Marx’s Das Kapital
The politics of the critique of political economy
“It is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought, but the point of view of totality”.
Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, 1923
In 1867, Marx published the first volume of Capital (Das Kapital), a book in which he attempted to unpack and unfold the logical structure of Capitalist society.
Marx tracks the logical movement of ‘Value’, a quasi-objective social form that is a function of time (specifically labour time). As he follows Value, he is able to unfold aspects of Capitalism that seem, at first glance, to be unrelated to the concept of Value. By the end of Capital Volume 1 (Volume 2 and 3 continue the unfolding, but they were completed by Engels after Marx’s death) Marx has outlined the basic structure of Capitalist production, but in a way which appears to contravene and undermine his starting point. It’s a neat trick - Marx has illustrated that not only does Capitalism have an internal dynamic tied to the movement of the Value-form, but that that dynamic systematically hides the logical structure that it was derived from. His goal is not primarily to describe or explain Capitalist economics, but to derive the surface appearance of Capitalism from that which is hidden. It is the derivation of what appears from what is hidden that is of key importance, but which is often overlooked or diminished in readings of the text, as it’s easier to apprehend the surface form of Capitalism (how we encounter it every day) than to follow the obscuring movement of Value underneath.
The State of Political Economy
The Political Economists of Marx’s day had somewhat successfully divined the economic laws which governed industry, commerce, and socio-economic interaction in Capitalist society. But what they hadn’t done was explain exactly why these laws worked in some situations, but not in others, or why they were often in tension with each other. Nor could they pin down an irrefutable source of economic value, or come up with a robust and comprehensive explanation of market interaction. It’s not that there weren’t plentiful theories and descriptions of how these things operated; indeed the problem was that the theories were plentiful — the many theorists, branches, and competing schools of Political Economy all searched for the holy grail: a single unifying theory that would accurately describe economic society in both theory and practice.
For many, the many economic principles, laws, and tendencies were a reflection of the complex and contradictory interaction of human beings, and that the former’s capricious behaviour was representative of those found in society. Things that could not be explained with any degree of rigour were chalked up as ‘externalities’.
For others, such as Adam Smyth, who was one of the first to attempt an exhaustive description of modern economics, society and economy were one, and society’s ‘invisible hand’ compelled individuals to act, and not the other way around.
Capitalism, then, was understood not as an economic system that was foisted on society, but either as society itself in its natural and distilled form, or a perfect representation of the human social relations that lay underneath it. Capitalism was society, or at the very least, the adequate economic form of society.
The Critique of Political Economy
Marx accepted that political economists had indeed uncovered, to varying degrees of rigour, the basic principles of economic society; the mistake that they had made was the acceptance of those principles as indicative of human society per se. Because of this, they were unable to properly grasp the nature of Capitalism as a unique social form, and would be led to contradictory claims that would not hold up to scrutiny.
But Capital’s subtitle ‘The Critique of Political Economy’ does not refer to subsequent criticism of political economy: the term ‘critique’ should be taken as meaning something akin to ‘explanation’ or ‘grounding’ — that is, Marx was attempting not only to unpack the logical structure of Capitalism, but to uncover the genesis of modern economic thought.
In Capital, Marx would show that all major positions and debates in modern Economics could be derived from the peculiar logical unfolding of Capitalism, including those theories which are in tension with each other. Rather than major political economists being wrong, or corrupt, he shows that their oppositions accurately describe the surface appearance of society, and are completely understandable based on the logic of Capitalism itself.
The idea that there was an invisible hand guiding the actions and behaviours of individuals was, in this sense, also understandable. But this invisible hand was of a historically specific nature: unique to Capitalism, and not applicable to human society writ large. The guiding force of the invisible hand was not natural, but a part of a new social system — one created by humans, but which appeared to have an independent existence that compelled all people, including Capitalists, to act according to the system’s logic. Human social relations were not guided by some intrinsic societal law present in all human societies, but by the laws of motion of this very particular society.
