Marx in the 21st Century: A Critical Introduction 9781003187783, 9781032035291, 9780367535995

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MARX IN THE 21ST CENTURY

This book introduces Marx as a political philosopher to the 21st-­century reader. Equal parts comprehensive, accessible, and engaging, it presents an unconventional reinterpretation of class struggle. Maffettone sheds light on Marx the individual, the intellectual, the political leader and icon, and links his lasting legacy to contemporary theories of justice. As one of the most prominent intellectual presences in history, Marx should not be read as a theorist of communism and socialism. Rather, he was, is, and shall remain for the foreseeable future, a radical critic of liberalism and capitalism. Within this innovative interpretive framework, he must be kept absolutely present in the analysis of contemporary politics. Under such premise, the volume explores Marx’s life, his thoughts, his most important writings, his works on historical materialism and economic theory with a focus on concepts of labor, commerce, capitalism, and surplus. The book also includes discussions on the Manuscripts of 1844, the Manifesto of 1848, and a brief critical summary of Capital. A truly definitive work on the “phenomenon” that is Marx, this critical introduction will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of political science, modern history, cultural studies, social anthropology, political philosophy, critical theory, justice, and economics, as well as appeal to the general reader. Sebastiano Maffettone is an Italian philosopher and public intellectual. He is currently Professor of Political Philosophy and Director of the Ethos Observatory, a research center focusing on public ethics at Luiss University Business School in Rome, Italy, where he teaches political philosophy and history of political thought. Professor Maffettone is President of the Fondazione Giordano Bruno and has been a member, president, and director of a number of prestigious institutions and research programs. After specializing in social philosophy at the London School of Economics (LSE), among other appointments, he has been welcomed as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, LSE, University of Pennsylvania, Sciences-Po College (Paris), Beijing University, and Mumbai University. Professor Maffettone’s research focuses on the development of an original vision of public ethics within Italy and on international topics of contemporary political philosophy. He also has a vast interest in the philosophy of John Rawls and has produced the Italian translation of A Theory of Justice. He regularly writes for Italian national newspapers, such as Il Corriere della Sera and Il Sole 24 ore.

ETHICS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND GLOBAL POLITICAL THOUGHT Series Editors: Aakash Singh Rathore and Sebastiano Maffettone Ethos Observatory, Luiss University Business School, Rome, Italy

Whereas the interrelation of ethics and political thought has been recognized since the dawn of political reflection, over the last sixty years—roughly since the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights—we have witnessed a particularly turbulent process of globalizing the coverage and application of that interrelation. At the very instant the decolonized globe consolidated the universality of the sovereign nation-­state, that sovereignty—and the political thought that grounded it—was eroded and outstripped, not as in eras past, by imperial conquest and instruments of war, but rather by instruments of peace (charters, declarations, treaties, conventions), and instruments of commerce and communication (multinational enterprises, international media, global aviation and transport, internet technologies). Has political theory kept pace with global political realities? Can ethical reflection illuminate the murky challenges of real global politics? This Routledge book series Ethics, Human Rights and Global Political Thought addresses these crucial questions by bringing together outstanding monographs and anthologies that deal with the intersection of normative theorizing and political realities with a global focus. Treating diverse topics by means of interdisciplinary techniques—including philosophy, political theory, international relations and human rights theories, and global and postcolonial studies—the books in the series present up-­to-­date research that is accessible, practical, yet scholarly. FORMATTING RELIGION Across Politics, Education, Media, and Law Edited by Marius Timmann Mjaaland INTERNATIONAL TOLERATION A Theory Pietro Maffettone WHAT IS PLURALISM? Edited by Volker Kaul and Ingrid Salvatore For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Ethics-­ Human-­Rights-­and-­Global-­Political-­Thought/book-­series/EHRGPT

MARX IN THE 21ST CENTURY A Critical Introduction

Sebastiano Maffettone

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Sebastiano Maffettone The right of Sebastiano Maffettone to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or ­reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and ­explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-­0-­367-­53599-­5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-­1-­032-­03529-­1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-­1-­003-­18778-­3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003187783 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

CONTENTS

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Preface Introduction

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1 Marx: The individual and the intellectual

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2 Marx: Main ideas Friedrich Engels  15

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3 Early years and the birth of communism The Hegelian Left  20 The Marxian critique of Hegel  24 Early communism  29 Alienation  31 The Manifesto  35 After 1848  37

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4 Historical materialism and the critique of the economy Capital: A summary of the principal arguments  43 Volume I. The process of production of capital  44 Volume II. The process of circulation of capital  49 Volume III. The process of capitalist production as a whole  50 Theory of value  55 The transformation of values into prices  58 Böhm-­Bawerk, Sraffa, analytical Marxism, and some results  61 In conclusion  68

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Commodities  70 Labor  72 Surplus value  72 Exploitation  73 Marxism and justice  78 Historical materialism and the collapse of capitalism  84 Marx and the utopian socialists  88 5 Final remarks Criticisms  89 Proposals  95

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6 Epilogue

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Appendix  109 Bibliography 111 Index 114

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PREFACE

I must confess: I have never been a Marxist, not even for a single day of my life. I consider this as neither a virtue, nor a fault. It’s simply a meager fact, quite unusual among philosophers of my generation (In Italy back in 1968, most philosophers were indeed, Marxists). Ever since, it seems most of the former Marxists have long forgotten Marx, along with (almost) everyone else. In my opinion, such an attitude is mistaken, both among former Marxists and those who were not, as well as among those who deal with philosophy and the social sciences in general. Karl Marx, however one wants to judge him from the point of view of political commitment, was a great thinker, a classic sui generis, if you will. Precisely for this reason, reading him is never a fruitless endeavor from an intellectual and cultural perspective. Moreover, even today, his ideas help shape our understanding of our time, its main features, and its deepest social and economic problems. This is not to say that he was right in his main assertions, for example, when arguing that the days of capitalism were numbered, or that communism represented “the riddle of history solved.” But at the same time, how can we fail to recognize that he was able to comprehend that capitalism represented only a period in the history of humanity, and within its operating mechanisms were already sowed the seeds of possible radical crises? The Nobel Prize-­winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz, upon receiving an honorary degree from my university (Rome’s Luiss University), affirmed—in front of a large audience of colleagues, authorities and journalists—that 2008 had been for capitalism what 1989 had been for communism. Undoubtedly, this conclusion is somewhat exaggerated, but it is hard not to admit that Marx predicted devastating crises like the 2008 global financial crisis, as he understood some of their triggers. At the same time, how can we fail

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to accept the thesis implicit in the Marxian vision, according to which we live in an unjust world, in which a few profit from the many, exploiting the labor capacity of others, so they may gain even greater wealth off their backs? The same can be said of the advent of globalization, which Marx had foreseen before so many others. Or the significance of science and technology to spur economic progress —in his day, those new sources of energy and the novel means of transport, while today, it’s genetics and artificial intelligence—while ushering in the destabilization of established social relations. I cannot imagine a sociologist who does not take into account the Marxian vision of the class struggle, or a historian who completely neglects the materialistic conception of history, or finally, an economist who knows nothing of Marx’s crisis theory. For what it’s worth, I believe the same holds true for anyone who, like me, deal with social and political philosophy. It is for this reason that throughout the years, I have seldom deprived my students of at least a few hours of lessons on Marx. It is also for this reason that, two hundred years after the birth of Karl Marx (1818–2018), I decided to publish this short tome. Not only have I never been a Marxist, but—all the more serious given the text you have in front of you—I am not even a “Marxologist”. Thus, the reader of this book cannot expect to find in its pages a philologically flawless account of Marx’s texts or some unknown aspect of his biography. More than anything else, the book is the external reading of a “liberal” political philosopher, claiming above all, intellectual honesty and offering some original food for thought. I must add that I have tried to write these pages in the simplest way possible, perhaps sometimes running the risk of betraying the letter of the text (as happens in any translation, anyway). Marx himself is a complicated and difficult author, and frankly it makes no sense to repeat his lessons without avoiding obscurum per obscurius; that is to say, complicating the reader’s life more than necessary by imitating Marx’s often incomprehensible style. The fascination of reading Marx today does not lie in his economic theory or his epochal predictions. Rather, it lies on the whole in his magical ability to mix different disciplines of knowledge in light of an immense philosophical culture and an unparalleled overall vision. Precisely for this reason, the essay you are about to begin is, more than anything else, a polite but insistent invitation to read—or perhaps re-­read—Karl Marx, at a time when you can

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do so without necessarily having to take his side politically. I really think it’s well worth it. This essay was fortunate to have been read and commented on by affectionate, competent colleagues and friends aware of the difficulty of the enterprise, including: Francesca Corrao, Claudio de Vincenti, Valentina Gentile, Volker Kaul, Pietro Maffettone, Domenico Melidoro, Marcello Messori, Giovanni Orsina, Gianfranco Pellegrino, Stefano Petrucciani, Gianni Toniolo, Aldo Tortorella, and Francesco Trincia. More than any other, my friend and companion in philosophical adventures, Giampaolo Ferranti, assisting my endeavor every step of the way. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to you all. Without their generous contributions, the text that follows would have come out much differently and far worse. Lastly, as a matter of course, any mistakes or interpretations that you may not share are my sole responsibility. The text was inspired by instruction in political philosophy held over the last twenty years at Luiss University. Luiss has provided the ideal environment to combine teaching with research. My thanks also go out to this excellent institution, which I have seen steadily improve over time like few others. Institutions are made up of people and therefore thanks are extended to all my Luiss colleagues, staff, and students. Finally, a special note of thanks to Daniele Rosa of Luiss University Press for his patience, friendship, and encouragement, and to the Editorial Staff at Routledge without which I might not have embarked on this undertaking. Sebastiano Maffettone

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Marx’s popularity in the West among scholars and the general public has undergone extraordinary variations over the last half century. Read and studied voraciously in the sixties, Marx was unjustly set aside (with some exceptions) after 1990. Certainly, this story was influenced by the decline of Soviet communism. It is impossible to deny the fact that Marx has, to a certain extent, entered into the history of real communism. Yet Marx was in fact—more than a theorist of communism and socialism—a radical critic of liberalism and capitalism. For this reason, he remains today, and for the foreseeable future, a thinker who must be kept absolutely present in the analysis of the problems and crises that characterize the life of contemporary capitalism. This is the opinion of, among others, authoritative press outlets which have accompanied the life of capitalism since its birth, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. The Wall Street Journal in the November 25, 1991 issue indicated Marx (with Freud and Einstein) as one of the thinkers who will most influence our future: “The revolutionary analysis of Marx, in fact, focuses almost exclusively on capitalism, not on socialism, and still today many abuses arise from unbridled capitalism.” The Financial Times ran an article in October 2008 titled “Capitalism in Convulsion,” adding that behind the dramatic crisis in question loomed the figure of Marx. On the other hand, if Marx was the greatest critic of capitalism, he was also one of its fervent admirers; he was of the class that represented it, the bourgeoisie. It is difficult to forget words of praise of capitalism like those he wrote (in The Grundrisse): Thus, capital creates the bourgeois society, and the universal appropriation of nature as well as of the social bond itself by the members of society. Hence the great civilizing influence of DOI: 10.4324/9781003187783-1

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INTRODUCTION

capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of humanity and as nature-­idolatry. For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility […] It is destructive toward all of this, and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the all-­sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces.1 In what follows, we will take seriously the unexpected endorsements we have mentioned, insisting on identifying the strengths of Marx’s thought. Among these, we can initially list the critique of capitalism based on notions like labor theory of value; exploitation and alienation; the materialistic conception of history; ideology critique and, more generally, the ability to understand one’s own time within a single powerful philosophical vision. In doing this, of course, we shan’t fail to point out the flaws and limitations of his thought and work. First among these is the evident gap between Marx’s analysis of the structural crises of capitalism, which remains important and current, and his proposal for alternatives, starting with communism which—despite the passing of the years—have failed to materialize in the way he imagined. One thing however seems certain: even if the Marxian idea of communism is obscure and the communist regimes have failed, Marx’s intellectual contribution maintains its vitality even today. A vitality that it probably did not have in 1883, the year of his death, even though his thought had already begun to gain popularity in Germany, among Russian intellectual elites and followers of the nascent German workers’ movement. To our advantage, nowadays it is possible—and I would say quite common—to study Marx without being a Marxist, which in all probability makes it easier to take his ideas seriously. Testaments (how significant it is difficult to say) to his posthumous success are, in addition to the worldwide dissemination of his thought, several opinion polls, like one conducted by the BBC a few years ago that named him as the most famous philosopher of all time. Not to mention what you can see for yourself by entering his name into Google, where he is one of the most frequently searched intellectual presences in history. This is largely due to the fact that the decline of real communism has somehow ended up freeing Marx, making him an author to be studied again—as Eric Hobsbawm also noted—in relation to the 2

INTRODUCTION

crises of a capitalist and globalized world. So it should come as no surprise that his grave at Highgate Cemetery (London) is perpetually visited, and it can’t hurt to reflect on the last sentence of his intellectual biography by Isaiah Berlin, in which Marx is said to have unleashed “the most powerful among the intellectual forces which are today permanently transforming the ways in which men think and act,”2 Berlin’s conclusion is, in my opinion, entirely unsatisfactory—maybe with a non-­trivial addition. Marx’s socialist legacy has always been shared by two rival forces, the revolutionaries (communists) and the reformists (social democrats). To both, Marx essentially provided the same political strategy—which is then that of every modern socialism—based on some unshakable cornerstones: struggles must be made in the workplace; there is a party that represents the workers; and the main objective is to seize power, which may be done peacefully or otherwise, as circumstances require. These objectives, though contentious among the anarchists and the Proudhonists of Marx’s time, were from then on shared by communists and social democrats alike. Frankly, it is difficult nowadays to embrace the position of the former, but the reading of Marx can still be used to revitalize that of the latter, which appears everywhere to be in crisis. In short, Marx has paradoxically become more useful for capitalists, liberals, and social democrats than for revolutionaries, radicals, and communists. At least, this is what it seems to me, as I try to uncover a path that leads from Marx to a liberal and democratic socialism, theoretically revitalized, so to speak, by appealing to contemporary theories of justice. This is essentially what I will argue, without putting too much pressure on Marx’s texts and ideas, as the reader will have the opportunity to see while reading this essay. Marx, however one wishes to judge him, was and remains one of the most imposing characters in the history of culture: not only because of his theories, but also because he was a charismatic political leader. In the name of his ideas, millions of people have built barricades, changed their way of life, fought for justice and built empires, but also killed and reduced billions of human beings to conditions of material and moral misery. What happened in the twentieth century in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba—to cite only the most sensational cases—certainly cannot be forgotten, since neither can the theoretical conjunction between communism and totalitarianism. Of course, in such cases it is difficult to assign Marx himself with the responsibility for so many historically and politically relevant consequences, since these are certainly beyond 3

INTRODUCTION

his intentions. However, anyone who approaches Marx’s thought and work cannot do so in an entirely innocent way: he/she must be aware of the tremendous amount of suffering that realized communism has brought about, often in the name of Marx. Moreover, and this must always be remembered, Marx was in his own way also a “prophet”, as Schumpeter called him, that is a character so charismatic as to resemble a religious leader. And there is no doubt that many men and women have been inspired by his ideas for precisely this quality of Marx’s, making it somehow deeply connected with his work (Luciano Pellicani wrote illuminating pages specifically on this aspect). Among other things, there is a whole “mythology” of Marxism, which is not a Soviet invention, but dates back to the years immediately following the death of Marx and is partly due to the figures of Engels, Mehring, Kautsky, Bernstein, and to the German social democratic movement in general (See the biography Karl Marx. Greatness and Illusion by Gareth Stedman Jones). In any case, we will discuss his work here only in a theoretical perspective, leaving the more political aspects and the charismatic-­religious nature of his character in the background. The advantage of our position consists in the fact that, all things considered, to understand the political and prophetic Marx it is essential to understand what he said in his theory. In short, in the following pages we will essentially talk about Marx the political philosopher, which risks losing part of his message as well as displeasing some of his supporters and detractors alike. We will do this by linking Marx’s analysis to the background of contemporary theories of justice (of liberal inspiration). A choice of this kind depends in no small part on my theoretical background, and in equally significant part—at least as far as I believe —on an independent reading of Marx. Simply put, this means I am a liberal political philosopher, who has worked in the wake of Rawls and theories of justice, which is evident in the text. But it also means that—as we will argue below—the part of Marx’s view which is least resistant to the scrutiny of time is his argument for the inefficiency of capitalism based on the labor theory of value. However, this does not deprive the idea of class struggle—with the corollary of exploitation—of meaning. And if this is true, then everything can be made compatible with the idea of distributive justice, and thus central to the writer’s paradigm. What else is the class struggle without the value theory behind if not a radical interpretation of distributive injustice?

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INTRODUCTION

The concept of distributive justice—if one wants to put it in contact with Marx’s paradigms, and with socialism in general— requires a preliminary clarification. If nothing else because every time an attempt of the kind is made, those who are, have been, or will be Marxists, jump up from the chair to affirm what for them is a truism, saying something like: “Marx is not just distributive justice!” Obviously, a statement like this is not without some truth. Especially because for Marxists, unlike what liberal and social democrats usually believe, distribution and production cannot be separated (it’s hard to forget the success that a libertarian and pro-­ market book like Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia had among Marxists precisely for this reason). But it is precisely this issue that must be clarified. With distributive justice—as conceived here—we do not mean a simple redistribution of economic resources, as the radical left has often considered. Rather, we mean a way of thinking about the basic structure of society oriented toward justice; that is to say, the more or less fair way in which the main institutions define the distribution of primary goods. The institutions in question are legal–political but also economic, like the market. The primary goods correspond to fundamental freedoms, such as civil and political liberties, including protection from poverty, rights to equal opportunities, certainly also a fair distribution of income and wealth, and even the possibility to form the basis of self-­respect by not being punished beyond measure in the lottery of natural and social talents. This awareness cannot be separated, however, from the further question that forcefully imposes itself on Marx’s reader: in what sense can he be taken seriously today? Fortunately, as already mentioned, the current historical circumstances help us to give a less emotional answer than what could have been given only a few decades ago. The fact is that the recent decline of communism allows us to look at the question with greater detachment than was possible in the years before 1989, especially for those scholars who, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, studied Marx in the context of the authoritarian regimes he inspired. In other words, today it is possible for each of us to say something like this: “Being a Marxist is not a viable hypothesis, but this does not prevent me from analytically evaluating Marx’s work like that of any other great thinker.” Thus Marx is treated in the same manner as Aristotle or Kant for example. Difficult? Without a doubt, but not impossible.

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INTRODUCTION

This short book—after the introduction—includes five chapters. In the first, we will briefly describe some significant biographical aspects of Marx's life, trying to link them to his education and his works. In the second, we will enter into the merits of the famous three pillars on which Marx’s thought is based: German philosophy, British economics, and French politics. This section concludes with a brief presentation of the figure and work of Friedrich Engels, the only enduring friend and companion of Marx who shared his main political experiences and as far as possible his ideas, as we can see from the continuous correspondence that the two maintained over the years. The third section is then dedicated to young Marx, starting from the adventurous years in which Marx was part, in his own way, of that peculiar climate of German philosophy: the so-­called Hegelian Left. The main works of this period are undoubtedly the Manuscripts of 1844 and the Manifesto of 1848 (written together with Engels). The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, published nearly 100 years after they were written, constitute a philosophical and critical tour de force based on the concept of alienation. At the time of their release, they provoked a heated discussion on the possibility of distinguishing two different Marxes, a young more philosophical Marx, and a mature Marx who was mostly an economist. Of the Manifesto, we can only say that it is, without a shadow of a doubt the most famous political pamphlet ever written. In the fourth chapter, Marx’s historical materialism and economic theory are analyzed. Concepts like labor, commerce, capitalism, and surplus are examined here. Considerable critical attention is devoted to the labor theory value, a veritable mainstay of the Marxian economic vision, starting with the age-­old question of transforming values into prices in Capital. Some fundamental criticisms to the labor theory of value are also briefly presented, without neglecting the Marxian responses, starting with so-­called analytical Marxism. A  brief critical summary of Capital is also presented, the purpose of which is to help the reader find his way around such a complex text. Finally, the fifth chapter is dedicated to the overall evaluation of Marx’s opus, ex nunc so to speak, that is to say, excluding any purely antiquarian and reconstructive intention in favor of a reading that allows us to separate the wheat from the chaff, thus seeking to understand what is alive and what is dead of Marx in the perspective of contemporary political theory. In light of this aim, the possibility of linking Marx’s economic-­political-­philosophical critique to today’s (­liberal and social democratic) theories of justice, assumes 6

INTRODUCTION

particular importance. We are in the presence, of course, of a controversial move, but—in our opinion—particularly useful if you want to save the “phenomenon” of Marx. In short, here we certainly undertake a conscious forcing of Marx’s texts and intentions, but this seems to be a good way of making it relevant to the contemporary debate. A digression on the Marxism–justice relationship completes the chapter.

Notes 1 Marx, K., & Nicolaus, M. (1973). Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. p. 409. 2 Berlin, I., & Oxford University Press. (1966). Karl Marx: His life and environment. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 267.

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1 MARX The individual and the intellectual

Trier is an ancient German town, a 4th century imperial seat, with a population of just over 100,000. Bathed by the Moselle, in an area of Rhineland-­Palatinate famous for sweet and delicate wines, Trier is also the birthplace of one of the most controversial thinkers of all time: Karl Marx. Marx was born there—the second of eight ­children—in 1818 (May 5th; died in London, 1883) to a Jewish family converted to Protestantism. He was raised in an international environment, more influenced by French political ideas than the rest of Germany at that time. His Father was a Jewish lawyer, brilliant and of liberal sentiments, a highly cultivated man and attentive to his son’s studies. He was forced to renounce his religion of origin because of his Napoleonic sympathies (upon his baptism he changed his name to Heinrich). The fate of Judaism in Prussia and Rhineland would greatly influence the life of Heinrich, who—coming from a family of rabbis—was able to practice a liberal profession as lawyer thanks to the Napoleonic conquests, only to pay the price—after Waterloo—with the conversion to Lutheranism that cost him dearly. His father certainly influenced Karl’s life more than his mother, Henriette, largely because—despite not being completely convinced (like any normal, father he was worried about the economic future of a son who wanted to devote himself to philosophy)—he enabled him to continue his studies with financial support and psychological encouragement. Marx, from a very young age, was strongly dedicated to that life of study that would come to characterize the whole of his existence. An often-­cited letter to his father testifies both to Marx’s love for his father and to his incessant commitment to his intellectual pursuits. In the letter in question (dated 10 November 1837; the young Karl not yet twenty) Marx says he considers life “as the expression of a spiritual activity, which develops on all sides, in 8

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187783-2

MARX: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE INTELLECTUAL

science, art, and private affairs…”1 He reveals thus his profound intellectual and philosophical vocation. And in the moving post-­ script he adds “Forgive, dear father, the illegible script and the poor style; it is nearly four in the morning, the candle is completely burnt out and the eyes dim…”2 His father would respond giving him his substantial approval, to which he would none the less add a few worried words on the economic aspects related to the life path that the young Karl seemed to have chosen. Never in his life would Marx forget the intellectual generosity of his father, and would try in his mature years to remember it in his relationship with his own children. From an early age Karl was noted for his brilliant intellect by the baron Ludwig von Westphalen, one of Trier's most influential figures, and with whom he eventually became friends. Marx would always remember him with affection and esteem. Westfalen introduced him, among other things, to the work of Shakespeare, which would accompany Marx for the rest of his life. Through Westfalen the young Karl met and married—after long and passionate ­courtship—his daughter, Jenny, four years his senior. The wedding took place on the 19th of June 1843. Jenny was the love of his life and the mother of his children, but also an intellectual companion and an assiduous reader of her husband’s work. Two things we know for sure about Marx: he was a man of great intellect and profound culture; and he did not have an easy character. A small and stocky man with thick hair and a long, disheveled beard, Marx’s complexion was so dark it earned him the nickname of “the moor”. Marx was also highly ambitious, would not tolerate being contradicted, and generally had a very high opinion of himself. Always sensitive to a perceived slight, he did not hesitate to use all his insight and wisdom to attack anyone who did not take his ideas and proposals to the letter. This he did without any regard for the feelings of others or respect for intellectual fairness. Most of the people he dealt with he thought of—and there’s a similarity with Rousseau in this—as fools or frauds. Essentially, Marx was undoubtedly a genius, but it was difficult, to say the least, to have him as a friend and a partner, let alone an enemy and adversary. Marx was a German philosopher of the second half of the nineteenth century (Leszek Kolakowski in his magnum opus on Marxism begins with the phrase “Marx was a German philosopher”). Of the German philosophers of his time, he possessed typical characteristics: extraordinary culture, multidisciplinary skills and a strong arrogance that led him to believe that the 9

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advancement of the world depended on a few essential categories of his thought. But, besides being a philosopher, Marx was certainly a well-­rounded humanist, a great sociologist, a prominent historian, a top-­rate economist, a qualified journalist, an undisputed leader and a political figure so charismatic that he could be compared to the founders of traditional religions. After being enrolled at the University of Bonn to study law (1835), he transferred the following year to the University of Berlin to follow lessons in philosophy, at a time when Hegel was the dominant figure. All in all, these were sad times for the German intelligentsia subjected to the censorship of the authoritarian and reactionary regime of Frederick William IV. In order to graduate, he presented his dissertation at the University of Jena, where on the 15th of April 1841 (without being present) he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy, with his thesis The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. Overall, the student Karl Marx participated intensely in academic life, being part of the circle of students that characterized it at that time in Germany, and not disdaining occasional spills and even scuffles (he was once arrested for disturbing the peace). It was during the Berlin years that the young Karl discovered the philosophy of Hegel, an encounter that would mark his intellectual life like no other. His professors during those years in Berlin were Eduard Gans, Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Bruno Bauer (of Marx’s relationship with whom we will have occasion to speak later). In these years of frantic and fervent study, the young Karl ranged from Roman law to history to the philosophy of Aristotle. Over time, roughly in the second half of the 1830s, he became more involved in the work of the so-­called Left Hegelians (which I will later address) and discovered the work of Feuerbach. In his student room the books were piled high and strewn about in disorder, and there was no field of knowledge that did not interest the young Karl, who also had a great love for technological innovation. Marx, however, deepened his studies of economics only after 1845—after reading Proudhon, James Mill, Owen and Sismondi. Eventually he would manage to become one of history’s greatest economists. As a scholar, Marx was essentially an autodidact. His writings can be roughly divided into three categories: I More typically philosophical early works, including On the Jewish Question (1843), and The German Ideology (with Engels, 1845–6). His Thesis on Feuerbach (1845) and his 10

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Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, can also be included in this group. All except the first remained unpublished during his lifetime. II Major economic works: Capital (vol. 1 1867, vol. 2 1885, vol. 3 1894). Volumes 2 and 3 were written between 1864 and 1878. To the magnum opus must be added the so-­called Grundrisse (1857–58) and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). III Political writings, which are numerous and scattered across time. The two principal works are The Communist Manifesto (written with Engels in 1848), and Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). From the historical and philosophical point of view it is i­nteresting—more so than putting the past on trial—to try to understand in the simplest way possible what Marx has really said and to what extent the things he said can still be considered important today. Naturally, in this way we reason in light of an anachronism: that is, we evaluate Marx in the present and under our contemporary gaze, and not from the perspective of the time in which he lived. Marx, even if we relieve somewhat his most strictly political legacy, is still not an easy thinker to unpack. On the contrary, his general vision of philosophy and his economic and social theory are highly complicated. This difficulty is aggravated by the fact that Marx—brilliant indeed, but by no means orderly—published during his lifetime, aside from articles in magazines and newspapers, very few of his many important writings. Among these are The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon and the first volume of Capital. This means Marx himself considered only a thousand or so pages of the more than thirty thousand he had written as equal to his abilities. In short, a certain lack of intellectual discipline accompanies his career, and going off the few published writings is not enough to account for his overall work. Moreover, it is equally complicated to say whether, and if so how, Marx remains theoretically relevant today. Marxism in our day is, with some exceptions, peripheral from a scientific point of view, and does not represent an essential part of the academic curriculum in the social sciences. However, when we talk about the usefulness of Marx’s thought today, we intend to evaluate if and when Marx’s concepts and theories concerning class struggle, exploitation, alienation, the nature of ideology, the materialistic 11

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interpretation of history, technological change, and the decline of capitalism have significance in the light of the social and political problems of the third millennium. And perhaps, one can also inherit from him a more general view of a methodological type, a vision whereby a serious analysis of the facts should not be separated from the value options we prefer, provided of course we make the effort to link them to each other in a convincing way. Be that as it may, any arduous appraisal of the kind fortunately does not require, as we have already said, to wed Marxism as a creed with actual political practice. It presupposes instead a historical– critical reconstruction of the most serene interpretation of Marx’s intellectual legacy, starting from his cultural education. This is how Bakunin described Marx in 1873.3 Mr. Marx… is vain, ambitious, quarrelsome, intolerant, and stubborn to the highest degree, as well as vindictive to the point of madness. He does not stop short of lies and slander to strike those who have had the misfortune to arouse his jealousy or his hostility; he does not withdraw in the face of any intrigue, however horrible, if it promises a strengthening of his position or his influence, or an enlargement of his power. Those are his bad qualities. We come now to the good ones. He is very intelligent and highly cultivated. It is rare to find a man of such vast knowledge, a man who has read and understood as much as Marx…

Notes 1 Marx, K., & Schafer, P. M. (2006). The first writings of Karl Marx. New York: Ig. p. 72. 2 Ibid. p. 83. 3 Enzenberger, H. M. (2019). Colloqui con Marx ed Engels: Testimonianze sulla vita di Marx e Engels [Conversations with Marx and Engels: Testimonies on the lives of Marx and Engels]. Rome: Feltrinelli Editore.

