marx's theory of scientific knowledge -patrick murray

7/25/2019 Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge -Patrick Murray

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by Patrick Murray

HUMANITIES PRESS INTERNATIONAL, INC.Atlantic Highlands, NJ


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First published n the mted tates o Aerica byHuanities Press International, Inc. Atlantic Higlans, NJ 07716

988 Huanities Press International Inc.

Library of Congess Cataloging-inPublication Data

Murray Patrick 1948

Marx's teory of scientific knowlege

Bibliograpy: p

Marx Kar 818883 2 SciencePilosopy

History19t century 3 EconoicsHistory

19t century I. Title.

B3305M74M84 1988 3354 863052

ISBN 039103379

All rigts reserve No part of tis publication ay be reprouce or

transitte, in any for or by any eans witout peission

MANFACTRED IN THE NITED STATES OF MERICA


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Jm G, f M R


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Contents

Acknow ledgmen ts

In troduction

Part One: Marx's Critique of Philosophy

Introduction 3

Division I Deciding o Pursue Science

Introduction 7Chapter 1 Marx's Doctoral Dissertation: Projecting a

PostHegelian Wissenscha

Division I Breakig wih Hegel

9

Introduction 5

Chapter Experimentum Crucis" in Judging Hegel'sSpeculative ScienceChapter 3 The Paris Manscripts Political Economy and

the Critique of Hegel' s Absolute Idealism

Division II

In troductionChapter 4

Chapter 5

Marx "Seles His Accouns wih GermanSciece

Snared in Hegel's Logic Bauer, Stirner, andthe True SocialistsHistorical Materialism An Alternatve toIdealism's Disembodying of History

71.

57

59

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Chapter 6

Divisio IV

I troductioChapter 7

CONTENTS

Scietic Kowledge Practical Philosophiesad Practice

Marx's Shiig Focus: From Philosophy toPolitica Economy

Proudho's Jumblig of Hegel ad Ricardo

Part Two Marx's Critiqe of Political Ecoomy

I troductioDivisio V

ItroductioChapter 8Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter

Divisio VI

ItroductioChapter 1

Chapter 13Chapte 14Chapter 15

Marxs Mature Methodological Writgs

Why Did Marx Write so Little o MethodMarxs Logically Well-Bred Empiricism

Marx's Distictio betwee Geeral adDetermiate AbstractiosMarx's Critique of the ClassicalEsseceAppearace Model ad ItsPoliticalEcoomic Employmet

Marx's Mature Scietic Practice: Captal IChapters

Begiig Marxs Critique of PoliticalEcoomy: The CommodityMarx's Theory of ValueMarxs Theory of MoeyCapital's Logical ad Epochal Break withSimple Commodity Circulatio

79

8789

103

1071091 13

11

1 3 1

139

1 4 1147163

177

Divisio VII The Theo-ogical, Political, ad PhiosophicalSigicace of Capitaist Ecoomic Forms

Itroductio 189Chapter 1 6 The Theo-Logics of Moey ad Capital 1 91


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Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

AbbreviationsNotes

CONTENTS

The Political Content of CapitalistEconomic FormsThe Recollection of Marx's Critique of

Philosophy in CapitalConclusion: The Distinctiveness of MarxsTheory of Scientic Knowledge

Selected BibliographySecondary Publications

Index

195

09

133356567

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Acknowedgments

n the long course of preparing this book, I have been helped and

supported by many persons and institutions. For sparking my interest inMarx and critical theory, I am indebted to Paul Piccone The rst periodof sustained research for this book was undertaken in Frankfurt, WestGermany, in 19751976 and was made possible by a fellowship from theGerman Academic Exchange Service (or DAAD). I am grateful to theKopavi community for its care and support during two years of writing inSt. Louis. I appreciate the criticisms and encouragement oered by themembers of my dissertation committee at St. Louis niversity, James

Collins, Richard Blackwell, and James Marsh. There is no accounting Ican give of what I owe Professor Collins.A number of persons read parts or all of the rst draft of this book and

oered criticisms and a good deal of encouragement. Among them, Iwould like to thank Thomas Ferguson, John Duggan, Michael Slattery,and Paul Mattick ,Jr , for many heartening words Joseph O'Malley mademany valuable critical comments Daniel Dahlstrom gave the rst partclose scrutiny and forced me to exercise more care in my discussion of

Hegel This was also a consequence of the extremely careful reading of themanuscript by Peter Fuss, to whom I am deeply grateful. I suspectneither he nor Dahlstrom wil l be satised with the treatment ofmy reading of Marx, but I hope that I have gained some ground .. . " ) . spefyg the complex relatnshp between Hegel and Marx Rob rt

,

Cohen generously took an early interest in my work on this book I >grateful for his support and suggestions During the summer of 1980, 1was awarded a short-term research grant from the German Academic

Exchange Service to pursue work on this book in Frankfurt again. I wasable to discuss the rst dra with three of my former teachrs, RdigerBubner, Herbert Schndelbach, and Jrgen Ritsert, as well as withAlbrecht Wellmer. Our conversations led to a number of corrections,clarications, and shis in perspective; I appreciate their interest andeorts. For their nancial support and warm encouragement, I would liketo thank Richard Andrews, Dean of the Graduate School at Creighton


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! A CNO WLEDGEENT

niversity and William F Cunningham,r. , Dean of the College of Artsand Sciences at Creighton niversity. Mrs Ruth Southern, Gina Hausmann, and Darlis Vauble put in long hours at the painstaking work of

typing versions of the book; I appreciate all their laborsSince we met in Frankfurt in 1975 Moishe Postone and I ave caried

on an extended conversation on Marx and critical theory. This book owesmuch to him and to our conversation. I look forward to its continuationAbove all, I want to thank my wife, eanne Schuler, for her imagination,her patient education of my writing, for so many walks and conversations,and for her friendship and love through all the years of writing this book


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ntroduction

any sparks have own over it, but the issue of scientic knowledgein Marx has led to few careful studies. For decades partisans insisted on

the scientic character of Marxs work; opponents met that claim withderision Ironically, both parties to this cold war agreed on a positivistview of science, and both assumed as much of Marx While the sympathizers held Marx up as a paradigm of positivism, the critics consideredhim an impostor, the author of a mishmash of halfbaked economics,Hegelian philosophy, and moralism. Neither side was prepared for thepossibility that Marx would challenge its own preconceptions concerningthe nature of scientic knowledge

As previously unknown works of Marx above all, the Paris Manscripts1844) became available, reinterpretations emerged, and the issue became more complicated A kind of dtente was achieved by splitting theimage of Marx the hard-nosed scientist was the late Marx"; the earlyMarx" was a humanist worthy of praise for uncovering alienation incapitalist societies This bifurcation allowed liberalizers in Communistcountries and New Leists elsewhere to seize upon a palatable earlyMarx," while putting the scientic late Marx" on the shel RobertTucker expressed the attitude characteristic of this approach: Capital

is an intellectual museum-piece for us now, whereas the sixteenmanuscript of 1844 on the future of aesthetics, which he probably wra day and never even saw t to publish, contains much that issignican t , ,2

Since the late sixties, this benign neglect of the scientic Marx haschallenged by scholarly and political developments. Continuing research aided by access to the Grundrisse questioned the textual basis for thebifurcation. This made it harder for admirers of Marx's humanism toshrug o his scientic concerns. As the New Le fragmented, a revival ofmore traditional Marxist groups pushed the scientic Marx to the foreground again This revival, along with the practices of the Communistcountries, undercut the rapprochement with Marx New Leists grewuneasy with Marx Many began to suspect that what they once thoughtwas only a bad spot was in fact indicative of a bad apple. Such suspicions

lll


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l INTRODUCTON

brought on a new rush of interpretations in which Marx's insistence onscientic thinking signied a fundamental contradiction in his work,which undercut his humanism.3 But this new disillusionment with Marx

rested on the old premise that he embraced generic positivism. As CharlesjTaylor put it "That Marx looked on Captal as a work of science, and thatthe term sience' came to hae for him very much the sense tt it had forthe later neteenth century general, seems to me correct. The debate over Marx and science, then, has been framed by the

complacent judgment that, whether or not Marx was a good practitionerof science, he, too, adopted the positivist standard5 What has beenoverlooked is that he meaning of "science is not univocally positivisndeed, that meaning has fallen on hard times and that Marx did notust adopt a theory of science that was ready to hand; he worked out aistinctive view which constituted an early reection of postivism. We

shall see how Marx's theory of scientic knowledge anticipated manyIpresent critiques of positivism in that it ( 1 challenged the value-freelaura of science and incorporated reection on the relationsip betweentheory and practice into the constitution of science; ( recognized a

