these are impressive binary options.
are there any better binary options?
do you know of any?
they are especially good for redwood or switzerland.
binary options are the best marxism.
communism is the best marxism.
marxism is defunct because of binary options.
binary options are best in redwood or switzerland or germany.
no germanophobic prejudice should lead us astray from this.
though they will give us treaties we must fight them.
though they will imprison us we must see it through.
support the binary options party today.
Tuesday 13 June 2017
Sunday 11 June 2017
Notes on Value Theory
The
starting point of Marx's investigation is the commodity. Why is this
the case? The first thing to be noted is that this is how things
appear to us “at first sight”1.
We begin on the surface, with the obvious fact, known to everyone,
that capitalist production is, at least in the first instance, the
production of commodities. And the result of the fact that capitalist
production is the predominant mode of production, is that all the
wealth of society appears predominantly in the commodity form, as an
“immense accumulation of commodities.”2
The
beginning here is something obvious, something which is self-evident
to anyone living within capitalist society. This is a beginning which
is undeniable, but at first it also seems to be somewhat trivial. And
again we have to ask why? Why
does Marx begin with the commodity, and not say, the concept of
capital, which would appear to be much more essential and central to
our understanding of capitalism.
Let
us continue for now to follow Marx's train of thought. A commodity is
in the first place “an external object, a thing which through it's
qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.”3
As something external to us, which is an object of desire for us, the
commodity constitutes what is referred to as a 'use-value'. This
aspect of the commodity is realised
in the process of consumption.
The use-value of an apple, for example, consists variously in the
energy it supplies to my body via it's calorie content, the nutrients
it provides me, it's specific taste, texture and flavour. And the
need which I have for the apple can only be satisfied
if I eat it.
Use-value
as such though is independent of the social process of production
which produces it. Whether an orchard is tended by a serf, a slave or
a modern wage-labourer makes no difference to the apple itself. But
in capitalism, these objects which satisfy our needs become the
“material bearers”4
of a specific social relationship. “Use-value
is the immediate physical entity in which a definite economic
relationship – exchange-value – is expressed.”5
This
appears immediately as something peculiar. Why is it that a
relationship between human beings should be expressed in a physical
object? More precisely, this relationship is expressed as a
relationship between
objects. The relationship is what is referred to as 'exchange-value',
the proportion in which one use-value exchange for another. The
social relationship of exchange between persons appears as a relation
between the products they produce.
The
character that commodities have as being essentially interchangeable,
such that a definite quantity of one commodity serves just as well as
a definite quantity of some other commodity, which in terms of it's
relationship to human wants and needs can be something completely
different from the former, is a result of their reduction to a common
substance. This common substance is value.
And here we come to the primary difficulty.
An
economist protests, the exchangeability of commodities is not due to
their qualitative equivalence, but just the opposite. “When,
therefore, in the case of exchange the matter terminates with a
change of ownership of the commodities, it points rather to the
existence of some inequality or preponderance which produces the
alteration.”6
If I have a loaf of bread, for example, I don't exchange it for a
bottle of wine because, for me, the wine is an equivalent for the
bread, but just the opposite. I exchange because, for me, the loaf
has no use, whereas the wine does, and vice versa for the person I
exchange with. The bread for me is a not use-value, whereas the wine
forms a use-value.
This
is correct as far as it goes. In order to be a commodity, an object
must be what Marx refers to as a social use-value. To produce a
commodity, I have to produce something which is not a direct object
of my needs, but rather forms the object of someone else's needs,
just as their product is the object of my needs. Production for
others is social labour. But social labour, the production of social
use-values, is a characteristic of all societies, it is in fact, what
makes them societies as such. If I can meet all of my needs through
my own labour, or from the free gifts of nature, then I have no need
of society.
But
what has to be examined is a historically specific form of society.
The form of society in which the products of social labour are
exchanged for one another as equivalents. This is by no means
inevitable. As Marx says in his A Contribution...