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2 MARX Main ideas

It is commonly claimed that Marx’s thought rests on three pillars: the philosophy of Hegel, English political economy, and French politics. The idea of the three pillars was first articulated by Moses Hess, as Isaiah Berlin affirms, but it was made famous by Lenin in his 1913 article, “The Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism.” On the other side of the coin, these three pillars correspond to three disruptive forces of that period: the capitalist industrial revolution, the French revolution, and the intellectual impact of philosophical idealism. There is no doubt, however, that these influences count for Marx in decreasing order: first Hegel, then English economics, and finally—and at a distance—French politics. Moreover, it was Lenin—a man hardly prone to excessive abstraction—who said that in order to understand Marx one must read Hegel. In short, Marx was undoubtedly Hegelian; at least in his own way. A letter from the young Marx to his father confirms this impression. Marx writes that he has read Hegel “from beginning to end” (not an easy task), and argues that only Hegel, first among the great thinkers, could succeed in putting “the idea in actuality itself.” More generally, as noted by Stefano Petrucciani, if the Hegelian summa assigns to each past philosophy the merit of having developed a category of logic (i.e., of reality), and to itself the task of summing up each of these categories, this same way of arguing is applied by Marx not only to history of philosophy but that of economic, social, and political regimes. From this point of view it can be argued, as Karl Löwith has, that the major distinction between the two thinkers is quite clear: while Hegel had done everything possible to make the world philosophical, Marx wanted to make philosophy completely worldly. More simply, one can say that while for Hegel, “spirit” is the driving force of history, Marx intends to replace the DOI: 10.4324/9781003187783-3

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spirit with the material conditions of life. But the thing—as one can easily guess—is more complex and regards the circuitous route of the various Hegelian schools (as we shall see shortly). The influence of British economics, on the other hand, relates to Marx’s materialism. Marx was certainly a materialist, but in his own way. He was what can be defined as a “historical” materialist; he was critical of eighteenth-century materialism influenced by the French like Holbach, Condillac, and Diderot. For Marx, traditional materialism was purely theoretical, while he saw it realized only in practice. Marx was a materialist because above all he was an anti-utopian, and a supporter of a “scientific” vision of reality and history (whether or not his vision is truly scientific is a separate issue). The peculiarity of Marxian materialism lies within the fact that Marx believed that culture, religion, art, and philosophy itself were closely related to the means of the production and the distribution of wealth. Thus, we see Marx’s so-called “materialistic conception of history,” which somehow makes philosophy the handmaiden of the economy. From this point of view, there was no doubt that the classical British economists such as Smith, Ricardo and Mill—from whom Marx took up the labor theory of value—were on the cutting edge of those times. The cutting edge of British industrial economy in the second half of the nineteenth century, Marx had the opportunity to become acquainted with, in part through his long association with his friend and scientific collaborator Friedrich Engels (whose general contribution to the work of Marx has always been a source of controversy). There is no doubt then that the main aspects of this vision of Marx’s were already present on the marketplace of ideas in those years and that—beyond the British economists, the theory of surplus value was taken up in part by Fourier, and that of state ownership of property by the theory of Max Stirner. But to trace precedents is little more than an academic exercise, since what matters most in Marx’s thought is without a doubt the synthesis; the amalgam with which he manages to hold together and make different concepts and theories more powerful. It should be immediately added that the materialistic conception of history exposes itself to an immediate objection. How is it possible to make an exception for Marx’s theoretical vision that undoubtedly aspires to truth, when in Marxian terms, all theories are “ideologies,” and are as such a distorted vision that reflects the reality of economic relations of production? But perhaps the secret to save Marx from himself is to clarify that in all probability 14

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Marx did not want to argue that culture, art, ethics, and political opinions depended strictly on the economic situation, but only that the economic background must always be taken into account. However, we will return to the question later.

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels was born in November of 1820 in Barmen, today the district of Wuppertal (Rhineland), in the Ruhr, one of the oldest industrialized areas of Germany. The first of seven children in a family engaged for generations in the textile business with interests also in Manchester, the young Engels shows an early intolerance toward the oppressive and pietistic environment in which he is raised. Basically self-taught, after high school he does not undertake university studies. Instead, he combines his internship at family import/export company in Bremen with extensive reading and publishing interests, and in this way is able to highlight his uncommon observational skills and unquestionable ability as a journalist. In addition to various journalistic collaborations, between March and April 1839, Engels (then just 18 and using a pseudonym) publishes in the Telegraph für Deutschland—organ of the literary movement of the Young Germany—his Letters from Wuppertal, in which he targets the social hypocrisy and cultural philistinism of his native environment. In particular, he criticizes the obscurantist outcomes of local pietism, as well as the moral and material degradation that industrial production (in this case dyes) cause both in the landscape and among workers. After two years of commercial apprenticeship in Bremen, the young Engels decides to serve in the military, as a volunteer in an artillery regiment, but still as a means to promote his own cultural interests, now extended to philosophy and politics. He then chooses the university town of Berlin, approaching the Young Hegelians and there, as a non-matriculating student, has the opportunity to follow the lessons that the late Schelling held from the chair that had been Hegel’s until November 1841. Already in December, the little more than twenty-year-old Engels publishes a report, Schelling on Hegel, in the Telegraph. In March 1842 he publishes a critical pamphlet, Schelling and Revelation, which for

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some time was attributed to Mikhail Bakunin (see F. Engels, Anti-Schelling, edited by E. Fiorani), in which he defends the rationalistic commitment, aimed at understanding the world, of Hegelian philosophy, against the irrationalism of the later Schelling. Leaving Berlin at the end of his military service, Engels returns to Barmen, from where he would have to leave for Manchester and complete his commercial training at the family company. On his way to his hometown he stops in Cologne, where for the first time in the offices of the Rheinische Zeitung he meets Karl Marx, then its editor in chief. The meeting is not a particularly happy one, due to the ongoing dispute between the newspaper and the Young Hegelians of Berlin, with whom Engels still identifies. More significant for Engels, as for Marx, is the meeting with Moses Hess, which then introduced into the Hegelian historical– philosophical framework the urgency of the social question and of human emancipation in the prospect of communism (the abolition of private property). From this moment the young Engels embraces communism. The British period, which opens at the end of 1842 and closes at the end of 1844, puts Engels, from the privileged observatory of Manchester, in contact with the social struggles of the Chartist movement, to whose circles he is introduced by Mary Burns, an Irish worker destined to become his life partner. He also collaborates with The New Moral Man, the newspaper of Robert Owen, the other leading exponent of English socialism. The fruit of these experiences, and of the priority he would henceforth attribute to social conflicts with respect to the predominantly intellectual movements with which he had previously identified, are the Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, published in February 1844 in the first and only issue of Karl Marx and Arnold Ruge’s Deutsch-Französiche Jahrbücher. It is the first important work of Engels to appear with his name in a German publication. The target of the Engelsian critique of the categories of economic science and contemporary industrial economy is the centrality of private property and its necessary presupposition in a competitive market. The destructive effects of competition on the social dimension of human life are emphasized, as well and the irreconcilability between private interests, legitimated in their isolation and

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reciprocal opposition, and the common good. Hence the twenty-three-year-old Engels draws conclusions about rising inequality between the capitalist and land-owning classes and the masses of workers, and the inevitability of increasingly violent economic crises, to the point of presenting communism as the only outcome capable of reconciling humanity with nature and with itself. Reading the Outlines will contribute, among other things, to determining the theoretical agenda of Marx, with whom upon his return to the continent at the end of 1844, Friedrich Engels will establish what is perhaps the most famous intellectual association in history. Another result of the English stay and the field study of social struggles is The Condition of the Working Class in England of 1845. The work, considered by many, Engels’ greatest, did not go unnoticed with its tones of harsh anti-bourgeois polemic that did not shy away from citing extreme stories taken from the newspapers as testimony to the daily living conditions of the English proletariat. The latter is presented by Engels to the German public as the result of the immense social transformation (mechanization) and the only subject from which one could expect a liberating action at the world level, a revolution no longer limited to the political sphere but capable of an assault on the economic foundations of social life. Starting from 1845, as mentioned, Engels’ work is intertwined with that of Marx, first with the distancing from the Young Hegelians (The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Company, 1845; The German Ideology. Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism According to Its Various Prophets, 1846, but published in 1927) and then with the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by the authors on the commission of the League of Communists, recently established in London in 1847. It is now that the foundations are laid for the figure of co-founder of Marxism, who will occupy the historiography of the labor movement for the following 150 years. Political-organizational and journalistic activities in support of the Communist movement go hand in hand and will essentially occupy the whole life of Engels, with periods of greater intensity such as the revolutions of 1848: Marx

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and Engels side with democratic demands, despite never denouncing bourgeois timidities in the anti-monarchist struggle, and failing to mention the specific aims of proletarian action (establishment of a classless society). The defeat of the motions of ‘48 force Engels to flee to Switzerland, and finally to embark from Genoa to London (in 1849). In 1850, Engels will resume working at the family company in Manchester, at the same time publishing—in the Neue Reinische Zeitung— The Peasant War in Germany. A study on peasant revolts in Germany between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the work aimed, among other things, to recall to the historical memory of the German people a revolutionary tradition nowadays largely unknown (the principal source is Wilhelm Zimmerman, Allgemeine Geschichte des großen Bauernkriege, published in three volumes in Stuttgart between 1841 and 1843). In 1859, in his review of Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Engels coins the idea of the “materialist conception of history” as a methodology for the critique of political economy. Since then, Engels’ philosophical interests are piqued, in particular with regard to the relations between philosophy and science, which he always considered from a dialectical point of view; albeit materially oriented. Marx’s own painstakingly-completed work—the first volume of Capital appears in 1867, the following will be edited by Engels—is placed against this background. In 1875, Anti-Dühring was written to refute the doctrines of Karl Eugen Dühring a professor in Berlin, who was gaining influence in the German Social Democratic party, in which Engels expounded his metaphysical conceptions. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy dates back to 1886, while in 1884 in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State the principles of historical materialism were measured against the contemporary anthropology of Lewis Henry Morgan on the subject of the historicity of the major social institutions. All these works will profoundly mark the culture of the communist movement and beyond: the Engelsian interpretation of Marx’s theoretical enterprise will remain canonical for many decades to come. He dies in August of 1895.

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3 EARLY YEARS AND THE BIRTH OF COMMUNISM

It can be said that the meaning of Marx’s youthful writings is twofold: One side consists of a cultural critique of capitalist society which precludes the human being the possibility for self-­realization; the other consists of a critique of religion—inspired, as we will see, by the debate within the so-­called “Hegelian Left”—that Marx presents in a completely original way based on the materialistic conception we referred to in the previous chapter. Marx is, however, very adept at linking the two themes in question, so that he is able to transform the critique of religion proposed by his predecessors into something different, and—above all through the use of the concept of alienation—to make it increasingly similar to a radical critique of the society of his time. There exists as one could say a widespread malady of the spirit, which—according to Marx—no one before him has properly understood. To do so, it would be necessary to combine the critique of religion with a materialistic conception of history. This is an important point because the critique of religion already existed on the marketplace of the ideas of his time and indeed is an important aspect of the philosophical discussion after Hegel. The education of Marx took place, in fact, within a romantic and anti-­Enlightenment reaction that was typically Germanic (in some way post-­Napoleonic), and the crisis of German Hegelianism of his time, both serving as a response to Kant on the part of philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling and the Schlegel brothers. Marx, after his school years in Trier, devoted six years to university education, studying briefly in Bonn and then more than five years in Berlin. In Berlin Hegel carried out the final phase of his teaching and his popularity, when Marx arrived, was still skyrocketing.

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The Hegelian Left On the whole, Marx contributed decisively to the realization of that link between reason and reality, the fusion of which had been perhaps the main objective of Hegel’s philosophy. In this context, an undoubted characteristic of his thought is that of keeping himself in equilibrium, so to speak, between rationalism and empiricism. Many others in those years, such as Kierkegaard, had criticized Hegel in a strictly anti-­rationalistic and spiritual perspective. Marx, on the other hand, was never a pure metaphysician, and throughout his life he maintained a constant attraction to empirically considered facts (facts never dissolve into concepts, and this is another significant difference with Hegel). The main critique of the Hegelian Left focused on the meaning of a famous phrase of Hegel’s, written in the preface to his Philosophy of Right: “all that is rational is real, and all that is real is rational.” The Hegelian “right”, or if you prefer, the “Old Hegelians”, interpreted the famous phrase of Hegel's Philosophy of Right by claiming that rationality should adapt to reality. In this way, it offers a vision of philosophy as a description when no justification of reality, especially politics, exists. The “Hegelian Left”, or the “Young Hegelians” if you prefer, instead argued the opposite: it is the reality that must comply with the dictates of reason. In this way, it is claimed that philosophy criticizes reality, trying to change it for the better. Marx was by far the most important exponent of the Hegelian Left. For the exponents of the Hegelian Left, such as Feuerbach, Ruge, and eventually Marx, this sentence of Hegel’s remained rather ambiguous. As Engels said of Hegel, summarizing well the intellectual mood of the Left Hegelians, “the conservatism of his point of view is absolute” (Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy). For the authors of the Hegelian Left, the Hegelian reconciliation of reason and reality was an unhappy union. They argued that, by doing as Hegel, one ended up by making the necessary and eternal essence coincide with the historical existence of things, thus making the factual reality absolute and inevitable. Ruge attacked this confusion from the point of view of political theory, arguing that Hegel had absolutized some political concepts—starting with the state—which were instead transitory and products of history. Feuerbach instead insisted on the absolute specificity of human existence as a fact, arguing that we need to measure philosophical concepts and theories against it.

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In general, one of the constants of the Hegelian Left’s thought is the insistence on the importance of existence in the controversy over the Hegelian reconciliation of reason and reality. Only the empirical existence of the human being would thus enable us to understand the major concepts of philosophy and theology, including the central one of god. For Feuerbach, even God is a human creation, and not the other way around. Marx also focuses his criticism of Hegel on the notion of real or material existence, as others will do in the manner of Kierkegaard. But while Ruge focuses on ethical-­political existence, Feuerbach on that of the human being in the flesh, Marx starts from the economic existence of the masses and their subjugation. Ludwig Fueurbach had begun—as was typical for German ­idealists—with Protestant theology studies (in Heidleberg). He had then gone to Berlin, where he had followed Hegel’s courses and ­studied under his supervision. His first criticism of Hegel dates back to 1835, when he published—in Ruge’s Hallishce Jarübcher—a long essay entitled, Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy. In this essay, he speaks of the nonsense of the Hegelian absolute and of the general teleological matrix of the philosophy of Hegel. This criticism goes hand in hand with a broad recognition of the philosophical value of Hegelian philosophy, which is nevertheless considered the highest point of “philosophical speculation.” Feuerbach’s central idea is that philosophy—after Hegel—needs a radical transformation, as he proclaims in his Provisional Theses for a Reform of Philosophy (1842) and the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843). The central argument maintains that philosophy— still embodied by Hegel—is little more than a masked theology, a sort of denial of theology, which however remains theology. From this negative thesis comes the positive one: philosophy must not concern itself with the absolute, that is to say, God, but with the relative, that is the human. This anthropological view of philosophizing then starts in turn from the sensual nature of the human being and his bodily existence. The consequence of this philosophical transformation is a changed attitude toward politics and religion criticizing the dissolution of the first in the second (of the Hegelian matrix). Against Hegelianism (both left and right), Marx launched the celebrated and dangerous anathema: “The weapon of criticism obviously cannot replace the criticism of weapons.” It is also superfluous to underline how much this rejection of the absolute and the spirit in the name of a renewed materialism counts for Marx and for the European conscience of that time. 21

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The other exponents of the Hegelian Left are less important than Feuerbach, both for Marx and for that historical period. Ruge concentrated his version of Hegelian criticism on the historicization of reality in controversy with his absolutization (attributed to Hegel). The most obvious consequence of this desired historicization consists in the coincidence of philosophy and temporality. Arnold Ruge was also a talented journalist and the discussions between the late 1830s and the early 1840s—which he introduced—in the Deutsche Jahrbücher saw among the participants, besides Feuerbach, Strauss, Zeller, Droysen, Lachmann, and the Grimm brothers. The religious and political criticism of the Deutsche Jahrbücher achieved a rare result for such a sophisticated debate, that of reaching the entire German intellectual class and not just small avant-­garde circles. The most famous philosophical contribution of Ruge consists in the criticism of the Hegelian notion of State: for Ruge the State is mistakenly seen by Hegel as essence and not critically as existence. Bruno Bauer also came from theological studies, and his first work was a critique of the Synoptic Gospels. He was convinced that philosophy, and indirectly German academy, was going through a period of unstoppable decline, connected to the Kantian and idealistic critique of metaphysics. Against this decline, Bauer declares the need to grasp the absolute individuality of being and to build upon it a politics for the future. It is also certain that the criticism of the Hegelian Left was taken very seriously by Schelling, who made it somewhat his own in his mature years during his Berlin lessons from 1840 onwards. Schelling also adopted a central distinction between essence and existence, accusing Hegel of having confused the two, and himself placing greater emphasis on the notion of existence. Philosophy must proceed—in this ­perspective—from being immediate to reaching thought and not vice versa. Philosophy must proceed—from this perspective—from immediate existence to thought and not vice versa. In this thesis, Schelling was certainly not alone, as with him were Feuerbach, Marx and even Kierkegaard, who moreover had the opportunity to follow his lessons. The criticism of the Hegelian Left relegated Hegel’s philosophy to the background for some time, and for a sympathetic resumption of Hegelian studies, we will have to wait until the beginning of the twentieth century after Dilthey and Croce. Now, precisely within the Hegelian Left, the debate on religion was vehement and perceptible. It was a strange debate, as it were, halfway between a theological revision and interpretation 22

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of Hegel. In what sense does the Hegelian spirit correspond to the self-­understanding of God in history? The god in question was the God of Christianity, and in general the Young Hegelians did not tolerate this kind of reading of Hegel. Perhaps the first work to criticize this reading was The Life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss (1835), in which what we would today call a secular vision of the Gospels is presented. But undoubtedly the work that caused the most stir in those years was the Kritk der Evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (3 volumes, 1841–42) by Bruno Bauer, who even denounced the worship of the Gospels. On these premises Ludwig Feuerbach was able—in his Essence of Christianity—to reach a famous skeptical thesis, according to which man resembles God, since God is nothing but a human creation. The debate had come about this far when Marx began to make his voice heard. Marx’s thesis is that the criticism of religion in the manner of Feuerbach goes in the right direction, but only halfway down the road so to speak. While understanding the essence of the religious phenomenon, he none the less fails to grasp its cause. For Marx, religion is a human invention, as for Feuerbach, but it is an invention caused by the conditions of spiritual and material misery in which the human being finds himself in the age of industrial capitalism. That is why “Religion… is the opium of the people” as Marx’s most famous saying on the subject goes. The consequence of this explanation is obvious: only by removing the cause—the political and economic regime, that is—can we eliminate the effect—the drug that is religion. In this sense, it can be said that a sophisticated Catholic interpreter of Marx like Augusto del Noce was not wrong in arguing that Marx’s atheism was not an accident within the theory but a constitutive element (the fact that this was stated in opposition to Italian “cattocomunisti” at the time like Franco Rodano is something specifically related to the cultural history of Italy). Marx has an important aspect in common with the Hegelian Left: the lack of confidence in philosophical theory as such. In these years, while Moses Hess dedicates a book to the “last philosophers”, Bruno Bauer writes that “philosophical literature can be considered finished forever”. It is difficult to say why these thinkers, despite other differences, were each so skeptical of philosophical theory. Perhaps one of the reasons lies even in an excess of admiration for Hegel, who was nonetheless, criticized by these authors. The exponents of the Hegelian Left seem, on the whole, to think that from the pure philosophical point of view Hegel—even with some mistakes—had said all that was important to say. For this reason, 23

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it remained to his successors only to try to put into practice in an original way the theoretical nucleus of the Hegelian dialectic. Whether or not this is the case, the fact is that the writings of the Young Hegelians are often weak from the point of view of the scientific demonstration of a thesis, but capable of interesting and sometimes sensational proclamations. On the other hand, if Hegel had invented “the philosophical discourse on modernity”—as suggested by Jürgen Habermas—the Young Hegelians contributed to it significantly. They did so by introducing into the philosophical universe a combination of professionalism and extra-­academic interests, so that former Privatdozent, journalists, and men of various cultures put their skills to the service of a renewed way of thinking about reality and modernity. This has, both as its premise and as a result, a sort of practical urgency, a desire to change the world that transcends the forced rationalization wrought by Hegel. It is a kind of critical hyper-­activism, which leads the Young Hegelians to conceive themselves as an avant-­garde, which sows the seeds of the future in the present. The radicalism of many of their theses is tied to this self-­conception, and parallel to it is a great capacity for mutual rivalry. Feuerbach and Ruge, Ruge and Marx, Marx and Bauer, Bauer and Stirner, form pairs of hostile companions, ready at the first opportunity for extreme enmity. In this situation of crossfire, whether on the basis of journalistic talent or the ability to write harshly polemical essays, the fixed point remains that these authors count on the effects of their writings in society. Often the practical consequences of this radical activism were dramatic even from the personal point of view, and almost all the exponents of the Hegelian Left had trouble with employment and economic hardships in their day-­to-­day lives.

