Full Title:
Dialectically
Reconstructing the Dialectic
of the ‘‘‘Intended’’’ Content of the 5 Unwritten
“Books” of Marx’s Planned Immanent Critique of Political
Economy as a Whole --
‘Reading Marx’s Mind, Psychohistorically’.
Dear Reader,
The text below represents my attempt to reconstruct [at
least the first two levels of the table of]
[the] contents of the five remaining, unwritten books of the six books, planned by Marx, for his dialectical, immanent critique of the ideology-pervaded, ideology-compromised science of
classical political economy, the classical economic science/ideology of modern, capital-centered society, i.e., of the society whose all-dominating social relation of production is what Marx
called “the capital-relation”.
[the] contents of the five remaining, unwritten books of the six books, planned by Marx, for his dialectical, immanent critique of the ideology-pervaded, ideology-compromised science of
classical political economy, the classical economic science/ideology of modern, capital-centered society, i.e., of the society whose all-dominating social relation of production is what Marx
called “the capital-relation”.
Only the larger part* of the first “book” -- the “book” entitled “Capital: a Critique of Political Economy”
-- was completed, and published, by Marx and Engels, as of 1894, after Marx’s
death in 1883,
and shortly before Engel’s death in 1895. That
first “book” alone spans four
“volumes”, and is usually printed in six separate codices --
1. Capital: a Critique of Political Economy,
volume I:
the Productions-process of Capitals;
2. Capital: a Critique of Political Economy,
volume II:
the Circulations-process of Capitals;
3. Capital: a Critique of Political Economy,
volume III:
the Overall-process of capitalist
Production;
4. Capital: a Critique of Political Economy,
volume IV:
Theories of Surplus Value [The History
of the Theory], in 3 Parts / 3 separate volumes.
My instrument
for this project is the “intuitional”, “intensional” [“connotational”],
heuristic «organon»
of the Seldonian ‘First Dialectical Algebra’, applied in exploratory mode, i.e., to
semantically “solve”, step-by-step, a step-valued,
equation-valued, ‘Dyadic Seldon-Function’ “dialectical method of presentation”
‘meta-equation’, which begins with the category named Capital as its «arché» category.
The goal for this blog-entry is to dialectically calculate two ‘“Tables of Content”’ for the content that Marx envisioned -- based upon a marshaling of all available evidence as to his intensions in that regard -- for his entire “Critique of Political Economy”: all six+ “books”.
One of the two versions of that dialectically-calculated list of ‘ideo-physio-ontological’, categorial contents will be presented in ‘dialectical-analytical language’.
The other will be presented in a more popularized, ‘“literary”’ language.
Far beyond this blog-entry, a goal of the Foundation is to publish a multi-volume treatise entitled
“Descendance-Phase Capitalism”, which will, to the best of our ability, actually carry-out, and fill-out, or fulfill, the content summarized in that ‘“table of content”’, in a way which assimilates all of the wealth, including the tragedies, of modern human experience and knowledge -- stripped of ideology -- since Marx wrote his last line about this domain, as Marx often indicated that he fervently hoped his followers would do, for the good of the -- growing -- majority of humankind, the working class, and, therefore, for the good of global humanity as a whole.
The goal for this blog-entry is to dialectically calculate two ‘“Tables of Content”’ for the content that Marx envisioned -- based upon a marshaling of all available evidence as to his intensions in that regard -- for his entire “Critique of Political Economy”: all six+ “books”.
One of the two versions of that dialectically-calculated list of ‘ideo-physio-ontological’, categorial contents will be presented in ‘dialectical-analytical language’.
The other will be presented in a more popularized, ‘“literary”’ language.
Far beyond this blog-entry, a goal of the Foundation is to publish a multi-volume treatise entitled
“Descendance-Phase Capitalism”, which will, to the best of our ability, actually carry-out, and fill-out, or fulfill, the content summarized in that ‘“table of content”’, in a way which assimilates all of the wealth, including the tragedies, of modern human experience and knowledge -- stripped of ideology -- since Marx wrote his last line about this domain, as Marx often indicated that he fervently hoped his followers would do, for the good of the -- growing -- majority of humankind, the working class, and, therefore, for the good of global humanity as a whole.
Enjoy!
Regards,
Miguel
*[Even this vast expanse of text is still missing, for
example, Marx’s full, systematic[-dialectical]
presentation of so crucial a topic as “the
competition and concentration of capitals”, let alone the topic of capitalist crises!]
a. Marx’s Plan for his
Overall “Critique of Political Economy”. Marx’s pre-Das Kapital book, entitled A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy, published, by Marx, in 1859, eight years
before his publication of volume I.
of Das Kapital, opens, in its world-famous Preface, with the
following statement --
“I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the
following order: capital, landed
property, wage-labour; the State, foreign trade, world
market.”
“The economic conditions of the three great classes into
which modern bourgeois society is divided are analyzed under the first three
headings; the interconnection of the other three headings is self-evident.”
“The first part of the first book, dealing with Capital,
comprises the following chapters: 1. the
commodity; 2. money or simple circulation; 3. Capital in general”.
“The present part consists of the first two chapters.”
“The entire material lies before me in the form of
monographs, which were written not for publication but for self-clarification
at widely separated periods; their
remoulding into an integrated whole according to the plan I have indicated will
depend upon circumstances.”
[Karl Marx, A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, International
Publishers [NY: 1970], p. 19].
In the «Grundrisse» manuscripts, which form a
major part of the “entire material . . . in the form of monographs . . .
written not for publication but for self-clarification . . .”, Marx enlarges
upon this six «Buch»s plan, announced above, in crucial ways
--
“< I.
(1) General
concept of capital. -
(2)
Particularity of capital: circulating capital, fixed capital. (Capital as necessaries of life, as
raw
material, as
instrument
of labour.)
(3) Capital as money.”
“II.
(1) Quantity of capital. Accumulation.
(2) Capital measured by itself. Profit. Interest. Value of capital: i.e. capital as distinct from itself as interest and profit.
(3) The circulation of capitals.
(a) Exchange of capital and
capital. Exchange of capital with
revenue. Capital and prices.
(b) Competition of capitals.
(g) Concentration of capitals.”
“III. Capital as Credit.”
“IV. Capital
as share capital.”
“V. Capital as money market.”
“VI. Capital as source of wealth. The capitalist.”
“After
capital, landed property would be
dealt with.”
“After
that, wage labour.”
“All three presupposed, the movement of prices,
as circulation now defined in
its inner totality.
On the other side, the three classes, as production posited in its three basic forms and presuppositions of circulation.”
On the other side, the three classes, as production posited in its three basic forms and presuppositions of circulation.”
“Then, the state. (State and
bourgeois society. - Taxes, or the existence of the unproductive classes. - The state debt. - Population.”
“The
state externally:
colonies. External trade. Rate of exchange. Money as international coin. -”
“Finally the world
market. Encroachment of bourgeois society over
the state. Crises. Dissolution of the mode of production and form of society based on
exchange value. Real
positing of individual labor as social and vice versa.) >”
[Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of
Political Economy (Rough Draft), translated by Martin
Nicolaus, Penguin Books [Middlesex: 1973], p. 264].
Most crucially, from Marx’s
extended outline of his plan, extracted above, we learn that it is the final
“book” of the six, the one to be entitled “World Market and Crises”, that is to house
the climactic crescendo of Marx’s life’s work:
his scientific,
systematic[-dialectical] presentation of
capitalist crisis,
and of no less than the self-«aufheben» self-revolutionary self-transition of
self-alienated, capital-centered -- not
yet humanity-centered -- human society, into a new, higher social relation of
production, into a new mode of human social self-reproduction, propelling
itself from ‘“the closing chapter of human prehistory”’ [my
paraphrase of Marx, Preface, A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, p. 22] to the opening chapter of human[e] history proper.
What Marx meant by the
phrase “critique of political economy” was not a narrow, specialized, esoteric,
academic concern, but, on the contrary, a universal human concern, eloquently
captured in Maximilien Rubel’s rich and impassioned rendering --
“Marx’s Capital is a history of a world in the
course of self-destruction, a pathology of an inhuman[-human -- M.D.] society
... . The real target behind Marx’s
criticism of the science
of political economy was a specific mode of existence, the mode of life and
labor of [a] humanity threatened by its own achievements, its technical
inventions and institutions. Capital,
itself a scientific
work, is directed against a science
whose pretext is the wealth of nations and whose raison d’être is
the enslavement of
“the poorest and the most numerous class.”
For Marx, political economy was . . . the science of the dominant social order, and he
undertook the study of economics with the single, fixed purpose of censure and
denunciation. Marx intuited that evil before he had any
theoretical certitude about it, in fact even before he began the study of
political economy. He went from
socialism to science, not from science to socialism. His revolutionary faith preceded all
scientific demonstrations, and he did not intend, in writing Capital, to
found a new philosophy or a new economic science.
What was needed was not a new interpretation of the world,
but a radical critique
that would destroy a science
that, while giving the appearance of objectivity, was actually the science of obtaining wealth by producing poverty. Marx aimed to give explanations in order to
pillory the exploitation of
labor; he aimed to destroy illusions, to tear apart the deceptive veil of an ideology that justifies the exploitation of man by man. In short, Marx’s ambition was the critique of political economy”.
[Maximilien Rubel, Rubel on Marx: Five Essays, Cambridge
University press [NY: 1981], pp. 82-83, bold, italics
and other emphases
added by M.D.].
Marxian theory itself was
later hijacked by Lenino-Trotskyist, Lenino-Stalinist, and Lenino-Maoist ideologues, and turned into
“Marx-ism”,
a sub-scientific and anti-scientific,
quasi-religious ideology to “justify” a new,
state bureaucratic ruling-class-imposed pathway to capitalist development for
the countries of the semi-periphery of core capitalism -- the pathway by means
of a “primitive accumulation” of industrial [state-]capital, “written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood
and fire” [Marx, Capital I, p. 715] to even greater measure than that of
the original expropriations
of the great majority of the people upon whose ruins, and upon whose corpses,
original, core capitalism was constructed.
In our times, now, when state-bureaucracy-as-totalitarian-ruling-class state-capitalism -- heinously misnomered as “socialism” or “communism” -- has fulfilled its “historical mission”, of delivering its peoples back into the world market of the capital-relation, in the form of hybrid, private/state-capitalist re-totalitarianizing nation-states, and in which the latest world-market depression-crisis of capitalism -- still unfolding further today -- has underscored the ultra-vicious, ‘humanocidal socio-taxis’ of descendance-phase global capitalism, we who hold the weal of Terran humanity at heart are urgently in need of jettisoning “Marx-ist”, crypto-religious ideology, and of returning to -- precisely in order to resume -- Marx’s dialectical-scientific critique of political economy, in order to secure a dialectical-scientific guidance for our efforts to help this humanity -- including to help ourselves -- achieve social-evolutionary, and social-revolutionary, ‘‘‘escape velocity’’’ from the ‘descendant-phase capital-attractor’ of global ‘humanocide’: of a global, final ‘‘‘New Dark Age’’’.
We are, in particular, in urgent need of reconstructing and completing the whole of Marx’s intended critique of the political-economics of the global capitals-system, and of furthering that intended critique, by means of all of the human-historical experience of life under that capitals-system, and of all of the wealth of universal labor, accumulated since Marx’s time.
This text is created in the spirit of contribution to that urgent human task.
b. The
Intended Content of Marx’s Full Critique of Political Economy,
Elucidated via the Seldonian «Organon». Let us apply that organon, or “instrument of
thought”, that is the
Seldonian ‘First Dialectical Algebra’, to the reconstruction -- step-by-step -- of a
step-valued ‘dialectical-mathematical method-of-presentation meta-model’ of the contents,
and of the systematic dialectic of the contents, of Marx’s entire critique of political economy.
