The other day I briefly addressed the concept of determinacy in relation to Capital specifically, and marxism in general. This quote from the preface to the first edition figured prominently.
“…in the analysis of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance. The power of abstraction must replace both. But for bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labor, or the value-form of the commodity, is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but so similarly does microscopic anatomy” (90).
(In)determinacy is really a secondary concept here (and will be discussed later in the preface in, perhaps, better detail). The main thrust of Marx’s biology metaphor has more to do with the notion that ‘what you see is not always what you get’ -to put it as colloqiually as I can manage.
“The complete body is easier to study than its cells.” (90)
What Marx is really getting at is that how things appear to be/work are not always actually how they function. While the human organism, taken at face value, is a single body composed of various limbs and organs, this body is in fact constituted of not only many cells and sub-cellular structures, but also other microscopic life forms which serve to break down or chemically balance our organism. A ’superficial’ analysis of the body does not reveal all of its ‘actual’ functions -and so as observation of the body becomes less superficial physicians move from treating infections with bleedings to treating them with antibiotics.
Capital, as stated previously, is an attempt to delve into these ’economic cell forms’ and peer behind the superficial or ‘face value’ analysis and conceptualizations of capitalism.
This quote from Capital volume 3 (which I serendipitously came upon last night) makes the point in this manner:
“As the reader will have recognized in dismay, the analysis of the real, inner connections of the capitalist production process is a very intricate thing and a work of great detail; it is one of the tasks of science to reduce the visible and merely apparent movement to the actual inner movement. Accordingly, it will be completely self-evident that, in the heads of the agents of capitalist production and circulation, ideas must necessarily form about the laws of production that diverge completely from these laws and are merely the expression in consciousness of the apparent movement” (vol. 3 428).
In other words, without an adequate analysis and understanding of the capitalist mode of production, economics can easily base itself upon so many ‘frogs in the belly’. It is not without reason Marx states in the preface, “I assume…a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore think for himself” (90).
Leave a Reply