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What Is The Purpose Of Marx`s Critique Of Political Economy

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Date : 09/08/2019

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What is the purpose of Marx s critique of Political Economy?

Abstract
In Part I, this essay shows that traditional approaches have sought a productive interpretation of political economy. What all traditional Marxist approaches have in common is the presupposition of productive labour and its role in overthrowing the antiquated modality of production. However, this presupposition, which in turn is affirmative of Classical Political

Economy, is incompatible with 21st century political development and, moreover, Marx s conception of the immanence of critique. Marx s critique aims at the entirety of Political Economy and this includes the double-character of labour in bourgeois society. This paper interprets Marx s critique as negative& its purpose is thus to elucidate the social relations that constitute economic forms. It argues this, in Part II, by analysis of Marx s fetishism of commodities and the loss of subjectivity in the traditional literature. Thus, this essay shows that, by maintaining labour as fundamental, capital has become the supreme subject and any traditional approach remains capital affirming& a perverter of Marx s intentions.

Introduction
In the Preface to A Critique of Political Economy Marx outlines the content of his Critique . Capitalism, for Marx, is the last form of social antagonism but how Marx defines antagonism is the point of departure from all Classical Political Economy: an antagonism that emanates from the individuals social conditions of existence (Marx, 2000a& 424). For Marx, what lies at the epicentre of dynamic human life are social relations& these social relations in totality constitute the economic structure of society (Marx, 2000a& 424). Moreover, Marx departs from any traditional Marxist interpretation by dismissing the active role associated to the working class: by elucidating their social existence that determines their consciousness (Marx, 2000a& 425) any labour movement would merely be capital affirming.
By analysis of Marxian Economics and Structural Marxism, followed by explanation of the social constitution of economic categories purported in 4 of chapter 1 of Capital , this essay will show how Marx intended to make a negative critique of Political Economy.

Section I: Traditional interpretations of the critique of Political Economy

Marxist Economics identifies Marx s critique as a science of economic categories that transcends the shortcomings of Classical Political Economy. Accordingly, Marx had taken over the labour theory of value from Classical economists such as Smith and Ricardo, improving it whilst interpreting the critique of capitalism positively (Heinrich, 2004& 32). Production must occur and the value of commodities is determined by the amount of labour that constitutes their production (Ricardo, 1981& 11). This Ricardian thought is presupposed in Marxist economics, Marx tried to explain price formation by a labour theory of value (Elster, 1986& 64), but the distinction between Marx and the Classical approach was merely that Marx identified capitalism as being necessitated by exploitation of this labour power (Heinrich, 2004& 33). Hence, for the scientific approach there are no fundamental differences between Marxian economics and Classical political economy, only different conclusions (Heinrich, 33) based on distribution. Marxist theory becomes merely a sophisticated theory of capitalist reproduction (Bonefeld et al, 1995& 2), with the analysis of economic categories constituting a theory of labour (Postone, 1993& 9)& prescribing it the revolutionary activity of forming the dictatorship of the proletariat which is a form of state socialism with distribution according to labour effort (Elster, 1986& 165).

According to Structuralist Marxism, Political Economy is a theoretical anti-humanism (Althusser, 2005& 229). There are general economic laws in operation and capitalism is merely an historically contingent manifestation of these economic laws. In &interpreting fundamental economic laws that manifest themselves in historically specific form in capitalism s categories (Bonefeld, 2014& 28), Capital for the structuralist approach thus becomes a means of analysing history (Althusser, 2005& 230). This movement understands a dialectic between transhistorical economic relations and historically contingent social relations& the former being a force of nature, the latter developing within the general economic framework (Bonefeld, 2014& 28). Since social relations are determined within the economic framework, their analysis must come secondary and Marxism thus proceeds as a science without a subject (Postone, 1993& 77). Furthermore, amongst these inescapable economic laws is that of the labour theory of value& the production process is reduced to the labour process as a production of use-values (Clarke, 1980& 35). The major contradiction in capitalism therefore becomes that of private property and market distribution (as charismatic of capitalism) on one side and the necessity of industrial production on the other (Postone, 1993& 9). The distinctive feature of capitalism is thus the historically specific modality of labour (Bonefeld, 2014& 29).