Marx set out to research socio-economic phenomena from this perspective; to understand how and why this modern compelling force worked, and where it came from. This was not new work for Marx, who had been engaged in an exegesis of Capitalism for the whole of his adult life, but this fresh perspective meant that all of his older works gained a new significance, and he was able to incorporate them into this new conceptual schema.
Contrary to popular belief, Capital is not a revolutionary call-to-arms that exposes worker oppression, nor a history book showing the timeline of Capitalism’s rise, nor an ‘alternative economics’ textbook decrying the errors and deceptions of mainstream political economy. Rather, it is a comprehensive logical rebuilding of the entirety of Capitalist society, but from a historically specific starting point : Value— Capitalism’s unique invisible hand.
I talk briefly about the history of the economic category of Value in this essay, and define it in Marx’s terms in this short essay. In essence, Value is a quasi-objective temporal form which mediates societal interactions. But Marx doesn’t lead with this; rather, he systematically derives this definition through the book Capital.
The peculiar movement of Value, and then of Capital (which Marx defines as Self-Valorising Value) results in the primacy of appearance, and the masking of essence — that essence being the movement of Value itself. In other words, economic and philosophical thought is based on how things seem to be, without questioning why it is that it seems this way. To question the legitimacy of how things look, you’d have to already grasp that essence and appearance were not the same.
‘Capital: The Critique of Political Economy’ is a book which attempts to derive the entirety of society, including major schools of economic and philosophical thought, from the movement of the Value-form.
(As a side note, modern science has grasped that the underlying nature of reality and surface appearance and interactions are not the same — but we still view the world in surface terms because its more accessible to us through our lived experience, whereas the complex reality of something like Quantum Electrodynamics is inaccessible in our daily lives. Still, it is an understanding of what is hidden underneath that allows for the huge advances in Science, Technology, and Medicine)
This is a pretty bold claim — and one that seems to go against common sense. It also went against the view of mainstream political economy, philosophy, and the social sciences. But after decades of interrogation, this is what Marx had discovered, and because Capitalism doesn’t appear to have an internal dynamic, he wrote the book Capital as the argument — a book that would follow the internal dynamic, and at the same time show how the dynamic obscures itself. In the text, the end of every chapter seems to contradict the beginning, and each subsequent chapter both illuminates and obscures the things that are described in previous chapters. The structure of the book Capital describes the logical unfolding of a social system which — at its core — creates a surface image of itself and hides its internal workings.
Just as you can’t understand Capitalism through a cursory examination of its appearance, you can’t really understand the book unless you’re following the argument the entire way through, and are aware of what Marx is trying to do. It means that a great many people, including many Socialists and Marxists, often take some passages as dogma, when in fact individual quotes, passages, and even chapters, are contradictory parts of something much bigger. This can help explain why there are so many arguments about what Capital means — but most often it results in people getting two chapters in and then giving it up.
Takeaway: The appearance of a fully-understandable and logical system hides the peculiar essence that created it.
A close guided reading of Capital can be both provocative and illuminating, but ultimately it’s a difficult text to follow: partly due to the complex language used, and partly due to its structure. Because of this relative inaccessibility, the best way to justify Marx’s claims is in how adequately they can explain modern phenomena, and fit together as a coherent and robust worldview. For those attempting to change the world, this analysis should also be able to proscribe a course of action that goes past simply ‘seizing power’ or ‘creating an alternative economic model’.
Major Political Concepts in Capital
Capital is not a descriptive economic text because Capitalism is not an economic system, but a totalising social system which appears to be purely economic (industrial).
This is a hard pill to swallow, because although we see Capitalism as having an impact on social issues such as race and gender, it’s still easier to view the economic aspect as having primacy over the social - the distribution of wages, goods, and services, and the greed of Capitalists and the wealthy, seems to be the cause of racial and gender-based disparity. (In a more conservative, or liberal view, Capitalism is not the cause, but simply exacerbates inequality - inequality something seen as existing in the same form throughout history).