The Marxian critique of Hegel Marx actively collaborated with Ruge when their periodical, the Deutsche Jahrbücher—due to the radicalization of the political opinions that it hosted— was forbidden in Germany, to establish the Deutsch-­Französischen Jahrbücher in France. His exchanges of letters with Feuerbach and Strauss were the order of the day in the 1840s, as was his collaboration with Bauer. In short, Marx was quite integrated into the Hegelian Left. Of course, it can be said without question that his philosophical depth and degree of culture were superior to those of the other exponents of the Hegelian Left and that he was—from this point of view—the only one 24

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comparable to Hegel himself. Not by chance, therefore, the first important paper by Marx—dated 1843 but published posthumously in 1927—is dedicated to the Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right (in German, Kritik des hegelschen Staatsrechts), and represents a comment, strongly influenced by Feuerbach, on paragraphs 261–313 of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. In this essay, Marx criticizes Hegel because his Philosophy of Right is too similar to a logic, so that in his ambit “the existing political determinations evaporate into abstract thoughts.” A thesis of this kind was taken up by Louis Althusser, in the context of the French university of the second half of the twentieth century, to separate Marx from Hegel and present him as the father of a new way of doing social science. In essence, Marx accepts the Hegelian thesis that sees in modernity the emergence of a tension between civil society and the State, but criticizes Hegel for having given an idealized and distorted view of the relationship between state and civil society (and family) by exaggerating the importance of the former at the expense of the latter. Marx instead argues that civil society is more important than the state, because it is in civil society that the conflict between classes occurs. In his words: “the political state cannot be without the natural basis of the family and the artificial basis of civil society; they are its conditio sine qua non.” In essence, Marx’s criticism of Hegel, and the reversal of idealism in practice are interesting but not entirely original because they are affected by the cultural climate of the time. It can also be said— as Biagio de Giovanni argued in, “Hegel e il tempo storico della società borghese”—that Marx is not able here to fully grasp the realism implicit in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Despite these limitations, Marx’s central objection to Hegel, according to which the State does not express the ethical overcoming of a fundamental antagonism, but rather represents a solution to the functional dilemmas of society, remains of formidable intellectual relevance. Moreover, the political critique of the constitutional monarchy is an important political consequence of the theoretical thesis, and the centrality of the economic–social sphere makes the mature Marx appear in the background. Finally, the “discovery” of social classes and their importance remains a memorable sociological result, the scope of which economists have often struggled to understand. In the years immediately preceding (1842–1843) Marx had become a journalist at, and eventually director of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. One should not forget that Marx was, practically all his life, an extraordinary journalist, able to integrate as 25

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few others could theoretical understanding of an issue (which is not surprising) with knowledge of the facts (which is less obvious for him). Overall, his political articles show a radical liberal– democratic position, different from the communism of the following years that would make him famous. In the same years, Marx writes On the Jewish Question (Zur Judenfrage), an essay inspired by the criticism of two publications on the same subject by Bruno Bauer (Die Judenfrage and Die Fähigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen, frei zu werden; see B. Bauer, K. Marx, The Jewish Question, edited by M. Tomba). This essay is often viewed as a critique of democracy or of Judaism, but in reality, it supports a more sophisticated thesis. In fact, Marx seems to think that Jews should not aspire to obtain the same “liberal” rights as Christians, in principle because these—identified with those contained in the Déclaration des droits de l’droits et du citoyen of 1791—are nothing more than the rights of the selfish individual. But, as we said, the reason is not sheer suspicion of liberal democracy or mere distrust of the Jews, but rather the realization that having obtained liberal rights has not prevented Christians from suffering material and spiritual misery. And as a consequence, one cannot see why Jews should imitate them. The goal of political emancipation—as Marx always maintains—is not bad in and of itself, but nevertheless insufficient because what is truly needed is a real human emancipation. The implication is that, in order to improve the human condition, it isn’t enough to revise the juridical form of the State, but it is necessary to change the economic structure of civil society. Probably, Marx was not wrong to deny that human emancipation can be identified with political (democratic) emancipation. And there is in this claim some remnant of Judaism, if only the fundamental idea of a liberation of humanity, and—as Ágnes Heller said—such liberation is a leitmotiv of Judaism. That said, it must also be admitted that in On the Jewish Question Marx indulges in a negative view of Judaism—he who came from a family of Jewish origin with two rabbi grandfathers!—based on strange anti-­Jewish biases which he never explains. Not for nothing does the text end with the famous phrase “the social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism,” and the Marxian romantic condemnation of money tends to identify Judaism with money. This attitude could be thought to depend on the humiliations suffered by his father because of his ethnic identity, constrained by a forced conversion to Christianity. Be that as it may, his relations with Jewish intellectuals were never 26

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easy, as shown, for example, by the case of Moses Hess, who was undoubtedly a man of esteem, and highly admired Marx. But more generally still, Marx always had a kind of refusal toward Judaism, convinced that the assimilation of Jews in Europe was impossible, and that nascent liberal Zionism was a chimera. Perhaps, precisely this instinctive rejection causes one of the most obvious misunderstandings in Marx’s life, the one that always made him overlook the importance of nationalism as a political and ethical force. As the icing on the cake in this essay there is also a critique of human rights, conceived by Marx in a rather short-­sighted manner as “bourgeois human rights.” Marx argues that “the rights of man [...] are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society— i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community.”1 This thesis may seem at the very least hasty and short-­sighted, and in part it is. But we must also keep in mind that Marx, with Locke, as a typical human right has in mind one pertaining to property, and so the thing becomes less incomprehensible. Above all, having essentially targeted legal rights, one can understand that—in his opinion—a society that must always defend itself through legal coercion is a society lacking in sense of community. However, in this work—and this is important—­ political alienation emerges as a derived form of economic alienation, following a line of reasoning destined to become central with time (especially for the radical Marxist positions, sometimes influenced by Heidegger as in the case of Marcuse). It is also interesting to consider the criticism presented here of liberal–­democratic constitutionalism: for Marx constitutionalism is based on an obvious error, which consists of wanting to preserve and guarantee the existing economic-­social equilibrium rather than subverting it. It is in this way that what will later be considered the historical materialism of Marx takes hold. It is an important although vague theme, as long as Marx never gave a complete and unified version of historical materialism in one single work (the first formulation is in the years 1843–48, after which—with an exception in 1859—it is all in all taken for granted). This position comes, in an original way, from the fusion of two classical philosophical horizons. On the one hand, there is certainly German idealism, of which Marx is, in his own way, a brilliant epilogue. Marx’s German idealism is not that of Kant, who also recognized the merit of placing the human being at the center of the cognitive and practical world. It is instead—as we have said several times—that of Hegel who, through the dialectic method, introduced the historicity of the real into the philosophical 27

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world. Precisely the introduction of history into the core of the theoretical approach constitutes one of Marx’s undoubted merits. It stemmed partly from the cultural climate of the German university of those years, in other words both from the influence of Hegel (as we have seen) and from that of the historical school (Savigny and others) whose theses Marx had very much in mind. In particular, we undoubtedly see the influence of Hegel’s idea of an “organic” development of history is, such that a set of events takes on meaning from an internal logical process of a substantially metaphysical nature. Granted what is due to the spirit of the time, it must be said that the originality of the Marxian approach to the logic of history is substantial. From this point of view, Marx overcame (in the dialectical sense of the Aufhebung) also Hegel, seeking—and in his opinion finding—a worldly cause for the malfunctioning of the organic development. A cause which is no longer constituted by the vagueness of the absolute spirit but by the concrete class of capitalists. The latter is to blame for the lacerating split between an individualistic civil society composed of self-­interested subjects and a politics that claims to represent the organic whole, while failing it. This is primarily what led György Lukács—in his celebrated History and Class Consciousness—to argue that Marx’s historical materialism exceeded that of Hegel for affirming the primacy of praxis while retaining the essence of the dialectical method (of Hegel himself). The novelty introduced by a historical conception of development can be clearly seen if we consider that the social and political thought of the time, as for example can be seen in the works of liberals and utilitarians, usually started from an assumption of the immutability of human interests, and was thus a historical. As pointed out by Hegel, a human being is not immutable, but is oriented in coherence with its historical time and the culture that characterizes it, and how this occurs depends on the interaction with the world. Something like that, for Marx, comes close to the truth. But it misses the point because the whole thing is too abstract: it takes place only at the level of thought and not at the level of reality. And here Marx meets the other philosophical horizon, that of materialism. The latter is realistic, from Hobbes to Feuerbach, but has the defect of being typically a-­historical and non-­dialectical. From this we understand that Marx’s idea is to accept the realism of materialists—albeit in his own way— while historicizing it and making it dialectical through the great Hegelian vision. Hegelian progress must thus take shape in the real world through man–nature dialectics and the development of 28

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social relations, or—to quote Habermas—through labor and interaction. Indeed, the replacement of the self-­formative process of the spirit, which is at the center of Hegel’s philosophy, with the evolution in the relationship between the acting subject and the sphere of production, remains one of the lasting achievements of Marx’s thought. In this way—as Habermas argues—labor becomes the founding principle of modernity. What emerges is the famous theory according to which the history of man corresponds to the of the forms of social relations of production. When new technologies fail to fit within the existing economic and social structures, there is a “contradiction.” But the latter cannot last too long because sooner or later progress will sweep away the structures incapable of holding up over time. In this way, if we apply this logical structure to the economic–social world, we can say that capitalism has replaced feudalism, but inevitably it will find its own internal contradiction and will have to yield to communism.

Early communism Marx, in October 1843, is forced due to his political and journalistic activity to leave Germany. It will be the first of a series of expulsions from his country and attempts to return. He takes refuge in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Europe, and home to many German exiles. Marx meets several of these exiles, including the tailor Wilhelm Weitling, the first manual worker he met, and the poet Heinrich Heine, and also attends meetings of the League of the Just. He spends the years 1843–1845 in Paris, where he is fascinated by the Universal Exposition and the electricity with which Place de la Concorde is illuminated. In these years, the project of The Franco-­German Annals, undertaken with Ruge, fails and Marx enthusiastically reads French literature (his favorite writer is Balzac) and above all progressively embraces communism. His communism emerges not only from the reading of the French radicals, but also from a critical view of democracy: for Marx, the fault of democracy is that of separating the political sphere from the socio-­economic one. Politics must serve instead to resolve concrete economic and social issues. Marx mentions among the inspiring sources of this thesis the “modern French”, and his interpreters have usually considered these to be primarily Saint-­ Simon and Proudhon. The failure of the Annals pushes him to write for Vorwärts, a vaguely revolutionary newspaper whose overall position Marx doesn’t fully endorse, and it will be this 29

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collaboration that eventually ends up determining his expulsion from France. He moves to Brussels, where he spends three years which were on the whole industrious and fruitful (1845–1848). The failure of the 1848 uprisings will cost Marx his expulsion from Belgium, which he will leave to find his final residence in London, which was then “the great city of refuge for the exiles of all nations.” The ascendancy of French communism in these years is important even if it has been said to be less so with regards to other influences, and can be summed up in a sympathy for the revolution and for the political radicalism that Marx nurtured all his life. In any case, among the French thinkers of the time, one can certainly say that Marx succumbed to the influence of the socialist movement from Babeuf to Louis Blanc and August Blanquì, of the utopian socialism of Saint-­Simon and Fourier, and the socialist anarchism that Marx would take seriously at least until the mid-­1840s. In general, the doctrine of common ownership instead of private ownership of the means of production comes from these authors, although it is not known whether Marx took it directly from Morelly or Mably, rather than from Babeuf or even from German versions of French communism. It seems rather that the Marxian class theory, whose originality is not in question, has precedents in Linguet and Saint-­Simon, as the crisis theory does in Sismondi. The dictatorship of the proletariat then finds previous traces in Babeuf and Blanquì, just as the centrality of the working class had been declared by Louis Blanc and other French communists. Hegel’s notion of historical development also plays a part in the formation of the communist Marx. In a critical review essay on Hegel, Marx reiterates how Hegelianism presents “an inverted consciousness of the world,” while for him it is instead the world that should be turned upside down. This subversive spirit leads to a more explicit adoption by Marx of communism as a philosophical–political horizon. This is evident when reading the famous Economic-­Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, published only in the twentieth century and the source of heated controversy among scholars. Even before—in notes on the classics of economics coeval with the Economic-­ Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844—Marx, after arguing that politics must serve the problems of civil society, for the first time identified the latter with the economic structure. In these same notes, the central relationship between commodity and money appears, and consequently the concept of “alienated labor”. 30

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Alienation The Economic-­Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 appear to be substantially divided into three parts, not yet fully connected: a critical reading of classical political economy (for the first time in Marx’s life), an analysis of private property and communism, and a discussion of the concept of labor in a Hegelian horizon. In the book, the concept of “alienation” plays a central role, a concept that to some extent corresponds to the Hegelian separation of man from nature, but Marx’s alienation is not the same as Hegel’s. For Hegel, in fact, alienation is the “negation” of the primitive unity in which humanity lived, the division of the subject from the community. For Marx, on the other hand, what matters most is not humanity but the person who, in the conditions of capitalist production, loses sight of the horizon of meaning and becomes incapable of self-­realization. For the concept of alienation, Marx had an unrecognized intellectual debt with Max Stirner. Finally, we can also say that the concept of alienation takes up, in original forms, a traditional idea of almost aesthetic self-­ actualization that Marx inherits from Herder and Schiller (and that we will find again in Marcuse). The meaning of alienation for Marx is threefold. In the first place, the alienation and separation of the subjective conditions from the objective ones of production, whereby the salaried worker, alienated from his own labor-­power, loses all control over the product. Secondly, the wage worker “no longer recognizes himself in his work,” having ceded himself as a commodity to the capitalist. Thirdly, alienation has a metaphysical–existential meaning, so that in the historical conditions that characterize capitalist society, each worker cannot self-­actualize. In conclusion, alienation reveals that modern capitalist society has profoundly disturbed the nature of human social relations. The concept of alienation is similar to that of separation, implying the division of the things that were joined. For Marx, in the historical conditions characterized by the capitalist regime, what occurs is no less than the separation from the human essence, so to speak, from its existence. This is revealed epistemologically in the unconscious substitution—systematic in capitalist society—of interpersonal relations of exploitation (reality) with objective laws such as supply and demand (appearance). In this sense, alienation in religious terms resembles a kind of idol worship. We have already seen how Marx, in the treatment of the Hegelian Left, has dealt with something of the sort, that is to say of religious alienation or alienation from the essence of the human species due

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to religion. But then, as has happened with the critique of religion, with time Marx is convinced that authentic alienation—following in some way Feuerbach but also Adam Smith—depends on the world of labor and production, and from the historical conditions in which it materializes. In other words, in the capitalist world it is labor that leads to the alienation of the human being. The human being—because of the relations of domination established through economic exchange—thus keeps from becoming estranged from itself by establishing the dominion of the inanimate (Colletti). In capitalist society, the alienation of the worker is revealed in the fact that his activity connected to the product becomes extraneous to the point of being forced in some way to sell himself. The first type of alienation is the alienation from the product, and the second consists in the alienation from the productive activity as a whole that derives from the division of labor. The third, existential, type of alienation consists in the separation of the single person from the human species. As can be seen in Chaplin’s famous film, Modern Times, the mechanical repetition of work makes it progressively impossible for the human being to fully self-­realize. The worker does not work, in the alienating capitalist society, to satisfy a desire for work, but in order to stay alive. However, this is the result of class domination, and the cause of a kind of social slavery. Precisely for this reason, any reformist attitude toward this type of society is unsuccessful and only the revolution followed by the establishment of communism, as an alternative to the capitalist regime, offers a serious source of hope to the exploited. Beyond the crude and primitive forms, communism presents itself here as the ideal and real solution combined, to the antagonisms and contradictions that have influenced the history of humanity. This happens through the suppression of private property and the consequent abolition of money. This is followed by the reappropriation by a renewed and no longer selfish human being of his true social nature. As written (a bit too romantically to be taken literally) in German Ideology, the human being—in socialist society— so transformed will be able to actualize itself in full, going hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, tending to the cattle in the evening and exercising their critical abilities after dinner. However, for Marx, communism does not present itself as a mere ideal but rather as the destiny of humanity, as the outcome of a natural historical process. From this point of view, it is understandable why according to Marx communism is “the riddle of history solved.”

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The publication of the Economic-­Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844—which occurred only in 1932 after a complex editorial affair (see Musto, 2008)—sparked a widespread debate. This debate became particularly heated, also following the political openings that Nikita Khrushchev had proposed during the twentieth Congress of the CPSU. The discussion on the subject then contributed to creating that idealistic, revolutionary, and pro-­active climate that must lead to sixty-­eight. A climate that is found both in Italy in the widespread cattocomunismo of those years, and in a more philosophical way in the writings of Herbert Marcuse. It is difficult indeed to make people understand today, more than fifty years later, how such a sophisticated intellectual debate became part of common knowledge and daily discussions in the second half of the 1960s. Many authors believed that, especially with the theory of alienation, Marx had provided a “humanist” version—more general and philosophical, that is—of his theory, a version destined to end with the mature Marx, untraceable in his main work, Capital. Libraries of books have been written about this possibility of distinguishing two different Marxes through time. Well known among others became the interpretation of Louis Althusser, who insisted on the distinction between an initial “humanist” Marx and a subsequent (and definitive) “scientific” Marx. It is difficult in general to have a precise opinion on such complex questions of interpretation in which a vision of Marx and Marxism certainly plays an important role, and it would be inappropriate to attempt an account of the kind here. Personally, I am convinced that the philosophical aspects are always present in Marx’s work: in fact, there is a permanent tension not only between essence and existence, but between what we might call substance and accident, and between the phenomenal and noumenal human being (also why I started by saying that “Marx is a German philosopher”). Remaining on the theme of alienation, we can only be content with recalling that the idea—central to the overcoming of alienation—of “the return of man to himself” always remains in Marx’s work even if the term “alienation” appears rarely in his writings after 1858. Furthermore, a certain continuity between the first Marx and the second can be seen in the fact that his concept of alienation is never linked to labor as such, or to a purely existential experience (as it could be for Freud), but rather to the deformation of labor in capitalist society and to the commodification of the human being that follows.

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However, the concept of alienation (Entfremdung; that is to say, estrangement, but also Entäußerung, a true coming out of oneself to become other than oneself) remains important in the general economy of Marx’s thought, and may even allow one to find a red thread that links the young Marx with the mature Marx of Capital. Marx is in fact since his youth convinced that the oddities of the social world in the age of capitalism is that some become very rich and others remain very poor, especially since apparently in his time there are no conditions of coercion that explain the subjugation of the worker as in ancient times. The question is clear: how can the expropriation of wealth by the capitalists take place with the consent of the workers and in the absence of coercive institutions? The answer to this central question is twofold. On the one hand, consensus is only apparent and is somehow extended to workers by hiding the reality of the situation; the alienation of the latter makes them victims of the employer. On the other hand, as we shall see, Marx elaborates a complex theory of value to definitively clarify this aspect of the story. Only this theory succeeds in unmasking the theses of those whom Marx calls “vulgar economists” and then those who do not recognize the truth of exploitation and see profit as a physiological result of the economic system and not as a form of social imposition. The reconciliation between these two hypotheses is based on Marx’s conviction that the labor market and the determination of wages under capitalism are intrinsically coercive. This, of course, is because in essence the workers have no choice, and are obliged to sell their labor-­power in order to survive. This background determines the reciprocal bargaining power of the parties in the capitalist market (so is possible to reconstruct in terms of game theory, as Roemer and Elster have done). In conclusion, we can think that the concept of alienation is able to relate— in light of an ideal of autonomy of the person—two central aspects of Marx’s work: on the one hand thesis based on the economic theory and the forces of production, and on the other the thesis based on exploitation. According to economic theory, capitalism turns out to be substantially inefficient, whereas from the point of view of the thesis on exploitation it seems unjust. The lack of meaning—in Rawlsian terms, the loss of that fundamental primary good constituted by “self-­respect”—and the systematic incapacity to self-­realize result from the capitalist economy and allow for exploitation. At the same time, however, these same deficits reveal the structural injustice of capitalist society and provide the normative basis on which the revolutionary process can leverage. From 34

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this point of view, the overcoming of alienation is a sort of absolute, and thus presupposes if not the end of history at least the end of the State and of capitalism.

The Manifesto In these same years, Marx meets Friedrich Engels, and the two write together The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism (1845) which constitutes a vigorous and bitter attack on the Bauer brothers, known exponents of the Hegelian Left. In this way, Marx demonstrates—which is confirmed throughout the rest of his scientific career—that he cannot easily dismiss an idea without taking it up personally with its author. In 1845–46, from Brussels, he collaborates with Engels on the drafting of The German Ideology—this essay was also published posthumously—perhaps the first work in which historical materialism came to the fore in a sufficiently complete form. The German Ideology is however a work of considerable interest, in which Marx the philosopher emerges in a fairly systematic manner. Unfortunately, it was not received at the time with sufficient attention, which confirmed the thesis of a scientific Marx opposed and superior to the philosopher (without neglecting Engels’ unquestionable responsibility in the matter). The theoretical background is always Hegelian, in the peculiar Marxian version influenced by Feuerbach and the Hegelian Left, but the rejection of spiritualism and abstraction is unequivocal. They are replaced by the centrality of what for Hegel was “civil society”, while the subject of history is no longer constituted by the dynamics of nations but by that of the classes in conflict with each other. From this point of view, bourgeois society is the last one in which this conflict appears and with its overcoming there will also be a pacification of humanity. In any case, capitalism appears as a progressive and absolutely necessary phase of human history, and communism is seen more as a trend than as a society with established traits. It should be noted that both capitalism and communism are not conceived as local phases but as essential aspects in the global development of all peoples. The Young Hegelians are relentlessly mistreated by Marx in the text, in the name of a critique that could have as its emblem the famous phrase of the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have so far only interpreted the world in different ways – the point however is to change it” (also inscribed on Marx’s tomb). 35

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In 1847 Marx publishes The Poverty of Philosophy, a harsh criticism of Proudhon (who had written a Philosophy of Poverty) continuing the series of violent and personal attacks on authors who he had previously admired and used. Indeed, Proudhon had committed the naivety of submitting his work to the attention of Marx, who again responded with unprecedented critical violence. Marx considered Proudhon an amateur in philosophy, unable to understand Hegel, and sloppy in economics (Marx believed he had destroyed Proudhon’s theory of exchange once and for all). Worse than ever, Proudhon was in his opinion an individualist and a moralist (here too Pellicani wrote words to remember). Above all, however, in 1848 Marx and Engels write The Communist Manifesto, published later in London in German, perhaps the most successful piece of political propaganda ever written. Drafted on behalf of the Communist League (the recently renamed “League of the Just”), the essay enunciates a general political program in an almost catechetical form, such as: “What is the Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of liberation of the proletariat.” Its opening line is as famous as a passage of a Shakespearean tragedy or a triplet by Dante: “A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of communism” (Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa – das Gespenst des Kommunismus). The essay presents class struggle as the central focus of critique and engine of history: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. The main classes of the time in which Marx and Engels write are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The proletariat, as representative of the oppressed, has the emancipatory function of realizing the revolutionary transformation of society. This role of the proletariat intersects with the theory of historical development, whereby the proletariat would give the final push to a society, the capitalist one, in which relations and forces of production are already in contradiction. In supporting this thesis, Marx and Engels nevertheless insist on the historical merits of the bourgeoisie, on its revolutionary and innovative capacity. But precisely because of this capacity, Marx’s 36

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bourgeoisie can’t do without “constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production” and in the end the bourgeoisie itself will produce nothing but a permanent socio-­economic contradiction and various crises of overproduction, given that “bourgeois relationships have become too narrow to contain the wealth they have produced.” The proletariat, that is, the class destined to supplant the bourgeoisie, will find the necessary strength and unity for the revolution from these crises of capitalism. The main thesis is that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” with the consequence that only a violent revolution can lead to the political domination of the proletariat and therefore to the true democracy that ends up coinciding with communism (on this coincidence of communism and democracy there would of course be much to discuss). There is no doubt that the reduction of the historical explanation to class struggle is a dramatic simplification, because, to give just one example, the struggle between patricians and plebeians in republican Rome is not easily defined as a class struggle precisely in Marx’s terms. Nevertheless, the small book by Marx and Engels marvelously combines analysis and prescription in a mixture of awareness and faith that it is difficult to find elsewhere in documents of this type and not by chance end up being one of the most widely read writings of all time after the texts of the great religions. In short, we are in the presence of a cocktail of utopia and historical materialism that has aroused incredible passions—albeit sometimes very dangerous ones—in millions of readers (at the time the essay came out, Marx was not yet thirty).

After 1848 Almost at the same time as the publication of the Manifesto, the revolution of 1848 breaks out in Paris, and its echoes immediately arrive throughout Europe. Marx rushes to Paris from where he was expelled in 1845 to shelter in Brussels, but then returns to Cologne and resumes the publication of his newspaper, now with the name of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a newspaper that will last just over a year with 300 copies published. The new expulsion from Germany is the direct consequence of these activities. From August 1848 until his death, Marx lives in London, with the exception of short trips abroad. In London he finds the Chartist leader George Julian Harney, also a member of the League of the Just, which Marx had by then taken over. The name the league had taken under his (authoritarian) command was the unequivocal 37

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name of the Bund der Kommunisten (League of Communists), coherently changing its motto from “all men are brothers” to “proletarians of all countries, unite.” From London Marx tries to resume his journalistic activity by founding a new magazine. The articles published in 1850 in the renewed Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-­ökonomische Revue (of which only four issues come out) are largely dedicated to political life in France, whose history Marx shows he knows quite well. Some of them are then reproduced by Engels in 1859, under the title The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850. Due in part to the wave of repression that reigns in Europe after 1848, Marx radicalizes and for the first time in these articles he adopts the infamous expression “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In January 1852 Marx is offered—by Weydemeyer—to collaborate weekly on the magazine Die Revolution which will be published in German in the United States (this magazine will also have a short and unfortunate life). Marx writes his articles punctually, articles then published together with the title The Eighteenth Brumaire of Luigi Bonaparte, which—as we have mentioned—it is part of small number of Marx’s works published during his lifetime. Also, this essay begins with a phrase that later became famous: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-­historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” In fact, Marx was struck by the absurdity of the comparison between the original Napoleon of the past and the present day “knockoff.” The “18th Brumaire” of the title sarcastically recalls not an event in the life of the nephew but the seizure of power of his grandfather (in 1799). The Eighteenth Brumaire covers the period of French history until 1852 and, together with the articles written on English politics, provides an interesting picture of the way in which Marx interpreted the actual politics of his time in the light of his theoretical theses on the class struggle. It is also interesting for the way in which Marx reads Bonapartism, and its contact with the national assembly, as an example of dictatorship to which the bourgeoisie is forced to resort once it is no longer sure of its class domination. In truth one can also argue that in the case in question, Marx did not fully understand the problems of an embryonic democracy, transforming moreover the effective conflict between Republicans and Loyalists into a fairly imaginary one based on the class struggle (they must have been Lumpenproletariat and ignorant peasants, who did not understand their real interests well, to let Louis Bonaparte win). 38

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In London Marx carried out intense political activity, in contact with political refugees, especially Germans, while refusing to meet even stimulating characters who were part of the “alternative and revolutionary London” like Mazzini and Herzen. In 1850 he wrote with Engels an Address of the Central Committee to the League of March 1850, a text which evokes the “permanent revolution,” which was destined to become quite famous, being taken up in Russia by Trotsky, and later, Lenin. In those same years, Marx had become a correspondent for an American newspaper, where it seems that his writing was particularly appreciated, the New York Daily Tribune. This collaboration meant that for a few years Marx was able to enjoy even a small, fixed income, a collaboration that, however, ceased after ten years (1852–62) leaving him at the mercy of the blackest poverty. From a personal point of view, it was undoubtedly a sad period in which three of his sons died, largely due to the conditions of poverty in which Marx lived in the then infamous district of Soho. However, as usual—despite his misfortunes—Marx in these years is able to read everything and not only his economists and philosophers, but also so much more, starting from English literature, that would serve him also to improve his mastery of the language (among others he read Henry Fielding and Walter Scott).

Note 1 Marx, K., & Stenning, H. J. (2012). Selected Essays. Ohio: Duke Classics.