Hence, what defines the Economic and Structuralist conceptions of Marxist critique is the transhistorical conception of labour (Postone, 1993& 7). In the structuralist tradition there operates a presupposition that the productive power of labour defines value& this presupposition is also maintained in Marxian economics. In this light, Marx s Capital thus becomes a theory of labour. Capitalism is an historically contingent manifestation of the necessity of labour to produce value& the ever-increasing productivity of labour is attributed to a natural industrial necessity in human agency. Accordingly, what is defined to specific epochs of production is the distribution and organisation of wealth& industrial production itself, however, is trans-historical (Postone, 1993& 6). The traditional approach does not challenge the Classical perception of labour as a valid form of wealth production& rather uses Marx s analyses of economic categories as a means of understanding how it is distributed inequitably through surplus value expropriation. Marx s Capital is seen as elucidating how, in capitalism, the productive power of labour is exploited by the capital-owning class& labour produces wealth at an ever-increasing rate but this is fettered by surplus value expropriation. In these traditional conceptions, industrial production continues to develop whilst the social relations of private property and exploitation constrain it& this is seen as the fundamental contradiction of capitalism (Postone, 1993& 8).

Since, however, industrial production gives rise to social relations within its laws, this development has the potential to give rise to new social relations of equitable distribution. Socialism is thus premised on industrial production and the role of labour. Therefore, the critique is positive and focuses on how in a scientific socialism an equitable mode of distribution will justify the productive power of labour (Postone, 1993& 8). Socialism will release the truly universal and social (Postone, 1993& 10) characteristics of labour from the distributive-fetters of capitalisms historically-specific modality. In these traditions, Marx is thus considered a great economist (Heinrich, 2004& 32). The forces of production are not socially-constituted but constitute social relations which are antagonistic with the forces of production, thus dissolving the social relations immanent in capitalism reveals not a social constitution but merely the general economic laws which create the necessity of industrial production. Hence, the purpose of critique becomes to understand capitalism as a historically contingent manifestation of general economic laws (Bonefeld, 2014& 32) and, moreover, to assign a productive capacity to the working class to establish equitable wealth distribution in a post-capitalist society.

Caveats of Traditional Marxism

These varying traditional approaches to Marx s critique all share a common view that labour as value-determinant is trans-historical . Capitalism is defined by the mode of distribution and how wealth is extracted by means of private ownership and expropriation of surplus value, hence the economic categories apply exclusively to a self-regulating, market-mediating economy (Postone, 1993& 10). Therefore, in the 21st Century with the rise of Keynesian state-interventionalist capitalism, Marx s critique seemingly no longer applies, for in many capitalist states, the state itself became a dominant source of wealth distribution. Moreover, the continuation of repression in actually existing socialism in the Soviet Union and China, for example, was exempt from the traditional form of critique, for no longer does private distribution of wealth dominate, private property and the market were &abolished (Postone, 1993& 11). Practically, therefore, any traditional interpretation that does not challenge the Classical labour value theory and thus attributes economic categories to the mode of distribution is at best antiquated by political development, these fundamental problems indicate the limits of the traditional interpretation (Postone, 1993& 11).

More significant than antiquation, however, is the traditional failure to grasp capitalism adequately (Postone, 1993& 13). By failing to think outside of capitalism, a positive critique is a mere abstract critique, that dissolves the social subject back into her economic inversion (Bonefeld, 2014& 35). The traditional standpoint of transhistorical labour, by its presupposition of industrial production, does not entail a critique of production as Marx intended it. To be a revolutionary critique, the core of capitalism must be understood and reconceptualised and this core is labour (Postone, 1993& 3). Since labour is particular to capitalist economy, any critique based from the standpoint of labour adopts a materialism of Classical Political Economy (Clarke, 1980& 47), simply re-applying the labour theory of value derived from Smith s natural propensity to truck and barter (Smith, 2007& 14). Furthermore, a critique of production then can prescribe no particular role to labour as is suggested in the orthodox tradition for this would merely affirm that which [Marx] attempts to criticise (Postone, 1993& 142). Traditional critique is positive critique, based on the presupposition of labour. Thus, Marx s critique must be negative and therefore challenge the Classical labour theory of value: it must ask the question why labour is represented by the value of its product (Marx, 1993& 39).