\dialectic of concept andfact and paid close attention to the logic and content scientic categories I will call this Marx's :empiricism in secondntension ; and (3 thematized the subectve constitution of scienticeories pursuing their historicity and their links to logics of practical life\een into the basic structurings of scientic theories Over recent decades, philosophers of scienc largely ignoring Marxhav called positivism into question Their dismantling of logical empir-/ csm in hand with Thomas Kuhn's book Te Stcture o Scentc Reolu tons has provoked what might be called a "rationality crisis Thehermeneutical relativism espoused by Richard Rorty in his widely readPlosop and te Mrror of Natur indicates the depth of that crisis A faultline in this upheaval, one noted by Kuhn, concerns the capacity ofposvsm to cope with the actualities of science as a historical phenome-non. The searc for non-Platonist models of science models in whichistory and reason are not segregated, has led a few hilosophers to annterest in the historically minded Hegel and Marx.6 The promise of this

new direction in the philosophy of science was an important considerationbehind my research for this book. My purpose, however, is not to enterdirectly into contemporary debates on the nature of scientic knowledgebut rather to provide a sound basis for the appropriation of Marx byphilosophers of science.

hroug a close, textual study informed by te ngoing tradition of critical theory, I show ta the long-standing "wisdom according to

I


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INTRODUCTION v

which Marx was a garden-variety positivist is incorrect. Since Marxsconcern for scientic nowledge was lifelong, the neat division of Marxnto humanst and scentst fals. But my reading also challenges the

recent authors who consider Marx's pervasive interest in science a perversion of his humanism. Actually, Marx's humanism and his dedication to scence worked on one another, as did his studies of Hegel and Ricardo The result was an original theory of scientic knowledge that explicitly !ncrporates humanstc values, which were carefully scrutinized for theispecic social content. Marx strove for objectivity not by dogmatically asserting the independence of science from history but by exposing tevarious ways in which science is embroiled in society.

* * *

Marx early began to ponder the nature of scientic knowledge, andworked it into his critiques of religion, philosophy, political economy, andpolitics. Consequently, the interest of this book spreads beyond its centraltopic to questions concerning Marx's reception of Feuerbach's critique ofreligion; Max's reading of modern philosophers, especially Hegel; his

theories of value and surplusvalue; his critique of liberal politics andFrench and German socialism; and, nally, the developmet and unity ofhis thought.

Marx's advocacy of scientic thinking appeared already at age nineteen, when he wrote to his father of his conversion to Hegel's thought andhis abandonment of an attempted science of law along Kantian linesOnly a few years later 1 8 1 , in his dissertation and notes, Marx began tosuspect Hegel's principles and criticized the Young Hegelians for makingexternal, moalistic rather tha immanent, scientic criticisms of Hege

In the Crtque of Hegels Plosop Rgt 1 8 Marx wentsuspicion to analyze the scientic shortcomings of Hegel 's last puwork and his philosophy as a whole. Marx continued to formula criticism ofegel in the Pars Manuscrpts 1 8 and applied it in thepopular and polemical works on the Young Hegelians ( Te Hy18, and Te German Ideoloy 18 and on Proudhon (Te PoeryPlosop 187 A letter to Leske documents the importance Maxplaced on these early erts to develop a theory of scientic knowledgeIt seemed to me very important to send n adance of the poste development, a polemical writing against German philosophy and German socalsm up to now This is necessary in order to prepare te public for thestandpoint of my Economy,' which positions itself opposite the precedingGerman science. Marx's Economy" book did not appear for overtwenty years. But the theory of science operative in Captal sprang from


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XV NTOD UCON

those early crtques of the Young Hegelans, Proudhon, and, above all,Hegel

Much of the rst part of ths book and no small porton of the

second s devoted to examnng Marxs relatonshp to Hegel. ThatHegel should gure so promnently n a work on Marxs theory ofscentc knowledge may seem odd However, Marx treated Hegel not asa dead dog" but as the drect ancestor of hs own theory of scentcknowledge. Determnng precsely Marxs debts to Hegel, as well as hsderences wth hm, s a major part ofthe work nvolved n evaluatng thedstnctveness of Marxs nonpostvst concepton of scentc knowledge.

What drew Marx to Hegels dea of scence were ts mmanence ts

attenton to the logc of theores, and ts hstorcal sense Indeed, t was nthese terms that Marx developed hs crtque of Hegel The noton ofmmanence bore multple menngs, t meant that scentc progressrequred nternal crtcsm, and t demanded that concepts be grounded nther subject matter In hs analyss of the Plosop oJRgt Marx faultedHegel for mposng prefabrcated categores on hs subject matter cvlsocety and the state Wth consderable help from Feuerbach and wth asharp eye for the logc of a theory, Marx connected that lack of mma

nence to a fundamental nverson n Hegels phlosophy Hegel put logcbefore experence. In Marxs judgment, Hegel fell vctm to the sameEnlghtenment syndrome treatng abstractons as actualtes whch hehmself had traced through modern phlosophy Unlke the woodenconstructs of Descartes (matter), Spnoza (substance), and Kant (thngsn themselves), Hegels logcal Idea was endowed wth lfe and subjectvty, a Pnoccho among these thoughtthngs But Marx realzed that thsnverson reected the hstorcal nverson of lfe under captalsm, where

the anmated abstracton captal assumed prorty over nature and humanty Marx thus lnked Hegels phlosophy to the deep structures ofcaptalsm, much as he later lnked poltcal economc theores to thosedeep structures.

Marxs crtque of absolute dealsm further nvolved a return to epstemology, an emphatc dstncton between general and determnate abstractons, and a new understandng of the logc of essence. These threemoves nvolved a recovery of certan Kantan themes. Te return to

epstemology s perhaps clearest n the ntroducton to the Grndrssewhere Marx took Hegel to task for dentfyng processes of thought wthreal processes or Marx, thnkng s one of many ways n whch humansapproprate an ndependently exstng world, and ts structure should beexamned, not smply fosted upon the real world Marxs use of generalabstactons, suc as the catgory of use-value or theabr pross ngeneral, shows that he was not an absolute hstorcst Hs naturalsm


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.NTRODUCTON V

recognized some constants in life. As he put it in the Genan eolo hisapproach, unlike the German, professorial science, was not presuppositionless" Such constants as the human need to supply the means of

material subsistence enter into science as general abstractions and play anecessary, tough very limited, roleMarx has a less optimistic unerstanding of the logic of essence than

does Hege For Hegel essence must appear as something other than itself;its ogic one of opposition, but not antinomy, a in Kant The oppositioncan achieve reconciliation through the mediation of a third party: forexample, the state reconciles the oppositions within civil society. ForMarx the very opposition of essence and appearance needs to be uprooted,

not mediated Thus, Marx calls for revolutionizing civil society to put anend to its antagonisms. Third parties, such as he ven, the stae, or money,signal submerged conict, not achieved harmony Marx's proposal torevolutionize civil society needs to be reexamined today, when eorts teliminate social antagonisms have generally taken totalitarian forms . Thisreexamination must, in turn, raise questions concerning the logic thatunderlies such a radical proposa