Seldonian ‘First Dialectical Algebra’, to the reconstruction -- step-by-step -- of a
step-valued ‘dialectical-mathematical method-of-presentation meta-model’ of the contents,
and of the systematic dialectic of the contents, of Marx’s entire critique of political economy.
Evidently, given Marx’s plan of that critique as repeatedly written-out by him, our «arché» for this ‘meta-model’ -- our beginning category, or starting-point -- must be the category named Capital itself.
Let us embed that «arché» category, Capital, abbreviated to C, into the algorithmic context
of a ‘Dyadic Seldon Function meta-model meta-equation’,
in view of the efficacy that the specifically ‘Dyadic Seldon Function’ has shown for capturing the internal
differentiation of the rich ‘“value-form”’ content within the first “book” of Marx’s Critique
of Political
Economy
[CPE],
namely «Das Kapital» itself [for more regarding which, see http://feddialectics-miguel.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-dialectic-of-marxs-as-das-kapital.html,
and pages 32-41 in Brief
#8, http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Briefs.html],
as follows --
CPE)-|-(s = (CPEC )2s.
Let us, next, then, proceed
to semantically “solve” this equation, for the meanings of the
category-descriptions generated by this ‘Dyadic’ Seldon-Function ‘meta-equation’, as
the step
value, s,
rises -- category-descriptions which are generated, initially, as
‘categorial-algebraic unknowns’. Let us transform them into
‘categorial-arithmetic’ “knowns”,
by applying to them the Seldonian ‘organonic algebraic method’ for the solution of such
‘dialectical equations’ --
Let us proceed, with this
solution-process, as we have said, step-by-step, i.e., s-value-by-successor s-value, in the
ordinal, consecutive order of these s-values.
0.
Step 0.
The s = 0 ‘equation-value’
of our Critique
of Political
Economy
‘meta-equation’ is --
CPE)-|-(s = CPE)-|-(0 = (CPEC )20 = CPEC 1 = CPEC .
No new ‘category-description(s)’ to “solve for”, here, in this 0th step.
This ‘step 0’ simply affirms of
the «arché» category as «arché».
What is to be done for this step is to
‘re-mind’ ourselves of the rich, internally-differentiated content of our «arché» category, denoted C, of Capital
itself -- as ‘explicitized’ in the tables of contents of the four volumes of
Marx’s Capital.
The status of our reconstruction so far can be presented pictorially as per the depiction below --
The status of our reconstruction so far can be presented pictorially as per the depiction below --
If we depict the step s = 0 partial Table Of Contents [TOC] for the entire, ostensibly 6-Treatise Critique of Political Economy as a whole, we have --
How vast a content is already "intended" [connoted] even by just the first category, «Capital-en-général», can be seen by "extending" ['explicitizing'] the known connotations -- drawn up from Marx's various draft outlines of, and manuscript titles for components of, the '"first Treatise"', by '"union"' of their -- in-detail -- varying contents, as follows:
1. Step 1. The s = 1
‘equation-value’ of our Critique of Political Economy
‘meta-equation’ is --
CPE)-|-(s = CPE)-|-(1 = (CPEC )21 = CPEC 2 =
CPEC + CPEqCC.
The new
‘category-description’ to “solve for” here, in this 1st step of our
reconstruction of the Marxian, dialectical “method of presentation” of his the Critique
of Political
Economy,
is described, ‘categorial-algebraically’, as CPEqCC.
The standard “canons of
interpretation” of the Seldonian ‘solution-«praxis»’, for such algebraic ‘poly-qualinomial’ terms,
expect this second
category-description to represent a categorial “other” of -- a ‘‘‘dialectical opposite’’’, or “antithesis”, to -- the first, «arché» category, CPEC.
More specifically, the
“canonical” interpretation expects that this second category-symbol might describe an «arithmos», or ‘‘‘number’’’, of ‘meta-units’
to the units
of the Capital
category, with each such ‘meta-unit’
being “made up out of”, or ‘‘‘«aufheben»-containing’’’, a [usually] heterogeneous multiplicity of
the units of
the Capital
category.
The initial concept, or
founding category, of the CPE -- namely, Capital -- is, and should
be, the simplest, the most abstract, the most “ungrounded”, of the categories to be presented in this
‘meta-model’ of a systematic
dialectical
method of presentation
of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy.
The next category -- the second category -- of
this categorial-progression presentation, should be, as well as an “other” the
first category, also a somewhat less abstract, more concrete, somewhat more “determinate” -- more ‘‘‘grounded’’’ -- category
of the Critique
of Political
Economy.
In terms of the social
relations of production of modern, capital-centered, society, in terms of the
“property relations” central to this kind of society, capital-relations
-- individual capital units;
individual capitalist
proprietors’ individual capital-properties
-- are typically subsumed
by, and ‘‘‘«aufheben»-contained’’’
by, landlord properties,
by the ownership, on the part of ‘land proprietors’,
who may not also be industrial capital proprietors
in their own right, of territorial
expanses of land
which literally “ground”
-- upon which sit -- the capital-facilities of a “heterogeneous multiplicity” of individual industrial-capital property units,
whose owners pay, as a deduction from the surplus-value that they, e.g., therein,
produce, class revenues in the form of rents to the land’s owners for the privilege of so sitting.
Such units of “Landed property” are,
indeed -- quite literally and sensuously so -- ‘meta-units’
which ‘‘‘«aufheben»-contain’’’
a typically “heterogeneous multiplicity” of Capital[’s] units.
Modern Landed Property,
within modern, ‘capital-centered society’,
e.g., the ‘‘‘Landed property-relation’’’, forming, as a word, i.e., the name of a distinct “social relation of production”, and, as a ‘socio-physical actuality’, the foundation of a
distinct social class, and also of a distinct social form of property, is a typical
organic element of those ‘capital-centered societies’
that emerged organically, as the ‘meta-evolutionary’, revolutionary fruition of
the internal ‘‘‘evolution’’’ of the preceding, agriculture-dominated, land-centered social formations, such as
those of European “feudalism”, where ‘‘‘modern Landed Property’’’ -- still even today -- involves the «aufheben» conservation, within modern, ‘capital-centered society’, of the earlier, landed-estate-centered, ruling class.
Modern Landed Property
, as a category, qualitatively distinct from the Capitals category, and as a category characteristic of modern society, may not be so clearly -- intuitively and experientially -- familiar, e.g., for our «norte-americano» audience, i.e., in European ‘transplant societies’, such as that of the United States, in
which the predominance of the early ‘capital-relation’ ruling-class, and form of property, was ‘‘‘transplanted’’’ wholesale, by
colonization, to an initially remote social terrain, previously populated only
by ‘late-arrival’, migration-originated social formations, formations no more
developed than to the stage of the predecessor to the [“feudal”] predecessor
of modern, ‘capital-centered society’, or than to even earlier social formations, in the case of North America, e.g., band, camp, village, and chiefdom formations at most. In such European ‘transplant societies’, there was no indigenous, separate “feudal” land-holder former ruling class to be «aufheben» conserved.
We therefore assert [as denoted by the sign: ‘|-.=’] our solution, for this second category-term of
our step
s = 1 equation, to be the CPE
category of modern Landed Property, CPEL --
CPEqCC |-.= CPEL;
s = 1 ==>
CPE)-|-(s = CPE)-|-(1 = (CPEC )21 = CPEC 2 =
CPEC + CPEqCC |-.= CPEC + CPEL.
Now, having heuristically --
‘intuitionally’ and ‘connotationally’ -- re-derived the second “book” of Marx’s
planned Critique
of Political
Economy,
let us see what we discover when we iterate our ‘Seldon-Function meta-equation’
again, further, this time for s = 2, and solve the
resulting equation’s new ‘category-descriptions’, using the same method we used
to “solve” the equation of step s
= 1.
The progress of our reconstruction, so far, can be presented pictorially as per the depiction pasted-in below --
If we depict the step s = 1 partial Table Of Contents [TOC] for the entire, ostensibly 6-Treatise Critique of Political Economy as a whole, we have --
2. Step 2. The s = 2 ‘equation-value’ of our Critique of Political Economy ‘meta-equation’ is --
CPE)-|-(s = CPE)-|-(2 = (CPEC )22 = CPEC 4 =
(CPEC 2)2 = (CPEC + CPEL)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL) x (CPEC + CPEL) =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEqLC + CPEqLL.
(CPEC 2)2 = (CPEC + CPEL)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL) x (CPEC + CPEL) =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEqLC + CPEqLL.
The two new
‘category-descriptions’ to “solve for”, here, in this 2nd step of our
reconstruction of the Marxian, dialectical “method of presentation” of his the Critique
of Political
Economy,
are described, ‘categorial-algebraically’, as, respectively CPEqLC,
and CPEqLL.
The standard “canons of
interpretation” of the Seldonian ‘solution-«praxis»’, for such algebraic ‘poly-qualinomial’ terms,
expect the third
category-description, here CPEqLC,
to represent a categorial “synthesis” of -- a ‘‘‘dialectical complex unity’’’, or “joint product/result”, of
-- both
of the two preceding categories; of the first, «arché» category, CPEC,
and / with the second category, CPEL.
of the two preceding categories; of the first, «arché» category, CPEC,
and / with the second category, CPEL.
More specifically, that “canonical” interpretation expects that the third category-symbol might describe an «arithmos», or ‘‘‘number’’’, of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the Landed Property category, with units of the Capital category.
Marx clearly asserts, in several key passages of the Grundrisse, that the reproduction of the modern Wage-Labor relation-of-production is the contemporary joint product, as well as the historical joint-product, of the contemporary, synchronic interaction of modern Landed Property and Modern Capital, based on seemingly difficult arguments, as worded.
We will review those arguments in detail a little further on.
The best quick summary of the logic of Marx’s solution that we know of, e.g., as to the correct meaning for the algebraic category-symbol CPEqLC, is to say that the contemporary forcible exclusion of the majority of the population from access to land, and from access to other means of production of livelihood as well, by the joint action of the units of Capital and of Landed Property, as property-relations/social-relations-of-production units, and as units of a dominant/‘co-ruling classes’ alliance, is the social force that maintains the majority of the human population within the confines of the Wage Labor category -- e.g., in the class status of Wage Labor [or, recently, also in that of Salaried Labor], that is, in the social relation of production / “property”-relation of [relative] property-less-ness, of the relative lack of ownership of either landed property or industrial capital property [although the late ascendance-phase capitals-system emergence of home-ownership, and/or of capital-stock ownership, among upper working-class elements, has modified this characterization to a degree, but to a degree which is also under relentless attack, especially recently, in the current, 2007+ global depression self-crisis of the self-globalizing capitals-system.
We may therefore assert [ ‘|-.=’ ] our solution, for this third category-term of our step s = 2 equation, to be the CPE category of modern Wage Labor, denoted by CPEW --
CPEqLC |-.= CPEW;
s = 2 ==>
CPE)-|-(s = CPE)-|-(2 = (CPEC )22 = CPEC 4 =
(CPEC 2)2 = (CPEC + CPEL)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL) x (CPEC + CPEL) =
(CPEC 2)2 = (CPEC + CPEL)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL) x (CPEC + CPEL) =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEqLC + CPEqLL =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPEqLL.
The standard “canons of interpretation” of the Seldonian ‘solution-«praxis»’, for such algebraic ‘poly-qualinomial’ terms as CPEqLL, expect this fourth category-description to represent a
supplementary categorial “other” of -- a second, supplementary ‘‘‘dialectical opposite’’’, or “antithesis”, to -- the second, first “antithesis” category, resolved as CPEL, as well as constituting an “other” categorial opposite to the first, «arché» category, and also to the third, ‘uni-category’, as well as to the entire “non-amalgamative”, «asumbletoi» ‘‘‘sum’’’ / ‘cumulum’ of all three of the initial triad of categories, taken as a whole.
