1/24/50
Dear J:
Let me get some notes regarding the structural development of CAPITAL off as an interlude between the other phases of our work. In a very large sense, of course, Marx's labors on his chief work can be said to have begun when his very first impulse to understand "the material interests" of his day took shape in his Economic-Philosophic MS of 1844-45.1 At the same time CAPITAL is the achievement of 4 decades of study: (1) the 1840s which closed with the monumental Communist Manifesto2 saw the first systematic presentation of the economic theories in his Poverty of Philosophy,3 1847, and the first precise presentation of the domination of dead over living labor in his Wage Labor and Capital.4 This period also included something we have never seen: a work to be called "Critique of Politics and Pol. Eco.", which Engels urged him as far back as 1/20/45, "Try the sooner to finish your book on political economy, even if in many respects it does not satisfy you".5 And which Marx, in 8/1/46, explained that he had not yet reworked because "it seemed to me extremely important to lay the premise for my positive exposition of the subject by a polemical work" (Rus. ed.), the "polemical work" refers to his and Engels' German Ideology.6 (2) The 1850's concluded with the Critique of Political Economy.7 (3) In the 1860s he wrote many variants of CAPITAL, beginning with "Ch.3" of the Critique, writing all of the 4 books of Capital in draft form, and the finished VOL. I.8 (4) The 1870s saw the 2nd (French) edition of Capital, the completion of Vol. II.9
Whereas it is not possible to trace the difference between his Critique of Politics and Political Economy of 1845 and the Critique of Political Economy, 1859, it is very easy, at least structurally, to trace development between 1859-78. It begins in Jan. 14, 1858, with his letter to Engels in which he announces "I have thrown over the whole doctrine of profit as it has existed up to now. In the method of treatment that by mere accident I have again glanced through Hegel's Logic has been of great service to me...".10 He then conceives the bourgeois economy to be presented in 6 books: I. Capital; II. Landed Property; III. Wage Labour; IV. State; V. International Trade; VI. World Market. That first plan shows, furthermore, that I. Capital is quite different from Capital, I, as we will know it. He states that it will contain 4 sections: A. Capital in General. B. Competition. C. Credit and D. Share Capital. THAT IS HE CONCEIVES OF WHAT WILL GO INTO VOL III WHICH WILL DEAL WITH "FORMS OF APPEARANCE" as part of Book. I.11
The conception of the 6 books remains until the publication of the Critique. However, there is no reference to the 4 sections of the 1st book. Instead, just the first section Capital in general is expanded into 3 chapters: 1. Commodities, 2. Money, 3. Capital in general, of which but the first two chapters are published as THE CRITIQUE. It is important to note that each of these chapters has appended notes on the theories of the subjects dealt with, thus: A. Notes on the History of the Theory of Value, and under Ch. II: B. Theories of the Unit of Measure of Money, and C Theories of the Medium of Circulation and of Money. The importance is that when he begins, immediately after publication of the Critique, to work on "Chapter 3" (which will in actuality lengthen out to the range of the 4 books of Capital) he will follow the same structure. BUT THIS STRUCTURE WILL BE CHANGED, not merely in order to put all theories "at the end" in a separate book, but for the more important and actual reason that nothing will interfere either with the dialectical development of Marx's own theory nor with the actual development of capitalist production for whatever history will be included within the body of the work itself, will be not the history of theory but the history of production relations arising out of technological development and resulting in the struggle of the workers for the shortening of the working day.
The new method which allowed freer movement of the material itself Marx was to describe in 1870 (6/27) "Herr Lange wonders that Engels, I etc. take the dead dog of Hegel seriously when Buchner, Lange, Dr. Duhring, Fechner, etc. are agreed that they -- poor dear have buried him long ago. Lange is naive enough to say that I 'move with rare freedom' in empirical matter. He hasn't the least idea that this 'free movement in matter' is nothing but a paraphrase for the method of dealing with matter - that is the dialectic method".12
But before we can fully comprehend the meaning of this, let us go back and follow through with the first plan. The continuation of the Critique, in Manuscript Form, as he left it after working on it from August 1861 to June 1863, consisted of 1472 pp, divided as follows:
(1) pp. 1-220 and pp. 1152-1472 begins with the transformation of money into capital and continues through with the material more or less as we have it in Vol. I of CAPITAL.