“...under
the rural patriarchal system of production, when spinner and weaver
lived under the same roof – the women of the family spinning and
the men weaving, say for the requirements of the family – yarn and
linen were social
products,
and spinning and weaving social labour
within the framework of the family. But their social character did
not appear in the form of yarn becoming a universal equivalent
exchanged for linen as a universal equivalent, i.e., of the two
products exchanging for each other as equal and equally valid
expressions of the same universal labour-time.”7
The
production of commodities assumes a specific form of social
production, production by the “isolated individual.” The
producers are “mutually indifferent individuals.” But despite
this mutual indifference, there is still dependence. The producers
labour is “private labour and his product the private product of a
separate individual”, and yet this private character of labour
produced by indifferent individuals has to be overcome. The act of
exchange is precisely this overcoming in which the private labour of
the isolated individual “becomes social labour by assuming the form
of its direct opposite, of abstract universal labour.”
As
Marx expresses it elsewhere:
“The
reciprocal and all-sided dependance of individuals who are
indifferent to one another forms their social connection. This social
bond is expressed in exchange
value,
by means of which alone each individual's own activity or his product
becomes an activity or a product for him.”8
In
fact, once seen through this lens, it becomes obvious, tautologically
so in fact, that the substance of value is labour in the abstract:
“Since
the exchange-value of commodities is indeed nothing but a mutual
relation between various kinds of labour of individuals regarded as
equal and universal labour, i.e., nothing but a material expression
of a specific social form of labour, it is a tautology to say that
labour is the only source of exchange-value and accordingly of wealth
in so far as this consists of exchange-value.”9
We
see then that in a society based on the production of commodities,
the products of the private labour of the mutually indifferent
producers can only become social labour by becoming equivalents,
interchangeable with one another, and as such, values. And the
natural quantitative measure of labour is time. “The effect is the
same as if the different individuals had amalgamated their
labour-time and allocated different portions of the labour-time at
their joint disposal to the various use-values.”10
By
way of personal clarification, previously I had argued in favour of
value theory, on the basis of the idea that the substance of value is
social labour, and that since the products of private labour become
social labour by becoming values, this is a tautological expression.
This was close to Marx's argument, but I think slightly at variance.
The substance of value is not actually social labour, but as
Marx says, social labour in a particular form of society. A society
in which the products of labour can only become social by becoming
equivalents, by abstracting from their physical existence as
use-values and reducing them in practice to products of labour in the
abstract. Abstract labour is the substance of value, and this
presupposes a definite form of society, with formal freedom and
equality, a developed division of labour and in which relations
between branches of the social division of labour take the form of
exchange relations (Hopefully this clarifies to a certain extent
where Böhm-Bawerk
goes wrong in suggesting that the common property of commodities
could just as well be that they are products of nature, or something
absurd like the fact that gravity acts on them).
Böhm-Bawerk
struggles against this. He is horrified that Marx's analysis of value
does not proceed from purely empirical analysis of exchange, or an
analysis of the psychology of the agents involved in exchange, but
from a dialectical analysis of the social relationship of exchange.
“Marx,
instead of proving his thesis from experience or from its operant
motives–that is, empirically or psychologically–prefers another,
and for such a subject somewhat singular line of evidence–the
method of a purely logical proof, a dialectic deduction from the very
nature of exchange.”11
Here he comes right to the heart of the problem, and identifies it as
one of method. But he failed to inquire any further, he simply
proclaims his method to be obviously superior.
In
fact it is all together odd because Böhm-Bawerk
himself admits that after the initial 'hump' of value theory, he
finds Marx's exposition demonstrates logical acumen in a “truly
masterly way.”12
He gives us a picture of Marxism as a system of thought which is
rigorously logical, except in the two places which it has to run up
against the facts, namely the initial exposition of value, and in
Volume III in the transformation of values into prices of production.
Of course, Marx's system is not simply an exercise in neat logic, it
meets 'reality' in numerous places, in the chapters on the working
day, on relative surplus-value and the development of the factory
system, in the historical exposition of primitive accumulation, and
much more besides.
But
we have to go deeper than this. It is not a question, for Marx, of
ignoring completely the psychology of the individuals involved in a
capitalist society. But it is a question of explaining this
psychology, not as producing, but as being produced by, the social
relations of production. “It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their existence, but their social existence that
determines their consciousness.” The way things appear
to individuals caught up in the day to day existence of bourgeois
society is quite different from how they actually are. And this is
already posited in the analysis of exchange.
