–6, 8, 8n12 Materialist conception of history, 39–41 Maurer, Georg Ludwig von, 148, 152 Metabolism, xiv, xv, xviii, 123–168, 178–181, 190, 204, 210 Money, 22, 26–28, 40, 41, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 59, 69n15, 71–81, 85, 86, 90, 94, 97–99, 101, 108, 109, 115, 116, 118, 119, 130–132, 139, 150, 178, 179, 186, 188–198, 191n44, 191n45, 195n57, 201, 203, 206–209 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 161, 162 Moseley, Fred, 113n47

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N Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 48, 49, 148 New materialism, 1–46, 170–173, 176 O Okishio, Nobuo, 114n48 ‘On the Jewish Question’ (Marx), 21, 22, 24 Organic composition of capital, 102, 103, 106, 111, 113–115, 207 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Engels), 162 Otani, Teinosuke, xiii, xv, 70n16, 143, 191n16, P Paris Commune, 44, 45, 131, 163 Personification of reified things, 78–79, 98, 150, 186, 189–194, 191n43, 196, 197, 208 Phenomenology of the Spirit (Hegel), 10 Picketty, Thomas, 100 Postone, Moishe, 198 The Poverty of Philosophy (Marx), 37–39, 43, 47 Premodern community, xiv, xviii, 100, 141, 144, 148, 149, 151–153, 156, 157, 161, 164, 166–168 Price, 53–55, 62, 62n10, 63, 69, 70, 72, 76–78, 81, 83, 101, 103, 111–113, 114n48, 115–117, 119, 152, 188, 192, 193, 195, 196 Price of production, 62n10, 85n27, 111–113 Price tag, 53, 72–77, 78n22, 98, 109 Primitive accumulation, 118, 121, 153, 161, 176, 184, 198 Private labor, 66–70, 68n14, 74, 78, 78n22, 109, 118, 121, 127, 130, 175, 177, 179, 186–189, 199, 208

Productive power, 40–43, 45, 52, 58, 69, 84n27, 88–91, 93–95, 102, 103, 113–115, 114n48, 121, 124–126, 129, 136, 138–141, 144, 147, 155–157, 159, 162, 180, 202, 203, 210 Productive relation, 40, 43, 45, 124 Profit, 22, 41, 52, 63, 69, 110–112, 114–117, 134, 139, 147, 148 Profit rate, 110, 113–118, 121, 139 Proletariat, 23, 25, 29, 33, 37, 42–45, 48, 159, 164, 198, 199 Property, xiii, 15, 22, 27n34, 29, 30, 34, 36–38, 40–42, 79, 97–107, 118–121, 128, 131, 149–155, 162, 163, 170, 176, 190, 191, 194, 195, 198, 199, 209 Property rights of commodity production, 99, 100 Proudhon, 25, 36–38, 47, 71, 72, 78 R Rate of profit, see Profit rate Real subsumption of labor under capital, 95, 97, 209, 210 Reification, 53n4, 68–71, 93, 94, 102, 104–107, 124, 133, 150, 152, 160, 183–210 Relative surplus population, 92, 102–104, 106, 159, 207, 208, 210 Relative surplus value, xv, 88, 89, 114, 130, 138, 180, 203 Religion, 10–16, 18, 18n21, 19, 24, 25, 30n37, 32, 39, 172, 187n37 ‘Results of the Direct Production Process,’ 84n25, 200n38 Rheinische Zeitung, 15, 16, 48 Ricardo, David, 26, 37, 38, 54, 55, 113, 144

 INDEX 

Rojahn, Jürgen, 26n33 Rubin, Isaak Illich, xiii, 70n16, 79n23 Ruge, Arnold, 14–17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 31 S Saito, Kohei, xiv, xv, 65n12 Say, Jean Baptiste, 25, 108 Say’s Law, 108 Smith, Adam, 26, 55, 56, 56n6, 65, 71, 84n27, 113, 170 Spinoza, Baruch De, 10, 11 Srnicek, Nick, 126n5 State, xiii, 8–10, 15–23, 29, 42, 44, 50, 63n11, 77n21, 82, 87, 96, 99, 101, 104, 105n41, 106, 107, 121, 129–131, 145, 155, 156, 159, 171, 190, 193–196, 195n57, 201, 202, 206, 208 Stirner, Max, 32, 32n41, 36 Strauss, David, 10 Surplus value, 83–85, 88, 89, 95, 99, 100, 103, 106, 110, 111, 113, 114, 126, 136–138, 144, 156, 159, 160, 179, 180, 199, 206 Sweezy, Paul, 62n10, 114n48 T Technology, 42, 85, 94–97, 114n48, 115, 133, 136, 139, 140, 179, 180, 204

215

‘Theses on Feuerbach’ (Marx), 21n24, 33–35, 37, 171, 172 Trotsky, Leon, 2 U Useful labor, 57–60, 64, 64–65n12, 67, 84n27, 88, 187, 188 Use value, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60, 64, 64n12, 67, 68, 72, 79, 80, 83, 86, 88, 93, 95, 115, 136–139, 174, 175, 179, 180, 187, 191 V Value, xiii, 22, 53, 55–57, 63–64, 125, 177, 187, 187n37 Value body, 74, 76, 77, 109 Variable capital, 84, 102, 110 W Watanabe, Norimasa, 10n14, 21n24 Westphalen, Jenny von, 6 Westphalen, Ludwig von, 4 William, Alex, 126n5 Y Young Hegelians, 7–16, 18, 19, 24–26, 31, 32, 34, 35n48, 44, 171 Z Zasulich, Vera, 153–157