Marx's three moves away from absolute idealism recur in his critique of

political economy, which is examined in the second part of his book. AsMarx made clear in his Notes on Wagner," his decision to begin Captalwith something actual rather than a hypostatized abstraction, the commodity rather than the concept of value, owed from his rejection of apost-epistemological" idealism Marx did not wish to ape th idealists bypresenting capitalism as the unfolding of some eternal concept, ratherthan a historically determinate form of society dominated by abstractforms such as value and capita Distinctions between general and dete

minate abstractions, for example, use-value and exchange-value, providea structuring element of Captal and lay the basis for Marx's ! : economists who naturalize" specic social forms. Marx's grasp o logic of essence opened up the two most innovative . . , Captal the analysis of the value-form and the theory of s Because Marx recognized that essence must appear as sometng oter tse he realized, unlike Ricardo, that value must appear asother than itsel namely, money, and that surplus-value and the rate surplusvalue could not be identied with prot and the rate of protSuggestions that Hegel only got in the way of Marx's economic thoughtclearly fall wide of the mark. The only way to follow Marx's treatment ofpolitical economy is to pay close attention to his underlying theory ofscience, which was shaped largely by the encounter with Hegel. 1

To appreciate the way Marx's theory of science pervades not only hisphilosophical and economic work but also his approach to politics,


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NTROD UCTON

consder a further connotaton of the noton of mmanence. Seekng outthe ought" n the s" was the featur of Hegels thought about whchMarx wrote most vvdly n hs 1837 letter to hs father. From the tme of

hs dssertaton, Marx showed how the sharp dualsms of theoretcal andpractcal reason led to a fourfold nexus of su bjectvsm, transcendence,dolatry, and conservatsm. For example, Marx connected the subectsm of the Young Hegelans wth ther tendency to transcend the world na way that made dols of ther deals and le them passve n the face of asoc ety they faled to comprehend . Set n the context of ths cycle, even thewellworn eleventh thess on Feuerbach dsplays new facets Changng theworld s the pont, and that reures more than hgh deals and subjectve

nterpretaton"; t calls for scentc comprehenson and a proper theoryof scentc knowledge tself. Poltcal practce that lacks adequate theoretcal foundatons s seen to swng between terrorsm and reacton

Wthn ths dalectc of theoretcal and practcal reason, te nterplaybetween scentc and poltcal consderatons n Marx s constant. Poltcal mplcatons appear n hs return to epstemology, hs dstnctonbetween general and determnate abstractons, and hs logc of essence. Bynot dentfyng the concepual dalectc of Captal wth a dalectc of

hstory, Marx removed hmselffrom nated clams concernng the development of precaptalst socetes. Consequently, Marx provded no warrant for a poltcs that works from some magned hstorcal blueprnt norder to put such socetes under a forced march.

By dstngushng general categores such as useful labor, nstrument ofproducton, and land from the determnate categores abstract labor,captal, and landed property Marx penetrated the apparent naturalnessand farness of the captalst economy. In so dong he expanded the

poltcal horzon beyond the bounds set by lberal theory to nclude theprospect of a postcaptalst socety, one n whch value, captal, wagelabor, and landed property wld have no place. Furthermore, t was bydstngushng wealt (a general category) from alue (a determnate one)that Marx dsclosed the latent bourgeos prncples of the Gotha Programme of the German socalsts. When the Gotha Programme declaredlabor to be the source of all wealth, rather than of value, t spped nto abourgeos dealsm (akn to Hegels phlosophy) whch ascrbes super

natural creatve power" to labor and gnores the natural condtons of allwealth Marxs crtcsm ponts out the ecologcal nderence of thebourgeos pont of vew shared by an mportant workngclass organza-tn.

By castng value n terms of the logc of essence, Marx recognzed thenecessary, rather than nomna, derence between value nd rce. hsdscovery undermned the socalst proposals of Proudhon, whch attacked


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NTRO UCTONXX

values appearance, money, rater than its essence, production based onabstract labor. Many socialist and even Marxist political programs arestill Proudhonist" in this sense.

This last point raises a broader, politically sensitive, question. WasMarx primarily a critic of capitalist producton or a critic of capitalistpatterns of dstrbuton Moishe Postone argues that the traditional interpretations have stressed distribution. They have conceived of the dialectic offorces and relatons of production as an external one in which terelations are fetters on the ever-progressive forces, which are assumed tohave an inerent, technologically determined course. Tis conceptioncomports well with viewing value as a neutral, rather than a critical,

category wih respect to production; placing property relations at thecenter of politics; and taking the goal of revolution to be the dictatorsip ofthe proletariat. To this Old Le reading of Marx with its associatedpolitics, Postone counterposes a New Le reading which nds the fettersn capitalist production as well as on it and sets a new political agenda: theelimination of value as a social reality, a new attitude toward nature andwork embodied in a new form of production, and an end to the proletariat.What I have learned concerning Marxs theory of scientic knowledge

strongly supports the emphasis on Marx as a critic of productionI f Marx is a critic of production, the traditional dialectic offorces ofproductionand relations of productionbreaks down; this inturndislodgesthe stock versions of historical materialism. These perennial views relyonan external, mechanical conception ofthe relationship between being andconsciousness,baseandsuperstructure;a technological determinismwithrespect to production; and thepresumption that categories such as forcesand relations of production, the state, and ideology (along with the

supposed rules governing them) provide an algorithm which can bappliedto any historical period withwonderful results. Withhis di "'of historical materialism, Marx perfected Vico: he truly madescience, or so the story goes. Quite a dierent picture emerges frombook.

Marxasess interestedinreversing theidealist subordination ofbeinto consciousness than hewas in undermining this enlightened dualism,whichled as oen tocrude materialismas toidealism We will abandonany mechanistic view of the detrmin

ation of politics and philosophy byeconomicsoncewerecognizehow heavily Marx's basiceconomiccatego-riesare alreadyfreighted with political, philosophical, and even theologi-cal signicance. Conversely, the philosophical and political specicity ofthe economic categories rules out technological determinism. Likewise,the texts do not support the associated notion of natural science aspoliticallyneutral. Any recipe" approach to historical materialismis not


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INTRDUCTION

oly icosistent with statemets by Marx, it ies the face of hispaistaking criticisms of Hegel, Young Hegelians, and Proudhon forbrigig their readymade cocepts to the study of history. The proper

analysis of Marx's distiction betwee geeral and determiate abstractios, made in the German eolo, that locus classcus for historical materialism, supports a understadg of historical materialism as a propaedeutic to s ciece, ot its guarantee. Marx oers o sciece of history,but he does put us o otice of the may ad subtle ways hstory entersito the constitutio of science.

Attention to the practical, historical rootedness of the cocepts ofsciece, as well as the values which guide it, distiguishes Marx's theory

of scietic kowledge from any positivist versio. Moreover, it was apassio for achievig huma fulllmet that red Marx's search ito thecontradictions of the actual world. Marx, then, was no ordiary sc ientist,for his serious inquiries ito the nature of sciece place im in thecompay of such philosopher-scietists as Aristotle and Descartes. This iseasily missed, however, because Marx provided o organon, o handyrules that govered the directio of his mind. This absece is itself afeature of the particular approach to science he developed. The fact that

Marx's sophisticated theory of scietic knowledge remais largely sublimial i his better kown works makes them extraordinarily densemuch turs on a word, a distinction, a begiig. May a scietic orpolitical isight is lost for lack of uderstandig Marx's methodologicalinovatios. This book should both increase awareess of this demandingquality o Marx's writing ad help in meeting those demads. The wemay be able to move beyod Marx instead of around him.