More specifically, the “canonical” interpretation expects that this fourth category-symbol might describe an «arithmos», or ‘‘‘number’’’, of ‘meta-units’ to the units of the Landed Property category, with each such ‘meta-unit’ being “made up out of”, or ‘‘‘«aufheben»-containing’’’, a heterogeneous multiplicity of the units of the Landed Property category.
In terms of the institutional formations of modern, capital-centered, society, in terms of the “institutional infrastructure” essential to this kind of society, landed-property-relations -- individual landed-property units; individual landed proprietors’ individual land-properties -- are typically subsumed by, and ‘‘‘«aufheben»-contained’’’ in / by, national state sovereign territories, by the ultimate “ownership”, on the part of ‘nation-state’, of all of the total sovereign territor(y)(ies), of the -- usually-contiguous -- territorial expanses that constitute modern nation-states, whose residents pay, as a deduction from their class revenues, taxes, to support the public bureaucracies, and the operations, of the nation-state that ultimately ‘“owns”’ the land that they “own”.
Such “[nation-]State units are, indeed, quite literally and visibly so, ‘meta-units’ which territorially ‘‘‘«aufheben»-contain’’’ “heterogeneous multiplicities” of Landed Property units.
We may therefore assert [ ‘|-.=’ ] our solution, for this fourth category-term of our step s = 2 equation, to be the CPE category of modern nation-States, denoted by CPES --
CPEqLL |-.= CPES;
s = 2 ==>
CPE)-|-(s = CPE)-|-(2 = (CPEC )22 = CPEC 4 =
(CPEC 2)2 = (CPEC + CPEL)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL) x (CPEC + CPEL) =
(CPEC 2)2 = (CPEC + CPEL)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL) x (CPEC + CPEL) =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPEqLL =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPES.
This synchronic, systematic, method-of-presentation dialectic thus exhibits a developing interplay, a continuing and mounting counterpoint, between more abstract, ‘‘‘value-form[ation]’’’, or ‘‘‘social-relation-of-production’’’, “social formation” categories, and more ‘“grounded”’ -- more concrete, more tangible, more visible and more sensuous -- ‘‘‘spatial’’’, geographical, ‘territorial-form[ation]’ “social formation” categories.
The progress of our reconstruction, so far, can be presented pictorially as per the depiction pasted-in below --
If we depict the step s = 2 partial Table Of Contents [TOC] for the entire, ostensibly 6-Treatise Critique of Political Economy as a whole, we have --
Note: In the diagrams for this blog-entry, we are using the ‘Marxian convention’, in which the upward vertical direction of display represents the direction of increasing ‘thought-concreteness’, complexity, or determinateness [‘determinations-rich-ness’].
This convention is an inversion of the convention associated with philosophical idealism -- Platonian, Aristotelian, Porphyrian, etc. -- for which the upward vertical direction of display is the direction of increasing generality, abstractness, and simplicity, or ‘determinations-depletion’, and also a convention that we of F.E.D. have often adopted in our diagrams, e.g., when illustrating the paradigm of ‘systematic, synchronic, ‘trans-Platonian «arithmoi eidetikoi» dialectic’.
Marx described this -- what we term -- ‘Marxian convention’ in the following, crucial, methodological passage from his “Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy”, near the beginning of his «Grundrisse» [‘“Foundation”’] manuscript --
“The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin [M.D.: e.g., always began their method of discovery] with the living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc.; but they always conclude [M.D.: E.g., conclude their method of discovery] by discovering through analysis a small number of [M.D.: determinations -- ] determinant, abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money, value, etc.”
“As soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly established and abstracted, there began [M.D.: the systematic method of presentation of] the economic systems, which ASCENDED from the simple [M.D.: abstract] relations, such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, to the level of the state, exchange between nation[M.D.: -state]s and the world market.”
“The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method.”
“The [M.D.: thought-]concrete is concrete [as and for thought -- M.D.] because it is a concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.”
“It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration [E.g., as a process of ‘cumul-ation’, and of ‘multi-quality sum-ation’, or of ‘qualitative superposition’ of determinations -- M.D.], as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality, and hence also the point of departure for observation and conception.”
“Along the first path [M.D.:
the path of the Marxian-dialectical
method of discovery]
the full conception
was evaporated
to yield an abstract
determination [M.D.: an abstract determination
that then becomes the «arché»,
the point of departure,
for Marx's “second path”,
i.e., for the Marxian-dialectical
method of presentation];
along the second [path, the path of the Marxian systematic-dialectical method
of presentation -- M.D.],
the abstract determinations
lead towards the reproduction of the [M.D.:
real, i.e., of that which is experienced as external
to human thought] concrete
by way of thought.”
“In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of
conceiving the real as the
product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas THE METHOD OF RISING FROM THE ABSTRACT
TO THE CONCRETE, reproduces it as concrete in
the mind [M.D.: and for the
mind, as the ‘thought-concrete’, as distinct from
the ‘‘‘real-concrete’’’].”
“But this is by no means the process by
which the [M.D.: real-]concrete itself
comes into being.”
“. . . Money may exist, and did exist historically,
before capital
existed, before banks existed, before wage labour existed, etc.”
“Thus in this respect it may be said that
the simpler category can express the dominant relations of
a less developed whole, or else those subordinate relations of a more developed
whole which already had a historic existence before this whole developed in a
direction expressed by a more
concrete category.”
“To that extent the path of abstract
thought, RISING
FROM THE simple TO THE COMBINED, would
correspond to the real historical process.”
“. . . Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production.”
“The categories which express its [M.D.: social-]relations[-of-production -- M.D.], the comprehension of its structure,
thereby also allow insights into the structure and the relations of production
of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built
itself up, whose partly unconquered remnants are carried along with it, whose
mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc.”
“. . . For example, nothing seems more
natural than to begin
with ground rent, with landed
property,
since this is bound up with the earth, the source of all production and of all being, and
with the first
form of production of all more or less settled societies -- agriculture.”
“But
nothing could be more erroneous.”
“. . . Capital is the all-dominating economic power
of bourgeois society.”
“It must form the starting-point as well as the finishing-point,
and must be dealt with before landed property.”
“After both have been examined in particular [M.D.: i.e., separately],
their interrelation
must be examined.”
“It would therefore be unfeasible and wrong
to let the economic categories
follow one another in the same sequence as that in which they
were historically
decisive.”
“Their sequence is determined, rather, by
their relation to one another in [M.D.: contemporary, synchronic, ]modern bourgeois society [i.e., to what we term their taxonomic or ‘‘‘systematic
order’’’, as opposed to their historical, chronological order of first
appearance -- M.D.], which is precisely the opposite of that which
seems to be their natural order or which corresponds to historical [M.D.: I.e., to past, diachronic, ]development.”
“The point is not the historic position of the
economic relations[-of-production -- M.D.] in the succession of different forms
of society.”
“Even less is it their sequence ‘in the
idea’ (Proudhon) (a muddy notion of historic movement).”
“Rather, their [taxonomic
or ‘‘‘systematic order’’’ -- M.D.] order within [M.D.: synchronic] modern bourgeois society.”
[Karl Marx, «Grundrisse»,
translated and edited by Martin Nicolaus, pp. 100-108, bold italic underscore colored and
CAPITALIZATION emphases added by M.D.].
Before moving on to our next step, step s = 3,
let us pause to consider, in more detail, Marx’s arguments regarding just the
first triad
of the tetrad
of this step
s = 2 ‘poly-qualinomial’ model of Marx’s full Critique
of Political
Economy
synchronic-dialectical
method of presentation
--
CPEC + CPEL + CPEW
-- or --
Capital & Landed
Property & Wage Labor.
Marx
wrote, in 1858, to Engels: “I
am, by the way, discovering some nice arguments. E.g. I have completely
demolished the theory of profit as hitherto propounded.”
“What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment
was Hegel’s Logic at which I had taken another look by mere accident,
Freiligrath having found and made me a present of several volumes of Hegel,
originally the property of Bakunin.”
“If
ever the time comes when such work is again possible, I should very much like
to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational
aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified.” [Marx
to Engels, 16 January 1858, emphasis added].
Marx
wrote again, ten years later,
in 1868, that he wished to write a book on dialectics, stating that --
“the true laws of dialectics are to be found already in
Hegel, in a mystic form, however.”
“The
problem is to divest them of this form.”
[Marx to Dietzgen, 09 May 1868].
Marx
wrote, yet again, in 1875, seven years later,
and eight years before his death in 1883, that
once he had finished with his “Economics”, he intended to write on the subject of dialectics [Marx
to Dietzgen, Dec. 1875, see also Joseph Dietzgen to Marx,
16
January 1876,
conserved in the Archives of the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam [D II, 23], but missing from the International
Publishers 1991 edition of the Collected Works of Marx and
Engels, volume 45, covering 1874-1879, as is all of the Marx-Dietzgen correspondence. Joseph Dietzgen is not even listed in this
volume’s Name Index].
In the event, Marx did not live to write his “Dialectics”.
In the event, Marx did not live to write his “Dialectics”.
Not unexpectedly, given that
fact, we have no known -- extant -- detailed accounts by Marx of how he applied
his correction of Hegel’s dialectic
to the construction of the volumes Capital, to their method of presentation, although we do, of course, have
several general statements by Marx, in texts published by him, and in his
letters, as well as in posthumously published writings, attesting to Marx’s use
of a “materialist dialectical method” in the presentation of that work.
Indeed, triadic+ dialectical
‘content-structures’ abound in it, as we have shown, and as summarized in the
images linked-to below.
1. Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Deepest-Level First Triad: Deepest.
2. Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Mid-Level First Triad: Mid-LevelFirst.
3. Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Mid-Level Second Triad: Mid-LevelSecond.
4. Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Top-Level, Overall First Triad: Top-Level.
Perhaps the classic statement, published by Marx, of his use
of his dialectical method of presentation in the
construction of «Das Kapital» [as well as, implicitly, of his
dialectical method of inquiry] is the following, from Marx’s January 1873 Afterword to the
Second German Edition of Capital, volume I --
“That the method employed in “Das Kapital” has been
little understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory to one
another, that have been formed of it.”
“. . . German reviews, of course, shriek out at “Hegelian
sophistics.”
“The European Messenger of St. Petersburg in
an article dealing exclusively with the method of “Das Kapital” ... finds my
method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation,
unfortunately, German-dialectical.”
“It says: At first
sight, if judgment is based on the external form of the presentation of the
subject, Marx is the most ideal of ideal philosophers, always in the German, i.e.,
the bad sense of the word. But in point
of fact he is infinitely more realistic than all of his fore-runners in the
work of economic criticism. He can in no
sense be called an idealist.”
“. . . Of course the method of presentation must differ in
form from that of inquiry. The latter
has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyze its different forms of
development, to trace out their inner connexion. 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.”
“My dialectic method is not only different from the
Hegelian, but is its direct opposite.”
To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e.,
the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even
transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and
the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea”.”
“With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than
the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of
thought,”
“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 treated
Spinoza, i.e., as 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.”
There are powerful polemics in the affirmation of Marxian dialectics, above,
but scarce little detail about the actual ‘‘‘algorithm’’’, as it were, of
Marx’s dialectical method of presentation.
Marx’s whole discussion in this passage -- most of which we
have omitted in the extract above -- accrues more to a description of what we
and others call his paradigm of ‘‘‘historical dialectic’’’,
or ‘diachronic dialectic’, than it
does to what we call ‘systematic
dialectic’,
or ‘synchronic dialectic’ -- Marx’s dialectical method of presentation, as a species of the «genos» that Seldon terms ‘the dialectic of the dialectic
itself’ --
linkto 'dialectogram' for ‘the
dialectic of the dialectic’ as a whole;
However, regarding the
Marx’s planned, 6-category dialectical
method of presentation
for his planned critique of political
economy as a whole, of which Capital forms
but the 1st
category, we have, for a change, considerable discourse regarding its dialectical construction, both in
Marx’s correspondence, and in drafts of his critique of political economy, published posthumously --
especially in the «Grundrisse» manuscripts.