(2) pp. 220-972 contain The Theories of Surplus Value or what became Book IV of CAPITAL.13
(3) pp. 973-1158 deals with capital and profit, rate of profit, merchant's capital and money capital or topics dealt with in VOL. III of Capital
The first thing that strikes is that material that was to go into Volume II is not yet present. But by far the more important element is that the break from pp. 220-1159, when he was to resume material for Vol. I, is taken up, first with other theories. That is to say as soon as he finished the part of the transformation of money into capital and before he began to describe the actual process of production, he began to argue, so to speak, with all other economists: that is he "appended" as "Notes" to his theory of capital, or rather as it was still in embryo and limited to the new category, labor power, which had already been bought by the capitalist but not yet put to use, all the theories of surplus value. Furthermore, he not only had not let his own material develop before polemically fighting all others, but immediately after that, pp. 973-1158, and before dealing with the production of surplus value, he analyzed a single fragment of it, profit. That is to say, although he had already overthrown previous theories of profit, he himself was analyzing that particular aspect before dealing with the general form; or he counterposed his fixed determinate to other fixed determinates before dealing with the universal, surplus value, as yet undifferentiated.
It is this precisely against which he will argue later. It is the exact opposite of this which he will single out as one of the two major points of Volume I, the analysis of "surplus value irrespective of its forms, profit, interest, and rent". but in 1862 when he first definitely broke with Ricardo's theory of rent,14 he considered writing a "chapter" as a "supplement" to Volume 1 (8/2/62). But that year he had moved from considering the draft he was working on as the "Critique"; he gave it a new "title", Capital. But to him (in letter to Kugelman 12/28/62) it was still "the second part" of the Critique, "but although a continuation of Part I of the Critique it will appear independently under the title Capital, with a Contribution to the Critique of Pol Eco. only as a subtitle". He makes the further important decision not to deal with profit. "This Volume contains what the English call the principles of political economy. It is the quintessence (together with the first part) and the development of the rest (with the exception perhaps of the relations of different state forms to different economic structures of society) could be easily accomplished by others on the basis thus provided".15
His continued reworking led him to amplify the section on machinery. He writes to Engels, 1/8/63, "There are some curious questions here which I ignored in my first treatment. In order to get clear about it I have read through all my notebooks (extracts) on technology again and am also attending a practical course (experimental only) for workers..."16
That same year, 7/6/1863, he works out the whole theory of reproduction. It is first now that the major ideas of all 4 books (including the crucial Volume II) are ready at hand, and then there begins the "turning everything around".17 On 8/15/63 he writes Engels: "In the final working out the things are taking on, as it seems to be a bearably popular form, except for some unavoidable M-C and C-M.18 On the other hand, although I write the whole day the things does not get on in the way my own impatience, after this long trial of patience, desires. Anyhow, it will be 100 per cent easier to understand than No. I. For the rest, when I look at this compilation now and see how I have had to turn everything around and how I had to make even the historical part out of material of which some was quite unknown, then Itzig19 really does seem funny to me, with 'his' economy already in his pocket".20 ("in his pocket" is wrongly translated in the Engl. ed.21 as "in the making").
We have then, in 1858, a plan for 6 books: Capital, Landed Property, Wage Labor, State, Foreign Trade, World Market. Book I, Capital, is divided into 4 sections: Capital in general, Competition, Credit, and Share Capital. Section 1, Capital in general, gets divided again into: Commodities, Money, and Capital in General, the first 2 of which comprise the CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY as published in 1859. The chapters each are supplemented by "Notes" on the history of the bourgeois theories of the topics, comprising one and a half centuries of political economy. Immediately after publication, he continues with "Ch. 3, or Capital in General" and that grows into what will later become Volumes III and Book IV of CAPITAL, but which for the present follow the same structure, the transformation of money into capital, being followed by the same structure, the transformation of money into capital, being followed by the Theories of Surplus Value, and Marx's Theory of Profit follows that before he proceeds to analyze the process of production itself. Somewhere in this two year period, mid-1861-mid-1863, in 1862, he begins to conceive of it as a separate book, called CAPITAL, with Critique only as a subtitle. In that year he fully breaks with Ricardo's theory of rent and develops his own. His plan also evidently (according to Leontiev22) includes the famous Ch. 6 as end of Vol. I. As he moves into 1863 he first (January) amplifies the sections on the development of machinery, works out the theory of capitalist reproduction (July) and finally (August 15) finds he has "to turn everything around". It is here he discards his first plan.