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PART ONE

MARX'S CRITIQUE OF

PHILOSOPHY

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.- ; ,


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O

arxs theorizing about the nature of scientic knowledge takes

shape as he examines the preceding German science" that culminated inthe philosophies of Hegel and the Young Hegelians. Since Marx nds theYoung Hegelians derivative of Hegel more so than they recognized theweight of this rst part rests on the investigation of Marxs direct critiqueof Hegel (division . Marx experienced head-splitting diculties withHegels philosophy of the absolute, even at the time of his dramaticconversion to Hegelian dialectics in 1837, and, in his dissertation notes of1 84 1 , s et himself ofrom the Young Hegelians by calling for a thorough

going and internal critique of Hegel. But it is not until 1843844, in hisCrtque of Hegel's Plosop of Rg t and the Pars Manuscrpts that Marxactually develops such a critique and, in so doing, takes a giant stepforward in developing a distinctive theory of scientic knowledge Twostriking features of this critique of Hegel indicate Marxs approach toscientic knowledge. First, the very fact that Marx took Hegel andHegelianism so seriously marks his commitment to adance scienticknowledge through an immanent criticism of existing science (And

Marxs criticism is certainly an immanent one insofar as he endeavorsshow that Hegel only reduplicates the dualisms of Enlightenment thothat he sought to overcome.) Second, Marx begins to associatestandpoint with the deep structures of modern, capitalist society

Marxs criticism of the Young Hegelians in the Ho Fam andGerman eoloy coincides with the rst statements of his historical materialism In fact, historical materialism should be understood in this contextof his settling accounts" with idealist philosophy. I argue that Marx ismore interested in breaking down the dualism of being and consciousness,base and superstructure, than in simply inverting idealism, and thathistorical materialism is not a science of history Rather, it is a propaedeutic to actual historical work, a polemic against an idealism that turnshistory into a parade of thoughts and thinkers, while dehistoricizingpractical, material life. Historical materialism provides no all-purpose setof categries eady to be applied" to any given historical phenomenon


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4 MARXS CRITIQUE O PHILOSOPHY

Marx spends too much time berating Hegel, various Young Hegelians,and Proudhon for such applications" to make that mechanical viewplausible. In a further move away from conventional interpretations, I

call attention to the ways in which Marx' historical materialism links thelogcs of practical, material life, such as the logic of commodity exchange,with the logcs of schools of thought, such as utilitarianism and earlymodern natural science.

That Marx sought to change the world rather than merely interpret"it is well known. But Marx's nal thesis on Feuerbach should be understood in its full context, which encompasses a critique of the idealistconception of scientic knowledge Marx's thinking about the relations

between theory and practice reaches back to his university days Marxabandoned his youthful Kantian-Fichtean eorts because they were toosubjectivistic; they failed to penetrate the logic of actual things In hsdissertation work, Marx explicitly links subjectivism in a forfold nexuswith conservatism, transcendence, and idolatry. He sees the conservatismof Hegelianism, its inability to change the world, as the practical ip sideof its theoretical subjectivism, which fails to reach the logic of the actualworld and grasp its immanent contradictions. The Young Hegelians

stubbornly deify their own ideals and preach to the deaf ears of the world.In the case of Proudhon, whose defective Hegelianism also falls into thisfourfold nexus, Marx notes ironically that Proudhon's own ideals areill-understood reections of the society he thinks he is underminingProudhon provides the perfect foil for Marx, since his Plosop Poveris a parody of Marx's own life's work. Proudhon's attempt to synthesizeHegel and Ricardo suers from a lack of any fundamental critique ofeither With time, it becomes clearer to Marx that the logic of Hegelian

philosophy bears a striking resemblance to the logic of capitalist economicforms. As his interest shis to the critique of political economy, Marxsharpens reformulates, and sometimes reshapes his early theorizingabout scientic knowledge, but he never abandons it.


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Diison 1

Deciding to Pursue Science


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arxs thought about the nature of scientic knowledge and his

pursuit of a scientic grasp of his world mark no sudden shi away fromearly humanistic concerns; indeed, they reach back to the beginnings ofhis development as an intellectual At nineteen Marx repudiated thesubjective dualism of Kant and Fichte while enthusiastically adoptingHegels dialectical conception of scientic knowledge. Marxs dissertation, a study of the dierences between the philosophies of nature ofDemocritus and Epicurus, bears the marks of Hegel in its attention toforms of consciousness; their links to historical forms; the way their

fundamental logics penetrate both theoretical and practical philosophies;and their need to be altered when restrictive of human potentials forexperiencing the world and acting in it. By uncovering the logic of theisolated individual as the template of Epicuruss philosophy, Marx setshimself o from the Enlightenment, for he regards Epicurus as its mostoutstanding Greek precursor. In his notes he likewise associates the le"and the right" Hegelians with the dualistic logic of Enlightenmentthought; even then he is no ordinary young Hegelian. In studying the

course of phlosophy in the wake of one total philosopher, Aristotle,seeks insight into his own situation, living in the aermath ofRather than complain about Hegels political accommodations, as didYoung Hegelians, Marx concludes he should undertake theproject of developing a new theory of scientic knowledge and a


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Division IV

Marx)s Shjing Focus: From Philosopy toPolitical Economy


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With the Ho Fami and the German eolo Marx partially completedthe project for a new science sketched in his doctoral dissertation In theseworks Marx analyzed how the failure of the oung Hegelians to criticize

the deep logic of Hegel's philosophy led them to parody the man theysought to improve on Taken with the more substantial studies o He gel inthe Citiqe oJ Hegel's Philosop oJ Right and the Paris Manscripts, thesewritings brought to a close Marx's primary focus on the claim of Germanphilosophy to be scientic knowledge The years 1841847 mark amajor turning point in the direction of Marx's investigations into scienticknowledge, as his preoccupation shis from criticism of philosophy tocriticsm of political economy

Though this transition is marked, several important points of continuityremain s we saw in "On the Jewish Question and the Paris ManscriptsMarx's attention to political economy predates 84847 On the otherhand, Marx does not lock the door on philosophy aer 1841847, butshows in many of his writings aer that period a lively interes in ancientphilosophy, as well as in Hegel, the oung Hegelians, the British empiri-cists and utilitarians, and other modern European philosophers Mostimportant of all, Marx's critiue of philosophy has a politicaleconomic

character, and, conversely, his critiue of political economy is philosophi-cally signicant The mutuality is evident from a comparison ofParisian critiue of Hegel t Marx's mature critiue of political ecwhich demonstrates that the primary objective of Marx's work is ascritiue of the shared logic of modern philosophy and classicaeconomy If the Paris Manscripts speak at the same time to Hegel, ;l,and Ricardo, so will Capital


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CHAPTER

Proudhon 's Jumling of Hegel and

Ricardo

iven the interpenetration of Marx's studies philosophy and politi-cal econoy, it is appropriate that the turning point in his studies wasarked by the publication of he Pover oJ Philosoph ( 8 Signs of theshi are clear in Marx's foreword

Mr Proudhon has the isfortune of being peculiarly isunder-

stood in Europe In France he has the right to be a badeconoist because he is reputed to be a good Geran philosopher. In Gerany he has the right to be a bad philosopherbecause he is reputed to be one of the ablest of French econo-ists In our uality of being a Geran and an econoist at thesae tie, we wanted to protest against this double error

The reader will understand that in this thankless task we haveoen had to abandn the critiue of Mr. Proudhon in order to

take up that of Geran philosophy, and at the sae tie to givesoe observations on political econoy.

Proudhon j ubles Hegelian philosophy together with political ecnyrather than probe their intenal, logical interrelation, to producephilosophy and bad political econoy.

he Pover oJ Philosop written in response to Proudhon's he PhilosopoJ Pover ( 8 ,2 along with the critiue of Proudhon contained in Marx's

letter to nnenkov of 8 Deceber 8, will be the textual base for thischapter. s transitional writings, they are uniue in dividing tie rathereually between philosophy and political econoy. Marx draws the stringof his critiue of Hegel and the oung Hegelians through this critiue ofProudhon at the sae tie that he broaches soe criticiss of politicaleconoy that he develops ore fully in his later writings.