Alas, much of Marx’s
explicit commentary on the dialectical ‘content-structure’ of that overall plan
concerns more its historical, diachronic resonances than its synchronic, systematic
ordering and interconnexion, and, indeed, makes a distinction of “historical” versus “[‘‘‘systematic’’’] dialectical”,
rather than of ‘‘‘historical-dialectical’’’ versus ‘‘‘systematic- dialectical’’’.
Note:
This ‘counter-positioning’ of “dialectical” to “historical” -- the
latter as, implicitly, ‘undialectical’
-- does not persist
in Marx’s later published writings within his critique of political economy, either in the passages
already considered in this blog-entry, above, or in, for example, the decisive passages
of Capital, volume I, and volume III, in which the transition from the
capitals-system to what we call ‘political-economic democracy’ is summarily
described [e.g., in volume I, CHAPTER XXXII., entitled “Historical Tendency
of Capitalist Accumulation”, in which, e.g., the dialectical terminology
of “the negation of the negation”
is applied historically, diachronically, and, in volume III, CHAPTER XXVII,
entitled “The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production”, according to which,
e.g., the “acceleration”, by the capitalist “credit system”, of the “material
development of the productive forces”, and of “the establishment of the
world-market”, and hence also of the “violent eruptions” -- “crises” -- that
manifest the “immanent” “contradiction” of the capitals-system / “world-market”,
portends the historical
«aufheben»[in
the English translation, “abolition”]
of the system of capital].
Below are selections from
some key samples of Marx’s account of the ‘dialecticality’ of his ‘Capital ----) Landed Property
----)
Wage
Labour’,
apparently ‘convolute’, categorial progression.
“The work I am
presently concerned with is a Critique of Economic Categories or, if you
like, a critical exposé of the system of bourgeois economy.”
“It is at once an exposé and,
by the same token, a critique of the system.”
“I have very little idea how
many sheets the whole thing will amount to. ...”
“The presentation -- the
manner of it, I mean -- is entirely scientific, hence unobjectionable to the
police in the ordinary sense.”
“The whole is divided into 6
books.”
“1. On Capital (contains a
few introductory chapters). 2. On Landed
Property. 3. On Wage Labour. 4. On the State. 5. International Trade. 6. World Market.”
“I cannot, of course, avoid
all critical consideration of other economists, in particular a polemic against
Ricardo in as much as he, qua bourgeois, cannot but commit blunders even
from a strictly economic viewpoint.”
“But generally speaking the
critique and history of political economy and socialism would form the subject
of another work, and, finally, the short historical outline of the
development of economic categories and relations yet a third.”
[Marx to Lassalle, 22 February 1858, Collected Works, volume 40, pp. 270-271].
The second recorded account
went in a letter to Engels, some weeks later --
“The whole thing is
divided into 6 books: 1. On
Capital. 2. Landed Property. 3. Wage Labour. 4. State. 5. International Trade. 6. World Market.”
1. Capital falls into 4
sections. a) Capital en général.
(This is the substance of the first instalment.) b) Competition, or the interaction of
many capitals. c) Credit, where
capital, as against individual capitals, is shown to be a universal
element. d) Share capital
as the most perfected form (turning into communism) together with all its
contradictions.”
“The transition from capital
to landed property in its modern form is a product of the action of capital on
feudal, etc., landed property.”
“In the same way, the
transition of landed property to wage labour is not only dialectical but
historical, since the last product of modern landed property is the general
introduction of wage labour, which then appears as the basis of the whole
business.”
[Marx to Engels, 02 April 1858, Collected Works, volume 40, p. 298].
The above account was so
sparing that even the ultimate insider to Marx’s thought, i.e., Engels, did not see immediately from it the ‘dialecticality’
of the final
transition of that first
dialectical
triad,
namely, of ‘Landed Property ----) Wage Labour’
--
“The arrangement of
the whole into 6 books could hardly be better, and seems to me an excellent
idea, although the dialectical transition from landed property to wage labour
is not yet clear to me.”
[Engels
to Marx, 09 April 1858, Collected Works, volume 40, p. 304].
Engels’s unclarity on
especially the ‘Landed Property ----) Wage
Labour’
transition is understandable: we know of
no documentary evidence suggesting that Engels was ever privy to Marx’s massive
manuscripts written “for self-clarification” during Marx’s lifetime, although
Engels did inherit all or most of those manuscripts after Marx’s death.
The «Grundrisse»
manuscripts, in particular, contain rare reflections, by Marx, on the
dialectical structure of his plan and method of exposition of his entire
critique of political economy.
Let us
therefore turn now to the consideration of the primary passages, from the «Grundrisse»
notebooks, that bear on the [‘evolute’,
not ‘convolute’]
progression --
Capital ----)
Capital + Landed
Property ----)
Capital + Landed Property + Wage Labor
-- ‘‘‘systematic / synchronic dialectic’’’ that we
have modeled so far.
In his «Grundrisse»
notes, Marx sometimes seems to be suggesting that the Wage-Labor
category [in
our lingo, the first synthesis category], emanates from the Landed Property
category [in
our lingo, the first antithesis category] alone, without any ‘co-involvement’ of the Capital
category [in
our lingo, the «arché»
thesis category
of Marx’s entire critique].
First, as background, before
we explore those accounts of the origin of the referents of
Marx’s Wage-Labor
category, let
us consider the following passage, regarding the origin of the referents of his category of modern Landed
Property itself.
About the conversion, by the referents of his «arché» category, Capital,
of pre-Capital
forms, e.g., feudal forms, of landed property, Marx writes as follows --
“...capital, not only
as something which produces
itself (positing prices materially in industry etc., developing
forces of production), but at the same time as a creator of values, has to
posit a value or some form of wealth specifically distinct from capital [M.D.: ¿the necessity of an ‘‘‘antithesis’’’?]. This is ground rent. This is the only value created by capital
which is distinct from itself, from its own production.”
“By its nature [M.D.: i.e., therefore also self-reproductively
and synchronically] as
well as historically,
capital is the creator
of modern landed property,
of ground rent; just
as its action therefore appears also as the dissolution of the old form of
property in land. The new arises through the action
of capital upon the
old.”
[M.D.: Here Marx discusses the
history that came before the present, and that still exists, implicitly, in the
present, ‘‘‘behind’’’ or ‘‘‘within’’’, his «arché» thesis category, Capital, which is the correct «arché» for a contemporary, synchronic, systematic account of the present state of
self-reproduction of an ongoing capitalist society, but which is obviously not the «arché» from the vantage
points of human history,
as a whole, and of its diachronic, historical dialectic. Thus, there existed a pre-capitalist form of
the landed property social-relation-of-production, available for the emergent
capital social-relation-of-production to operate upon, and to convert into a
new-social-relation-of-production -- a new ‘social ontology’ -- compatible with
the self-reproduction of the capital-relation.
This involves the past-present-future, or
‘reconstruction-presentation-preconstruction [prediction]’, methodological
format, that Marx describes later in this same manuscript [op. cit.,
pp. 460-461],
as follows: “... our
method indicates the points where historical investigation must enter in, or where bourgeois
economy as a merely historical form of the production process points beyond
itself to earlier historical modes of production. In order to develop the laws of bourgeois
economy, it is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of production. But correct observation and deduction of
these laws, as having themselves become in history, always leads to primary equations --
like the empirical numbers, e.g. in natural science -- which point towards a past lying behind this system. These indications [Andeutung],
together with a correct grasp of the present, then also offer the key to the
understanding of the past
-- a work in its own right which, it is to be hoped, we shall be able to
undertake as well [M.D.: Alas!]. This correct view likewise leads at the same
time to points at which the suspension
[M.D.:
i.e., the [self-]«aufheben»]
of the present
form of production relations gives signs of its becoming -- foreshadowings of the future. Just as, on one side, the pre-bourgeois
phases appear as merely historical,
i.e., suspended [M.D.: i.e., as already [self-]«aufheben»-ed]
presuppositions, so do the contemporary
conditions of production likewise appear as engaged in suspending themselves [M.D.: i.e., as presently engaged in perhaps only
the earliest stages of their own self-«aufheben» process] and hence in positing historic presuppositions
for a new state of society.”].
“Capital is thi[u--M.D.]s
-- in one regard -- the creator of modern agriculture.”
[op. cit., pp. 275-276].
The following passage might
be read as suggesting that the actualities referred to by Marx’s Wage-Labor
category were
produced solely by the
action of the actualities referred to by his Landed Property category, without any
contribution from the actualities referenced by his Capital
category,
except by inheritance -- i.e., in a ‘meta-genealogical’ sense -- within and
through the referents of his Landed Property category --
“There can therefore be no doubt that wage
labour in its classic form, as something permeating the entire
expanse of society, which has replaced the very earth as the ground on which
society stands, is initially created only
by modern landed property i.e. by landed property as a value created by capital
itself.”
“This is why landed property
leads back to wage labour.”
[M.D.: Marx may also be alluding, in this whole
passage, to the ‘dialectical
circle’ of the systematic dialectic of a self-reproducing,
synchronic, system, a la
Hegel’s ‘ideo-system’ --
«Logik» ----) «Natur» ----) «Spirit» ----) «Logik» ----) . . .
--
in which each category leads from itself to its next category, and in which the
“last” category of a ‘dialectical triad’ of categories also
leads back to the first].
“In one regard, it is
nothing more than the extension of wage labour, from the cities to the countryside,
i.e. wage labour distributed over the entire surface of society [M.D.: this
sentence reflects the ‘territorial’ connotations of the characteristic phrase
“surface of society”, occurring also in his later works, e.g., in Capital,
volume III].”
“The ancient proprietor of
land, if he is rich, needs no capitalist in order to become the modern
proprietor of land. He needs only to
transform his workers into wage workers and to produce for profit instead of
for revenue. Then the modern farmer and
the modern landowner are presupposed in his person.”
[M.D.: This -- though but a ‘‘‘thought-experiment’’’,
and implying a ‘‘‘counter-factual conditional’’’ at that, in the form of an
implied conditional sentence: “If
agricultural wage workers exist, then modern landed property will exist, even
without the existence of modern industrial capital.”, to the extent that there
is no known case of sustained spontaneous transformation of landed proprietors
into wage worker
employers, e.g., as opposed to into ‘‘‘latifundial’’’ slave-worker employers, apart from
the ‘co-influence’ of capital -- might be read as suggesting that ancient
landed property could have produced modern wage labour, together with
transforming itself into the modern form of itself, apart from the ‘co-development’
of industrial capital, thus positing an exclusive
--
‘Landed
Property ----) Wage Labour’
--
transition, as opposed to a co-caused
co-transition
--
‘Landed
Property ----) Wage Labour’ (---- Capital, i.e., as W
= qLC].
“This change in the form in
which he obtains his revenue or in the form in which the worker is paid is not,
however, a formal distinction, but presupposes a total restructuring of the
mode of production (agriculture) itself; it therefore presupposes
conditions which rest on a certain development of industry, of trade, and of
science, in short of the forces of production.”
[M.D.: This latter sentence may be
read as a refutation of the -- only apparent -- suggestion of the preceding two
sentences, therefore now again upholding the hypothesis that the transition to
modern landed property and to wage labor both presuppose the emergence of
capital-based production.].
“Just as, in general,
production resting on capital and wage labour differs from other modes of
production not merely formally, but equally presupposes a total revolution and
development of material production.”
“Although capital can
develop itself completely as commercial capital (only not as much
quantitatively), without this transformation of landed property, it cannot do
so as industrial capital.”
