The Logic of Marx’s Theory of History: Reforming Formations

Felsefe Arkivi, 2024

Marx’s concept of value has been subject to significant criticism. Robinson argues that the concept is awkward and obscure, as it is meant to explain the prices of commodities and thus must be a kind of price, but it is not. Consequently, Robinson holds that the concept of value makes no sense. Furthermore, according to Harvey, Marx in the Grundrisse confuses value with price. It seems to me that both Robinson’s criticism and Harvey’s exegesis are based on serious misunderstandings. In this article, I first unpack Marx’s criticism of Darimon’s proposal concerning time chits. The upshot is that, for Marx, production relations enjoy a priority, and a monetary reform like Darimon’s cannot fulfill the function of revolutionary change. So, time chits become a triviality. Second, I suggest a reconstruction of what I call Marx’s “nonconvergency thesis.” The thesis states that there is a supervenience between value and price. Marx says that Darimon is ignorant about this thesis, and his proposal relies on the delusion that the two are convergent. Therefore, I maintain that Harvey’s claim is misleading, as he overlooks the nonconvergency thesis articulated in the Grundrisse. And Robinson’s condemnation of the concept of value should be dismissed because her understanding is very much the same as Darimon’s, in that she ignores the two-layered ontological structure between value and price.

2009

2009

The aim of this paper is to show how Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, which stand as his first systematic study of classical economists, transform the concept of labour as it had been developed by political economy against mercantilism and physiocracy. The current interpretations of the Marxian theory of value are first reviewed. The analysis of the Manuscripts then shows that the contribution of Hegelian philosophy lies in the definition of social labour in total opposition to the orthodox conception. This issue leads to a re­examination of the significance of these Manuscripts for the Marxian concept of value and its source, general and abstract labour.

Russian Studies in Philosophy, 2012

The article offers a logical reconstruction of Marx's theory of history. On the basis of an analysis of the concept of labor, the author presents and discusses the four main socioeconomic formations of human history. The author challenges the Marxian project of the elimination of both division of labor and private property pointing to its theoretical and practical shortcomings.

In a review of our work, Kincaid suggests that we are 'productivist', reducing interpretation of Marx and capitalism to production at the expense of the relatively independent role that can be played by the value-form in general and by the money-form in particular. In response, we argue that he distorts interpretation of our work through this prism of production versus exchange, unduly emphasises the independence of exchange to the point of underconsumptionism, and simplistically collapses the mediation between production and exchange in the restructuring that accompanies the accumulation of capital.

ПОЛИТЕИА, 2018

Marx noted in the Preface to the 1867 edition of Capital that beginning is difficult in all sciences. His work on this text reflected Marx and Engels's view that there was only one science: history, embracing nature and society. Unsurprisingly, the natural sciences shaped their work in important ways. My article notes the impact of Darwinism, thermodynamics and cell biology in Marx's analyses and examines the third of these in detail. When Marx eventually settled on the value-form of the commodity as his starting point in Capital, he described it as the economic cell form of the capitalist mode of production. This reflected a new step in his critique of political economy. For, in contrast to his account of two previous methods of political economy outlined in the 1857 Introduction, his subsequent interest in cell biology suggested a third method that would sublate and supersede them. The commodity provided the simplest, most apparent, and most immediate elementary unit of the capital relation and would serve both as a presupposition in his analysis and its eventual posit (result) as the analysis unfolded all its contradictory and dynamic implications for the logic of capital. This reflects his re-reading of Hegel's Science of Logic, which was also concerned with the choice of starting point in exploring an organic totality. The cell analogy was useful as Marx sought the best starting point for his critique. In this context, I identify six parallels between cell biology and Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production that might have influenced his starting point and subsequent analysis. But they remain analogies and guided neither his substantive research nor its presentation, which reflects the historical specificities of the capital relation. The article ends with some general conclusions on discovery, methods, and the method of presentation.

 value and value form  connecting the theory of value and the theory of money  the "double character" of commodity / value producing labour  the general form of surplus value -surplus value as the common source of all kinds of labour -less income  deciphering the " wage form"  constant and variable capital / circulating and fixed capital  the first analysis of the forms of circulation and the inner mechanism of the turnover of capital  refuting Smith's dogma: the first consistent analysis of the total process of reproduction and accumulation in capitalism  In my view: Capital was not a regression, certainly not a complete failure, but also not the culmination and Marx's last word on political economy