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POUDHON'S POLITICOECONOMIC PPLICTION OF THETHEOLOG OF BSOLUTE RESON

For Marx, Proudhon's relation to classical political economy resemblesthe relation of the oung Hegelians to H egel Proudhon tries to patch up,reinterpret, and edit classical political economy in orde to secure hisdesired vision of society He wants to resist what he considers to be theaccommodations of classical political economy, without consideringwhether the ver logic of political economy might be one of accommodation3 Proudhons failure to criticize the logic of classical politicaleconomy and his unreective adoption of Hegelian philosophy count forMarx as a single error, twice committed Hegels absolute idealism andclassical political economy both exemplify the logic of the Enlightenment;both are reections oJ (rather than on the development of capitalism

To reect on the development of capitalism reuires scientic insightinto the dialectical interplay of capitalist forms of life Such nsight enablesone to see the historical specicity of those capitalist forms One might saythat the goal of a critical science of capitalist society is to attain themetalevel with respect to the logic of capitalism Proudhons failure toachieve this metalevel lies at the core of Marxs disagreements with himIn keeping with the lessons which led him to hisorical materialism, Marxsees the root of Proudhons twicecommitted error less in his philosophicalineptitude than in his shaky understanding of the actual dialectics ofcapitalst society

Hegel's philosophy of absolute spirit provides Proudhon with whatMarx considers a des ex machina that acts as a surrogate for criticalhistorical understanding

Mr Proudhon sees in history a certain certaine] series of socialdevelopments; he nds progress actualized in history; he ndsnally that men, taken as individuals, did not know what theydid, that they deceived themselves about their own movement,that is, that their social development appears at rst glance assomething distinct, separated and independent from their indivi-dual development He does not know how to explain these facts,and therefore the hypothesis of the selfrevealing universal rea-son comes to him made to order Nothing [is] easier than toinvent mystical causes, that is phrases, where common sensebreaks down4

To explain the alien character of human history, Proudhon adducesHegels theological schema of history as the unfolding of universal reason


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a third party to real human beings Marx nds the appeal to a shadowyuniversal reason, lurking behind the not so reasonable events of humanhistory, to be scientically sterile

t the same time, Marx objects to Proudhon's theory of history as aheteronomos one, a heteronomous variety of teleology. We have alreadyseen Marxs disdain for such teleology,5 but he spells it out again in theletter to nnenkov

ccording to his [Proudhons] viewpoint, man is merely theinstrument which the idea or the eternal reason makes use offorits development The evoltions of which Mr Proudhon speaks,

are supposed to be the sort of evolutions which occur in themystical womb of the absolute idea6

This teleological conception of history instrumentalizes prsons, reducingthem to mouthpieces for a ventrilouist.

In blithely adopting Hegelian method, Proudhon does more than fallinto a theological understanding of history; his whole method takes on atheological cast ccording to Marx, Proudhon envisions the relationship

between category and actuality as one of incaation

Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions theabstractions of the social relations of production Mr Proudhon,like a true philosopher, holding things invertedly, sees in realrelations nothing but the incarnations of these principles, ofthese categories, which were slumbering so Mr. Proudhon thephilosopher tells us again in the womb of the "impersonal

reason of humanity7

As Marxobserves, Proudhon tries todo for political economywhatthinks Hegelhad done forreligionandright, namely, present it asmetaphsics.

More than oncewe have discussed Marx's charge that absolute ideal-

ism reduces scientic knowledge to applied metaphysics, in connectionwith what Kant calls an intellectualintuition Marx ch

ides Proudhonforemploying the abstract category of division, as ifhe were an intellectualintuition capable of reading o the historically specic rms of thedivisionof laborwithout appealingtoempirical knowledge.

The division of labor is, according to Mr Proudhon, an eternallaw, a simple, abstract category Therefore the abstraction, the


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idea, the word, us also suce for hi to explain the division oflabor in dierent historical epochs. astes, corporations, anu-facture, largescale industry ust be explained by the single

word "divide. First study carefully the eaning of "divide,and you will have no need to study the nuerous inuenceswhich give the division of labor a deterinate character in eacepoch9

Marx's irony reiterates Kant's point that such nondiscursive, deductivereasoning is not the province of huan reason.

As in the cases of Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner, Marx is quick to pointout the political consequences of the clai to such absolute knowledge. I tproduces an immediate connection of theory and practice that is bothdoctrinaire and elitist, not to ention illusory

It is the learned, therefore, the en who understand how topurloin suspendre] Gods intiate thought, who ake history.

The little people need only apply their revelations. You under-stand now why Mr. Proudhon is the delared eney of everypolitical oveent. The solution to present probles lies fori not in public action, but in the dialectical rotations of hishead Since for hi the categories are the otive forces, one doesnot need to change practical life in order to change the categories Quite to the contrary It is necessary to change the catego-ries, and that will have as a result the change of the real

society. O

Marx believes that Proudhon's rationalistic ethod sets hi up as a highpriest whose ystical insight into God's ind grants hi agical powersover huan history He becoes a iddlean in a heteronoous theologic of doination over huan history.

This critique of Proudhon's uncontained rationalis points up Marx'sattentiveness to the political odality ofscientic ethods and hi s resolveto establish a scientic ethod that would avoid these pitfalls of dogat-is and elitis Such a ethod has no place for an iediate identity ofh d . 1 1t eory an practce

As noted earlier, Marx views the authoritarian political iplications ofan iediat linking f heory and practice as a conseuence not just ofabsolute idealis; the third thesis on Feuerbach shows that the criticis

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ais at echanical aterialis a well Marxs critique attends t thecoon logic of these extrees of idealis and aterialis 1 which itidenties as the logic of Verstand a dualis resulting fro the calcication

of the abstractions spirit and matter That line of thought recurs in Marxsfurther rearks to Annenkov.

Because Mr. Proudhon sets on the one side the eternal ideas thecategories of pure reason, on the other side en and heirpractical life, which according to hi is the application of thesecategories, you nd in hi right fro the beginning a dualism

between life and ideas, between the soul and the body adualis which is repeated under any fors You see now thatthis antagonis is nothing other than the incapacity of Mr.Proudhon to coprehend the profane origin and history of thecategories, which he divinizes.3

Marx believes that Proudhon is already treading the path of dualis,before he akes his choice at the crossing of idealis and aterialis.

PROUDHON'S INTERONNETED SUBJETIVISM,TRANSENDENE, ONSEVATISM, AND IDOLATRY

The enlightened, dualistic logic of Verstand suers from a sujectivisticbias Inits eorts toseize upontheobjectiveworldoutsideitself, enlight-ened thoughtencounters the misplaced concretenessofits ownprojectedabstractions As wehaveseenearlier, Marx'sorganizedreectionsothesubjectivismoflogics forscience go back tohis letterto hisfathera

ndtohis dissertationwork. Inthe latter, Marxsawa constrictivesu bj c iv i : J , ,at work in Plato, Epicurus, and the Young Hegelians, for whom,

. . . . : argued, subjectivism was only one facet in a fourfold nexus ofoncludngtranscendenceconservatism,andidolat. This webofcharaceisis shared by the Enlightenment and its forerunner, the philosophyEpcurus. Proudhon's scientic eorts fall prey to the same diculties.

Proudhons subj ectivism resembles that of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirnerand the True Socialists in being constructionistic and moralistic. Marxsees Proudhon'sHegelianismas a mask for the subjectivismofhis systemof political economy. In the Pover of Philosophy, Marx explains hiscritcsm ofthe subjectivistic way in which Proudhon orders economiccategories. Marx charges that, despite his Hegelian verbiage, Proudhonfails torise tothe levelofdialectics.