This appears to be the case when we read Capital at a surface level - Marx spends an inordinate amount of time talking about the production and exchange of commodities, labour-time, factory conditions, etc. But what he is doing is attempting to derive the manifestation of economic appearance from something whose essence cannot be understood in economic terms. The primacy of the economic sphere is derived from the movement of a quasi-objective social form.
This claim borders on the purely academic, esoteric, or semantic. Why would it matter whether it’s primarily social, primarily economic, or a socio-economic mixture?
It’s important because we often discount the activities, conceptions, and structures which are extra-economic, viewing human society as something that exists outside of the main workings of Capitalism. This leads us to focus on only part of the problem, treating the symptoms and not the disease.
Let’s take human nature as an example. In an earlier work, Marx notes that human nature is commonly viewed as inherent and immutable. Greed, selfishness, competition, inequality, or, alternatively, goodness, altruism, cooperation, equality - can be viewed as part of human society throughout history. If Capitalism is purely, or predominantly economic, then our ideas about humanness should exist outside of it.
Marx claimed the opposite - that there is no trans-historical human essence, but rather that human nature is historically specific - applicable today, and not throughout human history. Who we are as people is shaped by modern society (Capitalism): both the positive aspects and negative aspects. And not in an indirect way, but as a crucial aspect of the social form.
Trans-historical conceptions of ‘the social sphere’ have a very real bearing on our conception of human emancipation, and its possible realisation. If human beings have always and will always be selfish and competitive, then Capitalism appears as the natural and final form of economic society — pure individualism and pure competition. If human beings are mostly good, then the economic system of Capitalism exists to protect the rights of people, and limit the worst impulses of the most nefarious individuals. And, indeed, these are common political arguments, and lead to compliance and apathy.
For Marx, there is no social sphere that exists outside of Capitalism. Even the dichotomy of Collective v Individual is something that is historically specific - humans in prior historical epochs didn’t have a concept of the individual, or the opposition of individual and collective, the way we do today. What we take for granted as inviolate laws of human nature and common sense are tied up with a very specific form of society.
Takeaway: For political organisers, the idea that people are neither good nor bad, neither naturally industrious nor naturally lazy, but shaped through social practice, is key to our ability to transform the society we live in. It’s not wishful thinking, it’s grounded in Capitalism’s social dimension.
Takeaway: We must view our social history as a crucial part of Capitalism as a whole, not existing outside of it. Our ability to transform Capitalism is dependent on our ability to transform communities - by understanding the system changes people and vice versa.
The final word here is on the concept of trans-historicity - the notion than concepts, structures, ways of being, are part of the entirety of human history. In Marx’s view, all modern ideas are in fact historically specific.
The concept of trans-historicity is not a human error - it is a form of thought created by the essential functioning of Capitalism. It really does appear as if things such as human nature, the individual, commodities, money and exchange, markets, and more, have existed throughout human history. For Marx, these concepts are either new to Capitalism, or they have been fundamentally transformed by Capitalism in a way which makes them completely different. For Marx, things such as ‘commodities’ have a dual being - one side concrete and throughout time, one side abstract and specific to Capitalism. Marx posits and unfolds these dual natures to describe Capitalism in Capital, and the end result hides the starting point.
This too borders on being an academic or semantic distinction. What is important about understanding trans-historicity is how it makes us think about progress.
The concept of progress - including social progress and technological progress - is not what it appears to be. It’s not that social and technological progress don’t happen, and it would be ridiculous to claim that Capitalism is not synonymous with huge societal advancements. What is peculiar about progress is that it is not linear.
It is completely understandable, and absolutely commonplace, to view society as naturally progressing in a linear fashion, because not only does it appear as such in Capitalism, but it also looks like we’ve been technologically advancing since the dawn of history.
For Marx, technological and social progress was effectively random prior to Capitalism, and has direction in Capitalism. That progress is not based on what is natural (and good) for human society, but what is natural(and good) for Capitalism - it is progress in the operation and extension of the social system itself.
