Reading Capital: Part II (First Remarks)

As seen at the beginning of Part I, we are reading Capital as philosophers. This means that we ask about the object of Capital, and the relation of the discourse in Capital to its object. Now we see that the question really has a double reference: we must ask about the philosophical object and the scientific object of Capital. We must determine the difference between the object of Capital and the object of classical Political Economy, and in doing so develop both a scientific and a philosophical reading of Capital (i.e. in Marxist terminology the task is to explicate and develop both dialectical materialism and historical materialism).

Thus we need a philosophical theory of scientific practice which will help us to determine the object of this practice.

Marx’s “basic discoveries” are listed. These concepts are to elucidate “the specific difference of [Marx’s] object” from that of classical Political Economy. They boil down to 1. value (and its opposition with use-value) and 2. surplus-value. (p. 80)

The value/use-value opposition gives us another crucial opposition, 2a. between concrete or useful labor and abstract labor. Just as a commodity is simultaneously a value and a use-value, the labor that produces a commodity is simultaneously abstract and concrete labor.

These concepts can be found in one form or another in classical Political Economy. But the Marxist difference comes to light when we compare the theory of scientific practice that is contained (often tacitly) in Marx’s works.

Classical Political Economy is committed to an empiricist epistemology: the essences are abstracted from the real, and the system of essences is given.

Marxism posits a difference between the real and thought. This implies two theses: 1. The primacy of the real over thought about the real, and 2. The specificity of thought with regard to the real (87).

Thus, the process of knowledge takes place entirely in thought. The difference between the real and thought is not a difference within the real (empiricism) or within thought (speculative idealism). The relation between the two is a relation of knowledge, not a real relation, but it is not a relation within thought, i.e. the real is not reducible to its concept. Knowledge must measure up to the real, so to speak. Thus we are again faced with the question: what sort of relation can there be between the RO and the KO?