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4 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF THE ECONOMY

The years 1850–1878 are years of even more intense study. Victorian London is flourishing and freer than the countries of continental Europe, even if plagued by terrible inequality and by that radical poverty so poignantly described in Dickens’ novels. Alongside the traditional prestige of the Nobles grows an industrious bourgeoisie also able to propose a new outlook on life, grounded in austerity, commitment to work and a willingness to take risks. The deep ideology of this bourgeoisie and of this ­outlook—in Marx’s eyes—is represented by the new British political economy. Not surprisingly, the two main political parties on the British scene—the Whigs and the Tories—stand out from each other on aspects of social issues, but share the ideology in question. To all this, the Empire, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie, Marx opposes his studies and his political passion. On the advice of Engels, Marx seeks out and eventually receives permission to read in the Reading Room of the British Library in London—today in the British Museum you can still see a reconstruction of the place where he worked—beginning the systematic study of political economy which then would lead to Capital, his most important work. In this same period Marx also does intensive work as a journalist, and writes pamphlets, short essays and newspaper articles usually inspired by a strong empiricism not disrupted by ideal force, often very modern in tone and overall capable of building a sort of critical history of the present. In this period he wrote a short essay on British imperialism in India. Few among those who are not already aware of this would believe that Marx turns out to be extremely pro-­Western and in favor of the British occupation of India for its long-­term positive effects (drawing inspiration from the work of James and John Stuart Mill). England, says Marx, destabilizing what would later 40

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187783-5

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be called “the Asiatic mode of production,” was on the occasion none other than “the unconscious instrument of history.” After all, Marx inherited from Hegel the idea that Asia on the whole was a stationary continent devoid of history (it is easy to say today that the two—and with them later Max Weber—were blatantly proven wrong on this point). Of the enormous critical work of these years only little would see the light of day while Marx was still alive, that is to say, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and the first volume of Capital. The publication of the rest would take place between 1857 and the end of the twentieth century, in ways and forms that are difficult to systematically order. In 1857–58 Outline of the Critique of Political Economy (often cited as Grundrisse from the first word in the German title), more than 1,000 pages in printed notes are drawn up, published in Moscow in 1939–41 but not available to Western scholars until 1953. It is a work that presents an interesting and profound insight into the way Marx saw philosophy and the history of economics. In the Grundrisse we find the explanation of some fundamental concepts: how money depends on a specific way of conceiving commodity, and how capital develops from money. Some fundamental categories of Marx’s philosophical and economic thought are introduced, such as those of value, labor-­power, and surplus. All these concepts will later be developed and perfected in Capital, but find their first exposure here. It should be noted that the book had been in the works since 1844, when Marx was in Paris, and was actually written only in 1857, largely because, according to the author, a devastating economic crisis ensued. Marx, not surprisingly, interprets the crisis in question as structural in capitalism, providing his first version of a crisis theory and linking it to technological innovation. However, despite the long gestation, if nothing else intellectual, and the unquestionable theoretical novelty of the vision, the Grundrisse is not usually considered a sufficiently clear and organized version of Marx’s economic thought. This, in all probability, is due to the fact that he had profoundly changed his vision from 1844 to 1857. In August 1858, Marx interrupts his work on the Grundrisse, to write—for the sake of change in a period of poverty and poor health—the first version of what was to be a general introduction to his economic thought with the title A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie). It is a relatively short text (130 pages), which can be considered a sort of 41

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first version of the first volume of Capital, a text that will be published in 1,000 copies in June 1859 by the publisher Duncker of Berlin on Lassalle’s proposal. Of the initial project, Marx actually manages to complete only two chapters, albeit important ones, on commodity and money. Perhaps for this reason the impact of the book will be modest, disappointing the author very much, despite the efforts by Marx, Engels and other friends to popularize it. The text begins with the discussion of the concept of commodity, as will happen later in Capital, and the tone of condemnation of money, understood in its social function, is softened compared to previous writings. From now on, money will be considered—despite the corruptive aspect is involved—an indispensable element in the formation of capital and in the historical transition from ancient to modern society. Capital (Volume I 1867b, Volume II 1865–1878, Volume III 1864–1875) is at once the most technical and difficult of Marx’s works, but also perhaps the only one in which the economic analysis is fully united with the more philosophical Hegelian aspiration mentioned above. It is undoubtedly one of the most influential books of the nineteenth century, on a par perhaps with Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species. In addition to the circumstances of health and commitments resulting from the political activity carried out above all in the context of the International Workingmen’s Association (Marx was a member of the General Council) the tormented elaboration of the work—which will never be completed, its chapters written and rewritten several times—is also due to the fraught economy that forced Marx to do other work, to the complexity inherent in the project itself and to an even more significant extent to the perpetual dissatisfaction of the author himself. All of this has in fact led to the lack of a definitive edition of the first volume of Capital, the only one of the three whose publication was followed by Marx in person (R. Fineschi, A New Marx,§ 2.3.2). The main purpose of the work is to explain the functioning, the defects and the prospects of the capitalist economy. This happens, however, within a complex philosophical vision that brings together under its aegis the laws of social development, a general economic theory revised from a historical standpoint, and a social history interpreted from an economic standpoint. It is—beyond the pros and cons—indeed a grandiose project, whose theoretical course is interrupted by digressions on the condition of the proletariat and its history in the context of a sometimes detailed 42

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description of the various periods of human development. All this in the light of a formidable methodological innovation and highly original style. Compared to the Manifesto, A Contribution to the Critique and the Grundrisse, perhaps the most obvious novelty is the greater analytical nature of the argument and the greater completeness of the content (which in any case is not little). From the point of view of the introduction of concepts, the most original nucleus is found in the analysis of labor and in its relations with the other fundamental categories of Marxian thought. An appropriate analysis of Capital—given the size and complexity of the work—would be impossible here. At this point, however, it may be noted that the alleged split between two Marxes, one the young theorist of alienation characterized by the Manuscripts of 1844, and the other “scientific” Marx of Capital, has been exaggerated. Marx remains, for all his long and prolific intellectual career, a thinker of the Hegelian Left, albeit sui generis and strongly critical of Hegel. The ultimate goal of his systematic critique of bourgeois economy can be read in this light, identified as the human being’s liberation from the chains which the capitalist regime have tied it. Basically, the leitmotiv of Capital consists in demystifying the appearance and revealing that capitalism systematically creates the hegemony of “dead labor” over “living labor”, which in turn is analogous to what happens ideologically in the religious universe where an inversion of role between subject and object also occurs. As you can see, even if in a different way, the same thoughts of the 1840s return.

Capital: A summary of the principal arguments Das Kapital, with the subtitle Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, is, although unfinished, Marx’s magnum opus. The original plan provided for the analysis of the capitalist mode of production—this is the content of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy—a six-­volume development: a volume on capital, one on rent, one on wage labor, one on state, one on foreign trade, and one on the world market (Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859). Of this great project, only the first volume on capital and some topics from the second and third (wage labor and land rent) have been realized, and even then, only partially. Originally the largest part of the work (more than 1,200 pages) was dedicated to a critical history of economic science, with the title Theories of Surplus Value, a 43

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part which would be published separately only between 1905 and 1910 in three volumes by Karl Kautsky. Capital was knowingly written for the working class; this destination, and in general the political-­revolutionary matrix of the work, was evident in the eyes of Marx and Engels. In spite of this, the richness of the references and the complexity of the theoretical development makes the text difficult to access for non-­experts. But even for the experts it is not easy to navigate within the work. Below is a brief summary of the main points:

Volume I. The process of production of capital Published in its first edition in 1867 in Hamburg by the editor Meissner, the first volume of Capital presents the basic anatomical elements of the world of capitalist production, and as such, was the main reference text for the reconstruction and criticism of Marxian doctrines discussed so far. The first section on commodities and money is notoriously among the most difficult to understand parts of Marxian work, submitted by the author himself to several revisions (see K. Marx, L’analisi della forma di valore, edited by C. Pennavaja) and serves as the field of protracted exegetical battles that still continue today (R. Fineschi, Un Nuovo Marx, §1.2.). The point of departure for the Marxian exposition is the commodity, the elementary form in which wealth appears in capitalist society, wealth that is produced not for consumption but for sale. Only later will the development of the categories of the capitalist world of production meet the other fundamental characteristic, namely the control over the process of production by capital holders who employ workers. Marx uses the term “subsumption” (a synonym of subjugation) to refer to the process in which labor is controlled by capital. The process of subsumption takes place historically, as we leave the domain of cooperation—typical of the economies of undifferentiated societies—and we enter that of civil society characterized by division of labor and the progressive introduction of machinery into the workplace. These parts are drastically reduced—compared to earlier drafts—in the published version of the first volume. This actually occurs with many of the parts of the rational reconstruction of history and general dialectical development, and Stedman Jones credibly argues that this can be attributed to the will to distance himself from classical German idealism. A thesis of this kind seems to be confirmed by what Marx 44

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himself writes in the postscript to Volume I in 1873, emphasizing the difference between his vision and the Hegelian dialectic. Commodity appears first of all as something useful, aimed at the satisfaction of needs or specific requirements, and in this it presents itself as a use value, but it also has another characteristic— exchange value—which makes it exchangeable with other goods. Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value. (Capital, Vol. I, p. 27; emphasis added) The institution of exchange establishes a quantitative relationship between qualitatively different goods of different use value. In order for this relationship to exist and the system of exchanges to be possible, according to Marx, the goods in question must have something in common, which he calls tout-­court value, of which exchange value constitutes the mode of expression or “phenomenal form.” The traditional metaphysical distinction between matter and form is found here in terms of value, and progress as a whole is the result of the dialectic between the two. If the form corresponds to exchange value, the matter of value consists in their being the product of labor: and this for Marx is the true substance of value. The magnitude of the value, how much value contained in a commodity, is then determined as a quantity of socially necessary labor incorporated in the commodity, that is to say as labor time required for its production “under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity” (Capital, Vol. I, p. 29). The dual character of a commodity—as a unit of use value as well as exchange value—corresponds to the double character of the work contained within it: useful labor generating use value, in combination with raw materials and abstract labor which produce exchange value. This is one of the discoveries of which Marx claims total originality and one of the central theses of his analysis of the capitalist mode of production. The abstract labor that exists in a society oriented to the production of goods, with an advanced social division of labor, is work that counts not for its peculiar characteristics—even if its product must always have a use value,

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otherwise exchange would be meaningless—but for its being a simple expenditure of human energy, of human labor in general. The analysis of the forms of value, which concludes the first section, explores the ways in which value is expressed in the exchange value of commodities. It is not a matter of determining how much of one commodity can be exchanged for another, but rather of bringing out the qualitative nature of exchange values and ​​ thereby exposing the genesis of the form of money, an exercise “which has never yet even been attempted by bourgeois economy” (Capital Vol.  1, p. 33). And so, from the “elementary form of value” (exchange as occasional barter: 20 yards of linen = a coat) we are led, through the forms of relative and equivalent value (in which the value of a commodity is expressed in an indefinite number of other goods: 20 yards of linen = a coat = 10 pounds of tea = 2 oz of gold, and so on—the usual practice of exchange), to the general form of value, in which the value of all commodities except one are expressed in terms of this unique commodity which thus becomes “the general equivalent”, that is, it assumes the social function of money. The first chapter concludes with the paragraph on the fetishization of commodities: a society oriented toward the production of commodities obscures relationships between people, which, in the decisive context of the production and reproduction of social life (economy in the broad sense), assume the aspect of a relationship between things to be bought and sold (commodities). This is what Marx calls the “fetishization of commodities”, analogous to the way in which religious cults attribute supernatural power to material objects. For example, money appears in the sphere of exchange and the consciousness of the actors involved as the “natural” incarnation of value, concealing the underlying social relationship. Three functions are attributed to money: First, "Money" is a measure of value, by which goods may be represented as quantitatively comparable. Second, money is the medium of "Circulation", as such it facilitates trade, thereby generating more money (e.g., the M–C–M scheme). It should be noted that Marx here en passant rejected what would become Say’s famous law, according to which every sale is a purchase and vice versa, and the circulation of goods entails the equilibrium of buying and selling, thus excluding the possibility of a crisis overproduction, as long as the market is allowed to operate without interference. Third and finally, money functions as “the sole form of value, the only adequate form of existence of exchange-­value” (Capital, Vol. I, p. 84). Through this lens Marx examines the phenomena of hoarding of money, of money 46

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as a means of payment (credit purchase, tax payments, rent, etc.), and of universal money (transaction medium for global commerce). The second section, called “Transformation of Money into Capital”, contains the central elements of the Marxist analysis of capitalism. Marx confronts various phases of capitalistic accumulation, which is presented as a unique form of accumulation of money. For this purpose, observes Marx, the exchange of commerce mediated by money (C–M–C scheme) is not sufficient: we stay here—in the simple form of commodity circulation—in the dimension of consumption and money spent once and for all. The scheme that expresses the accumulation is rather M–C–M′ (the general form of capital), where M′ > M, and the difference is what Marx refers to as ‘surplus’. And yet so far the level of circulation has not been abandoned. The nature of capital is indeed demonstrated as “value in process, money in process” (Capital, Vol. I, p. 108), however, the explanation of the source of the surplus value is missing. As Marx wrote, “the conversion of money into capital has to be explained on the basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities, in such a way that the starting-­point is the exchange of equivalents” (Capital, Vol. I, p. 116). Marx must locate in the sphere of the circulation a commodity whose use value produces a greater value (surplus) than that of its exchange value. This commodity is the labor‑power of wage workers. The genesis of surplus value has been located not in the sphere of circulation with the exchange of labor-­power, but rather is located in the sphere of production where the labor-­power is subsumed under the command of the capitalists who paid for it. The third and fourth sections are dedicated to the analysis of absolute surplus value and relative surplus value, and therefore to the analysis of the production process generally. With absolute surplus value Marx means a form of increase in the value produced by the workforce centered on the lengthening of the working day (manufacturing); with relative surplus value, however, the emphasis is on the increase in productivity made possible by investments in technologies (mechanization and industrialization) that lower the labor time necessary for production, in particular, of the goods consumed by the worker in order to reproduce, thereby reducing the value of the workforce. So, for the same length of the working day, the work will take less time to earn the salary, and will increase the amount which is appropriated by the capitalist as surplus value. 47

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(For the discussion of the rate of surplus value and the implicit notions of constant capital, variable capital, organic composition of capital, see Volume II. The process of circulation of capital). After the treatment of salary (sixth section), Marx devoted himself to the process of capital accumulation in the seventh and final section. Starting from the model of simple reproduction—without reinvestment of surplus value—the material and social character of capitalist production is emphasized: Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage labourer. (Capital, Vol. I, p. 407) The tendencies are then illustrated, on the one hand, to the concentration and centralization of capital—via, respectively, expanded reproduction and grouping of smaller capital into larger units— and, on the other, to the formation of an industrial reserve army, meant to keep wages under control. The section continues with the famous chapter on primitive accumulation. This is not a simple historical excursus. So far, Marx has presented the capitalist mode of production as a system that creates the conditions for its own reproduction by means of extraction of surplus value; it is necessary to provide an explanation of its initial use, before surplus value was available. In other words, it is a question of explaining how money and commodities have transformed into capital, and this presupposes for Marx a “polarization of the market for commodities” in a class of owners of money, means of production and means of subsistence of not being themselves directly tools of production (as in the case of slaves) and and at the same time not in possession of the means of production (as in the case of small independent farmers). Primitive accumulation is therefore reconstructed as the historical process in which the separation of the worker from the ownership of his own working conditions is carried out: Marx, in essence, presents its elements as a result of the dissolution of the feudal system and recomposition in the new capitalist order. A short, sarcastic, chapter on contemporary colonization and related economic theories concludes the first volume of Capital. 48

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Volume II. The process of circulation of capital The second volume of Capital was published by Engels in 1884; the editor’s preface, among other things, gives the sense of the state of incompleteness of the materials of the Marxian legacy and of the difficulties inherent in collating, deciphering and organizing the manuscripts. The first section of the second volume is an analysis of the forms taken by capital in its cycle of reproduction (money capital, productive capital, commodity capital) and the forms of this cycle: “the circulation time must now be added to the working times discussed in Volume I.” (Capital, Vol. II, p. 215). It is shown here how the reproduction of each individual capital involves the alternation of time between the spheres of production and exchange: means of production and labor-­power are purchased on the market, used in the production of goods, the destination of which is the market, where their value is realized, thus allowing the process to begin anew. Then, in the second section, we pass to the study of the periodicity of the cycle—the rotation of capital—i.e. the time required to complete a capital cycle. The faster the completion of the cycle is, the greater the surplus value that a given variable capital (workforce) can generate for each given interval of time, completing a greater number of production cycles. A distinction then becomes salient, that between fixed capital and circulating capital, already present in economic history from the physiocrats to Smith and Ricardo, but which Marx reformulates in light of his developments in the first volume concerning the production process (the distinction between constant and variable capital, the sole source of surplus value for Marx). Fixed capital is that part of productive capital which in the course of the production process only partially yields its value and is therefore lost for several production cycles (machinery, factories, means of production in general); working capital is instead consumed entirely in the labor process and must be sustained for each cycle (raw materials, labor-­power). The third section of the second volume is in all probability the one with the greatest impact in terms of the history of economic theory (input/output analysis; growth models) but above all in the history of pre-­and post-­revolutionary Russia: The reproduction schemes become central elements, first, at the end of the nineteenth century, in the debate between Marxists (with Lenin in the front row) and populists over the development of capitalism in Russia. Then, in the years after the NEP, they become inspiring models in

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the drafting of the budgets of the Soviet Union in the transition from capitalism to socialism. After dealing with the conditions of production and reproduction of individual capital, in this third section Marx assumes the point of view of aggregated social capital. At this level it is no longer sufficient to consider the reproduction of capital in terms of value, as in the previous sections; rather, the reproduction of the material elements of capital should be examined: This movement [conversion of one portion of the value of the product into capital and the passing of another portion into the individual consumption of the capitalist as well as the working class] is not only a replacement of value, but also a replacement in material and is therefore as much bound up with the relative proportions of the value-­components of the total social product as with their use-­ value, their material shape. (Capital, Vol. II, p. 241) Marx then analyses the state of equilibrium that must be respected in the conditions of simple reproduction (in which the surplus value is not reinvested in production) and in those of enlarged reproduction (where there is continuous reinvestment of part or all of the surplus to proceed with the new cycle on an expanded basis).

Volume III. The process of capitalist production as a whole Volume III of Capital was published by Engels in 1894. With it Marx proposed to undertake those aspects of capital which “approach step by step the form which they assume on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals upon one another, in competition, and in the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production themselves” (Capital, Vol. 3, p. 19) In particular, the third volume deals with the way in which surplus value is divided between the categories of income not derived from wage labor such as profits, interest and rent. The first section of the third volume discusses how the surplus value appears to the capitalist as profit, as a gain in relation not only to the labor-­power purchased with the variable part of the capital, but in relation to the total capital advanced for the production process (profit rate): The profit appears to the capitalist as the difference between production costs and market price. Thus the foundations are laid for the 50

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analysis of the formation of the average rate of profit in the second section and of the ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ in the third section. The average rate of profit is obtained by introducing the dimension of competition between capitals, but with this the assumption of proportionality between values and prices, hitherto stressed by Marx, must be dropped in favor of the analysis of the formation of commodity prices on the market (transformation of values into production prices, see below). However, as far as the “law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall” is concerned, the idea is that the drive to maximize profits induces the capitalist to replace workers with machinery. Thus increasing the organic composition of capital (the proportion between expenditure on means of production and expenditure on labor-­power) decreases or produces a tendency to decrease the rate of profit. The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall is, therefore, just an expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of production of the progressive development of the social productivity of labor. […] proceeding from the nature of the capitalist mode of production, it is thereby proved logical necessity that in its development the general average rate of surplus value must express itself in a falling general rate of profit. (Capital, Vol. III, p. 154; emphasis original) Naturally, increases in productivity can act in contrast, for example by decreasing the value of the means of production, and Marx examines various factors capable of counteracting the trend; in any case, the Marxian theses on the fall of the rate of profit and the recurrent systemic crises that find their root in this framework have been at the center of heated debate in economic theory, as well as in the theoretical-­political discourse of the labor movement. The subsequent sections of the book continue the examination of the different forms into which profit is divided. The fourth section deals with the question of profit from commercial capital, which at first sight seems to contradict the general Marxian thesis of the genesis of profit from surplus value extracted in the production process. The fifth section deals with interest-­bearing capital; its final chapter on the pre-­capitalistic conditions of loans at interest (usury) is, together with the discussion of the original accumulation in the first volume and the historical notes on commercial capital—also in the third volume—among the most important pages on economic history written by Marx. The sixth section is 51

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dedicated to the question of ground-­rent, one of the most controversial issues in theoretical economics in Marx’s time. First of all, it is specified that the analysis of rent takes place in the theoretical context of a developed capitalist system in which the agricultural sector involves only three classes: wage-­earning agricultural workers, capitalist tenants and landowners. Rent is then divided into differential rent and absolute rent. Differential rent derives from the conjunction of two factors. First of all, natural advantages enjoyed by some producers and not others (for example greater soil fertility), elements that are not included in the production price and therefore lower the organic composition of capital by bolstering the rate of profit; secondly, the source of this advantage is monopolized by a landlord who can claim a surplus in the form of rent, counting on the fact that the capitalists interested in the sector will be willing to pay what he asks for the use of the resource. Differential rent derives from the difference in production costs borne by the producers: the natural resources in play are indeed the material precondition, but the true source of the rent, like any other form of profit, is the surplus labor which is transformed into surplus value. Absolute rent, on the other hand, is what the landowner manages to obtain from the capitalist tenant even in the case of land less suited to cultivation. Finally, the seventh and last section of the third volume—among the most tormented for the fragmentary state of the manuscripts— addresses revenues and their sources. The basic thesis, which summarizes the aims of the entire third volume, is that profits, rent and wages with reference to capital, land, and labor as their respective factors of projection (“the trinity formula which comprises all the secrets of the social production process.” Capital, Vol. III, p. 591) are only superficial forms of the existing social relations in capitalist society. The outcome is to make those which are historically determined social relations (capital, labor) appear natural, or to attribute to natural elements such as the earth the social property of being a source of value. The work ends with a fragment of the planned chapter on classes: Laborers, capitalists and landowners are referred to as the three great classes of modern society, comprised respectively of individuals who live off wages, profit and rent. But is the source of revenue sufficient to constitute a social class? The manuscript breaks off at this question. Despite writing Capital—a work of impressive size and intellectual rigor—Marx nonetheless manages to carry out intense political activity in the 1860s. These were somehow special years. The civil 52

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war in America ends and Lincoln abolishes slavery (1863), union-­ linked European movements are formed in England and Germany, and in London, where Mazzini and Garibaldi are also present, and the London Trade Council is established in 1860. These years also see the birth of the First International, to which Marx dedicated great energy resulting in its undoubted success. The first meeting was actually convened by the British unions in September 1864, and in this meeting the International Association of Workers was formed (which will later be known as the First International). Besides the British and Germans in attendance were French and Belgians (divided in Proudhonists, Blanquists, and Jacobins), Polish democrats, and Italian Mazzinians. Marx is invited as a representative of the German workers, and does what he does best and writes the association’s program, the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association. The main cultural and political conflict pits Marx’s followers on one side, against Proudhonians, followers of Bakunin and Mazzinians on the other. Marx decides for once to be pragmatic and political, and expresses “fortiter in re, suaviter in modo” (as Engels later wrote). He even goes so far as to use words he normally found distasteful, like “morality, truth, and justice,” but, as Engels writes, not without his usual irony, “in this context they cannot do harm.” However, to avoid misunderstandings, the Address ends with the same words of the Manifesto: “Workers of the world, unite!” Among the main points of Marx’s thesis in the address of 1864 is the autonomy of the working class and the need for it to organize itself into a party. Sympathy for Marx’s revolutionary ideals is, to say the least, a minority opinion, but one which will gain more and more acceptance over the years. Indeed, trade unionists, who represent a sort of silent majority of the Association, are usually the more interested in practical questions, and in general no one can compete with Marx in terms of culture and revolutionary experience. In all subsequent meetings—Geneva 1866, Lausanne 1867, Brussels 1868—Marx, who dedicates hours and hours of his time to these matters, will try to push his ideological approach even without being present in person. Little by little, however, the honeymoon between Marx and the British members of the Association begins to wane. The latter did not share Marx’s revolutionary fantasies, and—starting with the anger on the Irish question—they tend to hold different positions on key issues. It must also be said that Marx himself does not fully understand the ethnic aspects of the Irish question, nor the so-­called absolute relevance of the British political conquest on civil and political freedoms. 53

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However, the debate on ideas is profoundly interrupted by the Franco-­Prussian war of 1870 and above all by the tragic story of the Paris Commune. Marx in his heart admired the Commune for having been a government of the people, for the people, and for having offered a model of revolutionary action, even if he could not approve its social program and certain basic utopianism. In it, after all, his Proudhonian and Blanquist adversaries prevailed. Marx, at the same time, could not fail to pay homage to the first victims of the revolutionary spirit in which he himself had always believed (to this matter he dedicated his paper on The Civil War in France, to which Lenin referred in order to defend continuity of his revolutionary strategy with Marx’s own thought). The tragic end of the Commune and the fact that Marx is taken, more or less arguably, for its avid supporter (with the nickname “red terror ­doctor”) also mark the decline of the First International. Meanwhile, the conflict between Marx and Bakunin becomes more and more heated with the passing of the years (Marx, as usual, doesn’t back down, and christens Bakunin “Mohammed without a beard”). On the subject of this conflict, while acknowledging Marx’s cultural superiority, it must be admitted that Bakunin had good reason when he insisted on the dangers connected with a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Bakuninians will end up separating and eventually form the Democratic Alliance. Marx even manages to transfer the International to the United States, where it will close its doors in Philadelphia in 1876. Meanwhile in Germany, the embryo of the Social Democratic Party is formed. In 1875 the congress of unification took place in Gotha between the two pre-­ existing parties, the General German Workers Association—founded by Ferdinand Lasalle with whom Marx had long-­standing friendly enmity—and the Social Democratic Worker Party born in Eisenach in 1869 and led by Liebknecht and Bebel, the latter of whom was considered to take inspiration from Marx and Engels. Marx is baffled and disappointed by the program of the new party, to which he wrote a response in 1875 in his Critique of the Gotha Program. In this essay, Marx takes aim at the unification program, criticizing its conception of labor and society as well as its progressive and democratic nature, while restating the need for a period of transition based on the “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” After that, the exploitation of man by man will cease, and everyone will be free to realize his full potential. Engels writes, in controversy with Liebknecht and the other social democrats, his Anti-­Dühring, 54

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an attack named after Eugen Dühring, an economics professor who had become a party leader. In this essay, among other things (Marx collaborates by writing the second chapter of the second section), Engels presents a scientific Marx, and describes a deterministic materialist conception of history that does not do justice to the reality of Marx’s own position. Nevertheless, it will have great weight later.

Theory of value Perhaps at this point it should be mentioned again that reading Capital is both fascinating and almost impossible (the reason we have provided a summary...), and that adequately understanding its theoretical core, that is, the theory of value, is arduous, at the very least. The responsibility for all this—beyond the objective difficulties of the subject matter—is largely Marx’s. Mainly, for what I believe, are three reasons. The first is that the jargon used by Marx in writing the work is often incomprehensible. The hermeneutical effort required is essentially enormous and the terminology employed is not only intrinsically complicated but also decidedly outdated. The second reason—which was noted at the time by Engels—is that the use of the Hegelian dialectic as a logical and argumentative structure makes the operation more difficult. Marx—as had happened after the release of Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy—was very disappointed by the lack of public success of the first volume of Capital. He actually believed that the Hegelian dialectic was “accessible to ordinary human intelligence.” However, in all probability, he deluded himself, and many arguments inspired by it were understandable only to the most sophisticated German intellectuals of the time. Finally, the third reason consists in the convoluted way (I don’t know of any better adjective) in which the work was published. The three volumes of Capital—according to the author’s intentions and I would say common sense—had to come out in rapid succession. This was not the case, and for different reasons ranging from theoretical uncertainties to Marx’s health, he wouldn’t see the publication of the work in his lifetime. In fact, more than twenty-­ five years passed—despite Engels’ laboriousness in putting the pieces together—before the publication of the third volume. This is unfortunate also because some problems, present in the first volume, are fully addressed only in the second and third ones (among these, the transformation of values into prices). 55

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The most well-­known and most important aspect of Marx’s economic vision is his conception of value. This is based on the labor theory of value, which Marx takes up, transforming it, from the classics of political economy such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo (above all), even if its origins can be traced back to John Locke’s conception. According to the classical labor theory of value, value depends on the quantity of labor incorporated in commodities. Marx’s theory of value respects this principle but has undoubted originality. To try to understand it, one can start from the general view of society and of history that Marx had in the background of his theory of value. Marx begins from the assumption—all things considered—that the value of a commodity does not depend on the work actually used to produce it, but on the labor which is “socially necessary.” It is essentially a kind of average or standard labor that is needed to produce a commodity, which in turn is linked to the socio-­economic conditions of the place of production. But the Marxian labor theory of value needs further context. In the first place, Marx conceives of society as divided into classes. In the class society, economic surplus, which then corresponds to unpaid labor, is appropriated by one class at the expense of the others by virtue of its social position. Something like this is evident, for example, in a slave society where the unpaid labor of the lower classes is forced labor. Within a capitalist society, however, forced labor does not exist, yet there is still the exploitation of one class, that of the workers, by another, that of the capitalists. One of the main tasks that Marx assigns himself is to bring to light this kind of more obscure and subtle exploitation. While in a slave society anyone who looks carefully at what goes on there can see exploitation, this does not happen in capitalist society, where apparently no one is forced to do what he does, and chooses it freely. It can be said that the philosophy of the mature Marx is intended to reveal how the ownership of the means of production by the capitalists is a matrix of exploitation and how the two main social classes—capitalists and workers—have systematically conflicting interests. Secondly, Marx distinguishes himself from the classics by his vision of history. The capitalist mode of production, in his opinion, cannot be conceived as something ahistorical, natural and eternal (as it sometimes seems when reading economics manuals). On the contrary, capitalist society is only a moment in the historical development of humanity. Marx rejects a definition of capital as 56

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a set of means of production given in nature once and for all, and instead regards it as something historically determined. For Marx, capitalism is a transitory mode of production, characterized by class society and the separation of the means of production from the workers. From this point of view, value is no longer a “natural” property, but depends on the historical determinations of this mode of production. It is in reference to the nature of capitalism and its essential historicity—which is revealed in periodic crises— that Marx pulls another formidable asset out of his magic hat. I am referring to the dialectic between (social) relations of production and the development of productive (economic) forces, theoretical tools long ago acquired by Marx (going back at least to German Ideology), but here indispensable in providing an explanation of the historical movement of capitalism. We will return to this later, however, when we discuss the intellectual legacy of Marx. Marx’s labor theory of value is based on this general background. The theory has two fundamental aims: (i) to demonstrate that in a capitalist society all value added in the process of production is socially necessary labor; (ii) to argue that in this type of society the surplus, ie the added value depends on exploitation. The first aim is reached starting from a distinction between “use value” of a commodity (what it serves) and the “exchange value” (its price). On this basis, Marx can describe the capitalist system as a whole as one that is aimed at the continuous and unlimited growth of exchange value. To understand how, we need to start from the concepts of commodities and labor. The basic idea is that the actual or real value of the goods depends on the labor employed to produce them. Now, certainly the labor theory of value appeals to this rather intuitive notion: after all, none of us would willingly trade something that took a great deal of time to produce with something else which required much less time. Furthermore, the labor theory of value offers a certain conceptual simplification by excluding the influence of demand in determining the value and price of a commodity, thus avoiding complex formal calculations. On closer look, however, the simplification is likely only apparent. This is for at least two reasons. Firstly, it is not possible to reduce the various forms of labor to one. The central idea of an average and standardized working time does not always work for several reasons. For example, there may be jobs that require special training, or people with special abilities that take much less than others to do something (have you ever had a classmate who was very good at math?), 57

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or certain jobs may be particularly unpleasant, and so on. In these cases, the idea of an average working time does not help, and to determine prices and values you need to revisit the theory of supply and demand. Secondly, it is not easy to understand how, in light of this theory, it is possible to effectively measure the value of a certain commodity divided in units of work-­time, since the value of a commodity depends not only on the work time used to produce it but also on the instruments available (fixed capital in Marx’s words). In essence, what emerges from this impossibility is that the price of goods cannot be derived from Marx’s theory of value. Therefore, even in the Marxian economic analysis, prices must be presupposed. But this fact, as such, makes the idea of a “real” value of the goods rather frivolous, or even a metaphysical entity (as opposed to a scientific one). In essence, Marx’s labor theory of value does not seem easily applicable to the empirical analysis of economic phenomena, a point which largely explains many professional economists’ distrust toward it.

