The aim of the course is to
provide students with a thorough grounding in the key texts of Marx's own work.
The focus of the course is Marx's critique of political economy, taught by
For the critique of
political economy I will unashamedly point students to my own commentaries,
particularly Marx, Marginalism and Modern Sociology and Marx's Theory of
Crisis , both published by Macmillan (although the former is out of
print), and Keynesianism,
Monetarism and the Crisis of the State , published by Edward Elgar.
There are two editions of Marx, Marginalism and Modern Sociology. I
rewrote the book for the second edition, especially expanding the chapter on
the early Marx, so this edition should be more useful for you, but the whole
book is a very large pdf file (18Mb). You can
download the whole book
here, or the first
edition as a smaller word file, or just the most relevant chapters, Chapters Two, Three and Four, separately
The main reading will be
Marx's own texts, and especially the first volume of Capital. You will
also be given a reading
guide to Capital. However, since Marx's life's work was dedicated to
developing the critique of political economy, we will begin by looking at
classical political economy and, in particular, the work of Adam Smith,
followed by some of Marx’s early works.
Teaching will be by weekly
two-hour seminars, plus tutorial support with your essays. Essays can either
review literature and issues discussed during the course, or can build on
coursework to address other debates in the field.
Most of the texts of Marx
and many subsequent Marxist texts can be accessed at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/index.htm
You should buy at least Capital, Volume One (there is an
abridged Student Edition edited by
Seminar questions are
provided to guide your reading for the topics where there is not a reading
guide.
A limited amount of
secondary sources are included on the seminar reading list. There is any number
of other textual commentaries which you might find helpful, but if in doubt
rely on the primary text and your own judgement of what Marx is trying to say.
The further reading is for those who want to get more deeply into the topic for
an assessed essay (or merely out of intellectual interest!).
You are required to attend
(and participate in) all seminars. If you cannot attend please email me,
preferably in advance.
You should come to each
seminar prepared with two two-minute presentations, each introduced with a
short quote (from one sentence to one paragraph) from that week’s reading:
1)
One
thing I have learned from the reading.
2)
One
thing I still do not understand.
There is a forum
associated with this module on which you are invited to post queries,
complaints, points for discussion and contribute your
own ideas arising either out of that week’s reading or that week’s seminar. You
are expected to contribute to the forum at least once a week. We will monitor
the forum and contribute to discussion as necessary.
You will be required to
write one class essay of 1,500 words each term, to be submitted by the seminar
in week 9 of each term. In the second term you will have the option of making a
20-minute presentation in place of a class essay. Writing essays is not meant
to be a punishment, it is meant to be part of the learning process for which
you are paying good money! These essays are not assessed, but we will give you
feedback on the essays and a notional mark for your essay (and your forum
contributions if you like!).
Week 5: Marx’s democratic origins
Week 6: Marx’s critique of Hegel’s ‘philosophy of the
state’
Week 8: Marx’s critique of human rights, law and
property
Adam Smith proposed an
historical materialist theory of society according to which the interests of
the main component classes were determined by the sources of their revenues:
wages, rent and profit. In this seminar we want to understand Smith's theory of
class and class conflict and to see how this was the basis of Smith's theory of
the state.
Adam
Smith: The
Wealth of Nations, Book I, chaps 1-9 Edited and
Annotated version
I.
Rubin: History of Economic Thought, parts 3 and 4
Further
Simon
Clarke: Keynesianism,
Monetarism and the Crisis of the State , Chapters 1-3.
David
Ricardo: Principles of Political Economy, Preface, Chs
1,2,4,5,6.
M.
Dobb: Theories of Value and Distribution, chs
2-4.
E. Burtt: Social Perspectives in the History of Economic
Thought, chs 2 - 4.
R.
Meek, The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology,
in Economics and Ideology and Other Essays
R.
Meek: Social Science and the Ignoble Savage
G.
Pilling: Marx's Capital, chapter 2.
Albert
Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests:
Political Arguments for Capitalism Before its Triumph,
Charles
Rist, History of Monetary and Credit Theory,
Chapter 2.
Seminar
Questions:
According
to Adam Smith:
1) What are the most favourable circumstances
for the development of the wealth of the nation?
2) What is the origin and use of money?
3) What are the constituent classes of
modern society?