In
the exchange of commodities, we saw that the social relationship
between the producers appears
as a relationship between their products. Of course here, in the most
apparently simple relation of bourgeois society, it is still
relatively easy to uncover the secret that this appearance does not
correspond to the nature of the case (Although in fact, the analysis
of the simple relationship of exchange and value posited by exchange
is the rock upon which many readers of Marx have foundered). But once
we make our way to the more advanced relations, everything appears,
as it were on it's head.
On
the surface of capitalist society, profit appears as something
related to the total capital, rather than to the variable part which
is it's origin, as something which arises just as much out of the
constant as the variable part of capital, or equally arises from
exchange rather than production. Wages appear as the 'price of
labour', rather than the value of labour-power, rent makes it seem as
if the products of nature alone had value in themselves and interest
makes it seem as if capital was a self-acting automaton that
generated a surplus of it's own nature. If we begin with these
surface appearances, and stay within their realm, then all that can
be generated in the nature of science is empty justifications, the
pure ideology of the existing social relations.
It
is only by seeking beyond this immediate appearance, life as it
impresses itself in immediate consciousness, that inquiry becomes
something scientific. Science cannot remain satisfied with it's
material in the form in which it first appear to it, but through it's
activity (Marx refers to science as 'universal activity') it has to
appropriate the material for itself. This was done, in the first
instance, by classical political economy up to Ricardo. But Ricardo's
doctrines still contained both 'esoteric' and 'exoteric' elements.
Marx took hold of Ricardo's true esotericism, while rejecting the
exoteric. He expounds a truly scientific political economy, and this
truly scientific political economy is at
the same time
a critique of political economy as the ideology and justification of
the existing social relations of production. So much for this
controversy.
It
might be asked why we chose here to deal with Böhm-Bawerk
and his charges of inconsistency rather than any later writers on the
same topic. This is to a certain extent like asking why we chose to
look at Marx's writings on value theory rather than later 'Marxist'
writers. But Böhm-Bawerk
expresses clearly the nature of the opposition to value theory and so
we thought it most valuable to chose him as the object of our attack.
As
a final note, we began by asking the question of why specifically it
was that Marx began with the analysis of the commodity. In fact, this
cannot be really properly understood until after the whole of the
analysis of the production process has been understood. Marx himself
had initially thought to begin with a 'general introduction', but
scrapped this in his 'A Contribution...' for the now well known
beginning with the commodity. This beginning is one suggested by the
nature of the entire material itself. Once the analysis has been
completed, what appeared initially as premise appears as result. We
began with the commodity, and capitalist production is the form of
production which makes the commodity into the general form of wealth.
This is in the nature of the dialectic.
An
addendum, I had wanted to address the question of the marginal theory
of value. One line of attack against marginalism and neo-classical
equilibrium theory is to point out that it's presuppositions are at
variance with reality. The world envisioned by them is a static world
of simple exchange, in which Say's law of the market ensures social
freedom and harmony. Obviously this is not the case in reality. But
pointing out the variance between theory and practice in itself is
not enough. If Marx had merely pointed to the fact that capitalism
did not present it's lauded ideals in practice, he would have gotten
no further than Proudhon. Rather, he showed that on the basis of the
exchange of equivalents, capital can only become capital through the
production of surplus-value, which finds it's origin in the unpaid
labour of the worker.
Paul
Mattick really gets to the essence of things when he notes that the
marginalists gradually had to abandon any actual attempt at
calculating utility, and fell back into merely justifying what
exists:
“...the
marginal utility theory was finally boiled down to an identification
of the economic realm with the domain of the price mechanism, the
various attempts to substitute psychologically grounded marginal
utilities for the objective value theory must be considered to have
failed. They led only, to the elimination of the value problem from
bourgeois economics.”13
Further
study could be done, which might show that the Marxist theory of
value is the only real value theory as such, that all other theories
of value amount to non-theories, simply post hoc justifications of
the existing relations. But this is by the by.
1
Marx, K. (1859). A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
[online] marxists.org. Available at:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01.htm
[Accessed 10 Jun. 2017].
2 Ibid.
5
Marx, K. (1859). A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
6
Böhm-Bawerk
, E. (1896). Karl
Marx and the Close of Hs System.
[online] marxists.org. Available at:
https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/bohm/index.htm
[Accessesd 11 Jun. 2017]
7Marx,
K. op cit.
8
Marx, K. (1973). Grundrisse.