The transformation of values into prices Despite the length of the work, Capital is not lacking—indeed it abounds—in conceptual simplifications and controversial assumptions. Among these, probably the most important in the first volume—if I am not mistaken, Marx proposes it only in a ­ ­footnote—is precisely that which holds values to be equal to prices. It is true that in the second volume, and then again at length in the third, Marx will return vigorously to this question. However, a thesis so relevant and not sufficiently demonstrated could not fail to arouse widespread debate. Over time, such was the case, and rivers of ink have been spent on the issue usually referred to as the “transformation problem” (several important Italian economists contributed to this debate, such as Garegnani and Napoleoni, and of course, Sraffa). The conceptual origins of the problem are sufficiently clear if we start from the assumption that for Marx, the economic categories (such as price or commodity) are no more than reflections of social categories (such as labor and exploitation). On this basis, it is necessary to ask how it happens that the emergence of economic categories in the phenomenal world is reproduced and stabilized in the substantial world of social categories. In other words, how does it happen that the set of prices and goods reify in the set of fundamental social relations? The answer to this question is no 58

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more, no less, than the labor theory of value as a whole. The law of value, from this point of view, tells us—at least, in the first and immediate interpretation—that if we want to understand the relationship between prices and commodities, we must reflect on what underlies them; that is to say, relations among social classes. Of course, the problem of transformation depends on whether such an operation makes sense and succeeds. The first thing to say about this is that—in Capital—Marx distinguishes the two concepts with sufficient clarity, aware of the fact that an abstract notion like that of value could not be equivalent to that of empirically observable prices. The most obvious difference in Marxian terminology is that prices correspond to exchange values expressed in money, and that exchange value is nothing more than a phenomenal form of value as such. However, in the first volume, Marx seems to postulate a kind of one-­to-­one correspondence, and it is not clear how this is possible. To understand this, we must begin by remembering—as already said—that for Marx the real problem is that value as such always corresponds to a social relationship between people. Exchange value somehow mystifies this truth by making value appear as a consequence of a relationship between things. And, as we will soon see when discussing commodity fetishism, the relationship between things systematically replaces the (authentic) relationships between people in the capitalist regime. From this point of view, it is not surprising that for Marx exchange value exhibits “a relationship between people passed off as a relationship between things,” and that is why the exchange value is metaphysically a simple appearance, merely superficial or a phenomenal form. Still, all this does not mean that exchange value is meaningless. On the contrary, two goods can incorporate the same amount of socially necessary labor, and therefore have the same value, yet for understandable reasons be marketed at different prices. In essence, price and profit, interest and rent are superficial phenomena and move in a different level of value abstraction. But this does not exempt us—as Marx will do in his third volume of Capital—from trying to understand the relations between the two levels, establishing “intermediate links” if possible (which is what “bourgeois economists” would not do and Marx’s critics do not always understand). To understand how Marx can do something like this, we need to go back to the foundational aspects of his value theory that correspond to the notions of constant capital, variable capital and surplus value. On this basis, the value of a commodity presupposes 59

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the distinction between constant capital (c), variable capital (v) and surplus value (s). To use the Marxian formula, the value is equivalent to c + v + s. As is well known, in turn the surplus value depends in this equivalence only on the percentage of variable capital v, so that it can be said to be equal to s ÷ v (and thus corresponds to the rate of exploitation). In an extremely narrow horizon, all this makes value a good approximation of prices. But as soon as the universe of reference becomes more complex, and in a word, realistic, the use of value as an approximation of prices no longer holds. This is well understood in the second volume—and more analytically, the third—of Capital, in which Marx puts aside the drastic simplifications of the first volume and consequently is forced to abandon the equivalence between value and prices. In the second volume, for example, Marx brings into play differences that concern the quantity of capital employed, its depreciation and its circulation from one commodity to another. By introducing these variables, it follows that two goods can incorporate the same amount of labor, and therefore have the same value, and yet they should be exchanged at different prices (for example, because in the production of one more total capital was used). In Volume III the differences between value and prices are explained based on the distinction between profit and surplus value; in Marxian terms, s ÷ (c + v) and s ÷ v respectively. On these premises, if different goods incorporate different proportions of constant capital with respect to variable capital, then it is not possible to trade at the same price. And, in cases like these, value and price need not necessarily coincide. The relationship between constant capital and variable capital which, which Marx calls the “organic composition of capital,” is decisive in this type of reasoning. The surplus value depends entirely on the amount of variable capital, that is to say of human labor employed, but the profit also depends on the quantity of constant capital and its cycle. That makes profit and surplus different from one another. But since in a capitalist economy over time profits must be equal to one another, sooner or later prices will adjust and making it possible to exchange goods that incorporate equal value at different prices. This is probably the main reason why, according to Marx, values can be different from prices. However, there are others. It may be that in a specific sector of production the proportion of constant capital and variable capital is not the same as in other sectors, and prices will have to reflect this type of difference. Or, prices— regardless of value—may be influenced by the cycle of working capital, that is to say by the time that passes between the capital 60

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investment and the return after sales. All this seems to show that Marx was fully aware of possible differences between values and prices. It could also be said that their equivalence holds only in principle, or better, that it has a purely normative meaning (and not a positive or descriptive one). The gap that then opens up between normative and positive should depend—following the general spirit of the work and Marx’s convictions—on the chaos that capitalism provokes. In essence, prices do not correspond to values fundamentally because the capitalist regime does not function as it should and makes this type of equilibrium impossible. Despite these attempts to explain it, the transformation of values into prices has been a lasting problem for the doctrine—as we have already said. This problem probably has two different causes: First, it seems to many that—in spite of Marx’s efforts—the difference between values and prices is inconsistent with the general theory expounded in Capital. In short, we would be faced with a robust inconsistency of the overall approach taken. Second, we must not forget that between the output of the first volume of Capital and the other two, the marginalist revolution in economics had already taken hold. Now, Marx’s line of reasoning is much more understandable starting from Smith and Ricardo than it is starting from Walras, Wieser, Menger and the other marginalists. This epistemically relevant fact is at the origin of perhaps correct but ungenerous criticisms—like that of Böhm-­Bawerk—and of approaches that attempt to reconcile Marx with microeconomic logic (as in the case of Morishima and Roemer). An interesting attempt to reconcile Marx and contemporary philosophy is led by the so-­called analytical Marxists. A brief digression on Sraffa’s thesis and on Marx’s marginalist economists—starting with Böhm-­Bawerk—is not without significance because it allows us to see with relative clarity the main reason why the debate over the transformation problem remains intractable. Namely, the fact that in the context of this discussion, Marx and Marxists on the one hand, and their critics on the other, seem to discuss two different issues, which of course generates mutual misunderstanding. This type of criticism in turn generates different reactions in the Marxist world.

Böhm-­Bawerk, Sraffa, analytical Marxism, and some results The most relevant problem in Marx’s theory of value consists in the underlying thesis according to which the exchange values of the goods must be proportional to the physical costs to obtain 61

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them (which in turn is a logical consequence of the truism for which one does not give something in exchange for something else that cost less to produce). Now, it can easily be demonstrated that such an assumption is false: all theories of physical cost are indefensible and involve difficulties in dealing with concepts such as capital and interest. From this point of view, if one assumes that in a balanced economic system the profits of all productive activities tend to be equal to one another, this is not difficult to understand: for example, take any two goods that need the same quantity of labor to be produced, but with one of the two that requires twice the time of the other to achieve the same result. It seems clear that the exchange value, the price, of the one that requires more time is higher because of the interest proportional to the time spent. In essence, prices do not depend only on physical costs, if only because we have to take into account the interest. If we accept such arguments, what are the consequences for a sophisticated theory of physical cost such as Marx’s labor theory? Here we present briefly three different hypotheses which—­taking for granted the impossibility of supporting Marx’s labor theory of value—draw three different types of conclusions: Böhm-­Bawerk limits himself to saying that the labor theory of value does not hold if we take seriously the basic assumptions of the new (in his time) subjectivist theories of value; Sraffa introduces—although refuting the Marxian transformation—the concept of distribution and argues that in this way Marx’s vision can be saved; analytic Marxism essentially accepts the marginalist revolution and attempts to defend Marxism on other bases. Böhm-­ Bawerk published his most important work on Marx, which is usually cited with the English title Karl Marx and the Close of His System rather than the original Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems, in a volume of essays in honor of Karl Knies. Released in 1896—two years after the publication of the third volume of Capital—the essay was soon translated into various languages, including Russian, and generally received as the most important criticism of Marx’s Capital. Böhm-­Bawerk’s intellectual formation took place within the Austrian school of Menger and Wieser, the sister of whom Böhm-­Bawerk had married. His authority at the time was undisputed—he was, after all, the Minister of Finance in Austria— and he never departed from the Austrian school’s thesis and from the subjectivist theory of value. The latter was acquiring in those years the prestige of the dominant theory, and Böhm-­Bawerk—who had already written a book inspired by the subjectivist theories of value 62

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in which he discussed Marx, Capital and Interest—in Karl Marx and the Close does little other than critically apply its dictates to Marx’s work. It can also be said that such a critique was in the air, so to speak, and that—if Böhm-­Bawerk had not formulated it—figures like Pareto in Lausanne and Wicksteed in England would have done it. In substance, Wicksteed, presenting the Marxian theory of value, surplus value and profit, maintains that Marx does not formulate one but two different theories of value, one in the the first volume of Capital and one in Volume III. The thesis is that these two theories lead to opposite results, and that therefore there is a contradiction between what is written about value in the first and in third volume of Capital. Not surprisingly, for Böhm-­Bawerk the cause of this mistake lies in the fact that Marx had taken on the obsolete labor theory of value. In conclusion, more than a critique of Marx’s work as such, we can speak here of an applied version of a more general thesis, which consists in the fundamental incompatibility between labor theory of value and subjectivist theories of value. The short but important book by Piero Sraffa, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960, subtitle “Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory”) intends to provide a critique of both marginalist economics and the common readings of Marxist economics based on the relationship between production conditions and wages, profit and prices. Indeed, for this reason—as well as for a certain intrinsic complexity—its main theses have been set aside over time. However, it seems important to us to present here a brief summary, after what has been said about the theory of value and the transformation problem. If indeed Sraffa’s thesis is accepted, then to save Marxism there is no need to resort to these controversial analytical tools. In his essay, on the basis of simple assumptions, Sraffa demonstrates first of all that the quantity of labor incorporated in goods does not play any role in determining the rate of profit. This is essentially because production conditions and real wages are sufficient to determine the profit rate itself. It turns out that the transformation problem is the result of a logical error, because the determination of the profit rate and the production prices does not need to be based on value. The rate of profit in a capitalist economy is not therefore equivalent to s ÷ (c + v), where s stands for surplus value, c for constant capital and v for variable capital (as Marx wanted). From this it derives finally that the surplus value itself and its relationship with the profit rate do not depend on the Marxian concept of value, and therefore that the transformation problem is a false dilemma. 63

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So far we have avoided discussing contemporary visions of Marxism, both Western and non-­Western, to keep the compass steady on the predetermined route, which—as has been said—is to attempt an overall examination and an anachronistic assesment of Marx’s work. We make an exception here for analytical Marxism. The reasons for this exception are essentially of two sorts. On the one hand, in our opinion analytical Marxism—with all its ­limitations— has objective intellectual relevance and can allow Marx’s paradigm to survive destructive attacks on the methodological and conceptual front. On the other hand, the writer has been strongly influenced by analytical Marxists in forming an opinion on Marx and his meaning today (in this case, the same reason stands for why we will discuss some themes and problems related to Marxism and justice). The influence of analytical Marxism on myself, mentioned here, concerns several aspects of interpreting Marx, but one in particular: one cannot defend a paradigm such as that of Marx by assuming that it is based on a logic and a method different from those normally employed in philosophy and the social sciences. The first thing to say, speaking of analytical Marxism as an interpretative current, is that it is composed of a group of professional academic philosophers and has only academic relavence. For this reason, its main representatives (G.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, John Roemer), have always—despite their differences—shared the idea that for their adherence to Marxism it was essential to maintain the most sophisticated standards of contemporary philosophy and social sciences. The history of analytical Marxism and its main writings roughly covers the period from the end of the 1960s until around 2000. In all these years, analytic Marxists made generous attempts to save Marxism, recovering—as they said—its methodological normalcy. Yet in so doing they put at risk the autonomous existence of Marxism itself, which increasingly tended, in this context, to become a sort of “left liberalism” based on a more radical vision of equality. The attempt of analytic Marxists to save Marxism by partially deconstructing its methodology is based on a deep affinity with the Marxian spirit, with the intention—not too different in principle from that of scholars such as Althusser and Colletti—to preserve the scientific basis of Marxism itself. From this point of view, analytical Marxism can be conceived as an Anglo–American academic version of the cultural backlash of 1968 in continental Europe. Of course, the milieu in question is important to get an idea of analytic Marxism. First of all, in the Anglo–American world Marxism has always been a minority view 64

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and has never achieved the level of social importance it had in other Western countries (for example, in France and Italy). This explains why the Anglo–American phenomenon is in some sense purely academic and has been influenced by politics far less than the rest of Western Marxism. Secondly, the underlying philosophical view changes considerably if we move from the world of continental Europe to the Anglophone world. In the latter, historicism and structuralism are almost absent, and phenomenology and existentialism are certainly less relevant. Instead, an analytical way of conceiving philosophy prevails, which finds its origins in logical positivism and in the philosophy of language. And the main characteristic of these schools of thought surely consists in a stubborn search for formal rigor and specific precision, aspects that analytic Marxism seeks to import into the Marxist paradigm. In addition to the difference of social and conceptual milieu, it must also be said that in the years in which analytical Marxism is affirmed, the philosophical and political background on which the debate rests changes throughout the Western world. The last great representative of the Frankfurt School—so relevant in the panorama of Western Marxism—Jürgen Habermas essentially puts Marxism aside to support radical-­ democratic theses. And perhaps the most important political philosopher in the West after Hobbes, namely John Rawls, imposes his theory of justice, a new horizon within which the egalitarian, social-­democratic and liberal aspirations move. From this cultural fact, from the rebirth of the centrality of the political philosophy that follows, move the various attempts to reconcile Marx and Rawls, Marxism and justice. All these concomitant factors—the academic and non-­political nature of Marxism in English-­speaking countries, the philosophical background, the emergence of a formidable liberal-­democratic political thought on the left—lead analytic Marxism to what is perhaps the most significant of its thesis: methodologically, Marxism can no longer rely on a different and more robust method, based on dialectics, compared to the rest of political philosophy and the social sciences. This thesis is central to Gerald Cohen’s deconstruction-­reconstruction of the Marxian conception of history, to John Roemer’s attempt to re-­establish Marxist economics on the basis of neoclassical economy, and to Jon Elster’s proposal in terms of game theory. The publication of Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History in 1979 testifies, more than any other writing, to this desire to methodologically “standardize” Marxism, not to give it the advantage 65

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of a qualitatively privileged and different method. Cohen’s book—­ considered by many to be the cornerstone of analytical Marxism— was especially well-­received, precisely because in the cultural climate of those years there was a need to view Marxism with “commitment without reverence”, to use the words of the author. As Cohen himself explained, the Marxism in question is analytical in two senses, one broader and one narrow: in a broad sense, its Marxism is analytical because it is opposed to dialectical reasoning. Strictly speaking, it is analytical because it is individualistic rather than holistic. The analogy in question also obliges us to take seriously the standard methodological criteria of philosophy and science only in the Anglo-­Saxon world. More specifically, we can think here of analytic philosophy, marginalist economics, and rational choice theories starting with the game theory. More or less these three horizons can be traced back to the names of Cohen, Roemer and Elster respectively. It is interesting to note that all the three authors in question approached Marxism independently of each other and were all mainstream thinkers. Analytical Marxism obviously did not exist when they began to deal with Marx, and it came out of their own independent reflections and their meetings in the late seventies and early eighties (in particular, analytic Marxism can be said to have been born in September 1981, when the three authors mentioned met eight or nine times in London). From then on, the membership of the group of analytical Marxists proved relatively stable. Those who belonged to the group include—according to Cohen’s reconstruction—Pranab Bardhan (Berkeley), Samuel Bowles (Amherst), Robert Brenner (Los Angeles), G.A. Cohen (Oxford), Joshua Cohen (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Philippe van Parijs (Louvain-­ la-­ Neuve), John Roemer (Yale), Hillel Steiner (Manchester), Robert Van der Veen (Amterdam), and Erik Olin Wright (Madison). According to some critics, Cohen’s interpretation of the materialistic conception of history in Marx does not sufficiently take the concept of class struggle into account (Jonathan Wolff for example). Regardless of this specific problem, Cohen concentrates, in his book, on a possible inconsistency in Marx between the explanatory primacy of the forces of production and the overall impact of the of the economic structure (without which one cannot even understand the development of productive forces). To overcome this inconsistency, Cohen proposes an innovation of the theory based on the concept of functional explanation. According to this this concept, it is the capitalist economy that generates forces of production consistent with its development. 66

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This of Cohen’s is rather daring, and thus it is highly debatable. Jon Elster rendered a substantial criticism of it, arguing that in this way an end of history is surreptitiously introduced into the model (see his Making Sense of Marx and Introduction to Karl Marx). An evident characteristic of Elster’s reading is that he tries to understand Marx’s theory explicitly in light of subsequent developments. In doing something like this, he finds a remarkable difference between the question “if Marx was right” (rarely) and that of “if Marx is still useful” (certainly yes, in his opinion). In this way, he distinguishes the living and the dead of Marx, arguing that concepts like alienation, exploitation, class struggle, and ideology are still useful for political philosophy, social sciences and more generally for understanding the world in which we live. Everything turns on the combined normative and methodological ground. On this basis, Elster still declares himself to be a Marxist without needing to believe in everything that Marx thought and without the will of a revolutionary political commitment. John Roemer does a remarkable intellectual job of making Marxist economics seem less dated than it is usually supposed, at the same time trying to make it compatible with what is studied today in economics. From this point of view, many of Marx’s famous theses—starting with those on the theory of value and on the tendential fall of the rate of profit—appear false. Roemer’s neo-­ marginalist vision, however, allows us to save important aspects of Marx’s thought, such as the theory of exploitation and the idea of class struggle. Marx’s vision—in this interpretation—is strictly normative: the capitalist system based on the private ownership of the means of production is morally unfair. All this, according to Roemer, is entirely compatible with the tools of contemporary economics. One of the beliefs shared by Marx’s “bourgeois” critics is that the theory of the value in Capital is false. The problems connected to conversion, of which we have spoken, constitute strong evidence in favor of this conclusion: Marx has made a sort of improper use of the appearance/reality distinction in metaphysics, attributing the first to the exchange value and prices, and the second to labor value. This ended up creating an unbridgeable gap between values and prices and therefore condemned the theory to uselessness. As we have already noted, a criticism of this kind is partially unjust in that it stops at the assumptions of the first volume of Capital without taking into account subsequent developments where Marx tries to explain why prices do not correspond to values. But even more can be said, since in this way you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 67

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As Roemer argued, it is possible to interpret Marx in an alternative way, thus avoiding the difficulty in question. Roemer’s thesis argues that one can reconstruct the Marxian outcome by using the idea of exploitation on bases relatively independent from the quantitative aspects of labor theory of value and the derivation of prices from it. By adopting this strategy, Marx’s two fundamental theses could be kept alive: (i) that the human relations on which labor is based rest on the exploitation of labor, the latter being reified through the price system; (ii) that it is obviously exploitation that generates profit through surplus value. Something like this presupposes that a microeconomic approach to the Marxian economy is possible and that everything is compatible with the general theory of equilibrium. The essence of the microeconomic approach is to make the actions of collectives dependent on the decisions of individuals. And this in truth contradicts the usual Marxian assumptions about the primacy of classes. But nothing prevents—as some analytical Marxists want— the concept of class from being derived and not original, in other words a theorem and not a theory postulate.

In conclusion Finally, I believe that nowadays, after much debate and after Sraffa’s contributions, the question of transforming values into prices is far less pertinent than has been thought in the past. In all likelihood, we can be satisfied with the conclusion that, while accepting that the transformation itself is impossible in a technical sense, it remains important to link Marx’s economic and sociological reasoning. And in essence accept that—even if the labor theory of value is unsatisfactory—notions such as exploitation and class struggle are structural aspects of the dynamics of capitalism. This kind of conclusion has generated, within the Marxist doctrine, two alternative methods of analysis of the problem (here I follow Duccio Cavalieri’s reconstruction): that of the Sraffian equations of production prices and that of the so-­called “surplus equation” of Garegnani (in which the determination of the rate of profit conceptually precedes that of prices). The debate on the subject continued in Italy—after the Modena Conference in 1978—on two opposing lines. The first believed that—even in light of Sraffa—the labor theory of value was not acceptable, but that at the same time this did not imply a renunciation of the theory of exploitation and other fundamental aspects of the Marxian paradigm. The second, 68

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supported among others by Claudio Napoleoni, held instead that it was possible to save the labor theory of value, without which the entire scientific program of Marx would have fallen. Neapolitoni himself found in the philosopher Lucio Colletti an ally in arguing that Sraffa’s thesis on transformation was unacceptable in the context of the Marxian paradigm. (The thought of Napoleoni did, however, go through different and sometimes contradictory phases on this aspect of the matter, as pointed out in the excellent introduction by Marcello Messori to the anthological volume of his writings entitled Lotta alla rendita. Teoria e proposte di politica economica.) There are two ways to react to a negative conclusion about transformation. For the first of the two, value theory is inconsistent but only if it is not considered in the simple reproduction version. It would not be so in the version of so-­called expanded reproduction. Capitalism, as we have seen, is based on the exchange between money capital and labor power, on which the entire system of production and exchange is based. For Marx, labor-­power is in fact a sui generis commodity in that it is the only one that allows the creation of value. To acquire labor-­power on the market, the capitalist transforms currency into capital (money) and uses the variable capital thus constituted to obtain surplus value. Once produced, the goods will be exchanged on the market and transformed into an exchange value, so that the labor becomes fully abstract labor. The theme is treated by Marx in the second volume of Capital with the intention of demonstrating that the enlarged reproduction of the capitalist production process implies specific conditions to be fulfilled, starting with the need to valorize ever-­increasing capital. But this aspect of the story, which involves all the factors of production, opens the space to sometimes devastating contradictions. This happens because the capitalist society, given the split between use value and exchange value, has as its goal only the creation of actual value (realizable in money) and therefore of exchange value. Something that, in Marx’s words, can only “make the contradictions and antitheses of bourgeois production erupt with a crash.” It is not easy to assess the theoretical content of this theoretical shift, which—on the whole—ends up by putting the burden of proof on the relations of production (the sociological aspect) by inoculating the economic aspect. The second way of discounting the theoretical impossibility of transformation generates a sort of compromise that has been realized between economists and philosophers interpreting Marx. From the point of view of the compromise in question, there exists in the 69

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Marxian theory of value a quantitative and descriptive (positive) aspect, relative to the measure of the quantitative value, with which economists would deal, and a qualitative and normative aspect, which would occupy the philosophers. With the corollary that the quantitative (positive) aspect encounters formidable obstacles, and that economists must take the normative side of the issue seriously. Of course one might easily point out that such a compromise may perhaps suppress the dispute but not solve the problem.