It is reasonable for people to believe in social and technological progress, because that’s the way it appears. However, because modern progress is dialectical (operating under a peculiar non-linear tension), we are going to remain stuck in a loop of certain types of progress, and certain types of regression, and these are bound together. As organisers and activists, we have to be attuned to how Capitalism promotes both.
I will fully explore the ramifications of this in a later article, as well as a full explanation of how this works, which will require a deeper examination of the concept of Value.
A Word on Totality
As per the quote that opened up this essay, Capitalism is a totalising system. Modern society in its entirety is derived from the peculiar, and historically specific, movement of Value. There is nothing ‘outside of the system’.
Economic social relations, Non-economic social relations, Individual and Social psychology, Culture, Thought, and Ideology are dynamically connected within Capitalism, as essential parts of Capitalism.
But it’s a totality in tension. The opening chapters of Capital describe the logical backbone of the system: the transmission of Value from commodities to money and back again, ad infinitum, and the corresponding need to gain as much Value as possible through this interaction. But in order for this to work optimally, from a system-perspective, there is a drive to limit the amount of labour-time involved. In short, the internal logic of Capitalism compels people to work for money, while at the same time generating the conditions that render human labour superfluous.
(Side note: This is not just an alternative economics — this tension was hotly discussed by mainstream Political Economists when Marx was writing. The Law of the Tendency of The Rate of Profit to Fall was based on this observation — and was a mainstream observation, not a fringe assertion)
This contradictory impulse at the heart of Capitalist society goes beyond the Economic dimension — in a totalising system it has a knock-on effect on the social dimension. The contradictory movement of Capital creates the social-psychological possibility for change — in a society where people’s labour time is often ‘surplus to requirements’, and yet needed in order to keep the whole thing moving, there is both a conscious and unconscious awareness that a different society is possible and desirable. In a totalising system with a logical contradiction at it’s core, both critique and revolution become ideologically and materially possible.
I mention this only to differentiate this reading from the positivist conceptions of totality which lead to deterministic readings and volunteerist and apathetic worldviews.
Takeaway: Modern society in its entirety is derived from the peculiar movement of Value in Capitalism — there is nothing ‘outside of the system’. Economic social relations, Non-economic social relations, Individual and Social psychology, Culture, Thought, and Ideology are dynamically connected within Capitalism, as essential parts of Capitalism. Revolution and critique are born within the system, rather than standing outside of it. Transformative action is possible when we see how the dimensions, or moments, are connected.
Concluding remarks
Capitalism is a totalising global social system that no nation is outside of. Even nations and communities that are nominally communist, socialist or anarchist, are caught up in the social form. There is no escape, except to transform modern society in its entirety. Not exactly the most pleasant of thoughts, as it’s uplifting to imagine there are Socialist countries that light the beacon of what is possible with some reorganisation. These can still be examples for us, but we should be under no illusion that they are not outside of Capitalism - they are simply more democratic forms of Capitalism. Still, the transition from Capitalism to Socialism then Communism will necessarily pass through more democratic and fair forms of what we currently have, and even imperfect Socialist countries have much to teach us.
There is no lasting Socialism in one country. Emancipation is global, or it doesn’t happen in any meaningful sense. That will require a huge amount of work both locally and across borders. On the downside, that’s going to require a lot of time and effort, and failures along the way. On the upside, the entirety of the world share the same root problems, so it will be coordination, rather than convincing, that will be the most work. Plus, through global cooperation on inequality we will prefigure the harmonious world that we all desire.
If Marx is right, and if this reading of Capital is right, then it can help us better understand the oppositions within Political Theory, Economic Theory, and Philosophical thought. Moreover, it can allow us to understand things about Capitalism that aren’t accessible just by looking at the surface appearance of the system.
More importantly, it can give activists and organisers a better understanding of what it would take to end Capitalism. Because if we’re part of a society over which we individually have little agency, stuck in loops of progress and regress, we’re going to want to end that as soon as possible. By fully understanding how the social system operates at its core, we can come up with more effective ways at ending it.
