A critique of political economy; some drafts or manuscripts on the theory of value and the concept of surplus value; these are the Grundrisse or Fundamental Lines of the Critique of Political Economy , written by the German philosopher, Karl Marx, between 1857 and 1858, before publishing his great work – Capital – whose first book was published in 1867.
The Grundrisse constitute a path for the study of capitalism and the understanding of how capital operates; or, according to Marx, “the exact development of the concept of capital (…), a fundamental concept of modern economics, in the same way that capital itself (…) is the basis of bourgeois society.”
These drafts, outlines, and notes were written after Marx moved to London following the revolutionary process of 1848; “the Grundrisse have been accurately described as the richest fruit of Marx’s thought,” noted British historian Eric Hobsbawm.
In November, Akal published the 408-page book Guide to Marx’s ‘Grundrisse’ by the 90-year-old British geographer and Marxist social theorist David Harvey; Harvey has also published Anti-Capitalist Chronicles (2023), Spaces of Global Capitalism (2021), and Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason (2019) with Akal .
The Grundrisse are a set of notes that Marx wrote for himself, as an internal dialogue in which he gave free rein to his thinking; even the concepts could change as the text progressed; the notions of debt, land, money or labor were also modified, as were the modes of production.
The author suggests ideas that could be developed in later works; in short, these are manuscripts and drafts that are difficult for the reader to approach, in contrast to the simpler style of his journalistic work.
Harvey points out in the introduction that Marx did not look down on bourgeois economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo; on the contrary, he considered that they were trying to understand the complex social phenomena of their time; in fact, these political economists provided the raw material for the interpretations of the communist intellectual.
David Harvey highlights aspects of Marx’s work that remain relevant today; thus, when Marx wrote his texts, industrial capitalism was present in Great Britain and parts of Western Europe; but similar working conditions can be observed today in countries such as Bangladesh, China, Turkey, Brazil, India, or South Africa.
Another noteworthy aspect of the Grundrisse is the conception of Capital as a totality , in its formation and functioning; this is compatible with the fact that, in broad terms, there has been a disregard for the notion of totality , partly due to the Foucauldian and post-structuralist turns that distrust this idea.
Capital as a whole is based on several circulation processes; among others, the circulation of goods through exchange; of money as money; of labor power; of money as capital; in addition, the circulation of fixed capital and, finally, the circulation of interest-bearing capital.
At this point, the author of the Guide gives special relevance to the circulation of labor power, among other reasons because the proletariat is exposed – during this process – to a plurality of material experiences: as a seller of labor power; as a recipient of a wage; as a buyer of goods and as a participant in the multiple forms of social reproduction in the daily life of a household.
In different passages of the Grundrisse , the role of the individual embedded in society is addressed, and in his relationship with private property and business competition; Marx criticizes the theorization that classical political economists made of an alleged rational homo economicus .
Thus, the English writer and journalist, Daniel Defoe, published in 1719 a very famous and widely read novel, Robinson Crusoe : a castaway who spent almost three decades on a deserted island in South America; David Harvey reproduces Marx’s words about Crusoe in the first book of Capital : “Saved from the shipwreck, clock, ledger, ink and quill (…) immediately began, like a good Englishman, to keep accounts for himself.”
Marx pointed out the tendency of capital circulation to enter into crisis, which—in addition to affecting the wage-earning class—implies a risk to the rate of surplus value and the reproduction of capital; this crisis, which also implies an opportunity for renewal, can originate in the production, distribution, consumption, circulation of fixed capital, or any other process that is part of the totality of capital.
But the author of the Guide to Marx’s ‘Grundrisse’ points to another type of crisis: that of alienation and loss of meaning; thus, “capital defines wealth in terms of money and property rights over essential resources. And that’s all. Marx postulates wealth as available time”; but capital seized this time, both in Marx’s time and today, Harvey concludes.
In the chapter dedicated to fixed capital and circulating capital, the author points out the connections between the capital/labor factors, capitalist accumulation, and 21st-century innovations such as Artificial Intelligence (AI); in such a way that the capacity to innovate reveals itself as a business, and the resulting fixed capital adds science and technology, which reduces the workforce (according to the United Nations, about 40% of global jobs are affected by AI; at the end of October, the e-commerce company Amazon announced the elimination of 14,000 jobs).
An example of the didactic intention of the Guide can be seen in the following explanation by the British professor of Anthropology and Geography: “Circulating capital flows towards immediate production and produces the goods that end up on our table or in the store; fixed capital, on the other hand, follows behind productive activity and has a different logic of circulation.”
According to Harvey, the author of the Grundrisse points out these logics first separately, but then establishes a relationship of continuity: “Circulating capital has to keep circulating so that the value of fixed capital is realized throughout its useful life.”
Akal’s text also accounts for the two Marxian perspectives on the historical evolution of capital; the first, perhaps, could be described as optimistic , since capital creates bourgeois society and has a civilizing influence compared to previous stages; these are described as local developments of humanity and idolatry of nature; on the contrary, in the modern world , Marx refers to capital, production and wealth as a “limited bourgeois form”.
READ MORE: https://rebelion.org/el-capital-clave-de-boveda-de-la-economia-moderna-y-la-sociedad-burguesa/