Commodities For Marx, the commodity is the elementary cell of capitalist society, the starting point for understanding it and the object whose accumulation gives rise to capital. The Marxian concept of commodity is not at all intuitive: a commodity is not an object that we see in a shop window and perhaps attracts us, rather it is an object whose nature is determined, in a capitalist society, by the social relations of production. A commodity is…a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labor appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labor; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor. This is the reason why the products of labor become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible…the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labor which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties… There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. This I call the fetishism… (Capital, Volume I, Ch. I, § 4) From this vision it follows that commodities as such do not have a value. The belief that they do have value as such, for Marx is “fetishism”. The term fetishism depends again on the young Marx’s critique of religion. In religion, the fetish is constituted by a cult object, which for cultural reasons is attributed with power which is only apparent. But even if real power does not exist, culture makes people believe that the power in question actually 70

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does. Now, even if the fetishism of commodities mentioned by Marx resembles this, it is not identical because the goods have some real intrinsic value. What really correlates the two forms of fetishism—religious and commodity—is the cultural process behind them. Capitalism makes the value of commodities appear to be connected to capital, but in reality, Marx maintains, it depends exclusively on the actual socially necessary labor required to produce them. This appearance contrary to reality, for which social forms hide reality, constitutes the soul of the commodity fetishism. Fetishism is a veil that hides exchange value as a property of things and conceals the underlying relationships between people (classes). In this sense, fetishism involves a mystification of human ­relations—due to the prevalence of the capitalist market—within which relations between people are transformed into objectifying relations between things. The value of commodities depends on the exchange of goods from which, in a capitalist society, the satisfaction of our needs depends. But for an exchange to be meaningful presupposes a way to measure the value of commodities with respect to one another. The exchange of commodities requires that they have some properties that make them comparable to each other despite the obvious qualitative differences between them. This measure—that is, the rate of exchange between commodities—is constituted for Marx by the value of the socially necessary labor incorporated within them. From this point of view, money measures the value of commodities, but the value of a commodity lies in the value of all other commodities in proportion to the labor time necessary to produce them (this thesis is taken from Ricardo). In this way, the commodity combines use value and exchange value, and somehow both goods and money. And money serves only as a means of circulation. This gives rise to the commodity–money–commodity cycle (C–M–C), whereby commodities pass from one person to another through his social mediation constituted by the transformation into money. However, money is also the basis of capital formation—just think of a bank to understand it!—and therefore the cycle of the commodity finds its counterpart in the money– commodity–money cycle (m–c–m’ with m’ > m) that is the cycle of the accumulation. But money corrupts, and sooner or later it ends up transforming the activities of human solidarity into activities made to be paid, ending up turning even the good natural qualities into their opposite. 71

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Labor Labor has a dual character, like commodity. It can be seen as: • concrete labor, aimed at producing this or that use value; • abstract labor, pure expression of human labor, which is independent of specific qualities and whose quantity determines the value created. The “immanent measure” (internal) of value is therefore that which results from the time of socially necessary labor; that is labor which is necessary to produce that commodity in the technical conditions and with the average social degree of skill in at any given time in history. The “phenomenal measure” (external) of the value is instead that deriving from money; as a general constituent of wealth and abstract labor. For Marx, in a capitalist society, value can only be expressed in a phenomenal way, through trading relationships and through money, and therefore the exchange value, manifested at the beginning of the analysis of commodities, appears more clearly later as a phenomenal form of value. In this way, the labor alienated from the workers can be made social only by annulling the concrete and useful particularities and reducing it to generic labor, qualitatively identical, whose products are precisely for this reason equivalent and quantitatively comparable.

Surplus value Labor-­power as such is the only source of capitalist profit. The latter depends on the “surplus value,” which in turn consists of the value of the product of unpaid labor supplied by the labor-­power of the worker, whose use—the labor—was acquired by the capitalist on the free market. Assuming the labor theory of value, it is not normal for the overall size of production to exceed what is necessary to ensure the survival of workers. The genesis of the concept of surplus value thus depends on an implicit need in labor theory of value. In such a theory the exchange, which takes place between “equivalents”, cannot generate profit. The surplus value is thus the source of every profit, according to Marx. This is what makes the difference between the money invested at the beginning of the production cycle and that collected at the end. The need to explain profit remains. In Marx’s view, this depends on the capitalist’s ability to find a commodity “whose

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value of use itself possesses the peculiar quality of being a source of value”. In this way, consuming such merchandise it would also create value. This commodity exists and is only one, labor-­power. Given that, in the labor theory of value, value is incorporated labor (as we have seen), then labor-­power must be the only commodity capable of producing value. Surplus value arises from the fact that the capitalist—given the particular conditions of the society in which he operates—can acquire labor-­power like any other commodity on the market, that is to say at the price corresponding to the labor time necessary to (re-­) produce it. This for Marx is equivalent to the set of means of subsistence that the class of workers, that is, those who possess labor-­power, consume and use. The surplus value depends on the fact that the value of a product is given by the labor time necessary to produce it, and this is normally greater than what the workers do use to produce it. A day’s labor for the worker makes more than the laborer does in terms of subsistence and costs for the capitalist. The surplus value and therefore the profit of the capitalist depends on this differential.

Exploitation Marx was not the first to talk about exploitation. Precedents of this concept can be traced from Aristotle’s theory of justice and from the theory of fair price in Thomas Aquinas and the scholastics. Among other things, there is a relationship between natural property rights and labor theories of value—such as, for example those formulated in John Locke’s work in the seventeenth c­ entury— and the idea of exploitation. The Lockean conception is then reflected in the writings of liberal economists, industrialists and socialists of the nineteenth century and in their thesis that society is divided into essentially two classes, that of productive individuals and that of parasites. But, given what is due to the history of the concept, there is no doubt that it was Marx who made the concept of exploitation central in his philosophical and economic vision. The concept of exploitation represents a relationship in which a subject (individual or collective) takes unjustifiable advantage of the “vulnerability” of another. Thus conceived, the concept in question presupposes an unjust distribution of resources and access to the means of production. In the words of John Roemer, it is essentially “conceived of as the distributional effect of an unjust 73

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inequality in the distribution of productive assets and resources.” In these terms, to speak of exploitation implies accepting a normative vision of political philosophy, one in which one can distinguish what is ethically right from what is not. And of course something like this is not entirely peaceful from a Marxian point of view (see the discussion on Marxism and justice later in this section). Marx supports a structural version of exploitation. Under this version, exploitation is not episodic but systematic because it depends on the class structure of the capitalist society. It also presupposes the existence of surplus value. Surplus value—that is, the labor of the worker not paid by the capitalist—is the main reason why we can speak of exploitation in Marx’s vision. Thus, Marx’s labor theory of value has as its corollary a theory of exploitation which represents one of the most interesting and convincing parts of his general construction. It must be said immediately that— given the strong doubts that exist about the validity of Marx’s labor theory of value—there can be an intellectual interest in separating the two things, arguing that the thesis of exploitation holds even if the labor theory of value fails. In this perspective, G.A. Cohen has come to argue that not only does exploitation not depend on the labor theory of value but even that we are here in the presence of two incompatible theses. Thus, it would not be the value of the labor of the wage workers that the capitalist appropriates but part of the final product of the labor. Even accepting a distinction like this, it must be admitted that the premise that all exploitation necessarily depends on of the existence of surplus value appears intrinsically problematic. Indeed, the notion of surplus value implies a sort of coercion exercised by the capitalists against workers, coercion due to the fact that the latter have no alternative to the offer of wages—if we exclude starvation!—and are therefore “forced” to accept the proposals of the capitalist. But all this is highly debatable if, for example, we think in terms of the welfare state and reflect on the fact that the state could always create a network of protection for all citizens that allows them as workers to have some form of resistance to the wages offered by the capitalist. The notion of exploitation here is ambiguous. On the one hand, it takes up—as we have said—a long ethical tradition that is based on the injustice of a world divided between rich and poor, wealthy and non-­wealthy. On the other hand, it depends on Marx’s attempt to replace the ethical and juridical discourse with this explanation which indicates the socio-­economic causes of exploitation rather 74

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than the moral reactions to it. The problematic nature of the concept arises from the fact that the two types of argument—the ethical and the explanatory—do not always work well in tandem. Exploitation, in Marx’s vision, depends on the fact that classes of people are exploited as they contribute to the social product with more labor than is necessary to produce the goods they consume. Of course, opposed to the exploited there are other classes of people, the exploiters, who consume more goods than they contribute to producing with their labor. This exploitative relationship stems from the fact that there is no contractual equality between capitalists and workers: workers are forced to offer labor to survive. From this derives the “invisible” coercion, dependent on the historical conditions for the capital–labor exchange, which replaces the visible one of pre-­capitalist societies (where there are slaves it is not difficult to understand that they are exploited by the masters). Of course, it is very questionable to assert—as Marx does— that capitalist societies are always characterized by this level of (­invisible) coercion, and it cannot easily be argued that there exists a type of coercion dependent on historical–social circumstances such as the one Marx imagines. Moreover, in the theory of exploitation there is a weakness similar to that seen in the labor theory of value, a weakness that consists in the difficulty of making all types of work commensurable. The main problem connected with the notion of exploitation, however, coincides with what we have called the ambiguous nature—halfway between ethical and economic explanation—of the concept. Because, while Marx explicitly denies using terms and theories that are based on morality and the law that are ideological to him, there is no doubt that the notion of exploitation has a moral meaning, and anyone who reads Capital cannot escape the moral nature of Marx’s indignation at the situation of the proletariat. Often, Marx calls exploitation “theft” or “robbery,” and these are terms rich in moral meaning. Moreover, it is even difficult to conceive the idea of exploitation if we do not start from an ethical conception of type in which a just society is hypothesized as that society in which exploitation does not exist. Finally, it is somewhat trivial to say that for Marx, a capitalist society is unjust, if his own theory does not allow us to fully understand in what sense. Certainly, however, the existence of exploitation justifies and motivates the class struggle aimed at eliminating it. The trick, if we want to call it so, inherent in the capitalist system, consists in the presence of a single commodity whose use value is also an 75

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exchange value. This commodity is labor-­power. In this way, the human being functions as a thing: that is, as any other commodity. It is not workers who use the means of production, but, through the intermediation of the capitalist, the other way around. But this shows that the labor-­power of the workers is the real productive force of capital. Thus, the real profit of capitalist enterprises does not depend on fixed capital (machines, etc.) but on variable capital (i.e., labor-­power). This is paid on the market like any other commodity, and given the compulsion to increase profits in the name of capital, it leads to a progressive impoverishment of the working class. On this basis Marx distinguishes the rate of profit, which depends on fixed and variable capital together, from the rate of surplus value, which depends exclusively on the amount of labor-­ power. The progressive crisis of capitalism will be caused, from this point of view, by the impoverishment of the working class and the consequent inability to sell on the market all the commodities of which the system produces ever more. This impoverishment will then be one of the causes of the endemic crises of capitalism, which in this perspective are essentially crises of overproduction, and the origin of its final collapse under the pressure of the proletariat. Now, in reality, it is not easy to evaluate the theoretical force of this vision, so powerful that it starts from the thesis on labor value and culminates in the idea of ​​exploitation. John Roemer tried to overcome this theoretical difficulty by trying not to consider the theory of exploitation as an effect of the capitalist-­wage relationship but in the perspective of a basic injustice that depends on the distribution of property in a class society. If—according to Roemer—we divide the society into two classes, that of the capitalists and that of the workers, then we can say that there is exploitation when in a possible coalition of both classes (society as a whole) the former would be worse if the second withdrew and the second would not be worse if the first withdrew. Such a hypothetical situation would suggest that what holds society together would not be the free will of the parties but some form of domination by one class over the other. It is well known that Marx’s idea of exploitation does not work to the letter (as already mentioned). If labor equals value, and exploitation depends on whether there is an unpaid portion of this labor and nothing more, then we have not concluded much. In fact, any institutional community needs public benefits—­education, healthcare, police, etc.—and given the Marxian labor theory value, even the resources used to obtain public goods correspond to unpaid labor. But in this case, obviously, it is not a form of exploitation; 76

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at least, not in the same sense in which the capitalists exploit the workers. The conclusion is thus that the notion of exploitation cannot be purely descriptive, as Marx would have it, but must instead necessarily depend on normative considerations of the type of social relationship on which it depends (as Rawls would say). In essence, for Marx, it is the institutional background, the basic structure of capitalist and liberal-­democratic society, which generates a version of exploitation that in this sense is necessarily ethical–political. In this perspective, a capitalist society necessarily ends up being unjust. And Marx must make his own criteria for evaluating it. The main reason for the injustice of capitalist society is, however, of a distributive nature—even if Marx would not have been pleased to recognize it!—and the resulting exploitation essentially depends on the fact that some essential resources—like the means of p ­ roduction— are distributed unfairly between people and classes. This arrangement, in turn, is enabled by a basic structure that makes it acceptable. For example, in capitalist and liberal-­democratic societies it should be through the voting process that workers are able to appropriate the surplus value. But something like this, by all accounts, does not occur. Hence the need to appeal to the social sphere as the only alternative capable of achieving a fair distribution. If exploitation depends on a deficit of fairness in the c­ apitalist– worker relationship, then Marx’s notion of exploitation presupposes a normative theory of justice. On this point there has been considerable controversy in the doctrine. Did Marx have a theory of justice that remained more or less submerged? Can one say that notions like exploitation and alienation, and in general the condemnation of capitalism, appeal to an idea of justice? Let’s be clear: I do not think we can doubt the fact that Marx was against capitalism, and the doubt concerns the values on which the conviction is based. Are they values of justice—like freedom, equality etc.—or are different values and perhaps more general, of the type which relate to the full self-­realization of the human being? As the reader will have understood, in my interpretation Marx condemns capitalism because it is unfair in the distributive sense mentioned above. But how can one support such a thesis when Marx explicitly denies it (he and Engels even changed name of the “League of the Just,” as mentioned earlier, because he did not like the idea of justice, which he deemed naive and abstract)? In order to do so, one must distinguish—as Rawls does—two meanings of justice, one “restricted” and one more general. In the first 77

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“narrow” sense, justice can be understood as a set of rules in force in the context of a given basic structure, the one dictated by capitalism, including perhaps also all the democratic procedures. But when we assume a more general, “broad” conception of justice, at the same time we apply the standards of justice to the basic structure that must be modeled in accordance with them. In this second case, we can state that the notion of exploitation, if understood as a capitalist expropriation of unpaid labor, seems—as we have already said—to presuppose an ethical judgment in terms of justice. Something like this is confirmed by Marx’s famous general principle of justice that we mentioned at the beginning: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” and reiterated by the already noted use of terms such as robbery and theft when he speaks of exploitation; terms whose connotation appears undoubtedly moral. And perhaps, more than any other consideration, the reformulation of the theory of exploitation in terms of justice can be drawn from the fact that in the “broad” interpretation that we have suggested the theory of justice implies a reorganization of the distribution of fundamental goods in the basic structure, starting with the means of production. This rearrangement presupposes, in addition to the essential freedoms, a certain equality in the possession of the fundamental goods as a condition for the realization of a just society. In essence, capitalist exploitation cannot be considered fair, and a theory of liberal and social democratic justice cannot accept the institutional basic structure that allows it.

Marxism and justice To seriously discuss the question of the relationship between Marxian legacy and the concept of justice it is necessary to consider two different aspects. That is to say, on the one side, what Marx himself thought about justice, and on the other, Rawls’ theory of justice that influenced ideas on justice more than any other theory in recent years (on this see my book Marxismo e Giustizia and Marx in America by Petrucciani and Trincia). Here it is not possible to treat Rawls’ theory of justice in depth. Moreover, many of our readers are aware that Rawls—in the wake of modern contractualist thinking and of John Stuart Mill—recently proposed an original vision of distributive justice. The object of the Rawlsian theory of justice is the basic structure of society. This is the structure of the most important economic, political and legal 78

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institutions. The problem is interpreted from a normative point of view, and consists in the choice—in a noumenal original position—of principles of justice able to hold together a “well-­ordered society.” The first principle insists on the “most extensive total system of basic liberties” aiming primarily at concrete constitutional freedoms. The second principle is divided into two parts. On the one hand it provides for equality of opportunity for all; on the other hand, it assigns a priority in the distribution of primary goods to the “most disadvantaged.” The parties in the original position choose such principles in a condition of only partial knowledge, under a “veil of ignorance,” which aims to ensure them impartiality. The justification of the principles is ensured by a topic based on the theory of rational decision-­making and on a current-­ checking mechanism of moral intuitions defined as “reflective equilibrium.” Rawls’s two principles of justice are lexically ordered, in the sense that it is not permitted to renounce freedom in the name of economic advantages. Rawls’ is a “public conception of justice,” which in turn should guarantee the stability of a well-­ ordered society on the basis of the shared principles of justice. It is not easy to say how much this kind of liberal and social democratic theory can be compatible with Marx’s vision. And if Rawls’ well-­ordered society is basically a society that has partially resolved class conflict, it cannot be denied that at first sight the normative structure of Rawls’s argument does not agree with Marx’s theses. Marx, in reality, was not particularly interested in problems of justice, and the few times he mentions them he does so in a negative way, even with sarcastic undertones. The notion of justice for Marx is in general an empty notion, a kind of rhetorical figure. There is no lack of negative references in the texts. Speaking of ethics, Marx and Engels say, in The German Ideology, “morality, religion, metaphysics and all the rest of ideology... they have no history and development…” In a letter to Engels dated November 4, 1864 Marx then writes: “I was obliged to insert two propositions about morality and justice in the initial motto ‘truth morality and justice’, but they are put in such a way that they cannot harm anyone”. In the first volume of Capital Marx teases Proudhon for the use of expressions such as “justice éternelle” and “équité éternelle,” and in the Critique of the Gotha Program he speaks of “ideological nonsense about Recht and other trash so common among the democrats and French Socialists.” In contemporary literature there is a wide debate on the possibility of reconciling Marxism and justice: for example, Robert Tucker, Richard Miller, and Allen Wood are against this possibility, 79

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while Steven Lukes and Ziyad Husami argued the opposite (for Lukes, Marx would support an alternative ethical vision of emancipation). There are also those who, like William L. McBride, propose an interpretative shift: on the subject we should distinguish between Marx and Engels, the first being more inclined to accept an argument based on justice and the second less. An interesting thesis is then that of Roemer who, in a highly quoted article in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs (“Property Relations vs. Surplus Value in Marxian Exploitation”, 1982), argued that a theory of exploitation must replace that of labor theory of value, and that a move like this would make Marxism and the theory of justice compatible. Roemer proceeds by rethinking Marxism in an analytical and microeconomic perspective. On similar premises, those who—from Joseph Sneed to Jon Elster—speak of Marxism in terms of game theory tend to refer to a general theory of equilibrium. The players here are collective social actors: in other words, an equivalent to Marx’s classes. If one wonders why an actor, that is, a class, accepts a balance and therefore adheres to a coalition, the answer can be given in terms of contractualism in a way that is not too different from what the Rawlsian parties in the original position would do. However, one can try to understand something more by looking at the criticisms that contemporary Marxists have leveled at Rawls’ theory of justice, bearing in mind that Rawls mainly discusses distributive justice, and that for every Marxist the horizon of justice—assuming there is one—is larger: I Rawls refers to the question of distributive justice, but is it possible to treat distribution separately from production? For Marx and most Marxists the answer to this question can only be negative. In this, among other things, Marxism ends up resembling liberal theories from Hayek to Nozick, for which to touch the distribution is to also disrupt the process of production. This happens—in Marxian reasoning—for two reasons: First of all, only by changing the production system as a whole can we change what everyone receives at the end of the process. Secondly, after all, Marx thought that capitalist distribution was to be considered substantially right, of course, once one accepted its general principles. In Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx criticizes the bourgeois idea of justice and adds: “Is it not the only ‘just’ division based on today’s mode of production?” In this way, it becomes clear that Marx starts 80

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from a formal conception of justice, in which the comparative distribution of resources has no weight. And from a strictly formal point of view it can be said that capitalism gives rise to a just society (the rules of the market are the same for everyone). In this sense, Ágnes Heller is right: Marx lacks a substantive ethical criterion of justice. II The conception of the Rawlsian political subject is still utilitarian and bourgeois. In “original position,” Rawls’ noumenal individual is rational in the sense of classical economic theory. In other words, it maximizes the set of “primary goods” that can be obtained from society. Marx’s socialist man, on the other hand, is more altruistically oriented and has no maximizing purpose. III Once the concept of Marxian ideology has been taken seriously, any argument that claims to be neutral with respect to the parties involved is considered impossible. Which is to say that there is no neutrality of the theory once the idea that history is the history of class conflict is accepted. Criticizing the authors of the Gotha program, Marx cannot help but say: “But ‘all members of society’ and ‘equal right’ are obviously mere phrases. The kernel consists in this, that in this communist society every worker must receive the ‘undiminished’… ‘proceeds of labor’.” More generally, we can say that in the Marxian perspective all conceptions of right and justice are underdetermined with respect to the material, historical and social conditions of coexistence. It is evident that, taken seriously, an objection of this kind is devastating since it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to cut out a normative space—­typical of the approach from Kant to Rawls—within the Marxian vision. This in turn calls into question the age-­old question of determinism in Marx (socialism simply happens for historical reasons without the need for a particular commitment on the part of the subjects). Habermas has stigmatized an option of this kind, arguing that a socialism without ethics is a “positivist” socialism. And saying that the latter is powerless because it provides a moral psychology but not a theory of action. IV In line with the previous one, in the context of a Marxian approach it is not possible to speak of justice in ahistorical terms because every historical period has its own justice. In other words, there is one justice within feudalism and another within a capitalist regime. Which, once again, renders fruitless 81

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any attempt to speak of justice in a general and normative way, as a specific relationship between citizens and institutions. Something like this is nothing but “bourgeois” justice. Only in the first stage of the communist society, will the worker receive due consideration of his working time, and only then could we begin to speak about justice. Equality, which is at the heart of the theories of justice, is not—for Marx—a prioritized outcome. The equality of rights in bourgeois society, a veritable “Eden of innate human rights [where] alone rule Liberty, Equality, Property, and Bentham,” as he will sarcastically say in Capital (Vol. I, p. 123), is nothing more than a right to be unequal. In the Economic Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx goes so far as to say that egalitarianism is generalized envy. What matters is social freedom, which—again for Marx—has the consequence that equality depends on freedom. True injustice corresponds to the absence of freedom. The latter is what allows us to say—as the Critique of the Gotha Program states—that everyone must have in accordance with their needs. Only a truly free man can seriously identify his own needs, but in order to go that far, at least the first stage of communism needs to be enlarged. V It makes no sense, for Marx and his research program, to have a theory of social choice whose aim is to optimize the level of institutions in the perspective of justice. More generally, institutions cannot be assessed as such because they are a consequence of the social and economic structure of society in a given historical period. In particular, the public institution par excellence that is the State—the one that then has the main task in achieving the objectives of justice—is not for Marx a neutral instrument but, albeit in different ways throughout history, to service of the dominant classes (as Allen Buchanan argues in his Marxism and Justice). Naturally, all this must be seen from the perspective of a research program (by Marx) that goes beyond justice, as the famous phrase from the Critique of the Gotha Program “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” shows abundantly. In fact, it is not difficult to understand that such a principle can at most be taken as a regulative ideal of the utopian type, but that as such it certainly cannot serve as a single criterion of justice. It doesn’t make much sense to preach—under the idea of justice—that all the needs of all individuals should be met. The upshot is that it is not clear how a communist society can guarantee such a result. 82

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This again refers to the fact that, in the second and most advanced stage of communism, the fullest abundance reigns. Regardless of the unreality of an assumption like this, it must also be said that a problem of justice usually presupposes a condition of relative scarcity. And absent the latter, obviously, the problem of justice also evaporates. The other part of Marx’s principle—that is to say “each according to his abilities”—also generates interpretative difficulties (Marx speaks of it in passing in the Grundrisse, and then in Volume III of Capital). Perhaps the solution to the hermeneutical question on this point is to think that labor and social commitment constitute the primary needs of individuals in a mature communist society. But even in this way one enters with two feet in the realm of utopia... Now, it is hard not to observe that a position so clearly beyond justice is difficult to sustain. Nor is it easy to accept the purely formal point of view according to which capitalist society is just as everyone is treated in the same way. There is no need to wait for a new and different world—that of realized communism—to criticize the injustice of capitalism. It is sufficient to nurture an ethical conception of politics, perhaps based on the condemnation of inequality, discrimination and exploitation, to be able to criticize capitalist society from within and often iuxta propria principia. But something of this kind presupposes a normative vision, which—as has been said many times—appears difficult or impossible within the intellectual and political program of Marx. Let us remember what was said earlier about goods, money and fetishism. In Marx, a deconstructive will is always present, aimed at unmasking the deceptions of capitalist society. In this case, the deception consists in attributing value to capital or natural resources as “things,” while instead, for Marx, the bourgeois capitalist regime is based on the fact that the status quo draws profits from “people.” It is not true, for example, that the earth as such contributes to the value of the product, but the point is that the capitalist regime makes it possible to have an income from the land completely independently of the labor necessary to make it productive. If we think in this way, the mystification of capitalism comes out: simply profit, interest and land rent or real estate are reifications and constitute an illusion. From which follows an obvious injustice. The thesis can be translated (not without some difficulty) in terms of theories of justice. If we resort to the distinction between the allocation and distribution of resources (via prices), the question becomes immediately clearer. And it becomes possible to 83

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understand where the core of injustice lies in the Marxian perspective. From the point of view of the allocation of resources, i.e. economic efficiency, there is nothing wrong with the attribution of a financial return to capital as an interest rate or to the land as an annuity. The ethical–political problem instead becomes immediately apparent as soon as we begin to think in terms of distribution. That is to say when we translate the financial return of capital and land into the property rights of the capitalist and landowner. In short, there is a distinction to be made between the so-­called neutral use of the market for the sake efficiency and the system of private property. The former is in itself neither just nor unjust, while the latter can be very unjust. However, this distinction is not usually accepted by Marxian communism, and that is why— we maintain—Marx isn’t able to conceive his vision in terms of justice/injustice. But the distinction in question is at the heart of the liberal and social-­democratic theories of justice like Rawls’. And if we want to try to reconcile—as I am suggesting—the two visions, the Marxian one and the one based on justice, we must argue that in the age of capitalism the factor of labor production is unjustly treated from the point of view of the distribution of basic goods. On this basis we can attribute to Marx the theorem that all members of society should have fair access to available resources, which is not the case in the capitalist regime. This fact generates systemic injustice and makes capitalism a regime of exploitation and domination. Naturally, we do not claim with this way of reasoning to having solved the immanent tension between Marx’s theses and a condemnation of capitalism in terms of justice. There are many reasons that make a reconciliation of the kind arduous, first of all that Marx was a fierce opponent of both reformist socialism and utopian socialism, and precisely because of this he did not want—as we have seen—to discuss capitalism as an example of distributive or general ethical injustice.