In 1863-65 he writes first drafts of all volumes of Capital, using 1861-63 draft only as basis. By May 1865 he thinks he can have it finished in "5 weeks". But in July 31, 1865, he writes Engels "the unvarnished truth. There still remain 3 chapters in order to finish the theoretical part (the first 3 books). Then there is yet needed to write the 4th book, historic-literary...".23 In January 15, 1866 he tells Kugelman he is "working twelve hours a day at writing out the fair copy. I think I shall bring the manuscript of the first volume to Hamburg in March".24 But it is October 13, 1866 when we first see the NEW PLAN:
"The whole work is divided as follows:Book I. The production Process of CapitalBook II. The Circulation Process of CapitalBook III. Form of the Process as a WholeBook IV. Contribution to the History of Eco. Theory
The first volume contains the first two books. The third book will, I think fill the second volume, and the fourth book the third".I consider it necessary to begin in the first book ab ovo".25
The completely new plan is so different from the first that only Marx's own sharpness can fully make us realize its depth. For he had reduced the nearly 900 pages of VOL. I of CAPITAL as we know it to two: "The best points in my book are: (1) the double character of labour, according to whether it is expressed in use value or exchange value (all understanding of the facts depends upon this, it is emphasized immediately in the first chapter); (2) the treatment of surplus value independently of its particular forms as profit, interest, ground, rent, etc. This will come out especially in the second volume. The treatment of the particular forms by classical economy, which always mixes them up with the general form, is a regular hash" (8/24/67).26 The first point he more or less had always from the start of his labors in the 1840s. The second point is what the dialectic of the material itself disclosed in 1863 which, once for all, buried the conception of Capital, Landed Property, Wage Labour and was compressed to its essentials: Capital and its opposite, wage labor, was to be considered in its properly subordinate place under capitalism; while landed property, as rent, was entirely discarded to be considered first as "particular form" of surplus value, or rather of the transformation of surplus value into rent, in Vol. III where forms of appearance are considered. The final form of Capital was born thus.
The revolution in the plan of Capital was not as a result of the absolute conclusion - the antagonism between labor and capital which was the very basis of every word he ever wrote from 1843 on - but that the conclusion arose not out of history alone but of the very dialectical development of production of value and which, both in its surplus value and wage forms, finds embodiment in the social product. Value is only the expenditure of labor power and if the total product contains but 2 elements: surplus value and wages then the whole opposition is between them, and the subordinate opposition between capital and landed property fades before that antagonism which creates and is created by the relationship between dead and living labor in the process of production. Back in 1857 Marx in his Introduction to Critique noted, among other things, "The dialectics of the concepts productive force (means of production) and relations of production, dialectics whose limits are to be determined and which does not do away with the concrete difference".27 It was 1863 before the technology of the machine and the "categories of workers", which he kept constantly asking Engels to describe, evolved a notion of capitalist production corresponding to its actual development.
That structure remained the final one, in general. But in Vol. I itself, particular in Chapter 1 and the Form of Value (which Marx wrote was "decisive for the whole book" - 6/22/67,28 and which, as his Afterward to Vol. I, 1/24/73,29 tells us he "completely reworked"). And the Chapter on Accumulation of Capital we know now he reworked for the French edition. That analysis, however, has to be made separately from the structural change in CAPITAL as a whole.
Please forgive the terribly discursive way in which this letter is written. Moreover, I've told nothing we did not know. What I have done is spoken out loud so that all the various changes are tabulated; the analysis will come afterward. Now that it is down I will probably limit myself to the structure 1858 and 1863, or perhaps best to call it 1865 since that is when we first get it down pat, and develop all the differences in those. I may, however, later also feel that it would be necessary to trace Marx's development, on the "economic" front, 1843-83. Do you think?
Since it will not be long before I'll be in NY again (Feb. 10) I may leave this as well as the continuation of the other matter I'm working on (From Ricardo to Marx) until we see each other and discuss further.
How are you getting on with yours on American Civilization?30 Just received William's on Du Bois.31 Will try to read it this week end and send him some comments, but I may not be able to do it till next week since this week-end is busy for Pittsburgh. We're all excursing to the coal regions with the special coal edition.
Best to Connie and Nob; John asks to be remembered.32
Yours,
R
1 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), (alternatively know as Marx's Paris Manuscripts). This collection of documents were written by Marx while in exile in Paris. They were written as notes, for the purpose of self-clarification, and were not intended for publication. They are fragmentary, and sections are missing and have not been located. They are, however, widely recognised as a hugely important element in Marx's oeuvre. Marx's intellectual debt to Hegel is evident in the Manuscripts. They remained unpublished until the 1920s, when a Russian translation, and versions in the original German, were made available in the USSR. In the 1940s, before any English language translation was available, the JFT translated some of the key sections. A collection of three of the essays, translated from the German by Grace Lee (Ria Stone), were published by the JFT, in mimeographed form, in August 1947 as Essays by Karl Marx. Raya Dunayevskaya's translation of two of the essays, 'Private Property and Communism' and 'Critique of the Hegelian dialectic', (from Russian translations), were published as appendices to the first edition of her Marxism and Freedom, in 1958, three years after she had parted ways with James and Lee.