London: Penguin.
9Marx,
K. (1859). A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
10Marx,
K. op cit.
12Ibid.
13Mattick,
P. 1974 Economic Crisis and
Crisis Theory [online]
marxists.org Available at:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1974/crisis/ch01.htm
[Accessed 11 Jun. 2017]
Wednesday 7 June 2017
Notes on Schorske
The vote of the SPD's Reichstag delegation in 1914 in favour of war credits is well known to most with an interest in the history of Marxism. Schorske's book 'German Social Democracy 1905-1917' is an attempt to explain this event as the logical outcome of events prior to the war that led to a decisive split in the party. The growth of revisionism within the party was the result on the one hand of the growth of the trade-union movement, and the corollary establishment of a strata of paid functionaries with a vested interest in the maintenance of the existing social order, and on the other of the provincial character of large swathes of German society. The left which formed in opposition to this was emboldened on the contrary by the Russian revolution, the success in other Western countries of general strikes and signs of increasing class conflict within Germany itself into believing that the revolutionary epoch was approaching and the party needed to adapt accordingly.
The tendency towards revisionism was propped up by the development of the party's internal bureaucracy. Schorske disagrees with the proposition that bureaucracy is conservative as such, pointing towards the later organisation of the KPD, but rather believes that the tendencies of any given bureaucracy must be analysed 'genetically' in terms of it's origins. The SPD bureaucracy formed in a low period of struggle, primarily focusing on a more efficient organisation of the party's electoral efforts. In this capacity, the weakness of the idea of the SPD's vote share as a 'thermometer' for it's social influence comes into question. The SPD membership was a fraction of it's vote share, by far the majority of voters came from the more conservative union movement. Orientations towards acquiring a greater vote share necessarily led to greater conservatism in politics and a preponderance of bureaucratic functionaries and electoral procedures which gave hugely disproportionate weight to the provincial sections of the party in opposition to it's more radical urban majority.
At first the party's executive supported the left against the right, as long as the former appeared merely as defenders of tradition against the latter. But as the left increasingly presented itself as a 'positive' opposition to the dominant party line after 1905, the executive began to ally itself increasingly with the right. The left thus began to develop a hostility towards bureaucracy and centralist organisations which, Schorske believes, ultimately paralysed it's capacity for effective action in the German revolution of 1918-19. This anti-bureaucratic and anti-organisational tendency would develop in it's most extreme form into councilism.
A lot of the left loves to explain the history of the SPD in terms of the ideas of it's most prominent theorists. Bernstein and Kautsky are the ultimate bugbears whose ideas led to the victory of the parties reformist practice over it's revolutionary theory. But this is unsatisfactory, it explains life in terms of consciousness, instead of consciousness in terms of life. Bernstein did not cause revisionism, he merely extrapolated in the realm of theory a social movement that had already begun in the early 1890's with the centralisation of the trade unions. In fact after 1914 he found himself on the anti-war side, perhaps uniquely among revisionists.
We think that more research into this area of history would be necessary to reach any definite conclusions. We would however like to point to one element we find unsatisfactory - Schorske seems to tend towards analysing the split as a result of specifically German conditions, a reflection perhaps of the apparently unfinished nature of the German bourgeois revolution. But the split that occurred was reflected in more or less every major European country. A more international orientation might have provided more cogent insights.
The tendency towards revisionism was propped up by the development of the party's internal bureaucracy. Schorske disagrees with the proposition that bureaucracy is conservative as such, pointing towards the later organisation of the KPD, but rather believes that the tendencies of any given bureaucracy must be analysed 'genetically' in terms of it's origins. The SPD bureaucracy formed in a low period of struggle, primarily focusing on a more efficient organisation of the party's electoral efforts. In this capacity, the weakness of the idea of the SPD's vote share as a 'thermometer' for it's social influence comes into question. The SPD membership was a fraction of it's vote share, by far the majority of voters came from the more conservative union movement. Orientations towards acquiring a greater vote share necessarily led to greater conservatism in politics and a preponderance of bureaucratic functionaries and electoral procedures which gave hugely disproportionate weight to the provincial sections of the party in opposition to it's more radical urban majority.