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Wha consues aecca oeen s he coesence o woconracory ses, her conc an her fuson no a newcaegory. Jus o pose he proe of enang he a secus shor he aecca oeen I s no he caegory whchs pose an oppose o sef y s conracory naure sMr. Prouhon who ges ece, eaes wh hsef, an fresan fues eween he wo ses of he caegory

Insea of enerng n he eernaons proper o he caegoreshesees, Prouhon es o reconce he n hs own pecuar way

r ns ha Prouhon's sujecsc orerng of he caegores ofpoca econoy apses no "oray.

he sequence of caegores has ecoe a sor o scaoldingDaeccs has cease o e he oeen of asoue reason.here s no onger any aeccs u ony, a he os, copeey pure ora y

Mar's ephac use of Prouhon's own erscaong here accenuaes he way n whch "oray accopanes sujece constuctionismhe caegores of he poca econoss are e s o gass n aaeoscope ha Prouhon wss o ge he arrangeen ha sus hsora fancy

he ogc o "oray for Mar noes gong eyon he gen,hrough an appea o one's own sujece eas, raher han y ferreng

ou he rea poenas or nerna conracons of he gen Prouhon'soray, supersocas, s spy a uopan erson ofhe oray of henghenen. Prouhon ruy represens he nghenen raon ofFrench pocs. Freey ae conracs, recprocy, equay, an consue aue (wha Mar wou ca "aue) are funaenas of hssocas. In rngng hese eas o ear on poca econoy, Prouhonensons he as a racay new nenory, whereas Mar causcayoseres ha hey are aen o poca econoy's own she \

Ricardo takes his starting point from present-day society todemonstratetoushowitconstitutesvalue Mr.Proudhontakesconstitutedvalueashis startingpointtoconstructanewsocialworld bymeans othis value Forhim, Mr Proudhon, consti-tutedvaluemustgoround andbecomeonceagainconstitutivefor a world already completely constituted according to thismodeoevaluation.Thedeterminationofvaluebylabortimeis,

J

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for Rcardo, he aw ofexchangeabe vaue; for Mr Proudhon, s he synhess of usevaue and exchangeabe vaue Rcardosheory of vaue s he scenc nerpreaon of acua economc

fe; Mr Proudhons heory of vaue s he uopan nerpreaonof Rcardos heory

95

In seecng consued vaue (vaue) as he cornersone ofhs vson ofhefuure, Proudhon sruck upon somehng fundamena, bu fundamenao he exsng word

The ex usraes an ronc connecon beween transcendence andconservatism Accordng o Marx, ranscendence, by sasfyng sefwh sown subjecve, mora" procamaons o he acua word, never aansa crca grasp of ha word and s nerna concs As a resu, faso reae o he word n a sef-conscous and free manner. Transcendences gnorance of he acua word bnds o he very word seeks oranscend.

If a hs sounds famar from he earer dscusson of he YoungHegelians, shoud As we observed a he begnnng of hs chaper,Proudhons reaonshp o Rcardo repeas he msake ha he YoungHegeans made wih respec o Hege Neher Proudhon nor he YoungHegeans came o a crca grasp of he deep ogc of he grea hnkerswhom hey sough o ranscend As Mar es Annenkov, Proudhondoes no rse above he bourgeos horzon" We mgh rephrase hs osay ha Proudhon remans whn he ogc of he Enghenmen or heogc of Verstand

To pu hs pon npoca erms, wemgh ca Proudhon a bour-geos socas" or a ef-wng Rcardan " The aer erm nds some

exuasuppor a he pon whereMarx brngsnheEngsh RcardansocasJohn Francs Bray o unock he secres ofProudhons hough.Wha Marx says ofBray appes o Proudhon, snce boh men seek oremedy he wrongs of capasm hrough a more jus appcaon Rcardos abor heory of vaue, by urgng ha workers receve a hevaue hey produce

Mr Bray does no see ha hs egaaran reaon, hs correctiveideal ha he woud ke o appy o he word, s sef nohng buhe reecon of he acua word, and ha herefore s oaympossbe o reconsue socey on a bass whch s nohng buan embeshed shadow of In proporon as he shadowbecomes emboded agan, we perceve ha hs body, far frombeng he dream ransguraon, s he acua body of exsngsocey.


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The egalitarian ideal of Bray and Proudhon is conservative with rspect tothe logic of existing society, though not necessarily with respect to everyfeature of that society. Thus

Proudhon attacks thedroit d'aubaine, what

Marx referred to as the forms of appearance of surplus-value interest,rent, and prot (indeed this was the real meaning of Proudhons phrasePropety is theft") but he never questions the logic of value itself. Quitethe contrary, he and Bray think that the equalitarian application of thelaw of value would dry up the sources of surplus-value .

The language of applying a corrective ideal" recalls Marxs critique ofthe Young Hegelians, who also saw critique as an application of ideals to agiven actuality. As in the case of the Young H egelians Marx considersProudhons xed idea"2 to be an idol, an object of unreective worship,which is in fact a product of Proudhons moral imagination as a memberof bourgeois society. This forgetful idolatry brings us full circle to theopening iscussion of Proudhons employment of Hegelian method. Byconstruing political economy as applied metaphysics," Proudhon putsthe categories of bourgeois political economy (and contracts, equality, freewill, and value are such categories) in the eternal mind of absolute reason,or God This makes holy and eternal the categories of bourgeois society.

Mr Proudhon does not directly assert that bourgeois le is aneteal truth for him. He says it indirectly, in that he divinizes thecategories which express the bourgeois relaions under the formof thought [meaning here, the thought of absolute reason2

roudhons idolatry lies in his forgetful hypostatizing in that t

ird rty

to human history absolute reason the categories of bourges potcaleconomy

PROUDHONS POLITICAL ECONOMY: METHOD ANDMETAHYSICS

Proudhons method in political economy is that ofpure abstraction by theunderstanding ( Verstand, the method of the Enlightenment, and his meta

physics is that of value. Marx wants to show the dialectical, or necessary,connectedness of the two His description of Proudhons method ofabstraction recalls his critique of Hegels use of logic in the Philosoph oJRight and the parody of Hegelian method in the Hoy Famiy using theexample of the category fruit In the Povery oJ Philosoph, Marx writes,

If we abstract thus from every subject a ll the alleged accidents,animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that


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in the nal abstracion, the only substance le is the logicalcategories . . . All things being reduced to a logical category, andevery movement, every act of production, to method, it follows

naturally that every whole of products and production, of obectsand of movement, is reduced to an applied metaphysics. Thatwhich Hegel did for religion, right, etc., Mr. Proudhon seeks todo for political economy.2

9

The method of Vestand that Proudhon invokes for political economy is amethod of inversion; aer abstracting the logical categories from real

things, t deduces these same things from the pure categories.Proudhons application of this method to political economy produces aset of abstract categories constituting the metaphysics of value. If weconsider the central categories of Proudhons politico-economicthough equality, free will, division of lab or, and, of course , constitutedvalue (or value) we nd very abstract categories indeed. Equality anddivsion of abor are hardly more than mathematical categories applied tosocial life.2 Free will (as Proudhon uses it) means only the simplenegation of any postive, external determination of the will, a conceptionof freedom already dscussed in connection with the Germandeoogy.

,2 The concept of value requires us to think of labor sans phrasewithout any further determination, a task resembling Lockes eort tothink of a triangle devoid of specic qualities. Categories such as thesenecessarily appear eternal, for they are stripped from the concrete situations which give rise to them. Marx notes this relationship in his leter toAnnenkov.

For Mr Proudhon on the contrary, the abstractions, the categories, are the primitive causes. According to him, t is they,and not men, who bring forth history. The abstraction, the categotaken as such, that s, detached from men and their materialacivity, is naturally immortal, inalterable, impassive; it is only abeng of pure reason, which merely says that the abstractiontaken as such, is abstract an admirable tautology2

Proudhons unreective use of the method of abstraction, the method ofVerstand, necessarily results in politico-economic categories wich arethemselves abstract, and seemingly immutable. Such are the categoriesconsttutng the metaphysics of value

Not the most important gure implicated in this discussion of methodand metaphysics, Proudhon the clumsy synthesizer of German philosophy and English politcal economy is rather a foil in Marxs delibera-


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tons about Hegel and Rcardo. ut as Marx ndcates n hs foreword tothe book, Proudhon s a poor Hegelan and a poor Rcardan. As a result,Marx's own book becomes muddled and works at cross purposes at hoseponts where Proudhon s too far out of step wth the loomng senorgures, Hegel and Rcardo. In fact, aer the dscusson of abstractonrecaptulated n the paragraphs above, Marx remarks, Up to now wehave expounded onl the dalectcs of Hegel. We shall see later how Mr.Proudhon has succeeded n reducng t to the meanest proportons . , 2 Wehave alread seen that Marx regards Proudhon not as one who actvelemplos the method of abstracton to acheve new scentc nsghts, asdd Rcardo, but rather as the bricoleur of abstractons alread on hand.