2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, (1848).
3 Karl Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, (1847).
4 Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, (1849).
5 The English translation of the letter from Engels to Marx of January 1845 and the one from August 1846 are not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove them.
6 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, (1847).
7 Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, (1859).
8 Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One, (1867).
9 Marx considered the French edition of Capital: Volume One, which he personally worked on, to be the most developed edition of Capital. At the time of writing the Preface and Afterword of the French translation are available on the MIA, but not the English translation of the French edition. Karl Marx, Capital: Volume Two, (1885).
10 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of January 1858 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove them.
11 Volume Three of Capital was not published in Marx's lifetime, but was edited and published by Frederick Engels more than a decade after Marx's death.
12 Friedrich Albert Lange was a German scientist and political writer. Lange, Buckner, Fechner and Duhring were contemporaries of Marx. Engels polemicised against Durhing in Engels, Anti-Duhring, (1877). Ludwig Kugelman (1830-1902) was a German socialist and friend and correspondent of Karl Marx. He was a fellow member of the First International. The English translation of the letter from Marx to Kugelman of June 1870, which Dunayevskaya was quoting, is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
13 Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, were written in 1863, but never published in Marx's lifetime.
14 David Ricardo (1772-1823) was an English economist who helped to develop the labour theory of value. Marx critiqued Ricardo's Theory of Rent in Theories of Surplus Value.
15 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Kugelman of December 1862 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
16 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of January 1863 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
17 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of July 1863 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
18 "M-C and C-M" is Marx's reference to his formula in Chapter One of Capital on the process of capitalist production involving money (M) being converted into capital (C) and then from capital (C) back into money (M).
19 Daniel Itzig (1723-1799), was a banker and mint master who served Prussian King Frederick II The Great and his successor Frederick William II. Marx and Engels used the 'Itzig' as a nickname for Ferdinand Lassalle (1825 - 1864), who was a leading figure in the German socialist movement in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1862 Lassalle developed a theory (Lassallianism), in explicit opposition to Marx, in which the state was to act as an organ of justice to achieve emancipation for workers. In 1875 the Lassallian Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein (General German Workers' Association) and the Eisenacher Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (German Social-Democratic Labour Party) came together to form the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Socialist Worker's Party of Germany). The unity program of the new party, the Gotha Program, was named after the town (Gotha) where the Unity Congress was held. Marx wrote his Critique of the Gotha Program as criticism of Lassallian tendencies in both the Eisenacher and Lassallian wings of the German workers movement. For more on the Critique, Marx and Lassalle see Karl Korsch's Introduction to the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
20 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1863 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
21 E"ngl. ed." is an abbreviation of "English edition".
22 This appears to be a reference to A. Leontiev, the author of Marx's Capital, International Publishers, 1946. Dunayevskaya critiqued Leontiev, and other Stalinist economists, in an article, 'Stalinists Falsify Marxism Anew', published in the September 1948 edition of Fourth International.
23 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of July 1865 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
24 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Kugelman of January 1866 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
25 "ab ovo" is Latin, and is usually translated into English as "from the beginning". The English translation of the letter from Marx to Kugelman of October 1866 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
26 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1867 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
27 Karl Marx, 'Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy', (1857).
28 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of June 1867 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
29 Karl Marx, Afterword to the second German edition of Capital: Volume One, (1873).
30 In the late 1940s and early 1950s James was working on a study of the history and development of the United States of America, which covered labour history, Black struggles and American culture. Some of this material provided the basis for his Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, which he wrote on Ellis Island in 1952, as part of his attempt to lobby to be allowed to remain in the USA. The larger unfinished manuscript that James was working on was published posthumously as: American Civilization (1993).
31 This is most likely a reference to the article by William Gorman (Morris Goelman) titled, 'W.E.B. Du Bois and His Work', and published in the May-June 1950 issue of Fourth International.
32 'Connie' is Constance Webb, who CLR James married in 1946. They had a son together, CLR James Jr, (known as Nobbie or Nob by his familiars), born in 1949. 'John' is most likely Raya Dunayevskaya's husband, John F. Dwyer, who wrote under the pseudonyms John Fredericks, John O'Brien, and Peter Mallory.