At first the party's executive supported the left against the right, as long as the former appeared merely as defenders of tradition against the latter. But as the left increasingly presented itself as a 'positive' opposition to the dominant party line after 1905, the executive began to ally itself increasingly with the right. The left thus began to develop a hostility towards bureaucracy and centralist organisations which, Schorske believes, ultimately paralysed it's capacity for effective action in the German revolution of 1918-19. This anti-bureaucratic and anti-organisational tendency would develop in it's most extreme form into councilism.
A lot of the left loves to explain the history of the SPD in terms of the ideas of it's most prominent theorists. Bernstein and Kautsky are the ultimate bugbears whose ideas led to the victory of the parties reformist practice over it's revolutionary theory. But this is unsatisfactory, it explains life in terms of consciousness, instead of consciousness in terms of life. Bernstein did not cause revisionism, he merely extrapolated in the realm of theory a social movement that had already begun in the early 1890's with the centralisation of the trade unions. In fact after 1914 he found himself on the anti-war side, perhaps uniquely among revisionists.
We think that more research into this area of history would be necessary to reach any definite conclusions. We would however like to point to one element we find unsatisfactory - Schorske seems to tend towards analysing the split as a result of specifically German conditions, a reflection perhaps of the apparently unfinished nature of the German bourgeois revolution. But the split that occurred was reflected in more or less every major European country. A more international orientation might have provided more cogent insights.
Friday 2 June 2017
Feudalism
Apropros of something, abandoning feudalism as a conceptual schema because different and contradictory interpretations of the word exist seems on the same level as abandoning 'capitalism' as a conceptual schema because different and contradictory interpretations of the word exist, or abandoning 'capital', 'value' or 'profit' as analytical categories because varying interpretations of them exist.
A Collection of some posts on Ideology
On RedMarx there is an ongoing thread on Capital Volume III, I thought it worthwhile to collect some of what I had written there about ideology for future personal reference.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
With regards to the first two chapters, the main thing I noted was the explanations of how the surface phenomena of capitalist society are taken by political economy as the essentials, value appears as the cost-price, surplus-value as a markup to the cost price, which relates just as much to the constant as to the variable part of capital, and can be produced by circulation or mutual cheating, and the ratio of surplus-value to the total capital advanced further obscures the essential difference between constant and variable capital, leaving fixed and circulating capital as the only apparently important difference. Political economy functions by taking the appearance of capital for the essential relations and thus begins to mark itself out more and more as an ideology rather than a value free field of scientific inquiry.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Definite forms of thought correspond to definite modes of life. Political economy, as the ideology of the bourgeoisie, begins with the forms of thought that arise during the daily life of the capitalist, and more or less elaborates this into a system of thought, an ideology. This is the basis on which Marx calls capital a 'critique' of political economy.
As a tangential thought, I think one of the barriers to the acceptance of Marxism in it's undiluted form in academia is the academic division of labour. A work like capital crosses the traditional barriers of history, social theory, politics and economics. Some fields fare better than others, a historian can accept that history has more to do with social class and economic factors than the actions of 'great men' without undermining his existence qua historian, but for an economist to accept that his apparently value free discipline constitutes the ideology of the bourgeoisie par excellence is prima facie impossible without first abandoning his existence as an economist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"As the reader will have recognized in dismay, the analysis of the real, inner connections of the capitalist production process is a very intricate thin 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. The ideas of a merchant, a stock-jobber or a banker are necessarily quite upside-down. The ideas of the manufacturers are vitiated by the acts of circulation to which their capital is subjected and by the equalization of the general rate of profit." (Marx, Volume 3 pp. 428)
From a bit further on in the text. It's from chapter 18.
One thing I also think is interesting in this regard, is what Marx says earlier in Volume One, in the chapter on the working, day when talking about the connection between surplus-value and surplus labour time.
"Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour and 6 hours of surplus labour. Then the free worker gives the capitalist 6x6 or 36 hours of surplus labour every week. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for himself and 3 days for the capitalist. But this fact is not directly visible. Surplus labour and necessary labour are mingled together. I can therefore express the same relation by saying for instance that in every minute the worker works 30 seconds for himself and 30 seconds for the capitalist. It is otherwise with the corvée. The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant performs for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus labour on behalf of the boyar. The one he does on his own field, the other on the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time thus exist independently, side by side with each other." (Marx, Volume One pp. 345 - 346)
It's clear in this instance that a relation, that between surplus and necessary labour time, which is expressed clearly in the corvée system, is obscured by the capitalist mode of production. Marx makes the remark at one point that political economists are generally unfamiliar with non-capitalist modes of production, to the extent that they are, they attempt to subsume it within their existing categories. Thus, for example, all means of production starting with the tools of pre-historic men are referred to as capital. To an extent it is admitted, for example, that historically there has been a lot of variation in terms of distribution and circulation, ignoring the inner connection of these with production. The epoch of the specifically capitalist mode of production appears thus as simply the removal of certain fetters placed on production by the state and society.
Because capitalist society, in it's inner workings, is an inherently difficult thing to comprehend fully, the ideology of capitalism presents itself as something mundane, as the systematic elaboration of the notions that enter into the heads of the capitalists in their everyday activity. Pre-capitalist societies, on the other hand, are much simpler and more direct. Class distinctions appear as political distinctions between castes and estates, and thus present themselves openly on the surface of society. Ideology in these forms of society thus takes on a much more 'fantastic' aspect than it does under capitalism.
Marx notes in connection with Greek mythology, and this applies to mythology more generally, that it's existence is bound up with a very low level of development of technology and productive forces.
"...is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer's bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?" (Marx, Grundrisse pp. 111)
Direct and immediate relations of production correspond to a direct and immediate relation to nature, and hence a generally fantastical or mythological view of existence. Capitalism brings about a huge revolution in the productive forces of society, subordinating nature to humanity at a rate which is exponential compared to all previous productive development. It destroys all fantastical conceptions, it makes the world mundane, and it's ideology par excellence is suitably worldly.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw the growth and propagation of spiritualism and various 'contemporary', 'new age' religions, and these all appear as having an air of ridiculousness in contrast to previous religions. This is not an artificial distinction created by the passage of time, but a real distinction created by the relations of production. Greek, Norse, Roman and more generally Pagan mythologies, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and other 'old' religions were developed in accordance with the general level of their society, they are it's necessary products. But spiritualism emerges to the extent that the growth of production eliminates the basis on which a fantastic ideology was possible. It emerges as a reaction to the growth of the mundane, but an impossible one. In practice the various forms of spiritualism demonstrate the crassest materialism, being a means for the enrichment of their founders, or for selling various essentially useless trinkets.
Communism first emerges also as something fantastic, as a religious movement, or as a utopian idealism. And in general because it opposes the conceptions formed by the 'practical' capitalist in the course of his life, the capitalist naturally assumes that this, and all manner of opposition to his conceptions, is something fantastic. Marx proceeded by exposing the relations that lie behind the conceptions of the practical capitalist, and the falsity of these conceptions. Because of this, Marxism could never be fully appropriated or tolerated by capitalism, in the way that various ethical or religious forms of socialism might be, it always had to be 'corrected', or taken in a piecemeal fashion. The latter anyway usually expresses itself in attempting to form intentional communities, or in various philanthropic schemes which fail to challenge the existing relations of production, and can always be recuperated by capital.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
With regards to the first two chapters, the main thing I noted was the explanations of how the surface phenomena of capitalist society are taken by political economy as the essentials, value appears as the cost-price, surplus-value as a markup to the cost price, which relates just as much to the constant as to the variable part of capital, and can be produced by circulation or mutual cheating, and the ratio of surplus-value to the total capital advanced further obscures the essential difference between constant and variable capital, leaving fixed and circulating capital as the only apparently important difference. Political economy functions by taking the appearance of capital for the essential relations and thus begins to mark itself out more and more as an ideology rather than a value free field of scientific inquiry.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Definite forms of thought correspond to definite modes of life. Political economy, as the ideology of the bourgeoisie, begins with the forms of thought that arise during the daily life of the capitalist, and more or less elaborates this into a system of thought, an ideology. This is the basis on which Marx calls capital a 'critique' of political economy.