Section II: The negative critique of Political Economy

Positive interpretations miss Marx s attempt to aim his critique at the entirety of Political Economy (Heinrich, 2004& 33). For Marx, the presupposition of labour is a capitalist category& it is not fundamental to human life and thus is naturalised by traditional Marxism. The naturalisation of economic categories is the result of a process of reification (Luka &cs, 1923& 91), whereby economic forms appear endowed with independent agency as a direct result of the abstract labour that defines their movement. This fetishism of commodities constitutes an objective illusion of socially-constituted forces that appear naturally derived& commodities have a mystical character and appear to us as transcendent (Marx, 1993& 31). The role of Critique thus becomes to decipher in and through these economic categories the social relations of capitalism that animate (inanimate) economic forms (Bonefeld, 2014& 38). The objective illusion of capitalist economic categories is founded on the commodity form of labour. In the separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual
labour (Marx, 1993& 255), the only commodity labour has left to sell is its labour power. Labourers thus bring their power to the market and sell it in an equivalent exchange according to its value, which is determined like every other commodity by labour-time necessary for production (Marx, 1993& 101). It is the equivalent exchange which is charismatic of labour power as a commodity and is necessarily equivalent for the exchange is grounded on the liberal principles of equality and is regulated by the labourer s double- sense of freedom (Bonefeld, 2014& 43). The commodity of labour power, however, is a peculiar commodity for it has the capacity to produce surplus value in consumption (Marx, 1993& 98). Surplus value is created after the moment of exchange, and begets itself (Marx, 1993& 89). Thus, through surplus value creation, the exchange of the commodity of labour appears as relation of value to more value& money to more money: M...M (Marx, 1993& 90).

Labour power, in its consumption, brings forth living off-springs as it reproduces itself in greater form (Marx, 1993& 107). It is this capacity of value in labour power to self-expand that gives it its objective appearance as self-constituting and natural. This is the source of the objective illusion, and in the dazzling form of money appears akin to an automatic process (Marx, 1993& 13& Bonefeld, 2014& 43).

However, the exchange relation of two un-equivalent things cannot be analysed according to any liberal values of equality & the premise of what constitutes capitalism cannot lie in capitalist terminology, for the relation of money begetting money (M...M ) stands in direct contradiction to the fundamental principles of commercial society. Thus, a critical theory must be employed to understand this phenomenon& the solution must lie outside the economic categories of capitalism.

The commodity form of labour is premised on abstract labour and its production of value, abstract labour is the pivotal concept of the critique of Political Economy (Bonefeld, 2014& 121). In the context of value production, abstract labour creates value and concrete labour creates use-value, but It is only in the creation of value that commodities of different concrete objectivities can be exchanged as equivalents. For the exchange of commodities there must be an equivalent that can be located in each. This equivalence is value, but its validity can only be realised in exchange& in their acting and re-acting upon each other (Marx, 2014& 33). When these goods of different concrete particularities are brought to the market, their concrete labour is abstracted not into the common expenditure of [...] nerves (Marx, 2014& 31), but into a definite proportion of society s total labour. The abstraction of &inequality (Marx, 1993& 33) is implicitly founded on the socially necessary labour the constitutes the two commodities, and this is necessarily determined in exchange& if a commodity cannot be exchanged, it has not fulfilled its purpose as a commodity, thus it has no value. Therefore, abstract labour is social labour& it finds validity only in exchange and exchange is [...] a social transaction (Marx, 1993& 42).

It is value [...] that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic (Marx, 1993& 34), since social labour can realise itself only in exchange, it necessarily does so through its products as a social relation of commodity to commodity (Marx, 1993& 13). Hence, the objective illusion& capitalist value is the manifestation of de-socialised, social labour. This is what Marx calls the fetishism of commodities (Marx, 1993& 31). Commodities for Marx abound in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties precisely because the social character of men s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product (Marx, 1993& 32). Commodities do not exist qua nature for the value relation between products which stamps them as commodities has no connection to the physical properties of the commodities& it is not because a table is made of wood that it is inherently equivalent to a chair in exchange, but because of the social, abstract labour that constitutes them both. The objectified self-movement of value, however, value in process, valorising, makes the products themselves appear as though they are commodities qua nature& that the fantastic form of a relation between things (Marx, 1993& 32) is derived from the wood of the table. It is, however, abstract labour that allows the products of human hands to appear as independent beings endowed with life (Marx, 1993& 32).

