Abstract
This chapter focuses on how the class relations of capitalist society are based on the specific character of the commodity form. The commodity is the logical starting point of Marx’s Capital, and the basis for the global networks of social relationships mediated through exchange that he described as “the fetishism of commodities”. It is through the consequences of market imperatives founded upon the commodity form—owners of capitalist means of production engaging in market competition that is grounded in their ability to gain advantages through management of workers and innovation in production—that capitalism realizes its systemic form. Such a system of abstract relations, in which real outcomes that ostensibly meet social needs are achieved in principle solely through the “invisible hand” of the market, differs radically from all prior forms of social reproduction. Not only is this form of society uniquely “economic” in the abstract principles of its organization, it is equally unique in the abstract economic relations by which the majority class of actual producers is exploited by the owners of capital. Where prior class relations of exploitation required the appropriation of surplus from producers through extra-economic coercion, after the fact, capitalist economic exploitation is not apparent.
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Notes
- 1.
None of the successful revolutions of the twentieth century have ever been argued to have occurred in developed capitalist societies; the few potentially- or quasi-revolutionary episodes (as in 1919) never came close to success.
- 2.
See, for example, these Internet videos: George Magnus, “Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy: George Magnus”, Bloomberg View (August 29, 2011). Nouriel Roubini, Karl Marx Was Right (August 16, 2011). http://www.wsj.com/video/nouriel-roubini-karl-marx-was-right/68EE8F89-EC24-42F8-9B9D-47B510E473B0.html.
- 3.
The term originated in a critique of the work of Robert Brenner by Guy Bois, but has since been accepted by most working within the approach. Another term, preferred by Charles Post, The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620–1877 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), is “Capital-centric Marxism”, resonating with the argument here.
- 4.
See Harvey Kaye, The British Marxist Historians (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984); Ellen M. Wood, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For a critical account, see Paul Blackledge, “Political Marxism”, in Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009).
- 5.
In addition to analyses above, see George C. Comninel, Rethinking the FrenchRevolution (London: Verso, 1987); Ellen M. Wood, Peasant-Citizen and Slave (London: Verso, 1988); Robert Brenner, “On the Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism”, New Left Review 104 (1970); Robert Brenner, “Bourgeois Revolution and Transition to Capitalism”, in The First Modern Society, eds. A. L. Beier and et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
- 6.
See George C. Comninel, “English Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism”, Journal of Peasant Studies 27, no. 4 (2000): 1–53; George C. Comninel, “Feudalism”, in The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics, eds. Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad Filho (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2012).
- 7.
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, MECW, vol. 35, 45.
- 8.
Ibid., 46.
- 9.
Ibid., 48.
- 10.
Ibid., 49.
- 11.
Ibid., 51.
- 12.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon, 1957), 40–1.
- 13.
Ibid., 45.
- 14.
See Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel (New York: Norton, 1997).
- 15.
See Karl Polanyi, “Aristotle Discovers the Economy”, in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, eds. Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson (Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1957), 64–94.
- 16.
Marx, Capital, Volume I, 69.
- 17.
Ibid., 69–70.
- 18.
Wood, Peasant-Citizen and Slave, 82.
- 19.
Aristotle, Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 10.
- 20.
Ibid., 13, 108.
- 21.
Ibid., 22ff.
- 22.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 118–9.
- 23.
Marx, Capital, Volume I, 90.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Ibid, 704ff.
- 26.
See Michael Zmolek, Rethinking the Industrial Revolution (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
- 27.
See Pierre Goubert, Beauvais et Le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730: Contribution à L’ Histoire Sociale de La France Du XVIIe Siècle (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1960).
- 28.
Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 625ff.
- 29.
This is a central point of Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution; see also Brenner, “Bourgeois revolution and transition to capitalism”.
- 30.
G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
- 31.
I briefly discuss this in both Comninel, “English Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism”, and “Feudalism”.
- 32.
See Comninel, “Revolution in History”.
- 33.
In addition to my works cited above, see Marcello Musto, “The Formation of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. From the Studies of 1843 to the Grundrisse”, Socialism and Democracy 24, no. 2 (2010): 66–100; Marcello Musto, “Marx En París: Los Manuscritos Económico-Filosóficos de 1844”, in Tras Las Huellas de Un Fantasma. La Actualidad de Karl Marx (Mexico: D.F.: SIGLO XXI, 2011).
- 34.
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, MECW, vol. 3, 235.
- 35.
Ibid., 241.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
E. P. Thompson, “The Poverty of Theory”, in The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London: Merlin Press, 1984), 74.
- 38.
Wood, Democracy against Capitalism, 35–7.
- 39.
Karl Marx, “Introduction”, MECW, vol. 28, 42; George C. Comninel, “Die Anatomie Des Affen Verstehen: Historischer Materialismus Und Die Spezifik Des Kapitalismus”, Z. Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung 84 (2010): 104–15.
- 40.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 293ff.
- 41.
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, MECW, vol. 29, 263.
- 42.
See Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction”, in Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York: International Publishers, 1965).
- 43.
K. Marx, Capital, Volume III, MECW, vol. 37, 325.
- 44.
Ibid., 769.
- 45.
Ibid., 734ff.
- 46.
Ibid., 776.
- 47.
Ibid., 776–7.
- 48.
Ibid., 777.
- 49.
Ibid., 777–8.
- 50.
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: N.L.B., 1974), “B. ‘The Asiatic Mode of Production’”, 462–549. Anderson argues that such a mode of production—following the terms of his definition—never existed.
- 51.
Ibid., 403–48.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
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Comninel, G.C. (2019). Capital and Historical Materialism. In: Alienation and Emancipation in the Work of Karl Marx. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57534-0_11
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