4) How are the interests of
wage-earners related to the interests of society?
5) How are the interests of capitalists
related to the interests of society?
6) How are the interests of landowners
related to the interests of society?
7) How is the price of a commodity
determined?
Marx's earliest critique of political economy consisted of a critique of
money, which he then developed into his critique of alienated labour. For this
seminar we will look at the two key texts: the comments on James Mill (see Reading notes) and the
section of the 1844 manuscripts on alienated labour. This
critique was strongly influenced in its form by Feuerbach's critique of Hegel
and in its content by Moses Hess's critique of money (see the articles
cited in the further reading). In this seminar we will try to get to the root
of Marx's theory of alienated labour, and ask why is the theory of alienated
labour a critique of political economy?
Marx: Comments
on James Mill
Marx: Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts, esp
`Estranged
Labour' to the end of the First Manuscript.
Marx: The
Jewish Question, esp. Part 1; Critical
Notes on An Article by a Prussian.
Istvan Meszaros:
Marx's
Theory of Alienation, chaps 2 and 3.
Bert Ollman: Alienation.
Ernest Mandel: From Alienation to Surplus Value
Lucio Colletti: From
Rousseau to Lenin, Chapters One and Two.
Friedrich Engels: Outline
of a Critique of Political Economy, in MSCW, vol. 3
Questions:
Exactly how does labour become 'alienated'?
What is alienated about 'alienated labour'?
Why is the theory of alienated labour a critique of political economy?
Why did Marx first reject and then adopt the 'labour theory of value'?
Between 1844 and 1847 Marx established the foundations of his theory of
society on the basis of his critique of political economy. This theory was laid
out in his series of lectures, later published as Wage Labour and Capital, and
in the Communist Manifesto, which is not only a political statement, but also a
theoretical text. In this seminar we will relate the social theory offered in these
texts to that of classical political economy.
Karl Marx: The
Communist Manifesto, especially Part I
Karl Marx: Wage
Labour and Capital.
Further
Karl Marx: The
Holy Family, Critical Gloss, nos 1-3
K. Marx: The
Poverty of Philosophy, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 7th observations.
E. Mandel: The Formation of Marx's Economic
Thought
Walton, P., and Gamble, A.,
From Alienation to
Surplus Value
Simon Clarke: Marx's Theory of Crisis , chapter
3.
Guide questions:
Wage Labour and Capital
In Wage Labour and Capital Marx organises his critique of political
economy around a series of questions. How does Marx's answer to these questions
differ from that of Smith?
1.
What
are wages?
2.
By
what is the price of a commodity determined?
3.
What
is capital?
4.
How
does any amount of exchange value become capital?
5.
What
is the relation between the interests of the worker and those of the
capitalist?
6.
What
is surplus value?
7.
Why
do capitalists constantly introduce new methods of production?
8.
Why
does this lead to the immiseration of the workers?
9.
Why
is Marx's theory a critique of political economy?
The Communist Manifesto
Part One of the Communist Manifesto outlines the development of
capitalism in terms of Marx's dictum that 'The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggles', and his account of history in terms
of the development of the contradiction between the forces and relations of
production. The former idea is sometimes considered voluntaristic,
the latter idea mechanistic. To what extent does Marx reconcile structure and
agency in the historical account in the Communist Manifesto? What is the
relationship between the fundamental contradiction and the class struggle?
The key book
for this section of the module is David McLellan: Karl Marx Selected Writings,
There is a
huge secondary literature on Marx’s critique of the modern state. My own
thinking has been particularly affected by the following:
Arendt, Hannah Between Past and Future Penguin 1977.
Arendt, Hannah Crisis of the
Republic Harcourt Brace 1972.
Colletti, Lucio From Rousseau
to Lenin, especially `Lenin's state and revolution' and `Bernstein and the
Marxism of the Second International', NLB, 1972.
Draper, Hal Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, all four volumes are excellent but see especially Volume One ‘State and Bureaucracy’, Part 2, ‘The theory of the
state',
Draper, Hal ‘The death of the state
in Marx and Engels’, Socialist Register,
1970.
Draper, Hal The Dictatorship of the Proletariat from Marx to Lenin, MRP, 1987
Dunayeskaya, Raya Marxism and Freedom, Twayne
1964.