Historical materialism and the collapse of capitalism A reconstruction of Marx’s historical materialism is a difficult and arduous task. The first reason for this is that Marx—despite the primary importance of the concept—never presents a unified theory of historical materialism in his writings. The second reason— probably at the root of the first—is that he does not seem to have a unitary and coherent vision of historical materialism itself. The first reason results from the fact that we must use at least four 84

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(­sections of) different works to get a complete idea of it, an idea that in any case originates with the critique of Hegel in his early years. In the Manifesto Marx limits himself to presenting, in the first part of the work, history from the perspective of historical materialism as the history of the class struggle. In the preface to Critique of Political Economy there is the reconstruction of history in terms of the development of productive forces, and finally, in Capital and in the Grundrisse, history is presented in light of the systematic search for surplus value on the part of the dominant classes. Needless to say that these different versions are not always consistent with each other. More generally, as we said, Marx does not seem to have a unitary and coherent vision of historical materialism. For him, on the one hand, it consists of a theory of the structure of the modes of production, and on the other hand, in a reconstruction of their historical succession. The structural approach summarizes what the different modes of production have in common: a nucleus of productive forces (for example the technology used) and of production relations (based primarily on property) with a superstructure that includes the law, ethics and the culture of every society in general. The historical reconstruction instead presents what the different modes of production do not have in common, so that we can distinguish an Asiatic mode of production, one based on slavery, one on feudal servitude, up to the capitalist mode production. Here again, one cannot say that coherence is Marx’s strong suit in providing a reasonably uniform depiction of the question. This is made even more complicated by the fact that Marx has a generally ambiguous view of history (as we have already seen in the case of exploitation). Here, the ambiguity consists in coexistence, within his thinking of two different conceptions of history: a philosophical history of Hegelian ilk, and an empirical theory of history. The first offers an interpretation of events in light of their contribution to the realization of the end of history. The end of history for Marx is communism, and the philosophy of history that justifies its progressive advent is remarkably similar to a religious vision that foresees the final salvation of humanity. The second offers a set of socio-­economic generalizations about social change. Without a doubt, Marx’s philosophy of history is now widely discredited, and few are willing to believe that the history of humanity is a kind of long wait for the advent of communism, but the problem is even more serious, if we consider that Marx’s empirical theory of history is strongly influenced by his philosophy of history (this type of objection, moreover, is at the heart of Benedetto 85

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Croce’s criticism of Marx). This confusion between two levels is clearly seen in what is perhaps the main defect of Marx’s whole vision, the underlying determinism. Determinism here means that in history there is an iron law that determines what will happen given what has already happened and in general that the laws of history are the equivalent of the laws of nature, an affinity for which Marx felt along with Darwin (Engels recalled the centrality of historical necessity in Marx’s thought in his speech at Marx’s funeral). Something like this, besides being completely unlikely, would take away from history what is perhaps its essential characteristic, that is, a relative unpredictability. Moreover, what is even worse, a vision of this type deprives human motives and reasons of all meaning and value. Given that determinism tells us where we are going, why should we work hard to realize the end of history? In short, Marxian determinism inevitably condemns us to a life of messianic expectation in which our efforts to understand and act on what we understand are superfluous. Furthermore, it is not easy to understand how Marx was a determinist, in the sense that humans are simply the object of a historical process that passes over their heads, but how much space is left for human choices and decisions. Among other things, it is not easy to understand how deterministic Marx was, in the sense that humans are simply the object of a historical process passing over their heads, and how much room there was for human choices and decisions. The determinism of Marx, if there is any, is still sophisticated. The basic thesis is that within each mode of production there is a dialectic between productive forces and production relations, or if you will between technology and legal regulation of ownership. This relationship is progressively realized until reaching a level of optimality. After this however, this fortunate correspondence degenerates sooner or later into contradiction and over time the production relations become incompatible with the productive forces. The contradiction is generated by the development of new productive forces that render existing production relations obsolete. At this point the necessity arises for “an era of social revolution” destined to remove the contradiction by bringing out new relations of production. It should be noted that this view is, if taken into consideration from a historical point of view, bizarre if not perverse. Take, for example, the necessary transition from capitalism to communism, which is what most interested Marx. His thesis tells us that the technological and productive progress of capitalism should, so to speak, make it rupture in the moment of its greatest development. To imagine something like this is very 86

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strange: people turn violent when things go wrong, not when development reaches its maximum! An impression of this kind seems to have been amply confirmed by history, as communist revolutions took place in countries that were on average backward in terms of the development of productive forces. Another weak point, in this perspective, concerns the absolute uncertainty that surrounds Marx’s communism when we consider it from the point of view of the balance between productive forces and relations of production. Once again in this case the Hegelian dialectic and Hegel’s philosophy of history seem to replace the arguments in favor of Marx’s thesis in this regard. We, in other words, can bet on communism only if we imagine it as an imminent end of history through a general dialectic which sees history go from primitive communism to capitalist alienation, which is then in turn removed by the final conquest of saving communism. But this is a quasi-­religious vision that seems to have little to do with the desired balance between new modes of production and social relationships that can bring them to power. What has been said in the last paragraph shows how Marx, to reach the revolution, does not focus so much on an argument in favor of communism as on an argument against capitalism. Capitalism, in his opinion, is condemned to failure according to its own principles, and sooner or later it will fail to provide the material goods on which it had founded its hope of success. Although it is strange to imagine the two together, Marx often seems to think that capitalism will simultaneously lead to an extreme impoverishment of the working class and to the end of capitalist profit. The theory of the tendential fall of the rate of profit is Marx’s principal argument for the crisis of capitalism. Traditionally, such a possibility was explained—after Malthus—in terms of population growth and stagnation in agricultural production. Marx instead wants to provide a theory of the crisis of capitalism within the industrial sector, the real core of the system. Here, for Marx, technological progress paradoxically instead of constituting an anti-­crisis factor ends up being the cause of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. It is obviously strange to imagine something like this, and to do this we must make an effort to identify ourselves with Marx’s reasoning: new technologies imply labor-­saving, but profit depends on the surplus value and this on the quantity of labor-­power, hence the saving of labor-­power implies falling profits. It is difficult to believe that such an argument could work in the eyes of an economist, and perhaps we can get away with saying that here again Marx focuses more on a qualitative thesis and on the strength of the Hegelian 87

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philosophy of history than on a reliable scientific argument. The mechanism of the capitalist system proves to be perverse in the final analysis because it alienates the human being from the product of his labor and transforms him into a thing. The need for proletarian revolution depends above all on the need to overthrow this systematic alienation stemming from the violence of class relations. Only through a revolutionary process will it be possible to remedy it, and this will allow the reconciliation of the human being with himself. What Hegel wanted on the spiritual level of consciousness, Marx claims to realize in the material reality of economic-­social relations.

Marx and the utopian socialists One can easily understand from this brief analysis of some categories of the mature Marx how his socialism is different from that of the so-­called utopian socialists, like Owen in Great Britain and Saint-­ Simon or Proudhon in France. But there is also something more than what is seen in the surface in this difference, something that is useful for grasping the complexity of Marx’s thought. The fact is that Marx was not only an economic critic, he was also and above all a (post-­) Hegelian philosopher. For him, therefore, the ultimate reconciliation must take place not only in the economic sphere, but also within the human sphere as well. Thus, the Critique of Political Economy is functional to overcoming alienation and claims to be a reconciliation of man with himself. It is enough to look at some similarities and differences between Marx and the socialist utopian in order to realize this. Surely Marx shares some relevant aspects of utopian socialism, such as: the historical inevitability of socialism, the distinction between (primary) production and (secondary) distribution, the importance of technological progress for determining the social order, the relative irrelevance of the political freedoms as such, the suppression of private means of production, the elimination of classes, and state centralism. Now, it is normally said that the main difference lies in the fact that Marx provides a critical theory of economics in place of the generic ethical aspiration of the utopian socialists to justify all these common aspects of socialism. And in this thesis there is certainly something true. The point is that there is another fundamental difference; the child of Marx’s Hegelianism, Marx wants to redeem man’s destiny through the economic process. The ultimate goal of socialism is thus epochal and almost eschatological: it is a question of reconciling the human being with a dehumanization, due to capitalism, which alienates him and estranges him from himself. 88

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It has been said from the start that Marx is a complex thinker, of whom nevertheless an “anachronistic” assessment must be made; that is, that we present the Marx of his own time in light of our needs today. I believe there is little doubt that his analyses of the capitalist system are profound and interesting, especially today when we are aware of the sometimes-­ devastating results that accompany the crises of capitalism. However, few of us would think of applying his categories to the real world. Assuming we agree on these two assumptions, it may be helpful to reflect on the points in which the doctrine of Marx is lacking, when considered in light of contemporary theory. To summarize in advance what these critical points have in common, one could say that Marx did not like to present his work in ethical–political terms. He claimed instead, a “scientific” basis for his work, and it is from this point of view that the main criticisms arise. At the same time, it seems appropriate to see if it is possible to find aspects of Marxian thought that can serve to address some critical issues of contemporary capitalism. We have given the latter aspect the name of ‘proposals’, in order to emphasize the tentative character of analysis on the point in question.

Criticisms I Marx, as we have said, is essentially a philosopher. But, perhaps also because he reacts to Hegel’s overestimation of philosophy, he tends to underestimate the weight of philosophical and more generally theoretical arguments. These for him are essentially superstructural and ideological; that is, ultimately dependent on the relationship between productive forces and production relations. In essence, what counts is not what one DOI: 10.4324/9781003187783-6

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says but “who says what,” where the “who” regards the placement of each speaker in a class horizon. A thesis of this kind not only calls into question the value of Marx’s own work, as we have already noted, but nullifies the meaning and scope of theoretical argument in general. Marx could certainly try to save the non-­ideological meaning of his theory by saying that this is the only theory that corresponds to the laws of historical development. But it must be reiterated that this loophole is weak because, as has been said, the laws of historical development either do not exist; or in any case, are difficult to prove. The latter objection Croce clearly affirmed when he maintained that there is no true science of history (from the lecture On the scientific form of historical materialism, delivered at Naples’s Accadamia Pontaniana on May 3, 1896). Marx’s overall thesis on ideology generally maintains that ideas, habits, norms, and values are nothing but the other side of capitalist and bourgeois society, which they both reflect and defend. In any case, it is an intellectually dangerous thesis in that it tends to render any discussion sterile (if it doesn’t matter what we say, why are we even talking?). But I think we can say that it is also false, in the sense that when knowledge is sufficiently specific and professionalized, not all the propositions within it are devoid of meaning independent of class relations. Above all, the Marxian concept of ideology conflicts with every political–philosophical hypothesis of normative nature (like those implicit in any theory of justice). The normative hypotheses in question in fact start from a pre-­established “we” that provides the universalistic basis of every possible discourse. But it is precisely the “we” so conceived that cannot be accepted by any philosophical position of the kind that Marx on this point inherits from Hegel. The Marxian ideology thesis can indeed be deconstructed in terms of the logical impossibility of any purely universalistic discourse (this of different points of view which—in the case of Marx—are also conflictual). There is thus no plausible universality in the debates, but only the coexistence of a set of potentially conflicting forms of local statements (as opposed to universals). A vision of this kind is proposed by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit as an interaction between individual consciousness and community, and taken up by Marx, for example in the Manifesto, as an essential conflict between class perspectives. 90

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It should be noted that a vision such as this can lead to radical positions such as those of Jacques Derrida, but can also generate a sort of practical and epistemic compromise whereby the universalistic “we” is not impossible in principle but rather requires, to be won, complex mediation work. From this point of view any reading of the concept of ideology in Marx can be reconciled with a normative perspective (such as those implicit in theories of justice) if and only if we assume the moderate interpretation, which we have established as a compromise, for which ideology does not annihilate speech due to lack of universality but rather places it at a more complex level of communicative interaction. II Marx, contrary to the utopian socialists he criticizes, is not a moral theorist. It simply isn’t his calling. On the contrary, he makes a scientific claim: capitalism will collapse due to its internal contradictions, and not because it is morally unjust. There is no doubt that this is Marx’s explicit opinion. Where there is a problem, however, is in the possibility of reading him today as a great normative theorist (on this, see the thesis of Francesco Trincia in his Normativity and History). Concepts like alienation and exploitation, to name just two of the most famous, have a certain moral weight. The labor theory of value itself can be read in an ethical perspective, by maintaining that we normally associate the two concepts involved, in the dual sense that we value labor and we believe that labor produces value. The consequence is then that a society that regularly disrupts the labor-­value link so conceived would automatically be an unethical society. In general, the restoration of the human being to himself, which Marx intends to pursue by achieving the goals of historical materialism, is clearly an objective of an ethical nature. This objective is pursued by Marx on the basis of a revised and corrected Hegelianism. It is generally difficult to deny that the motivations for the revolution are also moral, and that the idea of a reconciliation of the alienated individual in a society no longer distorted by capitalism is consistent with an ethical vision of politics based on justice. Indeed, an attempt to read Marx in the light of an ethical ideal would not even be novel. Neo-­Kantianism in the late nineteenth century exerted considerable influence in this direction on the social-­ democratic movement in Germany. The Marburg School, starting with the most illustrious exponents such as Hermann Cohen and Paul 91

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Natorp, saw in the categorical imperative the ethical premise for approaching socialism in terms of redemption of the worker and the restoration of his integrity. Similar conclusions were reached then by the so-­called Austro-­Marxists, including Max Adler and Otto Bauer. In essence, the ethical relativism that dismisses the moral point of view regarding the critique of capitalism is not necessary to Marx’s thesis, nor is a radical determinism. We might instead think that certain material conditions are indispensable for achieving a vision of justice. Marx’s own theory of exploitation possesses—as we have seen—important aspects of a theory of distributive justice. Marx also formulated a principle according to which “everyone should receive according to their own needs,” a principle which is certainly utopian but represents an ideal of distributive justice as well. Perhaps this was opaque to Marx in part because he had a narrow focus and limited to distributive justice. Today, after Rawls, we can argue that distributive justice applies to the basic structure of society and therefore also to relations between classes. In this perspective his content is potentially revolutionary and, in any case, compatible with the Marxian aspiration to reconcile the individual with himself. III Marx presents himself as both scientific and anti-­romantic. These two claims are both disputable. Twentieth century philosophy of science would not recognize the scientific nature in the strict sense of Marx’s analysis, with several exceptions in the case of certain French thinkers like Gaston Bachelard and Althusser. All things considered, for this reason as well we have called Marx a philosopher and not a scientist, even though he thought otherwise (it must also be said that the German term Wissenschaft, which we translate as “science,” then meant something else from what we now mean by this term and included systematic philosophy). The famous criticism of Marx by Karl Popper is a case in point of this incompatibility (in The Open Society and its Enemies). However, Popper’s critique is completely external to Marx’s paradigm, while Lucio Colletti’s critique in his well-­known Political and Philosophical Interview of 1974 criticizes the scientific nature of Marx that would wrongly hold the contradictions within the development of capitalism to be logical (dialectical) oppositions, not having the dialectic dignity of science, while instead they should be real oppositions (note that in Ideology and 92

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Society Colletti had argued the opposite, that “Marxism is science”). Now, knowing that it is controversial to say what is science and what is not, it remains difficult to completely exclude criteria of verifiability, falsifiability, predictability, and the like, from the scientific parameters. And Marx’s theory does not seem consistent with similar criteria indicated by the contemporary philosophy of science. Moreover, his methodology based on dialectical deduction appears unlikely from the scientific point of view. His anti-­romanticism is also debatable. The Hegelian Marx and theorist of alienation is not incompatible with some romantic aspirations for authenticity. The source in this case is probably Rousseau, whose influence on Marx should not be overlooked. Finally, as we have seen, Marx often asserts the criteria of an improbable philosophy of history rather than solid arguments that a professional economist would recognize as scientific. IV Marx was essentially a methodological holist, preferring to speak in terms of collectives rather than individuals. The value of the individual person counts little or nothing for him, given that what happens is essentially determined by the force of the facts and the context. Key notions of his conception such as those of capital, class, and the human species are certainly inspired by methodological holism. however, much of the knowledge in contemporary social sciences refers to methodological individualism. Individualism, which should not be confused with egoism, argues that the optimal choices of a society must be consistent with the interests of an abstract individual who is part of it. Given that individualism starts from the individual subject rather than the collectivity, Marxism is literally incompatible with methodological individualism. However, it is interesting to reflect on the hypothesis that the two methodological options are compatible in principle. As we noted earlier, authors like Elster and Roemer have developed promising analyses in this direction, analyses that seek to save Marx’s value theory through a microeconomic reading of its fundamentals. It is not easy to say whether such a revisionist model can be successful, but it is not impossible to think that for example the concept of class can be made to depend on a set of individual microdecisions (and in any case, it is a line of reflection which, however daring, appears interesting from an interpretative point of view). The same reasoning applied to classes could also hold for some functionalistic 93

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misuses of Marx. Particularly for the type that claim whatever happens in a capitalist regime it will certainly have been dictated by the interest—general and abstract—of capital. Also, in this case an individualistic microeconomic translation—such as those made by some analytical Marxists—could benefit the cause. It must also be said, for the sake of intellectual honesty, that in recent decades the debate on the fundamentals of the economy has become more complex on these issues. Amartya Sen’s “rational fools” critique is, from this point of view, paradigmatic. Individual rationality alone—many scholars would say today—is inadequate both in the fundamental perspective and in the face of the structural problems of the economic system. V Marx, for reasons of internal coherence, is forced to transfer the weight of many of his arguments from philosophy to economics. But it is precisely from the perspective professional economic that his theories are often poorly considered. Marxism is not part of official economic science, and in essence a student who enrolls in economics is not usually educated on the basis of texts and principles that refer to Marx. Why? It is not easy to answer, except to say that economists—like philosophers of science—mostly doubt the scientific nature of Marx’s research program. Of course, it is complicated to provide general reasons for such distrust. Wanting to simplify as much as possible, one could say that the marginalist and neo-­ classical economic revolution (from the 1870s onwards) has shifted the focus of economic problems toward the microeconomic foundations of rational choice. In essence, Marxian economics does not accept this dominant categorical picture, emphasizing in a holistic way the relevance of structural constraints (i.e., the set of limits on individual decisions that depend on the historical-­ social context), and consequently underestimating the individualistic bases of rational choice. It is also interesting to note, however, that not all economics is microeconomics, and that there are important currents of economic thought—for example those that draw inspiration from Keynes—outside of it. Finally, according to many contemporary economists, fundamentals based on the rational choice of neo-­classical economics should be revised in a direction not entirely unlike the Marxian one. VI So far, we have avoided putting Marx on any kind of “trial”. How guilty was the complex Hegelian thinker, Karl Marx, of 94

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the grief that the historical applications of his doctrine have caused in half the world? Obviously, it is not easy to answer such a question. And it is even less so if we keep in mind that there would be—as Stedman Jones claims—a remarkable difference between the “real” Marx and that built and represented by his socialist heirs/followers (the greater fault would in fact fall to the “fictional Marx”). Precisely this difficulty is one of the reasons why I neglected the issue. I am also equitable by nature, and I do not like the idea of putting ideas and those who support them on trial. In this, I very much agree with the response from the British Interior Minister to his Prussian colleague who was none other than Ferdinand von Westphalen, the half-­brother of Jenny, wife of Karl Marx, who had always been hostile to his brother-­in-­law, and became interior minister of Prussia. To Westphalen, who asked him to arrest Marx for his revolutionary theories, the British cabinet member wrote: “According to our laws, we simply discuss regicide and without there being an explicit reference to the Queen of England or the absence of a precise plan, there lacks sufficient reason for the arrest of the conspirators,” (taken from J. Attali, Karl Marx). Such a spirit of tolerance should apply even more to someone like Marx, who died long before the advent of the revolutions proclaimed in his name. Nevertheless, history cannot be ignored. And, whatever Marx’s personal responsibilities are on the subject, we have learned a lesson. That is to say that communism does not effectively defend the freedom so dear to Marx himself, in the name of which he wanted to protect the weak and the exploited. In short, realized communism, and possibly even worse, the socialist transition that lays the groundwork for it, are a threat to freedom that is far worse than that brought by capitalism (which is not without its faults). This is not a great discovery, one might observe. And it’s true. But a consideration in this regard seemed useful before arriving at conclusions which may have obscured the possibility of reading Marx from a liberal and social-­democratic perspective.

Proposals We have so far emphasized some fairly obvious difficulties, which come to light when examining Marx’s thought today. It seems only appropriate to try to understand whether there also are some 95

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Marxian proposals that can be intellectually helpful in the current situation. Here I identify four critical areas—without claiming that they are the only ones—in which such prospective proposals could serve to better understand the world of today and perhaps intervene with greater awareness. These critical areas concern: (i) the so-­called knowledge-­based economy; (ii) the incidence of inequality; (iii) the perverse effects of globalization; and (iv) tensions within capitalism. As we will see, our analysis of these four points leads to the conclusion that by discussing these issues—starting with Marx—one enters into standard debates in the theory of distributive justice. I By knowledge-­based economy, we mean the use of information to generate value in an economic universe profoundly influenced by the digital revolution and ICT (information and communication technologies). In this context, knowledge applies directly to economic production and is a scarce resource that enables a competition regime in which those who own it and are able to use it efficiently may obtain huge profits. We are all familiar with such a world, which is that of great transnational companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. To tackle problems concerning the knowledge economy in a Marxian horizon, it is necessary to overcome a prior difficulty, which consists in considering this level of production as merely superstructural. Once this first step has been taken, the sense of a critical position that draws inspiration from Marx in this area seems to be twofold: on the one hand, some instabilities of the knowledge-­ based economic system can be identified that can generate crises; on the other hand, there are some structural differences in the system in question, and it is claimed that these differences generate the need to intervene in an original manner. The new characteristics of productive activity linked to the knowledge-­based and immaterial economy concern both the object of the economy itself and the relations of production and labor within it, as well as the possible “contradictions” that are imposed by cognitive capitalism (see among others the works of Andrea Fumagalli, and keep in mind the analysis by Toni Negri). We might think of open issues like the following:

- In the economic valorization of the general intellect two contrasting structural movements take place. On the one hand, in the knowledge-­based economic system, innovation and therefore competitive profit, is linked to people’s 96

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cooperative capacities (see Yochai Benkler). In the 4.0 world, progress depends on groups that must work together and not on isolated individuals. But companies, in order to earn money, must secure exclusive patents and copyrights. They must therefore exclude and not include. This generates at least a logical tension between the two moments and a complex trade-­off. - The second problem concerns employment relationships. In cognitive capitalism, as we have said, the cooperative aspect is decisive. This usually generates non-­traditional work communities and ways of life consistent with them (see photos of daily life in Cupertino). At the same time, it generates a confusion between work time and personal life, in environment of widespread precariousness of labor relations. This generates a need for a strong corporate chain of command with a connected hierarchy. Which in turn is in tension with what has been said about cooperative needs. However, accepting this type of analysis is not sufficient to demonstrate the need to intervene in a lato sensu Marxian perspective. It is first necessary to see what can be done to resolve the tensions we have talked about, and then to argue that traditional Keynesian and social-­democratic measures cannot find a solution to the problem. Job insecurity and market competition to grab patents and copyrights don’t avail themselves of the development of human capital and discourage the consolidation of the general intellect. Against this danger, it is proposed— on behalf of Marxism—to reverse the entanglement of private life and work, reduce insecurity and abolish private ownership of intellectual products. But these are problems of a distributive nature and it’s hard to imagine that a Keynesian and social-­ democratic strategy wouldn’t suffice. And after all the rent war (Keynes spoke of “euthanasia of the rentier”) is a classic goal of social democrats. Furthermore, the Marxian analysis—given its claim to be scientific—presupposes that the crisis of the sector, generated by the “contradictions” mentioned, is in an advanced state. Just think of the names of the companies mentioned above (Google, Facebook, Apple) to see that this is far from the truth. Thus, a general reduction in the private ownership of trademarks and patents and a stabilization of insecurity in the knowledge-­based economy are—at least in theory—compatible with a theory of liberal and social-­democratic justice. 97

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II Marx missed the mark with many predictions. First of all, the one concerning the relative fragility of capitalism and its lack of efficiency, and secondly, the one concerning the possibility of achieving a socialist freedom. However, he intuited, in a formidable way, the importance of inequality in society and history. In truth, as is well known, Marx did not like to speak in terms of equality, a concept that for him seemed moralistic and legalistic (and therefore bourgeois). He preferred to talk about classes and differences of class. Now, it is certain however, that class difference is based on economic inequality, an inequality motivated by the fact that some are owners of the means of production and others are not and are therefore forced to sell themselves to the former. But as we have repeatedly said, the labor theory of value is perhaps the most fragile part of Marx’s grandiose vision. At the end of the day, to pose the problem of class struggle without the labor theory of value is equivalent to posing a problem of distributive justice. A problem that becomes even more acute and resounding in the light of the thesis—following Marx—on the progressive economic polarization of the world characterized by a growing disparity between a wealthy few and the dispossessed masses. Moreover, only a few years ago the French economist Thomas Piketty showed that even today the question of inequality has an undoubted importance, and that economic polarization is well underway, linking a rich set of statistical data to his theoretical options. This kind of analysis, enlightening as it may be, needs a normative component to be reasonable and motivating. This complement can be given by the fact that inequality is often perceived as “unjust.” This step makes the Marxian premises compatible with a theory of justice. Speaking of increasing inequality nowadays is particularly complicated, as the level of global inequality is actually decreasing rather than increasing, thanks to none other than the enormous economic progress made by very populous countries like China and India. But in the West inequality has grown, and this is particularly the case in the United States. Today there is a vast empirical literature that links the latest increases in inequality to the 2007–08 financial crisis. In principle, this literature has been overlooked by mainstream political philosophers (here, I agree with Pietro Maffettone). To many—including myself—this inequality seems unjust. What remains is the far from minor problem of clarifying the moral 98

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reasons on which we base such a judgment. This is no easy task; first of all, because egalitarianism as such is difficult to accept. To make everyone equal in a society in constant motion, we should constantly intervene in people’s lives. And in this sense the understandable egalitarian inspiration would be transformed—argued Hayek and Nozick among others—into a deceptive and continuous invasion of individual liberties. But there is more: wanting to be egalitarian at all costs probably implies a leveling down, which isn’t in the interests of anyone. In 1960, Bulgaria was probably a more egalitarian country than the United States, but it is frankly difficult to think that it was better to live in Bulgaria. All this shows that we need to reflect on the meaning of inequalities and on the reasons for equality. One can begin to do so starting from moral feelings, from the alienation of which Marx speaks to the humiliation that a lower status can have as a consequence, to the otherwise unjustified power that wealth can provide and the betrayal of the sort of liberal dogma that constituted by equality of opportunity (we are sure that Marx did not consider these the fundamental defects of democracy in the capitalist regime, these for which the 18th Brumaire he spoke sarcastically of as the “Holy Grail of universal suffrage”). Certainly, inequality can give rise to inequitable institutions which in turn generate a difference in wealth between citizens, besides the fact that—being unfair—these same institutions fail to reflect a principle of equal respect that is basic in liberal democracy. These types of inequalities are, however, relational, and pertain to relationships between people rather than an absolute principle of equality. In this, they are compatible with Marx’s main thesis according to which capitalism hides a real relationship between people under an apparent relationship between things. This constitutes the precondition for the class struggle. But, at the same time, this kind of reasoning is at the heart of a liberal and social-­democratic theory of justice. III We have discussed inequality as a source of structural conflict between the haves and the have-­nots. And we have tried to trace all this back to the formidable Marxian intuition that relations between people are at the basis of the economic system and constitute the source of the class struggle (an intuition which—according to Marx himself—is inspired by the bourgeois historiography of Guizot and Thierry as well as the economic reconstruction of Ricardo). It may also be thought that 99

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this structural conflict, as I defined it, has come to light in the West in recent years in the form of the so-­called populist protest. Whatever our interpretation of the word “populist”, there is no doubt that events like Brexit, the victory of Trump, the relative success of Le Pen in France, and so on, highlight a rebellion of the masses against the elite; surely a close relative of the class struggle. I also believe that this type of revolt was generated (even and perhaps above all) by the disappointments of globalization. In fact, globalization has created new inequalities considered unjust by many. As Branko Milanović has shown with a wealth of analytical and conceptual tools, the consequences of globalization have affected the various regions of the world in different ways. The most affected were the members of the lower middle classes in the West. It is not for nothing that the majority of populist protest is concentrated in this area and not, for example in Asia. But what are the effects of globalization which have damaged members of the lower middle classes in the West? The most obvious of these effects is certainly the one suffered by Western workers whose factories have been devastated by competition from China and other countries able to produce at lower prices. On the other hand, those who had the opportunity to use good technical and scientific skills—for example, ICT workers, mentioned above—who were able to exploit the greater breadth of the markets to profit from their special abilities. International trade shows, however, a difference between these two types of effects. The inequalities due to technological innovations seem more acceptable than those due to the effects of dumping on the prices of goods in the manufacturing industry. Usually, merit is valorized, and technical-­scientific specialization can be considered a merit. The same cannot be said for effects connected to dumping as in that case the price differences do not depend on innovation but on the lack of regulations—especially those that protect workers—in the ­ countries that manage to produce at lower prices. This is a reason to consider such inequalities unjust and therefore a normative basis for protest. Now, there is no doubt Marx had a remarkable insight into what would later be globalization and its possible consequences. The negative consequences of globalization were then radically emphasized by the anti-­globalization movement and

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in successful books like Hardt and Negri’s Empire, and in a different way Naomi Klein's No Logo. The Marxian legacy of this type of protest consists in the fact that the political level of protest itself rests on the economic level. Moreover, the defects of capitalism denounced by Marx are not local but global, and the main remedy, namely the revolution, in his opinion could never have been successful in one country alone. The class struggle is then structural and worldwide. Granted this, we can also say that we are here in the presence of a question of global distributive justice, which could result in a reformulation of the terms of exchange in international trade, beginning with the action of the WTO. And all this, I argue, should be the main objective of a liberal and social-­democratic vision of global justice (although, ironically, it’s Trump who made the first moves in this direction). IV But perhaps Marx’s most important discovery, and the reason why from the beginning we have said that today his work serves as much as ever to understand the crises of capitalism, consists in his having understood some of the eliminable tensions inherent in capitalism itself. He also tried to understand what the main cause of these tensions are (and in all likelihood, the Marxist and Marxian discourse would speak here of contradictions). From this point of view, one can say that the Marxian tensions have always existed in the development of capitalism, and are as follows: - the permanent tension between the technological development of capitalism and the unemployment (today more evident than ever!), through which—according to Marx—an “industrial reserve army” is generated; - the immanent tension between the will of capital to keep labor costs under control, reducing wages, and the need to at the same time maintain a high level of consumption (on which Rosa Luxemburg wrote, and from which the Keynesian solution originates); - the tension due to the economic polarization, which we have already mentioned; - the ecological tension created between the need to produce more and its resulting excessive consumption of natural resources (obviously on this point, Marx appears less aware than we are).