“Even the development of
manufactures presupposes the beginning of a dissolution of the old economic
relations of landed property.”
“On the other hand, only
with the development of modern industry to a degree does this dissolution at
individual points acquire its totality and extent; but this development itself
proceeds more rapidly to the degree that modern agriculture and the form of [M.D.: landed] property, the economic relations
corresponding to it [M.D.: i.e., to modern landed property],
have developed.”
“Thus England in this
respect [is -- M.D.] the model country for
the other continental countries.”
[M.D.: and the countries colonized
when their colonizing countries had already attained to the level of some capitalist
development, so that the colonization was also a transplantation of capitalist
politico-economic relations to a not only pre-capitalist, but also pre-feudal
social terrain, are even more anomalous with respect to that England
“model”. The social histories of these
“settler nations” -- e.g., of Australia, of the United States of America -- were
thus deflected, from the “model” path, by the outlet of unclaimed potential
landed property in their hinterlands -- occupied only by pre-feudal, pre-landed-property
indigenous social formations -- enabling those hinterlands to be continually
settled, for a period, by proto-proletarian settlers, escaping their otherwise
proletarian fate by converting to “yeoman” farmers -- to small landed
proprietors in their own right.].
“Likewise: if the first form of industry, large-scale
manufacture, already presupposes dissolution of [M.D.: pre-capitalist forms of] landed
property, then the latter is in turn conditioned by the subordinate development
of capital in its primitive (medieval) forms which has taken place in the
cities, and at the same time by the flowering of manufacture and trade in other
countries (thus the influence of Holland on England in the sixteenth and the
first half of the seventeenth century).”
“These countries themselves
had already undergone the process [M.D.: i.e., the process of the dissolution of
pre-capitalist forms of landed property, and of the formation of at least
‘proto-modern’ forms of landed property], agriculture had been sacrificed
to cattle-raising, and grain was obtained from countries which were left
behind, such as Poland, etc., by import (Holland again).”
[op. cit., pp. 277-278].
Elsewhere, but still in
contiguous passages of his «Grundrisse» notes, Marx describes
something that reads much more like an account of the ‘co-production’ of the
content referred to by the Wage-Labor category [the first synthesis category], by both that referred to by the Landed Property
category [the
first antithesis category], and that referred to by the Capital
category [the «arché»
thesis category
of Marx’s entire critique].
To wit --
“The inner structure of
modern society, or, capital in the totality of its relations, is therefore
posited in the economic relations of modern landed property, which appears as a
process: ground rent-capital-wage labour (the form of the circle can also
be put another way: as wage labour-capital-ground
rent; but capital must always appear as the active middle).”
[M.D. -- in the sentence above, modern capital appears as the “active middle”
mediator for the existence of both modern landed property and modern wage labor.].
“The question is now, how
does the transition from landed property to wage labour come about.”
“(The transition from wage
labour to capital arises by itself, since the latter is here brought back into
its active foundation.).”
[M.D.: Marx’s term, “transition”,
here, and in similar passages, should not necessarily be assumed to mean an
historical-temporal transition, but may also mean a presentational,
conceptual, or [dialectical-]logical -- [dialectical-]analytical -- transition, somewhat a la
those of Hegel’s «Logik», but stripped of idealistic
fetishism and mystification.].
“Historically, this
transition is beyond dispute.” [M.D.: but,
sometimes, the historical sense of “transition” alone is meant by Marx, and,
other times, the two meanings are parallel, and Marx uses the single term
“transition” for both meanings at once.].
“It is already given in the
fact that landed property is the product of capital.”
“We therefore always find
that, wherever [M.D.: the ‘‘‘pre-modern’’’ form of] landed property is transformed into money rent through the
reaction of capital
on the older forms of landed property (the same thing takes
place in another way where the modern farmer is created) and where, therefore, at the same time agriculture, driven by capital,
transforms itself into industrial agronomy, there the cottiers, serfs,
bondsmen, tenants for life, cottagers, etc. become day labourers, wage labourers, i.e.
that wage labour in its totality is
initially created by the action of capital
on landed property,
and then, as soon as the latter has been produced as a form, by the proprietor
of the land himself.”
[M.D.: This is one of Marx’s clearer
statements of the ‘co-ingredience’
and ‘co-involvement’
of capital,
as well as of modern
landed property,
in the formation of modern wage labor.].
“This latter then ‘clears’,
as Steuart says, the land of its excess mouths, tears the children of the earth
from the breast on which they were raised, and thus transforms labour on the
soil itself, which appears by its nature as the direct wellspring of
subsistence, into a mediated source of subsistence, a source purely dependent
on social relations.”
[M.D.: This process, of “clearing”
-- i.e., of, not
“ethnic cleansing, but of ‘class cleansing’
-- of the countryside, also forms part of the process of the “original
accumulation”, or “primitive accumulation”, of capital, whose horrors Marx so
vividly re-vivifies and re-envisages in Part VIII of Capital,
vol. I.].
[op. cit., p. 276].
In the following passage,
Marx describes the partially corroboratory historical experiences, regarding
his ‘‘‘wage labour requires landed property’’’ hypothesis, produced by the kind
of unintentional, semi-controlled political-economic experiments that arose
from those modern colonizations which were ‘transplantational’ of the “capital-relation”
onto lands remote from the capitalist system’s geographical core -- onto social
terrains which still lacked modern
Landed
Property land tenure systems:
“It must be kept in
mind that the new forces of production and relations of production do not develop out of nothing,
nor drop from the sky, nor from the womb of the self-positing Idea [M.D.: this latter
clause being a jab at Hegel’s -- and even at Plato’s -- mystifications; at
their fetishism, reification, and hypostatization of “ideas”, into imagined
‘pseudo-subjects’ [cf. Seldon], inverting the actual relation of ideas to the
real subjects, the human subjects, the human agents, whom they thus portray,
implicitly, as mere ‘pseudo-objects’ [again, cf. Seldon]]; but from
within and in antithesis to the existing development
of production and the inherited, traditional relations of property.”
[M.D.: What Marx is upholding in
this passage is his historic realization that human social development is, at
core, a self-development,
propelled by «causa sui»,
or «causa immanens»,
that is, that its new ‘socio-ontology’ emerges immanently, out of itself, by
human action, human «praxis»,
and by the self-induced mutation of that «praxis,
by “self-change”, or by ‘self-revolution’ -- by the ‘self-iterated
self-recursion’ of the ‘self-«aufheben»’ operations, and of the ‘other-«aufheben» operations, of negation / elevation /
conservation,
recurrently applied to prior, already-emerged, already-existent human
‘socio-ontology’.
Accordingly,
per the Seldonian ‘psychohistorical-dialectical meta-equation meta-model of
human social relations of production meta-evolution’, «Kapital» itself first arises as the
productive-forces-growth-induced ‘self-«aufheben»’ ‘self-meta-monadization’
self-conversion of the pre-existing, pre-«Kapital» Money-relation,
of the ‘Money social-relation-of-production ontology’, i.e., the M conversion of M itself, denoted by qMM = K, and the forms of landed property, agriculture, and
mining [i.e., of “extractive industry”] subsumed by «Kapital», and adapted to «Kapital», arise as the K conversion of A, of Raw Appropriation of extra-human Nature, A, denoted by qKA, and as the K conversion of G, i.e., the conversion of Nature as already improved,
for human use, by past human labor, denoted by qKG, etc.
Likewise,
the form of Commodities
subsumed by «Kapital», and adequate to «Kapital», i.e., “Commodity-capitals”, arise as qKC, and the form of Monies subsumed by «Kapital», and adequate to «Kapital», i.e., “Money-capitals”, arise as qKM, and the form of the ‘Monies-mediated Circulations of Commodities process’ subsumed by «Kapital», and adequate for the Circulation and Reproduction of
the Total Social «Kapital», arises as qKMC, etc.
For
more about this ‘dialectical meta-model’ of that psychohistorical dialectic, see pages 20-21 in the document linked-to by the following link: autobiography].
“While in the completed
bourgeois system every economic relation presupposes every other in the
bourgeois economic form, and everything posited is thus also a presupposition,
this is the case in every organic system.”
[M.D.: This
‘inter-presuppositionality’ that is a key characteristic of “organic systems”,
of ‘organic sub-totalities’, per Marx, so that, in the case of a human, social
system, every social relation of production rests upon, and is grounded by,
every other, with no relation being absolutely fundamental in terms of its
interconnexions to the others, represents the observed, partial, limited, ‘self-transitory
totalization’, the self-reproductive robustness, and resilience, of that
‘‘‘sub-totality’’’.
In
the case of the capital-centered human-social system, it represents the “completed
system”, or, actually, the mature, “zenith” state, completing the ascendant
phase of that social system, which is the cross-section, or “time-slice”, of
that system which is most appropriate for a ‘synchronic-dialectical’, ‘‘‘systematic-dialectical’’’
method-of-presentation
of that system, like that of Marx’s critique
of political economy, here in its planning stages -- in its
“draft” stages. This ‘anti-historical’, explicitly synchronic view of this ‘system-totality’ in its present,
mature, zenith state of self-reproduction, momentaneously eclipses, and drives
into implicitude, the past-diachronic view of the history of its becoming,
and the future-diachronic
view of its next, lawful, predicted, expected
self-«aufheben» self-revolutionary self-transformation, but does not extinguish that historical view.].
“This organic system itself,
as a totality, has its presuppositions, and its development to its totality
consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself [M.D.: e.g., the
‘subordinations to K’
that are denoted by qKA, qKG, qKC, qKM, qKMC, etc., in the Seldonian ‘meta-model’], or in
creating out of it the organs which it still lacks [M.D.: Again, the creations, by K, out of past social-relations-ontology, that are
denoted by each of, e.g., qKA, qKG, qKC, qKM, qKMC, etc., in the Seldonian ‘meta-model’].”
“This is historically how it
becomes a totality.”
[M.D.: Therefore also, the
capitalist-system, in the Seldonian ‘meta-model’, is not denoted by qMM = qK = K, which represents only the “antediluvian” forms of
capital -- usurers’ capital, merchants’ capital, and, e.g., ancient, or
pre-Civil-War American, and slave-labor-based
agricultural productive capital. The
capitals-system is represented, on the contrary, only by the entire ‘qualitative
superposition’, by the entire categorial ‘cumulum’ --
qK + qKA + qKG + qKGA + qKC + qKCA + qKCG + qKCGA + qKM + qKMA + qKMG
+ qKMGA + qKMC + qKMCA + qKMCG + qKMCGA.].
+ qKMGA + qKMC + qKMCA + qKMCG + qKMCGA.].
“The process of becoming
this totality forms a moment of its process, of its development.”
“- On the other hand, if
within one society the modern relations of production, i.e. capital, are
developed to its totality, and this society then seizes hold of a new
territory, as e.g. the colonies, then it finds, or rather its representative,
the capitalist, finds, that his capital ceases to be capital without wage
labour, and that one of the presuppositions of the latter is not only landed
property in general, but modern landed property; landed property which, as
capitalized rent, is expensive, and which, as such, excludes the direct use of the soil
by individuals [M.D.: e.g., by “should-be” wage-workers/proletarians,
seeking to escape from confinement in that, imprisoned, class, by refuge in a
new yeoman class].”
“Hence Wakefield’s theory of
colonies, followed in practice by the English government in Australia.”
“Landed property is here
artificially made more expensive in order to transform the workers into wage
workers, to make capital act as capital, and thus to make the new colony productive;
to develop wealth in it, instead of using it, as in [M.D.: «Norte»] America, for the
momentary deliverance of wage labourers.”
