Today I am detetmined to punch out of the preface material material so that tomorrow (or the next time I post) it will be at the start of Capital v.1 proper.
Contuning with the Postface…
Here is a quote from what Marx terms a ‘generous’ review of his method followed by a short comparison and contrast of his dialectic method to that of Hegel.
“It will be said…that the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. But this is exactly what Marx denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist…On the contrary, in his opinion, every historical period has its own laws…As soon as life has passed through a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws….Marx denies, for example, that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population….from this point of view, he is only formulating…the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have…The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the illumination of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development and death of a given social organism and its replacement by another, higher one. And in fact this is the value of Marx’s book’ (101-102).
Of course, we know better than to assume that the next stage of development will be a ‘higher’ one; know that the dominant concepts of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ stages are socially shaped and shaping relative concepts.
Marx appreciates this generous review, “But what else is he depicting but the dialectical method?”, he says. And now we’re on to his self-summarized relationship to Hegel. One can certainly reference Marx’s earlier works like The German Ideology, or Critique if Hegel’s Doctrine of the State to get the more nuanced versions.
This is on the level of ontology.
“My dialedtical method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which even he transforms into an independent subject, under the name of ‘the Idea’, is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only the external appearance of the idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought.”
“The mystification which the dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”
“In its mystified form, the dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and glorify what exists. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesman, because it includes in its positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspects as well; and because it does not let itself be impressed by anything, being in its essence critical and revolutionary” (103).
The remaining preface material, “Preface to the French Edition”, “Postface to the French Edition”, and then Engels’ “Preface to the Third Edition”, and “Preface to the english Edition” mainly have to do with editorial commentary regarding changes/additions/translations to the volumes. I feel this passage of Engels’ from the “Prefaqce to the English Edition” sets the proper tone for the rest of the book.
“Every new aspect of a science involves a revolution in the technical terms of that science….Political economy has generally been content to take, just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial life, and to operate with them, entirely failing to see that by so doing it confined itself within the narrow circle of ideas expressed by those terms…It is…self-evident that a theory which views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in the economic history of humankind, must make use of terms different from those habitual to writers who look upon that form of production as imperishable and final” (111).
Next time we enter Part One - ‘Commodities and Money’!
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