What has resulted from this fetishism in the history of traditional Marxism is the strict separation between subject and object and thus a focus on objectivity as science, science is understood in the positivist sense as excluding subjectivity (Holloway, 1995& 159). By excluding the social subject from analysis and focusing on economic categories, capital has become the supreme subject (Holloway, 1995& 172-3). These objectified categories seem to have independent existence outside of the class struggle that constitutes them, thus Marx s analysis becomes a partial theory-of-society, rather than a comprehensive theory-against- society (Holloway, 1995& 158). However, Marx did not intend to make brief, partial analysis &of economic forms& he meant to the criticise the categorical presuppositions of an entire branch of knowledge (Heinrich, 2004& 33). Traditional Marxism has never asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its products and labour-time by the magnitude of that value (Marx, 1993& 39), as a result, it has produced theories of structures that rest on unquestionable presuppositions and that these structures pre-structure human &action (Bonefeld, 1995& 182). Human practice is objectified as capital and thus as a constituted structure that social relations merely reproduce. These structures then seem to become the framework in which class struggle unfolds (Bonefeld, 1995& 191). Therefore, the naturalised economic laws of the structuralist tradition are a result of the fetishism of the social relations that necessarily constitute economic categories.

Economic theory, which traditional Marxism affirms, proceeds in agreement which a so- called base-superstructure model, which by objectifying social relations deciphers economic categories as having an a priori character (Backhaus, 1992& 60). Such economic theories have erected a socio-economic superstructure on a base of presupposed, yet irrational and undefinable concepts (Bonefeld, 2014& 24). These economic forms appear as naturally grounded but are merely inversions of first nature of society. This perverted form is, however, is a necessary illusion that is inherent in the economic process itself (Backhaus, 1992& 62). Economic forms in their deranged objectifications appear as immediate complexes that exist in themselves, over and above the social relations that constitute them and it precisely because of the peculiar social character of the labour that they appear this way (Marx, 1993& 32). As Postone expounds, essence cannot appear directly as essence, it must appear in a slightly distinct appearance (Postone, 1993& 166). There is a necessary condition between essence and appearance, thus it is abstract, social labour that is constitutive both of the essence of economic forms and of their mystified appearance as supersensuous things. The social relations in capitalism can never appear as overtly social (Postone, 1993& 167), thus they must appear in objectified form.
Therefore, what is identified in analysis of the economic categories are no general economic laws as these are mere necessary objective forms of essence& what is revealed in Marx s negative analysis is essence& it comprehends essence in its appearance [...] as a disappeared essence (Bonefeld, 2014& 65). Negative critique s power is making visible what is made invisible by the inversive nature of essence, as disunity in the form of unity (Bonefeld, 2014& 64). Thus, economic categories do mot merely disguise the real social relations& the abstract structures expressed by those categories are those real social relations (Postone, 1993& 62).

Conclusion

Just as Feuerbach s work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis thereby establishing an independent realm for the secular basis that can only be explained by contradictions within this secular basis, the traditional attempt to understand capitalism from a standpoint of transhistorical labour does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity (Marx, 2000b& IX). Feuerbach does not see the secular world as a social product , just as traditional critique does not comprehend the social constitution of economic categories. Worlds are changed by revolutionary practice, which is necessarily that of human activity& the religious world is but the reflex of the real world (Marx, 1993& 38).
This essay has shown that commodity fetishism is necessarily presented through the double- character of labour and that this is the distinctive feature of capitalism. Through this fetishism, the subject of human agency in the literature has been lost in the objective economic forms. Marx thus makes what Adorno calls an ad hominem critique (Adorno, 1973& 186). By demystifying economic categories as super-sensible economic forces that exist over and above this human agency, his analysis thinks in and through society to comprehend the perverted world that is essence.

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