Saturday, May 17, 2014

Dialectically Reconstructing the 5 Unwritten “Books” of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy Entire.



Full Title:

Dialectically Reconstructing the Dialectic of the ‘‘‘Intended’’’ Content of the 5 Unwritten

Books of Marxs Planned Immanent Critique of Political Economy as a Whole --

Reading Marxs 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”.

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.


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.  Marxs 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.”

“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, GrundrisseFoundations 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 MarxFive 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 Marxs 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.


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 -- 





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 lands 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 feudalland-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 = ==>

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.



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.


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   +  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 antithesiscategory, 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’’’ /cumulumof 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   +  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.


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.


0Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Value-Forms Dialectic Overall: 



1Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Deepest-Level First TriadDeepest

2Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Mid-Level First TriadMid-LevelFirst.

3Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Mid-Level Second TriadMid-LevelSecond.

4. Dialectic of Marx’s Capital, Top-Level, Overall First TriadTop-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.





Marx’s first recorded account of his plan for the presentation of his critique of political economy entire was rendered in a letter, not to Frederick Engels, but to Ferdinand Lassalle, who Marx hoped would help him to find a publisher in Berlin --

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’, notconvolute’] 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.]. 


“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-unitof 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 --









4Step 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 + CPEWCPESCPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF)2   =






CPEC + CPEL + CPEWCPESCPErSC + CPErSLCPErSW + CPEF  +


CPEqFC + CPEqFLCPEqFW + CPEqFS + CPEqFSC +  


CPEqFSLCPEqFSW + 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 constituteThe 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 + CPEWCPESCPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF)2   =





CPEC + CPEL + CPEWCPESCPErSC + CPErSLCPErSW + CPEF  +




CPEqFC + CPEqFLCPEqFW + CPEqFS + CPEqFSC +  

CPEqFSLCPEqFSW + 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 + CPEWCPESCPErSC + CPErSL + CPErSW + CPEF)2   =






CPEC + CPEL + CPEWCPESCPErSC + CPErSLCPErSW + CPEF +


CPErFC + CPErFLCPErFW + CPErFS + CPEiFSC + CPEiFSLCPEiFSW + 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 dialecticalmeta-equation meta-model of the Marxian Critique of Political Economy entire.

















TO BE CONTINUED.











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