The Dialectics of Capital

In the three volumes of Capital, Marx provides a brilliant example of how the dialectical method can be used to analyse the most fundamental processes in society. By so doing, he revolutionised the science of political economy, a fact which is not denied even by those economists whose views sharply conflict with those of Marx. So fundamental is the dialectical method to Marx’s work, that Lenin went so far as to say that it was not possible to understand Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having read the whole of Hegel’s Logic! This was undoubtedly an exaggeration. But what Lenin was driving at was the fact that Marx’s Capital is itself a monumental object-lesson on how dialectics ought to be applied.

"If Marx did not leave behind him a ‘Logic’ (with a capital letter), he did leave the logic of Capital, and this ought to be utilised to the full in this question. In Capital, Marx applied to a single science logic, dialectics and the theory of knowledge of materialism [three words are not needed: it is one and the same thing] which has taken everything valuable in Hegel and developed it further." (41)

What method did Marx use in Capital? He did not impose the laws of dialectics upon economics but derived them from a long and painstaking study of all aspects of the economic process. He did not put forward an arbitrary schema and then proceed to make the facts fit into it but set out to uncover the laws of motion of capitalist production through a careful examination of the phenomenon itself. In his Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains his method:

"I am omitting a general introduction which I had jotted down because on closer reflection any anticipation of results still to be proved appears to me to be objectionable, and the reader who on the whole desires to follow me must be resolved to ascend from the particular to the general." (42)

Capital represented a breakthrough, not only in the field of economics, but for social science in general. It has a direct relevance to the kind of discussions which are taking place among scientists at the present time. When Marx was alive, this discussion had already begun. At that time, scientists were obsessed with the idea of taking things apart and examining them in detail. This method is now referred to as "reductionism," although Marx and Engels, who were highly critical of it, called it the "metaphysical method." The mechanicists dominated physics for 150 years. Only now is the reaction against reductionism gathering steam. A new generation of scientists is setting itself the task of overcoming this heritage, and moving on to the formulation of new principles, in place of the old approximations.

It was thanks to Marx that the reductionist tendency in economics was routed in the middle of the last century. After Capital, such an approach was unthinkable. The "Robinson Crusoe" method of explaining political economy ("imagine two people on a desert island…") occasionally resurfaces in bad school text-books and vulgar attempts at popularisation, but cannot be taken seriously. Economic crises and revolutions do not take place between two individuals on a desert island! Marx analyses the capitalist economy, not as the sum-total of individual acts of exchange, but as a complex system, dominated by laws of its own which are as powerful as the laws of nature. In the same way, physicists are now discussing the idea of complexity, in the sense of a system in which the whole is not just a collection of elementary parts. Of course, it is useful to know, where possible, the laws which govern each individual part, but the complex system will be governed by new laws which are not merely extensions of the previous ones. This is precisely the method of Marx’s Capital—the method of dialectical materialism.

Marx begins his work with an analysis of the basic cell of capitalist economy—the commodity. From this he explains how all the contradictions of capitalist society arise. Reductionism treats things like whole and part, particular and universal as mutually incompatible and exclusive, whereas they are completely inseparable, and interpenetrate and determine each other. In the first volume of Capital, Marx explains the twofold nature of commodities, as use-values and exchange-values. Most people see commodities exclusively as use-values, concrete, useful objects for the satisfaction of human wants. Use-values have always been produced in every type of human society.

However, capitalist society does strange things to use-values. It converts them into exchange-values—goods which are produced not directly for consumption, but for sale. Every commodity thus has two faces—the homely, familiar face of a use-value, and the mysterious, hidden face of an exchange-value. The former is directly linked to the physical properties of a particular commodity (we wear a shirt, drink coffee, drive a car, etc.). But exchange value cannot be seen, worn or eaten. It has no material being whatsoever. Yet it is the essential nature of a commodity under capitalism. The ultimate expression of exchange-value is money, the universal equivalent, through which all commodities express their value. These little pieces of green paper have no relation whatever to shirts, coffee or cars as such. They cannot be eaten, worn or driven. Yet such is the power they contain, and so universally is this recognised, that people will kill for them.

The dual nature of the commodity expresses the central contradiction of capitalist society—the conflict between wage-labour and capital. The worker thinks he sells his labour to the employer, but in fact what he sells is his labour power, which the capitalist uses as he sees fit. The surplus value thus extracted is the unpaid labour of the working class, the source of the accumulation of capital. It is this unpaid labour which maintains all the non-working members of society, through rent, interest, profits and taxation. The class struggle is really the struggle for the division of this surplus value.

Marx did not invent the idea of surplus value, which was known to previous economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo. But, by disclosing the central contradiction involved in it, he completely revolutionised political economy. This discovery can be compared to a similar process in the history of chemistry. Until the late 18th century, it was assumed that the essence of all combustion consisted in the separation from burning substances of a hypothetical thing called phlogiston. This theory served to explain most of the known chemical phenomena at the time. Then in 1774, the English scientist Joseph Priestley discovered something which he called "dephlogisticated air," which was later found to disappear whenever a substance was burned in it.

Priestley had, in fact, discovered oxygen. But he and other scientists were unable to grasp the revolutionary implications of this discovery. For a long time afterwards they continued to think in the old way. Later, the French chemist Lavoisier discovered that the new kind of air was really a chemical element, which did not disappear in the process of burning, but combined with the burnt substance. Although others had discovered oxygen, they did not know what they had discovered. This was the great discovery of Lavoisier. Marx played a similar role in political economy.