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It is fairly straightforward to note the importance of these points as a whole. It is more difficult to follow Marx in the analysis of the causes that would generate these tensions of capitalism. This usual difficulty depends somewhat on Marx’s often too arduous rhetoric, somewhat on the actual complexity of a problem that involves the overlapping of different causes, and a great deal on the fact that the examination of the facts is simpler than that of their causes (to put en philosophe: a phenomenology is easier than an etiology). That said, it is quite clear that the main cause of capitalist tensions in the Marxian view is the structural relationship between (social) production relations and the development of productive forces. In fact, Marx’s reading foresees a sort of dialectical necessary in which conflict is progressively replaced by harmony: social relations initially favor a certain development of productive forces, which then become obsolete with time. At this point a “­revolutionary” process is triggered—and this is the theme of Marx which will be taken up again later by Schumpeter—and innovation imposes a radical change on social and political equilibrium. Now, there is no doubt that this is a thesis of enormous theoretical significance, the result of a great intellectual intuition. Nevertheless, even in this case there are plenty of problems which —as usual when it comes to Marx—will give rise to a “thorough and extensive” debate. The most relevant of these consists in a suspicion of incoherence: which is conceptually prior, social relations or productive forces? On this aspect of the story a theoretical decision must be taken, because Marx’s texts are undoubtedly ambiguous in this regard. Sometimes, it seems that the productive forces should prevail in terms of explanation, at other times social relations. Now, it is indeed very questionable to speak of a “determination in the last instance” or to accept a sort of mysterious dialectical solution to the puzzle. A serious answer on the subject is that provided by Gerald Cohen in his Karl Marx's Theory of History, which we noted in the discussion on analytical Marxism. Cohen speaks of a Marxian “functional explanation.” Such explanation claims that social forces are functional to the development of the capitalist economy, with the corollary that if they were not, capitalism itself would be destined for decline. This prima facie would reiterate the issue of inconsistency in the context of a more comprehensive view of the historical matrix. 102

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However, even this solution is not without its difficulties. If only because the functional explanation seems to presuppose some immanent end of history, a thing not easy to accept for a secular mentality. Furthermore, it must be admitted that it is not clear whether the dialectic between relations of production can be accepted without prioritizing the labor theory of value. But on this point, we have already expressed ourselves above.

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The conclusions concern the anachronistic account of Marx’s work that we have promised from the beginning. Given that scientific socialism today is not a viable hypothesis in the terms in which Marx evoked it, which other aspects of his body of thought remain current and useful, and which fail to withstand critical examination? The first thing as said to be clarified in such an account is that Marx—generally but especially when considered today!—is more of a profound critic of capitalism, and with it liberal democracy, than a prophet of communism. In actuality he wrote rather little about communism, while he wrote more than 30,000 pages about capitalism. His most important work, after all, is called “Capital,” and not “Socialism” or “Communism.” Marx’s main purpose was to denounce the failures, in his view often hidden, caused by capitalism as a social and economic system, at the same time maintaining that liberal democracy and even any form of liberal and democratic socialism could not be immune to such faults. But as every respectable budget tally must do, we try to itemize in this conclusion both the major defects and virtues that we find in his overall work. We’ll start with the former. We can begin with what we find most difficult to wager on today, the philosophy of history that Marx inherits, modifying it, from Hegel. That history moves, following a model, toward a predetermined and progressive end that can be deduced from the analysis of the past is something difficult if not impossible to believe. There are no scientifically respectable arguments that can demonstrate such a thesis, which therefore ends up being more the object of faith than of reasoned conviction. The same can be said about the role of the individual, which strongly structuralist hypotheses like Marx’s tend to deny. The very idea that individuals cannot choose anything authentically because everything is predetermined by the 104

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187783-7

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logic implied in history seems wrong and even abhorrent. Most of us believe that there are alternative decisions we can make in concrete contexts, and that these decisions are fundamental for any reasonable ethical or economic theory. Moreover, if Marx were right, politics itself—in which the great revolutionary himself was deeply involved—wouldn’t have much point. After all, it would be enough to wait for the inevitable coming of communism, leaving things as they go, without much to do. At the same time, it can be said that historical materialism—a doctrine which is often attributed in substantial part to Engels— has definitively faded away. Marx maintained that “being determines consciousness,” but it is not easy to understand what this sentence means in theory. Once again, the central idea—in addition to the vague suggestion that some historical processes are irreversible—is that there are socio-­economic explanations that correspond to some end of history. But since the ends of history are a very mysterious entity, even in this case we are enveloped by a thick blanket of fog. All this—according to many interpreters— makes it difficult to have confidence in the materialistic conception of history, which none the less has undoubted intellectual merits. For this reason, the thesis of the necessary correspondence between productive forces and production relations, although not without charm, remains difficult to argue. One way to do this can be to reduce the scope of the materialistic conception itself, arguing the forms of production profoundly influence the social structures that influence people’s mental attitudes at a given time. I believe that— taken in this way—the materialistic conception is more acceptable, as confirmed in part by the fact that this is what many sociologists and historians have done over the years (for the other part, it’s not a bad habit to take the classics of thought at their best and in the interpretation that allows them to save their main theses). It should also be added that, for Marx, the materialistic conception is not independent of social class theory, and the importance of the latter in the social sciences is difficult to doubt. Marx’s overall economic theory itself can be considered a partial failure, even if there are some peripheral exceptions and some formidable intuitions. This is if we exclude a revision of the paradigm in microeconomic and non-­functionalist terms. In general, it is precisely the labor theory of value—with the components of commodity, labor, and surplus value—that does not seem to be in step with contemporary economic science. Without an independent consideration of prices and the balance between supply and 105

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demand, we cannot proceed smoothly. A similar thing can be said for the theory on the collapse of capitalism, and not only because this collapse did not occur on Marx’s terms but also because the reasons given to justify it do not seem like good reasons. Finally, what is most perplexing in evaluating Marx’s overall work, is the absolute disproportion between the pars destruens, or critical part, and the pars construens, or proactive part, of his vision. If, in essence, Marx is an enlightened critic of the main defects of capitalism—the compulsion to maximize profit, the reification of human relations, etc., his ability to envision an alternative s­ olution—such as communism—leaves us bewildered, to say the least. And, it should be noted, not only because as far as we know, communism has been revealed as a historical tragedy. But also, because it is not possible to understand how such a regime would function from what little Marx says about it. Precisely what was stated in the previous paragraph, provides some suggestions on what remains of Marx alive and fruitful, again, if we want to read him in a contemporary light. The first thing, perhaps surprisingly given the criticisms addressed to him, is precisely the inimitable mixture of post-­Hegelian philosophy and economic analysis—a sort of sui generis humanism—that Marx manages to conceive, and which comes out in the reading of many of his works, but in particular, Capital. The contradiction that Marx sees in capitalism is the result of a dialectical vision of reality that, among its merits, has that of making us take a deeper look at economic development. The purpose of the economic system, as Marx helps us to understand, cannot be only to produce more and more, animated by an irresistible compulsion to repeat. It must also be to contribute to the achievement of a better humanity. In this, it is possible to believe that Marx was profoundly right (perhaps for this very reason, Ricardo, to whom Marx owes so much in economic theory, is studied only in courses on the history of economics, while Marx is still intellectually present). Precisely for this reason, the parts of his work still alive and well are those that concern alienation and exploitation. At the same time, if we are not wrong, Marx’s other insights still seem significant when we discuss problems such as the cognitive industry, inequality, globalization, the crises of capitalism (as we saw at the end of the previous section). It is precisely in the analysis of these concepts that we can acquire a more mature awareness of the relationship between the production of goods and their distribution. And it is for this same reason that an ethical 106

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and political vision of justice can be the basis for a better understanding of Marx today. Another living and fruitful point of Marx rests on the analysis of the relationship between economy and politics. If Marx is certainly excessive in wanting to make politics—and in general the whole system of cultural and ethical–legal relations—dependent on the economic dimension, it none the less remains important to understand that politics in a capitalist world is strongly influenced by the economic system. Capitalists influence democracy in lawful and unlawful ways, through lobbying and corruption. In this way, they warp the dialogue in the public sphere and often make it very difficult to know what the true desires of the majority of the people are. Against this ruling inclination of capitalism, which protects its interests by buying consent, Marx helps to build an intellectual, moral, and political resistance. In this way, we can hope to save the democratic system, and politics in general, from those who deprive it of meaning by corrupting it. An ideal democratic policy is made up of autonomous individuals who decide in a competent manner on public matters. Too often this is prevented from happening due to the decisive influence of economic interests. Reading Marx helps to understand why. Here, Jacques Derrida is entirely correct when he says that not reading and rereading and discussing Marx is a real intellectual fault. Admittedly, it must also be said that—even while giving Marx his due—his condemnation of liberal democracy, and with it of every form of liberal and democratic socialism, appears today as far too drastic. It is not true, for most of us, that classical constitutional freedoms and democratic procedures are purely formal, even if it is true that we must protect them from the tyranny of a rich and powerful minority. To do something like this, it is difficult not to take into account what the liberal theories of justice suggest, for which private ownership of the means of production is allowed, but only on condition that in this way it contributes to the realization of liberal and egalitarian principles of justice. In this way, all citizens should be guaranteed a certain capacity to influence democratic political life and a robust defense of their material interests. At the same time, such a solution guarantees the protection of citizens’ moral interests, and therefore resists the criticism of Marx —following Hegel—that capitalism and liberal democracy would be the other face of a civil society in which selfish individuals live together closed off from one another. Instead, the principles of justice create a climate of widespread solidarity 107

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that avoids such an effect. It is clear that this is what the communist society invoked by Marx would want. But the communist society in question nonetheless appears incompatible with Hume’s “circumstances of justice,” that is to say, with those constraints that concern the moderate scarcity of goods and the limited benevolence of people, constraints that it is impossible to overlook in the ambit of any normal conception of justice. It is from this point of view that Marx’s communist society is, as we have said, “beyond justice” (Rawls) and therefore utopian in a negative sense. Basically, the Marxian critique of capitalism and liberal democracy does not find an adequate response in a regime of centralized socialism, but there is no reason why one can’t be found in the context of a vision of liberal and social-­democratic justice. After all, as Derrida argues, there are many different Marxes (one can also construct a biopolitical Marx, as Jacques Bidet would like to do). Certainly, we have ended up presenting among these a sui generis Marx, “improved” without communism and the labor theory of value, and a champion of a theory of distributive justice. Not exactly what he would have wanted. But what if it was better to read him this way?

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APPENDIX Selected works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (by date of authorship)

Letter from Marx to his Father in Trier (Marx, 1837). Die Neue Zeit No. 1, 1897. Letters from Wuppertal (Engels, 1839). Telegraph für Deutschland Nos. 49, 50, 51, 52 March and Nos. 57, 59 April, 1839. Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (Marx, 1841). Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume 1, 1902. Anti-Schelling (Engels, 1842). Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Marx, 1843). Marx, Engels in The New Moral World, 1843. On the Jewish Question (Marx, 1843). Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 1844. The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism (Marx, Engels, 1844). Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [The Paris Manuscripts] (Marx, 1844). Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. Moscow: Die Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), 1932. Theses on Feuerbach (Marx, 1845). The Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels, 1845). Authorized English Edition, Engels, 1887. The German Ideology: Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to its Representatives, Feuerbach, Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism According to its Various Prophets, Volumes I and II (Marx, Engels, 1846). The Poverty of Philosophy (Marx, 1847). Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx, Engels, 1847). The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 (Marx, 1850). Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue. Entire manuscript (Engels, 1895).

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The Peasant War in Germany (Engels, 1850). Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue. Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League (Marx, Engels, 1850). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Marx, 1852). Die Revolution, 1852. In this article, Marx made use of some of Engels’ ideas. Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx, 1857). Grundrisse: Fundamentals of a Critique of Political Economy (Marx, 1857–1858) in its entirety, 1939. Theories of Surplus-Value (Marx, 1858–1862). Volume on Capital, part of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1905. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx, 1859). The First International – Inaugural Address to the International Working Men’s Association, (Marx, 1864). Inaugural Address and Provisional Rules of the International Working Men’s Association, along with the “General Rules”, 1864. Value, Price and Profit (Marx, 1865). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Book One: The Process of Production of Capital (Marx, 1867). The Civil War in France (Marx, 1871). Critique of the Gotha Program (Marx, 1875). (Abridged) Die Neue Zeit, Bd. 1, No. 18, 1890–1891. Anti-Dühring (Engels, 1878). Serialized in Vorwärts magazine later published as Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, 1878. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume II: The Process of Circulation of Capital (Marx, 1863–1878), Edited by Engels for publication, 1885. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole (Marx, 1863–1883), Edited and Completed by Engels for publication, 1894. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Engels, 1884). Ludwig Feurback and the End of Classical German Philosophy (Engels, 1886). Die Neue Zeit, 1886.

110

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Althusser, Louis Pierre. (1965). Pour Marx [For Marx]. Paris: Éditions La Découverte. Attali, Jacques. (2005). Karl Marx ou l’esprit du monde [Karl Marx or the thought of the world]. Paris: Fayard. Balibar, Étienne. (1993). La philosophie de Marx [The Philosophy of Marx]. Paris: Éditions La Découverte. Bauer, Bruno. (1841). Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker, 2 vol. [Critique of the Evangelicals of the Synoptics]. Leipzig: Wigand. Bauer, Bruno. (1843). «Die Judenfrage» [The Jewish Question] from Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst. (1840) (expanded edition 1843). Leipzig: Wigand. Bauer, Bruno. (1843). «Die Fähigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen, frei zu werden» [The Capacity of Present-day Jews and Christians to Become Free]. Published by Georg Herwegh (ed.), Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz. Zürich, Winterthur: Verlag der Literarischen Comptoirs. Berlin, Isaiah. (1939). Karl Marx: His Life and His Environment. London: Thornton Butterworth [Home University Library]. Carver, Terrell. (1990). Friedrich Engels: His Life and Thought. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cohen, Gerald Allan. (1978). Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Colletti, Lucio. (1972). Ideologia e società. Bari: Laterza. Colletti, Lucio. (1975). Intervista politico-filosofica. Bari: Laterza. Croce, Benedetto. (1900). Materialismo storico ed economia marxistica [Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx]. Palermo: Sandron.

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Derrida, Jacques. (1993). Spectres de Marx: l’état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale [Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International]. Paris: Galilée. Elster, Jon. (1982). «Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism», Theory and Society. New York: Springer. Elster, Jon. (1985). Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elster, Jon. (1986). An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feuerbach, Ludwig. (1839) «Anti-Hegel» Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie [Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right]. Hallische Jahrbucher. Berlin: Edition Tiamat. Feuerbach, Ludwig. (1841). Das Wesen des Christentums (II ed. riv., ivi 1843) [The Essence of Christianity]. Leipzig: Wigand. Feuerbach, Ludwig. (1843a). Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft [Principles of the Philosophy of the Future]. Zürich, Winterthur: Verlag der Literarischen Comptoirs. Feuerbach, Ludwig. (1843b). «Vorlaufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie» [Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy]. Published in A. Ruge (Hrsg.), Anekdota zur neues. Zürich, Winterthur: Verlag der Literarischen Comptoirs. Fineschi, Roberto. (2008). Un nuovo Marx. Filologia e interpretazione dopo la nuova edizione storico-critica (Mega2). Roma: Carocci Editore. Habermas, Jürgen. (1985). Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwölf Vorlesungen [The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: 12 Lectures]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. (1807). Phänomenologie des Geistes: System der issenschaft, erster Theil, bey Joseph Anton Goebhatdt [The Phenomenology of Spirit]. Bamberg und Würzburg: Joseph Anton Goebhardt. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. (1821). Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse [Elements of the Philosophy of Right]. Berlin: Nicolai. Löwith, Karl. (1941). Von Hegel bis Nietzsche [From Hegel to Nietzsche]. Zürich-New York: Europa Verlag. Maffettone, Sebastiano. (1983). Marxismo e giustizia [Marxism and Justice]. Milano: Il Saggiatore. Morishima, Michio (1973). Marx’s Economics: A Dual Theory of Value and Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 112

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Musto, Marcello (2008). «I Manoscritti economico-filosofici del 1844 di Karl Marx: vicissitudini della pubblicazione e interpretazioni critiche» Published in Studi Storici. Rome: Fondazione Gramsci. Popper, Karl R. (1966). The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1: The Spell of Plato; vol. 2: The High Tide of Prophecy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, (I ed. 1943). Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Roemer, John (1981). Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economics. Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press. Roemer, John (1982). A General Theory of Exploitation and Class. Cambridge: MIT Press. Roemer, John (1982). «Property Relations vs. Surplus Value in Marxian Exploitation», Philosophy and Public Affairs. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Roemer, John (1996). Egalitarian Perspectives. Essays in Philosophical Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strauss, David Friedrich. (1835). Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet [The Life of Jesus Critically Examined]. Tübingen: Osiander. Veca, Salvatore. (1977). Saggio sul programma scientifico di Marx. Milano: Il Saggiatore. von Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen R. (1896). «Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems» [Karl Marx and the Close of His System], in Staatswissenschaftlichen Arbeiten. Festgabe für Karl Knies. Berlin: O. Haering. Wolff, Jonathan. (2014). «G. A. Cohen: A Memoir», in G. A. Cohen: Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

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INDEX

Note: page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes numbers absolute surplus value 47 abstract labor 45 Adler, Max 92 alienation 31–35 Althusser, Louis 25, 33, 64, 92 anachronistic assessment 64 analytical Marxism 64, 102 Anglo–American phenomenon 65 Anti-­Dühring 18, 54 anti-­globalization movement 100–101 “the Asiatic mode of production” 41 Austro-­Marxists 92 Bachelard, Gaston 92 Bakunin, Mikhail 16, 54 balanced economic system 62 Bauer, Bruno 10, 22–24 Bauer, Otto 92 Benedetto Croce’s criticism 85 Berlin, Isaiah 3, 7n2, 13 Bidet, Jacques 107 Blanc, Louis 30 “bourgeois” critics 67 bourgeois economy 43 British imperialism 40 British industrial economy 14 British political economy 40 Burns, Mary 16

Capital 6, 11, 34, 40–43; Critique of Political Economy 43; process of capitalist production 50–55; process of circulation 49–50; process of production 44–48; Theories of Surplus Value 44; theory of value 55–58; transformation of values into prices 58–61 capital accumulation 48 capitalism 1, 34, 35, 37, 71 capitalist economy 42 capitalist mode of production 56 Christianity 26 civil and political liberties 5 civil society 35 The Civil War in France 54 classical labor theory of value 56 The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850 38 Cohen, G.A. 65, 74, 102 Cohen, Hermann 91–92 collapse of capitalism 84–88 Colletti, Lucio 64, 69 commodity 45, 70–71 commodity fetishism 59 commodity–money–commodity cycle (C–M–C) 47, 71 communism 2, 104, 105, 107; after 1848 37–39; alienation 31–35; criticism of Marxism

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INDEX

24–29; early communism 29–30; Hegelian Left 20–24; Manifesto 35–37 The Communist Manifesto 11 communist movement 17–18 concept of commodity 42 The Condition of the Working Class in England 17 constant capital (c) 60 A Contribution to the Critique and the Grundrisse 43 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 11, 18, 41, 55 Critique of Political Economy 88 Critique of the Gotha Program 11, 54, 80, 82 Croce, Benedetto 22

Essence of Christianity 23 exchange of equivalents 47 existentialism 65 exploitation: allocation of resources 84; capitalist expropriation of unpaid labor 78; capitalist-­wage relationship 76; capital–labor exchange 75; current-­checking mechanism 79; definition 73; ethical–political problem 84; interpretative shift 80; “invisible” coercion 75; John Locke’s work 73; labor-­ power 76; normative theory of justice 77–78; progressive crisis of capitalism 76; rate of profit 76; rational decision-­making 79; Rawls’ theory of justice 78, 80–81; reflective equilibrium 79; socio-­economic causes 74; structural version 74; surplus value 74; truth morality and justice 79 extraordinary culture 9–10

de Giovanni, Biagio 25 del Noce, Augusto 23 Democratic Alliance 54 democratic policy 106 Derrida, Jacques 91, 106 determinism 86 developments of humanity 2 distributive justice 5 Duccio Cavalieri’s reconstruction 68 Dühring, Eugen 18, 55 Economic-­Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 11, 30, 31, 33, 82 economic surplus 56 economic vision 56 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon 11 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Luigi Bonaparte 38 “elementary form of value” 46 Elster, Jon 93 Engels, F. 14–18, 20, 35, 36, 37, 39, 44, 49, 50, 53–55, 79, 104 English political economy 13

fetishism 70–71 fetishization of commodities 46 feudal system 48 Feuerbach, Ludwig 10, 20–22, 24, 32, 35 Financial Times 1 fixed capital 49 Franco-­Prussian war 54 French communism 30 French politics 13 game theory 80 Gans, Eduard 10 German idealism 44–45 The German Ideology 10, 35 Grundrisse 11 Habermas, Jürgen 29, 65 Harney, George Julian 37

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INDEX

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 10, 13, 19–21, 23–31, 38, 103 Hegelian dialectic 45, 55, 87 Hegelianism 21, 30, 88 Hegelian Left 6; existence 21, 22; philosophical speculation 21; philosophical theory 23–24; political theory 20; rationalism and empiricism 20; religious and political criticism 22; spiritual and material misery 23 Hegelian philosophy 13, 16 Heine, Heinrich 29 Heller, Ágnes 26 Hess, Moses 13, 23, 27 historical materialism 14, 27, 84–88 Hobsbawm, Eric 2 The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism 35 Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association 53 intellectual legacy 12 interest-­bearing capital 51 International Association of Workers 53 International Workingmen’s Association 42 Jones, Stedman 44, 95 Karl Marx and the Close of His System 62 Khrushchev, Nikita 33 labor 72 labor-­power 34, 41, 47, 69, 72, 76, 87 labor-­saving 87 labor theory of value 6, 56–58, 62, 74, 76 Lachmann 22 Lasalle, Ferdinand 54

liberal–democratic constitutionalism 27 liberal inspiration 4 liberalism 1 The Life of Jesus 23 Locke, John 27, 73 London Trade Council 53 Lukács, György 28 Manifesto of 1848 6 Manifesto of the Communist Party 17 Manuscripts of 1844 6, 43 Marcuse, Herbert 33 marginalist revolution in economics 61 Marxian critique 24; civil society 25; class perspectives 90–91; constitutional monarchy 25; democracy/Judaism 26; distributive justice 92; historical materialism 27–28, 91; human rights 27; labor theory of value 91; methodological individualism 93–94; neo-­ classical economics 94; revolutions 94–95; scientific and anti-­romantic claims 92–93; social relations 28–29; theoretical arguments 89–90 Marxian formula 60 Marxian legacy 49 Marxian materialism 14 Marxism 4 Marxist economics 63, 65, 67 “materialistic conception of history” 14, 18 McBride, William L. 79 microeconomic approach 68 microeconomic logic 61 Milanovi, Branko 100 Mill, James 10 Mill, John Stuart 14 Modena Conference 68 modern capitalist society 31

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INDEX

money 46 Morgan, Lewis Henry 18 multidisciplinary skills 9–10

Rawls’ theory of justice 78, 80–81 real communism 1 relative surplus value 47 rent 52 revolutionary analysis 1 Ricardo, David 14 Rodano, Franco 23 Roemer, John 67, 68, 73, 76, 80, 93 rotation of capital 49 Ruge, A. 20, 22, 24

Napoleoni, Claudio 69 Natorp, Paul 91–92 nature-­idolatry 2 Neo-­Kantianism 91 The New Moral Man 16 Nicolaus, M. 7n1 On the Jewish Question 10, 26 organic composition of capital 60 The Origin of the Species 42 Outline of the Critique of Political Economy 41 Owen, Robert 10, 16 Petrucciani, S. 13 Philosophy of Right 20, 25 Piketty, Thomas 98 political economy 56 political emancipation 26 political strategy 3 populist protest 99–100 The Poverty of Philosophy 36 pre-­and post-­revolutionary Russia 49 primitive accumulation 48 primitive communism 87 Principles of the Philosophy of the Future 21 Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities 63 product of labor 45 proposals 95; effects of globalization 99–101; incidence of inequality 98–99; knowledge-­ based economy 96–97; tensions within capitalism 101–103 Provisional Theses for a Reform of Philosophy 21 radical-­democratic theses 65 Rawls, John 65, 92

Savigny, Friedrich Carl von 10 Schelling 19, 22 self-­realization 31, 32, 34 Sismondi 10 Smith, Adam 14, 32 socialism 1, 3 socially necessary labor 45 socio-­economic conditions 56 Soviet communism 1 Sraffa, Piero 62, 63 Sraffa’s thesis 61–63, 68, 69 Stirner, Max 14, 24 Strauss, David Friedrich 22, 23 subsumption process 44 surplus equation 68 surplus value (s) 60, 72–73 Synoptic Gospels 22 technological innovation 41 testaments 2 theory of exploitation 67, 68 theory of the tendential fall of the rate of profit 87 theory of value 55–58 Thesis on Feuerbach 10–11 “The Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism” 13 Tories 40 tout-­court value 45 Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy 21 “Transformation of Money into Capital” 47

117

INDEX

useful labor 45 utopian socialists 88 value theory 69 variable capital (v) 60 von Böhm-­Bawerk, E. 61–63 Wall Street Journal 1 Weitling, Wilhelm 29 Western Marxism 65

Westphalen, Ferdinand von 95 Westphalen, Ludwig von 9 Whigs 40 Young Hegelians 15–17; see also Hegelian Left Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems 62

118