Held, David Models of Democracy, (Cambridge: Polity, 1997), chapter 4 ‘Direct
democracy and the end of politics', pp. 121-154.
Lenin,
Löwith, Karl Max
Weber and Karl Marx, Allen and Unwin 1982.
Luxemburg, Rosa The Russian Revolution and
Leninism or Marxism? ,
Miliband, Ralph ‘Marx and
the state’, Socialist Register, 1965.
Pashukanis, Evgeny Law and Marxism,
Thompson, Edward Whigs and Hunters,
ch. 10 ‘Consequences’ Penguin, 1977
You can find
some of the results of my own thinking in:
Fine,
Robert Democracy and the Rule of Law,
(
Fine,
Robert Political Investigations: Hegel,
Marx, Arendt (
Fine, Robert and Chernilo,
Daniel ‘Classes and nations in recent historical sociology’, in Gerard Delanty and Engin Isin (eds.) Handbook
of Historical Sociology,
Fine, Robert ‘Marxism and the social theory of
law’, in Reza Banakar and Max Travers (eds.) Introduction to Law and Social Theory,
Fine, Robert ‘The Marx-Hegel relationship:
revisionist interpretations’, Capital and
Class, 75, 2001,
‘On the
Jewish Question’ in McLellan pp. 46-70 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
also you
might look at
‘On the
freedom of the Press’ in McLellan p. 22
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1842/free-press/ch01.htm
Law on
the theft of woods’ in McLellan pp. 26-28
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1842/10/25.htm
Fine,
Robert Democracy and the Rule of Law,
(
Marx,
Karl ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ in McLellan
pp. 32-42
(Marx’s
critique is long and unedited so it’s useful to focus on the extracts in McLellan; but the whole text can be found at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/index.htm
Marx,
Karl ‘Toward a critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’, in McLellan pp. 71-82
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
Marx, Karl ‘Critique of the
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm
Marx, Karl ‘The civil war in
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm
especially
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
Marx, Karl ‘Letters on the Commune and on Violent Revolution’ in McLellan pp. 640 -644
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_17.htm
Marx, Karl‚ The German Ideology’ in McLellan
pp. 175-208
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/index.htm
Marx, Karl ‘Moralising
criticism and critical morality’ in McLellan pp.
234-236
But see also
Marx, Karl Grundrisse, Penguin 1973, pp. 471-498
Pashukanis,
Evgeny Law and
Marxism, London: Pluto 1980, ch.1
The first chapter of Capital presents Marx's mature critique of
political economy in his analysis of the value form and the theory of commodity
fetishism. Marx agonised over this chapter, writing it and rewriting it from
the first version in the Grundrisse, through the
first published version in his Critique of Political Economy, to the version in
the first edition of Capital. The version published in the English translations
of Capital is based on the French edition, in which Marx had simplified the
argument for publication in serial form for French workers.
The key issue to address in this seminar is what did Marx mean by the
value form? How does Marx’s theory of value differ from that of political
economy? In what sense does this define a critique of political economy? What
is the relationship between the critique of political economy and the critique
of capitalism?
Marx: Capital
Vol 1, Chapter 1 sections 1 - 3
Further
Marx: Critique
of Political Economy
Simon Mohun (ed) Debates
in Value Theory
Marx: The
Value Form, in Capital and Class, 4, and in Simon Mohun (ed) Debates in Value
Theory. This is appendix to the first edition of Capital.
I. Rubin: `Abstract
Labour and Value' Capital and Class, 5.
Simon Clarke: The
Value of Value, Capital and Class 10, and in Simon Mohun (ed).
Diane Elson (ed) Value.
I. Rubin: Essays on
Marx's Theory of Value, part One.
Geoff Pilling: Marx's Capital, esp chapter 5.
Geoff Pilling: Marx's
Capital, Philosophy and Political Economy,
Tony Smith: The Logic of Marx's Capital
J. Weeks: Capital and Exploitation, chapters 1,2
Geoff Kay: The Economic Theory of the Working Class, chapters 2
and 3.
Geoff Pilling, The Law of Value in Ricardo and
Marx, Economy and Society, 1, 1972.