Marx’s predecessors had discovered the existence of surplus value, but its real character remained shrouded in obscurity. By subjecting all previous theories, beginning with Ricardo, to a searching analysis, Marx discovered the real, contradictory nature of value. He examined all the relations of capitalist society, starting with the simplest form of commodity production and exchange, and following the process through all its manifold transformations, pursuing a strictly dialectical method.

Marx showed the relation between commodities and money, and was the first one to provide an exhaustive analysis of money. He showed how money is transformed into capital, demonstrating how this change is brought about through the buying and selling of labour power. This fundamental distinction between labour and labour power was the key that unlocked the mysteries of surplus value, a problem that Ricardo had been unable to solve. By establishing the difference between constant and variable capital, Marx was able to trace the entire process of the formation of capital in detail, and thus explain it, which none of his predecessors were able to do.

Marx’s method throughout is rigorously dialectical, and follows quite closely the main lines traced by Hegel’s Logic. This is explicitly stated in the Afterword to the Second German edition, where Marx pays a handsome tribute to Hegel:

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?

"Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connection. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction…

"The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of Das Kapital, it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., a ‘dead dog.’ I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

"In its mystified form, dialectic become the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

NOTHING

But this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction, is therefore the absolutely negative: which, in a similarly immediate aspect, is just Nothing.

(1) Hence was derived the second definition of the Absolute: the Absolute is the Nought. In fact this definition is implied in saying that the thing-in-itself is the indeterminate, utterly without form and so without content — or in saying that God is only the supreme Being and nothing more; for this is really declaring him to be the same negativity as above. The Nothing which the Buddhists make the universal principle, as well as the final aim and goal of everything, is the same abstraction.

(2) If the opposition in thought is stated in this immediacy as Being and Nothing, the shock of its nullity is too great not to stimulate the attempt to fix Being and secure it against the transition into Nothing.

With this intent, reflection has recourse to the plan of discovering some fixed predicate for Being, to mark it off from Nothing. Thus we find Being identified with what persists amid all change, with matter, susceptible of innumerable determinations — or even, unreflectingly, with a single existence, any chance object of the senses or of the mind. But every additional and more concrete characterisation causes Being to lose that integrity and simplicity it had in the beginning. Only in, and by virtue of, this mere generality is it Nothing, something inexpressible, whereof the distinction from Nothing is a mere intention or meaning.

All that is wanted is to realise that these beginnings are nothing but these empty abstractions, one as empty as the other. The instinct that induces us to attach a settled import to Being, or to both, is the very necessity which leads to the onward movement of Being and Nothing, and gives them a true or concrete significance. This advance is the logical deduction and the movement of thought exhibited in the sequel. The reflection which finds a profounder connotation for Being and Nothing is nothing but logical thought, through which such connotation is evolved, not, however, in an accidental, but a necessary way.

Every signification, therefore, in which they afterwards appear, is only a more precise specification and truer definition of the Absolute. And when that is done, the mere abstract Being and Nothing are replaced by a concrete in which both these elements form an organic part. The supreme form of Nought as a separate principle would be Freedom: but Freedom is negativity in that stage, when it sinks self-absorbed to supreme intensity, and is itself an affirmation, and even absolute affirmation.

The distinction between Being and Nought is, in the first place, only implicit, and not yet actually made: they only ought to be distinguished. A distinction of course implies two things, and that one of them possesses an attribute which is not found in the other. Being however is an absolute absence of attributes, and so is Nought. Hence the distinction between the two is only meant to be; it is a quite nominal distinction, which is at the same time no distinction. In all other cases of difference there is some common point which comprehends both things.

Suppose e.g. we speak of two different species: the same genus forms a common ground between both. But in the case of mere Being and Nothing, distinction is without a bottom to stand upon: hence there can be no distinction, both determinations being the same bottomlessness. If it be replied that Being and Nothing are both of them thoughts, so that thought may be reckoned common ground, the objector forgets that Being is not a particular or definite thought, and hence, being quite indeterminate, is a thought not to be distinguished from Nothing. It is natural too for us to represent Being as absolute riches, and nothing as absolute poverty. But if when we wish to view the whole world we can only say that everything is, and nothing more, we are neglecting all speciality and, instead of plenitude, we have absolute emptiness. The same stricture is applicable to those who define God to be mere Being; a definition not a whit better than that of the Buddhists, who make God to be Nought, and who from that principle draw the further conclusion that self-annihilation is the means by which man becomes God.

Communist Manifesto

Nothing would be more erroneous than to stamp the whole of the Communist Manifesto simply as an historic document. On the contrary. The principles developed by it, the method to which it leads us, the characteristic it gives by a few strokes of the capitalist mode of production, are to-day more valid than ever. The whole actual development, as well as the whole theoretic investigation, of the time since the drawing-up of the Manifesto, are nothing but an unbroken line of confirmations of its fundamental conceptions. Never was the principle more universally accepted that the history of all hitherto existing (civilised) society is the history of class wars; and never has it appeared plainer that the great moving power of our times is the class war between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

short live capitalism

As i started study on Marxist Philosophy i came to know that all thinks are governed by Materialism and nothing is like god.Since primitive development of society only the class struggle has been existed till the date and capitalists are sucking our blood and yet they are hungry.

think over it again u capitalist

I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.
Che Guevara