[M.D.: This temporary
‘‘‘escape-valve’’’, for proletarians, to small proprietorship in farmable land
as means of production of their livelihood, has therefore exercised a profound
influence in deflecting the history of the United States of America part of
Terran global capitalist society, temporarily, away from the trajectory that
forms the generic norm of the Marxian model of “the economic law of motion of
modern society”.].
“Wakefield’s theory is
infinitely important for a correct understanding of modern landed property.”
[op. cit., p. 278].
The following passage is
perhaps the clearest of all Marx’s writings regarding the hybrid nature of modern Wage Labor
-- i.e., regarding the ‘co-involvement’
of both Capital
and modern Landed Property
in the [creation of the] determination named ‘‘‘modern Wage Labor’’’ --
“Capital, when it
creates landed property, therefore goes back to the production of wage labour
as its general creative basis.”
“Capital arises out of
circulation [M.D.: e.g., as merchants’ capital] and
posits labour as wage labour; takes form in this way; and, developed as a
whole, it posits landed property as its precondition as well as its opposite.”
“It turns out, however, that
it has thereby only created wage labour as its general presupposition.”
“On the other hand, modern
landed property itself appears most powerfully in the process of clearing the
estates and the transformation of the rural labourers into wage labourers.”
“Thus a double transition to wage
labour.”
[op. cit.,
pp. 278-279].
[All of the op. cit. passages above have
been extracted from: Karl Marx, «Grundrisse»,
translated and edited by Martin Nicolaus, pp. 275-279, bold italic underscore colored and CAPITALIZATION
emphases and [square-brackets-embedded commentary] added by M.D.]
Based upon the totality of
the evidence of Marx’s discourses, presented above, we hold to our hypothesis
that, for the systematic dialectic
of the first
of Marx’s two,
overall triads
for his planned presentation
of his critique of political economy
entire, CPEqLC = CPEW,
i.e., that the reproduction of the human agent referents of Marx’s Wage-Labour category are the
continuing [as well as the historical] joint results of the interaction of the self-reproductive
actions of the human agent referents of his Landed Property category, and of
his Capital category.
Nevertheless, it might be
useful for the interested reader to explore the efficacy of an alternative model such as the following --
CPE)-|-(s
= CPE)-|-(2 =
(CPEC )22 =
CPEC 4
=
CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEqLC +
CPEqLL
-- i.e., a model in which CPEqLC ~> & ~= & ~< CPEW,
and in which CPEW
is the product of CPEL
-- as CPEqLL -- alone: CPEqLL = CPEW.
Of course, none of Marx’s
remarks, quoted above, can be considered definitive, as it must always be kept in mind, about
them, that they were never prepared for publication by Marx.
They represent rather his
roughest drafts toward consolidating -- and toward formulating in an integral,
unified way -- the conclusions of his
long, wide, and deep study in the literature, and in the observable actuality,
of “political economy”, up to the time when they were written.
The «Grundrisse»
notebooks, in particular, should be seen as a textual laboratory, constructed
by Marx for the conduct of his thought-experiments, toward that unified
critique, theory, and presentation of modern political economy which was his
central goal in them.
These “unedited”
manuscripts, while they do not supply us with Marx’s finished, final views, do,
however, provide, for us, a rare window into the raw material reaches of Marx’s
thought-processes regarding the topics of this blog-entry.
Note also that we have found
no textual evidence that the ‘meta-monadicity’
of “Landed Property”, in relation to “Capital”, or
that the ‘meta-monadicity’
of “The [nation-]State”, in relation to
“Landed Property”, figured explicitly
in Marx’s considerations regarding the presentational dialectic of these categories.
However, we do hold that the
“connotations” or “intensions” of ‘‘‘territoriality’’’, that are the key to both of these
‘meta-monadicities’, are universally present-to-mind, when cognizing the
categories “Landed Property” and “The
State”, for humans who partook in the human Phenome of Marx’s time, as for
those who partake in that of our own, and that these connotations may have
contributed to the -- seemingly unwarranted -- sense of obviousness which Marx
expresses with regard to the interconnexion of these categories.
3. Step 3. The s = 3
‘equation-value’ of our Critique of Political Economy
‘meta-equation’ is --
CPE)-|-(s
= CPE)-|-(3 =
(CPEC )23 =
CPEC 8
=
(CPEC 4)2 =
(CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES)2 =
CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES
+
CPEqSC +
CPEqSL +
CPEqSW +
CPEqSS.
The four new ‘category-descriptions’ to “solve
for”, here, in this 3rd step of our reconstruction of the Marxian, dialectical “method of presentation” of his the Critique
of Political
Economy,
are described, ‘categorial-algebraically’, as, respectively CPEqSC, and CPEqSL, and CPEqSW, and CPEqSS.
The standard “canons of interpretation” of
the Seldonian ‘solution-«praxis»’,
for such algebraic ‘poly-qualinomial’ terms, expect the fifth and sixth category-descriptions
-- here CPEqSC, and CPEqSL -- to connote the
main process / product of the interaction of their subscripted categories /
epithets / predicates.
They also expect the seventh
category-description, here CPEqSW = CPEqSLC, to represent a second categorial “synthesis”, a synthesis of all of the first four categories, or of the fourth category, CPEqS, with the synthesis of the first two categories, CPEqLC, i.e., with the third category, CPEqW -- thus, in a
sense, a ‘‘‘dialectical
complex unity’’’,
or “joint product / result”,
of the fourth
category, CPEqS, with all three of its preceding
categories, CPEqC, CPEqL, and CPEqW: i.e., with the first, «arché» category, CPEC,
and / with the second
-- first contra -- category, CPEL,
or, said another way, with the synthesis
of the first
and second
categories, i.e., a combination of the fourth category with the third category, with CPEW
= CPEqLC.
These “canons of interpretation” also expect
that the eighth category, CPEqSS, will stand for the
new result of a ‘self-combination’ of category CPEqS = CPES , that is, for a new
category each of whose units is a ‘meta-unit’ of units
of the category CPEqS , such that each
unit of category CPEqSS is made up out of a
heterogeneous multiplicity [i.e., of at least two] of the units
of category CPEqS.
More specifically to the case of this term, CPEqSS, the “canonical”
interpretation expects that this eighth
category-symbol might
describe an «arithmos», or ‘‘‘number’’’, of ‘meta-units’ -- “meta-“ to the units of the nation-State
category --
such that each such ‘meta-unit’ is “made up out of”,
or ‘‘‘«aufheben»-contains’’’,
a qualitatively heterogeneous
multiplicity of the units
of the nation-State
category, i.e., contains a heterogeneous multiplicity of nation-states.
Let us solve for this eighth category first, since its
solution is easier to see, given the solutions for the ‘self-hybrid’ terms that
we have already seen, and solved for, in the preceding steps of solution
herein.
¿What
is a political-economic category whose units
are each heterogeneous multiplicities of nation-States, the units of the nation-State
category?
If we consider that such units might be units of the interactions
between or among nation-States units -- interactions
that, stabilized and continually reproduced, form the relations between or among nation-States
units, then the
most prominent political-economic
relations between or among nation-States
are trade-relations.
We know, from our general knowledge of
Marxian CPE -- Critique
of Political
Economy
-- domain, that Marx’s dialectical pedagogical principles
-- his dialectical method of presentation, as attested
also in the methodological passages from the «Grundrisse»
manuscripts that we extracted above -- call for an order of presentation that moves
from the simpler to the more complex; from less ‘determinations-rich’, to more
‘determinations-rich’.
Therefore, we expect that Marx would plan to
present inter-nation-State
trade-relations, first, in their simplest,
most minimal manifestation, as trade-relations between nation-States
-- thus bi-lateral
trade-relations -- and, only later, present
the more complex, more ‘determinations-rich’ phenomena of -- multi-lateral trade-relations.
Therefore, we hold that the eighth category, described ‘dialectical-algebraically’
as CPEqSS,
is the category whose units are the distinct ‘‘‘ordered
pairs’’’, formed by the combination of each extant nation-State
with each other extant nation-State -- i.e., extant for that synchronic “slice”, or cross-section, of ‘diachronicity’ [i.e., of [human] history] that is
‘‘‘present’’’ for, and that is being ‘‘‘presented’’’ by, and in, the dialectical order of exposition
of the Critique
of Political
Economy
that is being reconstructed, with the help of our dialectical model, herein.
Thus, the units of the eighth
category will be heterogeneous,
because each extant nation-State is qualitatively different
from each other extant nation-State, and in such a multitudinous, ‘‘‘multi-chromatic’’’
sense, and those units
will be constituted out of a multiplicity
of units of the
nation-State
category in the
minimal sense of exactly two
nation-State
category units “in” each unit of our eighth category.
Each unit
of our eighth category will
therefore represent a potential bi-lateral trading-partners
pair
of nation-State
units.
The relationship between the CPES = CPEqS category and the CPEqSS category is thus a dialectical relationship, i.e., an «aufheben», ‘meta-monadological’
relationship,
in that each unit of category CPEqSS is
a ‘meta-unit-ization’ -- i.e., is an «aufheben» negation / conservation / elevation -- of exactly two units of category CPES = CPEqS.
Similarly, as we saw in step sCPE = 1,
the relationship of category
CPEL to category CPEC
was also a dialectical,
«aufheben», ‘meta-monadological’ relationship.
Likewise, as we saw in step sCPE = 2,
is the relationship of CPEL
to CPES
itself.
We therefore name this category, as did
Marx, the category of “International
Trade”, or “Foreign Trade”, which we will denote by CPEF,
and we therefore assert our solution as follows --
CPEqSS
|-.=
CPEF
-- and our solution, so far, for the s = 3
‘equation-value’ of our Critique of Political Economy
‘meta-equation’, thus becomes --
CPE)-|-(s
= CPE)-|-(3 =
(CPEC )23 =
CPEC 8
=
(CPEC 4)2 =
(CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES)2 =
CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES
+
CPEqSC +
CPEqSL +
CPEqSW +
CPEqSS
=
CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES
+
CPEqSC +
CPEqSL +
CPEqSW +
CPEF.
We have thus, so far, “solved for” -- and
‘“reconstructed”’, or ‘‘‘reproduced’’’, ‘dialectical-algebraically’ -- the first five of the six categories of Marx’s plan of presentation for
his Critique
of Political
Economy
entire, in the same
order as that into which Marx organized those categories, namely, for --
CPEC (----) Capital,
&
CPEL (----) Landed Property,
&
CPEW (----) Wage-Labour,
&
CPES (----) The State,
&
CPEF (----) Foreign Trade, & . . ..
-- the first five of Marx’s six categories, in Marx’s
order.
¿But,
then, why is the
last category as listed above, the category --
CPEF (----) Foreign Trade --
counted and ordered as category eight per our model, rather than as category
five, if our
model is a ‘‘‘fitting’’’ model of Marx’s Critique of Political
Economy
entire?
That question, together with its answer,
provide the keys to solution as to the meanings for our model’s categories five, six, and seven -- described, ‘dialectical-algebraically’,
by the symbols CPEqSC,
and CPEqSL,
and CPEqSW,
respectively -- to which we now turn.
The “canonical” interpretation expects that
the fifth
‘category-symbol’, CPEqSC,
might describe an «arithmos»,
or ‘‘‘number’’’,
of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the nation-State
category, with units of the Capital
category, that
the sixth
‘category-symbol’, CPEqSL,
might describe an «arithmos»,
or ‘‘‘number’’’,
of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the nation-State
category, with units of the Landed Property
category, and
that the seventh
‘category-symbol’, CPEqSW,
might describe an «arithmos»,
or ‘‘‘number’’’,
of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the nation-State
category, with units of the Wage-Labour
category.