Alfred Sohn-Rethel: Intellectual and Manual
Labour
G. A. Cohen: Karl Marx's Theory of History, chapter 5.
Derek Sayer, Marx's Method, Chapters 1 and 2
Patrick Murray, Marx’s
‘truly social’ labour theory of value: Part 1, Abstract Labour in Marxian Value
Theory. Historical Materialism, issue 6
Robert Fine, Democracy and the Rule of Law (2nd
edition, The Blackburn Press), chapter 4, pp. 95-112
Pichit Likitkijsomboon,
Marxian Theories of the Value-Form, Review of Radical Political Economics,
Vol. 27(2), 73-105 (1995)
Murray,
Patrick. Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge.
Chapter 13
Murray E.G.
Smith, Invisible Leviathan, chapter 4, pp. 47-62
Shortall,
The
Incomplete Marx, chapter 8,
sections I.A.i, I.A.ii, I.A.iii.
Marx
developed the sociological implications of his analysis of the value form in
the section on ‘commodity fetishism’ and the following chapter on exchange. The
key things to understand in this seminar are, first, what is the relationship
between the analysis of the value form and the theory of commodity fetishism,
second, what is the relationship between the theory of commodity fetishism and
Marx’s early theory of alienation and, third, what is the relationship between
Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism and his theory of money. You should look
back to Marx’s Comments on James Mill and compare the ideas in the Comments with
the ideas in the theory of capital.
You can
skip over a lot of the technical discussion in the chapter on money: use the
reading notes as a guide.
Marx: Capital
Vol 1, Chapter 1 section 4, Chapters 2 and 3
Further
On
commodity fetishism:
I. Rubin: Essays on Marx’s
Theory of Value, Chapter One
John Mepham, The Theory of Ideology in
Capital, Radical Philosophy, 2, and in J. Mepham
and D. Hilel Ruben (eds) Issues
in Marxist Philosophy, volume 3, with Steve Butters's
Reply.
Norman Geras: Essence and Appearance, New
Left Review, 65.
Heavier stuff on Marx’s theory of
money:
Suzanne de Brunhoff: Marx's Theory of Money
Patrick Murray, 'The Necessity of Money: How Hegel
Helped Marx Surpass Ricardo's Theory of Value', in Marx's Method in Capital. A Re-examination.
Fred Moseley (editor).
Fred Moseley: Money and
Totality: Marx’s Logic in Volume I of Capital
Felton Shortall, The Incomplete Marx,
Chapter 8, sections I.B.i, I.B.ii,
I.C
Reichelt, Helmut, 'Why did Marx conceal his
dialectical method' in Open Marxism 3.
Emancipating Marx, edited by Bonefeld, Holloway
and Psychopedis
Martha
Campbell, 'Marx’s
Explanation of Money’s Functions: Overturning the Quantity Theory',
Martha
Campbell, 'Marx's Theory of Money: a defense', in New Investigation of Marx's Method,
Moseley and Campbell (eds.)
Pichit Likitkijsomboon "Marx's
Anti-Quantity Theory of Money",
Claus M. Germer, The
commodity nature of money in Marx’s theory,
Suzanne de Brunhoff "Marx's
Contribution to the Search For a Theory Of Money"
The theory of the commodity, value and money is developed by Marx
without reference to capital. In this seminar we focus on the form of Marx's
argument as he analyses the transition from money to capital, the form of value
which is able to reproduce itself on an expanded scale. The question Marx asks
is, how does money create more money? His answer is to
look behind the form of value to find the fundamental social relation of
capitalist society, that between capital and wage labour.
Marx distinguishes two forms of surplus value production: relative and
absolute. The latter is based on the extension of the working day, the former
on the penetration of capital into the labour process. The introduction of
capital and the production of surplus value leads to the development of a
developed form of commodity fetishism – the ‘wage form’, in which it appears
that labour is paid for in full, so concealing the exploitation of the
labourer. Fundamental to understanding Mar’s theory of surplus value is the
distinction between the concepts of ‘labour’ and ‘labour power’.
Karl Marx: Capital,
Volume One, Chapters 4–6, 19-22.
Further
J. Weeks: Capital and Exploitation, chapters 3, 4.
Geoff Kay: The Economic Theory of the Working Class, chapters 3,
6.
John Harrison: Marxist Economics for Socialists, part one.
Ben Fine: Marx's Capital, chs 3-5.