Consequentl, the endurng value of the crtque of Proudhon for Marx'stheor of scentc knowledge les n ts character as a prox In thsrespect, Proudhon's case s much lke that of runo auer, Max Strner,and the True Socalsts.

An mportant derence between Proudhon and those Young Hegelanss that Proudhon endeavors to brdge poltcal econom and Germanphlosoph, n the process amplfng the shortcomngs of each Throughhs crtcsm of Proudhon, Marx sees more clearl how hs own crtque of

Hegelan method, understood as the method of Verstand carres over ntothe eld of poltcal econom Ths must ha strengthened Marx's prorntmatons about the common logc of Hegelan phlosoph, captalstsoce, and the scentc account of that socet n classcal poltcaleconom.2 ut other aspects of Marx's crtque of Prodhon's poltcaleconom are not extensons of the crtque of Hegel to the eld of poltcaleconom. The la the foundatons for a postve reapprasal of Hegel nMarxs later crtque of poltcal econom

REAPPRAISING HEGEL'S SIGNIFICANCE FOR THECRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

The aspects of Marx's crtque of Proudhon that spark a reconsderaton of Hegel's merts concern the nondalectcal, nontotalstc, andahstorcal character of poltcal econom. Proudhon fals to see that thecategores of poltcal econom, such as propert, value dvson oflabor,and wages, form a dalectcal totalt that s hstorcall specc.

In the real world, on the contrar, the dvson of labor and allthe other categores of Mr. Proudhon are socal relatons, whoseentret makes up that whch one toda calls; outsdethese relatons, borgeos propert s nothng bu a metaphscal or judcal lluson. 30


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PROUDHON JUMBLING HGEL AND RICARDO 99

The lack of dialectical acumen creates the political illusion that one canretain the ensemble of bourgeois economic categories while ridding oneselfof the associated social conicts and iequitable distribution of wealth. AsMarx states later in the letter to Annenkov.

Really he [Proudhon] does nothing other than what all goodourgeois [people] do. They all tell you that competition, monopoly, etc, in principle, that is, taken as abstract thoughts, arethe sole foundations of life, but in practice leave much to bedesired . . They all want the impossible, that is, the conditions

of bourgeois life without the necessary consequences of theseconditions.

Like the classical political economists, Proudhon fails to grasp either thenecessary relations among the various forms of bourgeois economic life orthe historically mutable character of the totality of those forms. The resultis a truncated, political" vision of socialism 2

In an 865 letter to . B . Schweitzer, Marx declares that Proudhon's

best book is his rst, What Is Proper, in which he relies on the philosophical method of Kant rather than Hegel Marx sees Kant's handling ofcontradictions by way of antinomies and appeals to transcendence asmore appropriate for a petit bourgeois thinker like Proudhon The socialposition of the petite bourgeoisie, one of living contradiction," is bestexpressed in such antinomies. Marx' s use of the dierences between Kantand Hegel prepares the way for a more positive employment of Hegel'sown critique of Kant's philosophy of Verstand

The critique ofVerstand was a novel philosophical strategy developedHegel in response to enlightened European thought and social lifewith particular attention to the philosophy of Kant. Two

featuresof Hegel' s critique ofKant'sphilosophyrelate toMarx'scrq ofProudhon as a representative of political economy. H egel riticizesKantforpresentingcognitive categories, notablythetwelvecategoriesotheunderstanding, inanondialectical,arbitraryfashion. Similarly, Marxc

harges the political economists with failing to present the dialecticalinterrelationsips of their categories . Much as Hegel nds fault withKant'sinability toseethehistorical textureofcognitivecategories, Marxcriticizes the classicalpolitical economists for not recognizingthe historical specicity oftheir categories.As noted inprevious chapters, MarxcriticizedHegel largelybyreap-

plyingthe critique ofVerstandto Hegel'sown thought, at the levelofthe


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logic of is total system Tus, Marx saw in te Hegelian pattern ofpenomenology logic real science, a metodologically treacerous attraction to logic as te alpa and omega of science. In te role of logic in

Hegel's system, Marx spotted a repetition of Kant's logic of Verstand onlynow at a meta-evel wit respect to Hegel's own critique of Verstand

Marx's critique of Hegel accomplises te goals projected in is dissertation work, to seek out te accommodation of Hegel' s tougt less in itsexplicit content tan in its constitutive principles. Marxs critique attendsnot to wat was focal for Hegel, tat is, is own development of tecriique of Verstand but to Hegel's tacit structuring of tat critique Tesystematic patterns of tinkin troug wic Hegel crticized Enligten

ment ratiocination were te very ones on wic Marx reected. In tisway Marx came to include even Hegel witin te fold of Enligtenmenttinkers

In criticizing te Young Hegelians and te Hegeliaism of Proudon,te met acritiqe of te teo-ogic of Hegel' s tougt ad served Marx well But as e moves into te scientic consideration of classical politicaleconomy largely a product of Englis society and toug Hegel's owncal critique of Verstand takes on renewed signicace. Many of te

explicit and self-consciously developed features of Hegel's work, includingis sensitivity to te content of forms, tei dialectical interrelatedness,and eir istorical specicity, are reabilitated by Marx as powerful toolsfor criticizing te metods of classical political economy. We can anticipate a certain readjustment of Marx's relationsip to Hegel, a cooling ofte eated polemics accompanying is own creative meta-critique ofHegel, and a renewed appreciation of Hegel's own focal critique of priorEnligtenment tougt.


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PART TWO

MARX'S CRITIQUE OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY


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Aer 1850 Marx completed only one book that holds great importanceto an inquiry into his theory of scientic knowledge the st volume ofCapital He and Engels spoke of their critique of the Young Hegelians as aselfclarication,"2 derived from the fundamental selfclarication Marxundertook in his earlier critiques of Hegel in the Critiqe J Hegel'sPhilosoph oJ Right and the Paris Manscripts In fact, Marx never wrote acomprehensive critique of Hegelian philosophy an omission that unsettled him throughout his life Although Marx came closer to achievinga comprehensive critique of political economy, even this he did notachieve, in that he published only the st of four volumes of Capital(counting heories J Srpls- Vale as the fourth volume), and Capital itselfwas only the rst part of an envisaged total critique of political economy.Nonetheless, the st volume of Capital does represent a signicant part ofa comprehensive critique of political economy

Th e dierence between a critique of philosophy, undertaken primarilyfor the purpose of selfclarication, and a critique of political econoy,oriented toward a complete critical presentation both of the system ofpolitical economy and the history of political economic theory, suggests ashift in the tactics of the present study. p to this point, we have followedthe historical sequence of Marx' s writings stopping to interpret importantworks, one or two at a time In what follows, the guiding thread will beconceptual sequence of Marx's mature critique of political economy Lfocal text is Capital

This part of the book will take two approaches to the study of Marx theory of scientic knowledge, as it emerges from his mature critiquepolitical economy: st, Marx's rather sparse writings directly on scientic method in political economy; second, Marx's own scientic practicein his critique of political economy, with an eye to its contribution to

understanding Marx's theory of scientic knowledge By drawing togetherwhat Marx said about science with what he did in his own scienticpractce, we will oer a coherent and peculiarly Marxian theory ofscientic knowledge.

03


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Division

Marx )s Mature Methodological Writings


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As noted at the end of the last chapter, once Marx shied his focus fromphilosophy to political economy we expected him to recover and useHegel's criticisms of ordinary empirical science (Hegel's critique of Verstand science). This proves to be the case Marx's mature methodologicalwritings, as well as in his scientic practice (which will be the subject ofdivision ) . Marx did not abandon is early criticisms of Hegel, whichworked their way into his mature approach to scientic method. Both areinvolved in answering the question, Why did Marx write so little onmethod It was the insistence on immanence and the dialectic of conceptand object, method and subject matter, which Marx rst adopted fromHegel and turned against him in his criticism of the Philosoph J Right,that le Marx precous little operating room for general methodological

reections Despite the scarcity of Marx's remarks on method, however,he was methodologically most subtle.