Our general ‘solution-contention’ is that these
three ‘categorial unknowns’ -- whose ‘categorial solutions’ have to satisfy the
‘hybridization conditions’ of combining the categories of CPES
and CPEC, and/or
their units, of combining the categories CPES
and CPEL, and/or
their units, and of combining the categories CPES
and CPEW and/or
their units, respectively -- all ‘‘‘belong to /- within’’’ CPES;
all are ‘‘‘subordinate’’’
to CPES, all are sub-sections of the main section on CPES,
e.g., are sub-chapters
to the chapter about CPES,
or are sub-treatises
to the treatise about CPES,
and are therefore all “contained in” the CPES
treatise.
Therefore, these three categories do not count as main categories, hence do not model the titles, and the
contents, of any of Marx’s six planned treatises, as do the categories represented, by
this model, as CPEC,
CPEL, CPEW,
CPES, and CPEF.
They only count as sub-categories to / within main category CPES.
So, after all, CPEF
constitutes the fifth
main category, just as in Marx’s
plan.
Our specific ‘solution-contentions’ are as follows --
- The sub-section connoted by the algebraic, ‘unknown category’ description, CPEqSC, should describe interactions of nation-State units with Capital units [with “individual capitals”] -- interactions that, stabilized and continually reproduced, form the “lawful” [‘‘‘maintainable’’’], ongoing, typical, standard relation between each nation-State unit and each Capital unit;
- The sub-section connoted by the algebraic, ‘unknown category’ description, CPEqSL, should describe interactions of nation-State units with Landed Property units [with individual land titles / title-holders] -- interactions that, stabilized and continually reproduced, form the “lawful” [‘‘‘maintainable’’’] relation between each nation-State unit and each Landed Property unit;
- The sub-section connoted by the algebraic, ‘unknown category’ description, CPEqSW, should describe interactions of nation-State units with Wage-Labor units, e.g., partitioned and aggregated in terms of the Capital units, and/or in terms of the Landed Property units, that “contain” / employ those units -- interactions that, stabilized and continually reproduced, form the “lawful” [‘‘‘maintainable’’’] relation between each nation-State unit and each Wage-Labor unit.
We therefore lodge our solutions for these three,
‘‘‘hybrid’’’ terms, or ‘categorial interaction’ / ‘categorial combination’, or ‘categorial
dialectical
[sometimes only partial] synthesis’
terms, as follows --
·
CPEqSC
|-.= the
category of nation-State
/ Capital Owner relations;
·
CPEqSL
|-.=
the category of nation-State
/ Land Owner relations;
·
CPEqSW
|-.= the
category of nation-State
/ Working-Class [Non-Owners]
relations
-- and our full solution, for the s = 3
‘equation-value’ of our Critique of Political Economy
‘meta-equation’, thus becomes --
CPE)-|-(s = CPE)-|-(3 = (CPEC )23
= CPEC 8 =
(CPEC 4)2 = (CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES)2 =
CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES
+ CPEqSC +
CPEqSL +
CPEqSW +
CPEqSS
=
CPEC +
CPEL +
CPEW +
CPES
+
CPErSC +
CPErSL +
CPErSW +
CPEF.
The progress of our reconstruction, so far,
can be presented pictorially as per the depiction pasted-in below --
If we depict the step s = 3 partial Table Of Contents [TOC] for the entire, ostensibly 6-Treatise Critique of Political Economy as a whole, we have --
4.
Step 4. The step sCPE = 4
‘equation-value’ of our Marxian Critique of Political
Economy
entire ‘meta-equation’ is --
CPE)-|-(sCPE = CPE)-|-(4 = (CPEC )24
= CPEC 16 =
(CPEC 8)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPES + CPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF)2 =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPES + CPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF +
CPEqFC + CPEqFL + CPEqFW + CPEqFS + CPEqFSC +
CPEqFSL + CPEqFSW + CPEqFF.
The eight
new ‘category-descriptions’ to “solve for”, here, in this 4th step of our
reconstruction of the Marxian, dialectical “method of presentation”
of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy,
are described, ‘categorial-algebraically’, as, respectively CPEqFC,
and CPEqFL,
and CPEqFW,
and CPEqFS,
and CPEqFSC, and CPEqFSL, and CPEqFSW, and CPEqFF.
The standard “canons of interpretation” of
the Seldonian ‘solution-«praxis»’,
for such algebraic ‘poly-qualinomial’ terms, expect the ninth through fourteenth
category-descriptions -- here CPEqFC,
through C CPEqFSL -- to connote the main process
/ product of the interaction of their subscripted categories / epithets /
predicates.
They also expect the fifteenth
category-description, here CPEqFSW = CPEqFSLC,
to represent a second
categorial “synthesis”, a synthesis of
all of the first five
categories, or of the fifth
main category, CPEqF, with the synthesis of the first three main
categories, CPErSLC,
i.e., with the synthesis of
the third and
fourth main categories, CPErSW = CPErSLC --
thus, in a sense, a ‘‘‘dialectical
complex unity’’’,
or “joint product / result”,
of the fifth main category, CPEqF, with all four of its preceding
categories, CPEqC, CPEqL, CPEqW,
and CPEqS: i.e., with the first, «arché» category, CPEC,
and / with the second
-- first contra -- category, CPEL,
or, said another way, with the synthesis
of the first
and second
categories, with CPEW
= CPEqLC, and / with the fourth category, and / with
the fifth main category, yielding a combination of
the fifth main and fourth categories with the third category, with CPEqFSW = CPEqFSLC.
These “canons of interpretation” also expect
that the sixteenth
category, CPEqFF, will stand for the new result
of a ‘self-combination’,
or ‘self-hybridization’,
of category CPEqF
= CPEF , that is, a new
category each of whose units is a ‘meta-unit’ of units of the category CPEqF, such that each unit of category
CPEqFF is made up out of a heterogeneous multiplicity [i.e., of at
least two] of
the units of category CPEqF.
More specifically to the case of this term, CPEqFF, the “canonical” interpretation
expects that this sixteenth
category-symbol might
describe an «arithmos», or ‘‘‘number’’’, of ‘meta-units’
-- “meta-“ to the units of
the Foreign Trade
category -- such that each
such ‘meta-unit’ is “made up out of”, or ‘‘‘«aufheben»-contains’’’, a
qualitatively heterogeneous
multiplicity of the units of the Foreign Trade category, i.e., ‘‘‘internalizes’’’ a heterogeneous multiplicity of bi-lateral
trade relations.
Again, let us solve for this sixteenth category first, since its
solution is easier to see, given the solutions for the ‘self-hybrid’ terms that
we have already seen, and solved for, in the preceding steps of solution
herein.
¿What
is a political-economic category whose units
are each heterogeneous
multiplicities of bi-lateral trade relations,
the units of the Foreign Trade category?
Consider that such units, the units of category CPEqFF, might be units of the multilateral
trade relations, uniting three or more bi-lateral trade relations
units, organized around
each ‘World Market Commodity’
-- all of the supplier / exporter nation-States in
relation to all of the purchaser / importer nation-States, for
each given ‘World Market Commodity’.
These multilateral trade relations for each specific ‘World Market Commodity’,
stabilized and continually reproduced, form the World Market itself.
We know, from our general knowledge of
Marxian CPE -- Critique
of Political
Economy
-- domain, that Marx’s dialectical pedagogical principles
-- his dialectical method of presentation, as attested
also in the methodological passages from the «Grundrisse»
manuscripts that we extracted above -- call for an order of presentation that moves
from the simpler to the more complex; from less ‘determinations-rich’, to more
‘determinations-rich’.
Therefore, we expect that Marx would plan to
present inter-nation-State
trade-relations, first, in their simplest,
most minimal manifestation, as trade-relations between nation-States
-- thus bi-lateral trade-relations -- and, only later, present
the more complex, more ‘determinations-rich’ phenomena of -- multi-lateral trade-relations.
Therefore, we hold that the sixteenth category, described ‘dialectical-algebraically’
as CPEqFF, is the category whose units are the distinct ‘‘‘ordered n-tuples, n > 3’’’, for each
world-traded commodity, formed by the combination of all extant nation-States
involved in the traffic of each given ‘World
Market Commodity’.
These are the very units that constitute “The World Market”.
The units
of the sixteenth category
will be heterogeneous,
because each extant supplier / exporter nation-State, and
each given distinct purchaser/ importer nation-State, are
qualitatively different from each other, in such multitudinous, ‘‘‘multi-chromatic’’’ ways,
and those units will
be constituted out of a multiplicity
of units of the
bi-lateral trade
relations Foreign
Trade category,
because at least three
bi-lateral trade
relations category
units will be “contained in”
each unit of our sixteenth category.
Each unit
of our sixteenth category
will therefore represent a potential multi-lateral trading-partners
multiplicity
of bi-lateral trade
relations category
units.
The relationship between the CPEF = CPEqF category and the CPEqFF category is thus a dialectical relationship, i.e., an «aufheben», ‘meta-monadological’ relationship, in that
each unit of category CPEqFF is a ‘meta-unit-ization’ -- i.e., is an «aufheben» negation / conservation / elevation -- of three or more units of category CPEF = CPEqF.
Similarly, as we saw in step sCPE = 1,
the relationship of category
CPEL to category CPEC
was also a dialectical,
«aufheben», ‘meta-monadological’ relationship.
Likewise a dialectical, ‘meta-monadological’, the relationship of CPES
to CPEL.
Likewise a dialectical, ‘meta-monadological’,
the relationship
of CPEF itself to CPES.
We therefore name this category, as did
Marx, the category of “World
Market”, or ‘“Global Market”’, which we will denote by CPEM,
and we therefore assert our solution as follows --
CPEqFF
|-.=
CPEM
-- and our solution, so far, for the step s CPE = 4
‘equation-value’ of our Critique of Political Economy
‘meta-equation’, thus becomes --
CPE)-|-(sCPE = CPE)-|-(4 = (CPEC )24
= CPEC 16 =
(CPEC 8)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPES + CPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF)2 =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPES + CPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF +
CPEqFC + CPEqFL + CPEqFW + CPEqFS + CPEqFSC +
CPEqFSL + CPEqFSW + CPEM.
We have thus, so far, “solved for” -- and
‘“reconstructed”’, or ‘‘‘reproduced’’’, ‘dialectical-algebraically’ -- the six named categories of
Marx’s plan of presentation
for his Critique
of Political
Economy
entire, in the same
order as that into which Marx organized those categories, namely, for --
CPEC (----) Capital,
&
CPEL (----) Landed Property,
&
CPEW (----) Wage-Labour,
&
CPES (----) The State,
&
CPEF (----) Foreign Trade, &
CPEM (----) World Market.
-- all six of Marx’s categories, in Marx’s systematic order.
¿But,
then, again, why is
the last category as listed above, the category --
CPEM (----) World Market --
counted and ordered as category sixteen per our model, rather than as
category six,
if our model is a ‘‘‘fitting’’’ model of Marx’s Critique of Political
Economy
entire?
That question, together with its answer,
provide the keys to solution as to the meanings for our model’s categories nine through fifteen -- described, ‘dialectical-algebraically’,
by the symbols CPEqFC, CPEqFL,
CPEqFW,
CPEqFS,
CPEqFSC, CPEqFSL, and CPEqFSW, respectively -- to which we
now turn.
The “canonical” interpretation expects that
the ninth ‘category-symbol’,
CPEqFC,
might describe an «arithmos»,
or ‘‘‘number’’’,
of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the Foreign Trade category, with units of the Capital
category, that
the tenth
‘category-symbol’, CPEqFL,
might describe an «arithmos»,
or ‘‘‘number’’’, of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the Foreign Trade category, with units of the Landed Property
category, that
the eleventh
‘category-symbol’, CPEqFW,
might describe an «arithmos»,
or ‘‘‘number’’’,
of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the Foreign Trade category, with units of the Wage-Labour
category, and
that the twelfth
‘category-symbol’, CPEqFS,
might describe an «arithmos»,
or ‘‘‘number’’’,
of ‘hybrid units’, uniting units of the Foreign Trade category, with units of the nation-State category.