Simon Clarke: Keynesianism,
Monetarism and the Crisis of the State , chapter 4.
Marx argues that the production of surplus value is based on the
extension of the working day beyond the time necessary to reproduce the capital
expended on the purchase of labour power. This leads to the important
distinctions that Marx makes between constant and variable capital and between
necessary and surplus labour time.
Marx: Capital,
volume One, chapters, 7-9.
Further
Marx, Capital, Volume One, Appendix (in Penguin edition) and in
Collected Works, Vol 34: The Results of
the Immediate Process of Production
Simon Clarke: Marx's Theory of Crisis ,
chapter 8.
Geoff Kay: The Economic Theory of the Working Class, chapters 3,
4, 5.
Marx, Economic
Manuscripts 1861-1863, CW, vol. 30, pp. 172-185
Felton Shortall,
The Incomplete Marx,
Chapter 8, sections II.A.i and II.A.ii*
Ben Fine, Marx's
Capital, 4th edition, chapter 3, 'Capital and Exploitation'.
Murray E.G. Smith, Invisible
Leviathan, chapter 4, pp. 62-67
Tony Smith, The
Logic of Marx's Capital, chapter 6.
Moishe Postone, Time, Labour
and Social Domination, chapter 7, pp. 314-336.
Wolfgang Müller and Christel
Neusüss, 'The Illusion of State Socialism and the
Contradiction between Wage-Labour and Capital', Telos, No. 25 Fall 1975, esp. pp. 60-84
Raniero
Panzieri, 'Surplus-value
and planning: notes on the reading of Capital', pp. 4-9, in The Labour
Process and Class Strategies, CSE.
The production of surplus value is always based on the extension of the
working day. This determines that the focus of the class struggle in the
workplace is the struggle over the length of the working day.
Marx: Capital,
volume One, chapter 10.
Marx: Capital,
volume One, chapters 11-13.
There is a limit to the extent to which the employer can extend the
working day, so a limit to which capital can increase surplus value by this
means. However, capital can also increase the production of surplus value by
reducing the labour time necessary to produce the workers’ means of
subsistence. This is achieved as the penetration of capital into production
leads the capitalist progressively to introduce new methods of production which
increase the productivity of labour. Because it is the capitalist who takes
these initiatives, it appears that the increase in productivity has been
achieved by capital, but in fact, in its simplest and most general form, it is
the result of the increased cooperation of labour in production.
Once capital penetrates into the labour process it progressively
transforms methods of production to increase the productivity of labour,
culminating in the development of machinery and large-scale modern industry.
Although this process is underpinned by the transformation of production technology,
this is not a technological but a social process, the tools and machines
expressing the transformation of the social organisation of production and
correspondingly of the social relations of production.
Marx: Capital,
volume One, chapters 14-16.
Marx
analysed the dynamics of capitalist development in ‘the general law of
capitalist accumulation’. Central to his account is the concept of the ‘reserve
army of labour’.
Marx: Capital,
volume One, part 7, especially chapter 25.
Further
Simon
Clarke: "The Marxist Theory of Crisis", Science and Society, 54:4, Winter 1990, pp. 442 – 67
Volume
Three of Capital looks primarily at the different forms of surplus value:
various forms of profit, interest and rent, which are the most superficial
forms in which surplus value appears, and in relation to which Adam Smith
defined his class interests in the theory which Marx refers to as the ‘trinity
formula’, the ultimate development of the fetishism of commodities. In this
seminar we will look at Marx's analysis of surplus value and profit, the form
in which surplus value appears. Economists have analysed the technical problem
of transforming values into prices as the 'transformation problem', but much
more important is the qualitative difference between surplus value and its
forms, in which the real relations underlying the production and appropriation
of surplus value are systematically distorted.
Part Seven
of Volume Three of Capital provides Marx's critique of the theory of class
proposed by classical political economy (and shared by sociology), according to
which class interests are determined by
the revenue sources (or, in Weberian terms, market
situation) of social groups, rather than being founded in the social relations
of production. This week we will read the relevant chapters and consider what is Marx's theory of class, and how relevant is Marx's
critique to sociological conceptions of class.
Max Weber: Class, Status, Party, in From Max Weber, Gerth
and Mills eds (extracted
from Weber’s Economy and Society)