Hegel taught Marx to give extraordinary attention to the logic andcontent of scientic categories. This fundamental lesson recurs in manyforms . Marx's criticism of sensedata and scientic empiricism turns ontheir failure to reect on the categories they employ. In this connection, Ispeak again of Marx's empiricism in second intension Marx distinguishedbetween categories that are conceptually abstract, for instance, value, and

those that are conceptually concrete, such as interest. He employed this distinction to make methodological criticisms of the political economiststhey reduce concrete categories to abstract ones, and they fail to vcategories in the proper rder Drawing a careful distinctiongeneral and determinate abstractions enabled Marx to point out the waysin which the political economists naturalize historically determinateforms. The key to the distinctiveness of Marx's critical theory of value ishis critique of the traditional understanding of the relation between

essence and appearance, which was adopted by classical political economyMarx not only distinguished between the conceptually abstract and

concrete; he also separated that distinction from the one between theabstract, in the sense of the conceptual, and the concrete, in the sense ofwhat is actual Marx took Hegel to task for failing to separate these two

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0 MARXS CRITIQUE O OLICAL ECONOMY

seses of the abstact a the cocete so og Max eewe whatcou be cae a epstemoogca pespectve the face of H ege's eotsto ovecome epstemoogy. Scetc owege moves fom the abstact

to the cocete but ths caot be uestctey ete wth themovemet of eaty he stcto betwee geea etemateabstactos aso cuts agast Hege as cate by tacg t ba to theGerman Ideoo ctque of pesuppostoess scece a to the stcto the Paris Manuscrips betwee aeato a obectvty coectg what Max say the German Ideoo wth what he eveops the toucto to the Grundrisse futhe ueme the othoox vewofhstoca mateasm. he moe of the essece-appeaace eato o

whch Max ee fo hs ow ctca theoy of vaue caes though thectcsms of Heges cocepto of ogca meato whch Max eveope hs ctque of the Phiosop of Right hat s to sa the ogc ofessece s a ogc of uecoce opposto a ogc of aeatio asuch s the ogc of vaue fo M ax


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CHAPTER 8

Did arx rite so Little on

ethod?

arx wrote little on scientic method Even when he irts with theissue of method in his foreword to the rst edition of Capital I and again inhis a er word to the second edition he is not particularly helpful If as Iclaim Marx was one of the most methodologically selfreective thinkersin the history of science we must explain the paucity of his writings onmethod

Although rigorous with himself in terms of scientic methodology

Marx submerges the methodological issues of his scientic writings Acomparison of the relevant sections of the Grndrisse and of the Urtext ofoward the Critiqe oJ Political Econom to the actual published text of thelatter indicates the extent to which he censored many of the moreinteresting ( and more Hegelian) methodological features of his own roughdras In a letter to Engels of 8 December 8 , Marx writes that thecontinuation of oward the Critiqe oJ Political Econom namely Capitalwill nonetheless be much more popular and the method will be muchmore hidden than in part 1 His tightstedness about his own scienticmethod has traditionally made the issue addressed by this book a thon one and has contributed to a great deal of misunderstanding about Marx : > d . Lintrospection on questions of scientic method

Marx's choice to focus his energies on a substantive critique of

conomy rather than on general reections concerning method involvesmore than catering to a popular audience In reconsidering the introduction he had written to the Grndrisse Marx decides that such generalreections are too presumptuous

I am suppressing a general introduction which I had tossed obecause aer thinking it over more closely every anticipation ofyet to be proven results s eems disrupting to me and the readerwho wants to follow me at all must resolve to ascend from theparticular to the general 2

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110 MARXS MA TURE METHODOLOGICAL WRITINGS

That itroductio cotais the most extesive treatmet of method to befoud i Marx's later writigs alog with a prole of his politicalecoomic digs. But to preset a geeral precis of productio ad

distributio exchage ad cosumptio ad method as well could bemisleadig. It might appear that the detailed presetati of the sciecefollowed deductively from the geeral reectios statioed i a preface oritroductio; whereas the detailed workig out of the particular sciece isfudametal for Marx.

Marx accepts Hegel's demad for a uity of form ad cotet iscietic kowledge. Method ought ot be some abstract formalizedprocedure hoverig over the specic cotet of a sciece Rather method

eeds to take its shape from the specic object uder scrutiy. To dootherwise is for Hegel to clutter the way to the truth with oe's owsubjective formalisms . We have see that Marx adopted this viewpoit asearly as the 1837 letter to his father i which he tells f abadoig aKatiaFichtea formalistic approach to a sciece of jurisprudece .From that poit oward Marx views sciece as a matter of gettig at thelogic of thigs themselves. Sice this logic is ot ascertaiable a prioripurely formal methodologies have o place i Marx's coceptio of

scietic kowledge.These same cosideratios lead to Marx' s etacritique of Hegel i theCritique oJHegel's Philosop oJ Right There Marx sees Hegel slippig itoa ew formalism with respect to the relatio of the sciece of logic to theparticular real scieces i this case the sciece of society. The formalismcosists i applyig the logic established i the sciece of logic to theparticular costellatios of social lif e. The results of this reewed formalism are o less abrasive to Marx tha the method that led to them By

subsumig social realities uder his preestablished logic Hegel has losttouch with the logic of the thigs themselves i particular with the logicof civil society ad the moder state.

Marx criticizes Hegelia formalism agai i its latterday expoetsthe Bauer brothers Max Stirer ad the True Socialists as well as i itsapplicatio to political ecoomy by Proudho. I a letter to Egelswritte i February 1858, Marx udercuts Ferdiad assalle's attemptto apply Hegelia logic to political ecoomy:

I see from this oe ote that he fellow plas i his secod greatwork to preset political ecoomy Hegellike. To his detrimethe will come to lear that it is a wholly other thig to brig asciece for the rst time to the poit of beig able to preset itdialectically through critique tha o apply a as ract, ished system of logic to huches ofjust such a system

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HY ARX ROTE SO LTTLE ON ETHOD 111

For Marx the dialectical presetatio ofthe system of political ecoomy ispossible oly through the most thoroughgoig empirical ad coceptualstudy of that system Dialectcal presetatio must emerge from a com

prehesive aalysis of political ecoomy ot by applyig a prefabricateddialectic.Marx thiks Hegels logic is beig used u critically as a ew orgao

for te real scieces For Marx to redo Hegels logic, however, would b e torun ito the face of his ow metacritique of Hegel. I this sese, Marxsstrictures agaist logic as a third party apart from the specic obect of asciece ad its specic logic allow him less space for geeral methodological cosideratios tha Hegel eoyed.

Eve though Marx obects to the presetatio of the sciece oflogic as aseparate sciece itroducig the real scieces of ature ad humasociety h recogizes that Hegels logic expresses certai basics aboutdialectics Marx always praises Hegel for his great empirical ad historical sese, which eables him to compose a logic that opes up so much ofthe truth of the specic scieces he pursued. Hegels accomplishmetsprovde a further savigs in methodological writig, sice so much ofwhatMarx eeds to produce his critique of political ecoomy is already o

had i Hegels work.Had Marx eer writte a work o Hegels dialectics, two poits mighthave bee established more coheretly ad forcefully ( 1 that Hegels useof his logic as a orgao for real scieces ivolves him i a mysticatioof logic, ad that H egel s logic oetheless reveals its great methodological power i the actual workig through of specic real s cieces . Thismight have claried the relative absece of explicit methodological deliberatios i Marxs writigs. Sice Marx wrote o such work, we must fal

back upo ou ow resources

It might be obeced that Marxs critique of a priori methodologis i ' , .itself a geeral reectio o methodology This remider is fair eough, : ,;

marx's theory of scientific knowledge -patrick murray

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