Our general solution-contention is that these four
‘categorial unknowns’ -- whose ‘categorial solutions’ have to satisfy the
‘hybridization conditions’ of combining the categories of CPEF
and CPEC, and/or
their units, of combining the categories CPEF
and CPEL, and/or
their units, of combining the categories CPEF
and CPEW and/or
their units, and of combining the categories CPEF
and CPES and/or their
units, respectively -- all ‘‘‘belong to / belong subsumed within’’’ CPEF;
all are ‘‘‘subordinate’’’
to CPEF, all are sub-sections of the main section on CPEF,
e.g., are sub-chapters
to the chapter about CPEF,
or are sub-treatises
to the treatise about CPEF,
and are therefore all “contained in” the CPEF
treatise.
Therefore, these four categories do not count as main categories, hence do not model the titles, and the
contents, of any of Marx’s six planned treatises, as do the categories represented, by
this model, as CPEC,
CPEL, CPEW,
CPES, CPEF,
and CPEM.
They only count as sub-categories to / within main category CPEF,
i.e., as mere species
of its «genos».
So, after all, if categories CPEqFSC, CPEqFSL, and CPEqFSW are also interpretable as
representing sub-categories
to / within main category CPEF,
then CPEM constitutes
the sixth main category, just as in Marx’s plan.
Our specific contentions are as follows --
·
The sub-section connoted by the
algebraic, ‘unknown
category’ description, CPEqFC,
should describe those interactions of Foreign-Trade units with Capital units [with “individual
capitals”] -- interactions
that, stabilized and continually re-engaged, instantiate the content of the “lawful”
[‘‘‘maintainable’’’], ongoing, typical, standard, “normal”, reproduced relation, including the juridical provisions,
essential to the continuation / self-reproduction of any capital-centered
society, between each Foreign-Trade
unit and each Capital unit;
·
The sub-section connoted by the
algebraic, ‘unknown
category’ description, CPEqFL,
should describe those interactions of Foreign-Trade units with Landed Property units
[with individual land titles / title-holders] -- interactions that, stabilized and continually reproduced, instantiate
the content of the “lawful” [‘‘‘maintainable’’’], ongoing, typical, standard,
“normal”, reproduced relation, including the juridical
provisions, essential to the continuation / self-reproduction of any
capital-centered society, between each Foreign-Trade unit and each Landed Property unit;
·
The sub-section connoted by the
algebraic, ‘unknown
category’ description, CPEqFW
= CPEqFLC, should describe interactions of
Foreign-Trade
units with Wage-Labor units, e.g.,
partitioned and aggregated in terms of the Capital units, and/or in terms of
the Landed Property units,
that “contain” / employ those units -- interactions
that, stabilized and continually reproduced, instantiate the content of the
“lawful” [‘‘‘maintainable’’’], ongoing, typical, standard, “normal”, reproduced relation, including the juridical
provisions, essential to the continuation / self-reproduction of any
capital-centered society, between each Foreign-Trade unit and each Wage-Labor unit;
·
The sub-section connoted by the
algebraic, ‘unknown
category’ description, CPEqFS,
should describe interactions of Foreign-Trade units with nation-State units, units -- interactions
that, stabilized and continually reproduced, instantiate the content of the
“lawful” [‘‘‘maintainable’’’], ongoing, typical, standard, “normal”, reproduced relation, including the juridical
provisions, necessary to the continuation / self-reproduction of any
capital-centered society, between each Foreign-Trade unit and each nation-State unit.
The final triple of algebraic, ‘unknown
category’ descriptions, CPEqFSC, CPEqFSL, and CPEqFSW, respectively, involve triple
rather than double subscripted descriptors/epithets.
We interpret them as representing categories
describing the ‘‘‘relation’’’ of category
CPEF, and/or of
its units, to categories CPEqSC, CPEqSL,
and CPEqSW,
respectively, and/or to their units,
respectively.
As such, they should also count as sub-categories to / within main category CPEF,
i.e., as but three additional species of its «genos».
However, since, as triple-descriptor
subscript terms, they denote ‘relations of relations’, i.e., ‘[meta-]relations’ of category CPEF
and/or of its units to
previously-evoked binary relations between previously-evoked main categories, we shall symbolize our
solutions for these latter three ‘category-symbols’, mnemonically, not as,
‘‘‘mere’’’, ‘“ongoing relation”’
categories , but, instead, as
‘“ongoing impact”’
categories -- i.e., as CPEiFSC, and CPEiFSL, and CPEiFSW = CPEiFSLC.
We therefore lodge our solutions for these seven, ‘‘‘hybrid’’’
terms, or ‘categorial interaction’ / ‘categorial combination’, or ‘categorial dialectical
[sometimes only partial] synthesis’
terms, as follows --
·
CPEqFC
|-.= the
category of Foreign Trade
/ Capital Owner relations = CPErFC;
·
CPEqFL
|-.=
the category of Foreign Trade
/ Land Owner relations = CPErFL;
·
CPEqFW
|-.= the
category of Foreign Trade
/ Working-Class [Non-Owners] relations = CPErFW;
·
CPEqFS
|-.= the
category of Foreign Trade
/ nation-State
relations = CPErFS;
·
CPEqFSC |-.= the
category of the ongoing impact of Foreign-Trade
upon nation-State
/ Capital Owner relations = CPEiFSC;
·
CPEqFSL |-.= the
category of the ongoing impact of Foreign-Trade
upon nation-State
/ Land Owner relations = CPEiFSL;
·
CPEqFSW |-.= the
category of the ongoing impact of Foreign-Trade
upon nation-State
/ Working-Class [Non-Owners] relations = CPEiFSW = CPEiFSLC.
-- and our full solution, for the step sCPE = 4
‘equation-value’ of our Critique of Political Economy
‘meta-equation’, thus becomes --
CPE)-|-(sCPE = CPE)-|-(4 = (CPEC )24
= CPEC 16 =
(CPEC 8)2 =
(CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPES + CPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF)2 =
CPEC + CPEL + CPEW + CPES + CPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF +
CPErFC + CPErFL + CPErFW + CPErFS + CPEiFSC + CPEiFSL + CPEiFSW + CPEM.
The progress of our reconstruction, so far,
can be presented pictorially as per the depiction pasted-in below --
If we depict the partial Table Of Contents
[TOC] that corresponds to the step sCPE = 4 model of our “Marxian Critique of
Political Economy Entire meta-model’, then we have --
-- such that our “Marxian Critique
of Political Economy Entire meta-model’ can be specified as
follows --
-- and we might conclude
that we are done.
But, if we did so conclude,
we hold, we would be wrong.
To end our reconstruction of
Marx’s Critique of Political Economy ENTIRE
here would not do justice to his outline notes, coming right after his positing
of the World Market rubric --
“Encroachment of bourgeois
society over the state.”
“Crises.”
“Dissolution of the
mode of production and form of society based on exchange value.”
“Real positing of
individual labor as social and vice versa. ...”.
Such a premature end would
not do justice to Marx’s «Grundrisse» statements, e.g., that --
“... Crises are then the
general intimation which points
beyond the presupposition [ = the World Market -- M.D.], and
the urge which
drives towards
the adoption of a new
historic form.” [p. 228]
-- and that --
“...the development of the
productive forces
brought about by the historical development of capital itself, when it reaches a certain stage, suspends [‘«aufhebens»’ -- M.D.] the self-realization of capital itself, instead of positing it.”
“Beyond a certain point, the development of the
powers of production becomes a barrier for capital; hence the capital relation a barrier for the development of the productive
powers of labor.”
“When it has reached this point, capital, i.e. wage labor, enters into the same relation towards
the development of social wealth and of the forces of
production as
the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter.”
“The
last form of servitude assumed by human activity, that of wage labor
on one side, capital
on the other, is thereby cast off like a skin, and this casting-off is itself
the result of the mode
of production corresponding to capital; the
material and mental conditions of the negation of wage labor
and of capital,
themselves already the negation
of earlier forms of unfree
social production, are themselves the result of its production
process.”
“The growing
incompatibility between the productive
development of society and its hitherto
existing relations of production
expresses itself in bitter contradictions, crises, spasms.”
“The violent
destruction of capital, not by
relations external
to it, but rather as a
condition of its self-preservation, is the most
striking form in which advice
is given it to be gone and to give room to a higher state of social production...”
“Hence the highest
development of productive power
together with the greatest expansion of existing wealth
will coincide with depreciation of capital, degradation of the laborer,
and a most straitened exhaustion
of his vital powers.”
“These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which, by momentaneous suspension of all labor and annihilation of a great portion of capital
the latter is violently
reduced to the point where it can go on fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide.”
“Yet these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale
and finally to its violent
overthrow.” [pp. 749-750].
[Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of
Political Economy (Rough Draft), translated by Martin
Nicolaus, Penguin Books [Middlesex: 1973]].
We hold that, to elaborate
his themes of --
“Encroachment of bourgeois
society over the state.”
“Crises.”
“Dissolution of the
mode of production and form of society based on exchange value.”
“Real positing of
individual labor as social and vice versa. ...”.
-- especially for Marx to
have elaborated his full theory of Crises, about which mere hints
are sprinkled throughout the «Grundrisse», A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and all four
volumes of «Das Kapital»,
including in the longer «Grundrisse» passage just
extracted above, we hold that Marx would have found that he needed a separate
treatise, a seventh
treatise.
True, Marx’s fully and only synchronic, systematic dialectical presentation of the [then-]present global capitalist
system would have ended with the sixth treatise, Of The World Market.
But Marx’s overall dialectical method
-- systematic-dialectical
and historical-dialectical united -- would have led him to write a final and climactic treatise,
viz., per the passage already quoted earlier, above --
“... our method indicates the
points where historical
investigation must enter in, or where bourgeois economy as a merely historical
form of the production process points beyond itself to earlier historical modes
of production.”
“In order to develop the
laws of bourgeois economy, it is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of
production.”
“But correct observation and
deduction of these laws, as having themselves become in history, always leads to primary
equations -- like the empirical numbers, e.g. in natural science -- which point
towards a past lying behind
this system.”
“These indications [Andeutung],
together with a correct grasp of the present, then also offer the key to the
understanding of the past -- a work in its own right which, it is to be
hoped, we shall be able to undertake as well [M.D.: Alas!].”
“This correct view likewise
leads at the same time to points at which the suspension [M.D.: i.e., the [self-]«aufheben»] of the present form of
production relations gives signs of its becoming -- foreshadowings of the future.”
Just as, on one side, the
pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical, i.e., suspended [M.D.: i.e., as already [self-]«aufheben»-ed]
presuppositions, so do the contemporary
conditions of production likewise appear as engaged in suspending themselves [M.D.: i.e., as presently engaged in perhaps only the earliest stages of their
own self-«aufheben» process] and hence in positing historic presuppositions
for a new state of society.”.
[op. cit., pp. 275-276].
We therefore hold that, in
the inferred seventh
treatise, Marx would have elaborated from, and upon, the [then-]present foreshadowings of his
predicted future epoch and mode of social reproduction
-- the society of
“the associated producers”
-- along with his theory of capitalist World Crises, and upon the
general strategy of the global working-class movement in response to those Crises,
methodologically /
dialectically deriving, from his
analysis of those foreshadowings,
the characteristics
of the successor social
system to the
capitals-system, and in far greater
detail than in any of his extant writings, whether in Chapter XXXII of volume I of Capital,
or in Chapter XXVII
of its volume III,
or in the «Grundrisse» manuscripts, or in the Critique of the Gotha Program.
Let us see if we can
reconstruct the analytical title, and the top-level table of contents, of that
final, climactic treatise, using the «organon» of our dialectical ‘meta-equation meta-model’ of the Marxian Critique
of Political Economy entire.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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