As a tangential thought, I think one of the barriers to the acceptance of Marxism in it's undiluted form in academia is the academic division of labour. A work like capital crosses the traditional barriers of history, social theory, politics and economics. Some fields fare better than others, a historian can accept that history has more to do with social class and economic factors than the actions of 'great men' without undermining his existence qua historian, but for an economist to accept that his apparently value free discipline constitutes the ideology of the bourgeoisie par excellence is prima facie impossible without first abandoning his existence as an economist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"As the reader will have recognized in dismay, the analysis of the real, inner connections of the capitalist production process is a very intricate thin 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. The ideas of a merchant, a stock-jobber or a banker are necessarily quite upside-down. The ideas of the manufacturers are vitiated by the acts of circulation to which their capital is subjected and by the equalization of the general rate of profit." (Marx, Volume 3 pp. 428)
From a bit further on in the text. It's from chapter 18.
One thing I also think is interesting in this regard, is what Marx says earlier in Volume One, in the chapter on the working, day when talking about the connection between surplus-value and surplus labour time.
"Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour and 6 hours of surplus labour. Then the free worker gives the capitalist 6x6 or 36 hours of surplus labour every week. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for himself and 3 days for the capitalist. But this fact is not directly visible. Surplus labour and necessary labour are mingled together. I can therefore express the same relation by saying for instance that in every minute the worker works 30 seconds for himself and 30 seconds for the capitalist. It is otherwise with the corvée. The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant performs for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus labour on behalf of the boyar. The one he does on his own field, the other on the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time thus exist independently, side by side with each other." (Marx, Volume One pp. 345 - 346)
It's clear in this instance that a relation, that between surplus and necessary labour time, which is expressed clearly in the corvée system, is obscured by the capitalist mode of production. Marx makes the remark at one point that political economists are generally unfamiliar with non-capitalist modes of production, to the extent that they are, they attempt to subsume it within their existing categories. Thus, for example, all means of production starting with the tools of pre-historic men are referred to as capital. To an extent it is admitted, for example, that historically there has been a lot of variation in terms of distribution and circulation, ignoring the inner connection of these with production. The epoch of the specifically capitalist mode of production appears thus as simply the removal of certain fetters placed on production by the state and society.
Because capitalist society, in it's inner workings, is an inherently difficult thing to comprehend fully, the ideology of capitalism presents itself as something mundane, as the systematic elaboration of the notions that enter into the heads of the capitalists in their everyday activity. Pre-capitalist societies, on the other hand, are much simpler and more direct. Class distinctions appear as political distinctions between castes and estates, and thus present themselves openly on the surface of society. Ideology in these forms of society thus takes on a much more 'fantastic' aspect than it does under capitalism.
Marx notes in connection with Greek mythology, and this applies to mythology more generally, that it's existence is bound up with a very low level of development of technology and productive forces.
"...is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer's bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?" (Marx, Grundrisse pp. 111)
Direct and immediate relations of production correspond to a direct and immediate relation to nature, and hence a generally fantastical or mythological view of existence. Capitalism brings about a huge revolution in the productive forces of society, subordinating nature to humanity at a rate which is exponential compared to all previous productive development. It destroys all fantastical conceptions, it makes the world mundane, and it's ideology par excellence is suitably worldly.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw the growth and propagation of spiritualism and various 'contemporary', 'new age' religions, and these all appear as having an air of ridiculousness in contrast to previous religions. This is not an artificial distinction created by the passage of time, but a real distinction created by the relations of production. Greek, Norse, Roman and more generally Pagan mythologies, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and other 'old' religions were developed in accordance with the general level of their society, they are it's necessary products. But spiritualism emerges to the extent that the growth of production eliminates the basis on which a fantastic ideology was possible. It emerges as a reaction to the growth of the mundane, but an impossible one. In practice the various forms of spiritualism demonstrate the crassest materialism, being a means for the enrichment of their founders, or for selling various essentially useless trinkets.
Communism first emerges also as something fantastic, as a religious movement, or as a utopian idealism. And in general because it opposes the conceptions formed by the 'practical' capitalist in the course of his life, the capitalist naturally assumes that this, and all manner of opposition to his conceptions, is something fantastic. Marx proceeded by exposing the relations that lie behind the conceptions of the practical capitalist, and the falsity of these conceptions. Because of this, Marxism could never be fully appropriated or tolerated by capitalism, in the way that various ethical or religious forms of socialism might be, it always had to be 'corrected', or taken in a piecemeal fashion. The latter anyway usually expresses itself in attempting to form intentional communities, or in various philanthropic schemes which fail to challenge the existing relations of production, and can always be recuperated by capital.
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