Abstract
The Marxian school which was founded by K. Marx (1818–1883) also arose out of the theoretical limits and deadlocks of the classical school. Marx’s renovation of economics was, however, quite different from the directions of other contemporary economic schools. Unlike the historical school or the neo-classical school, Marx did not discard the essential theoretical contents and achievements of the classical school which was based on the labour theory of value, but fully attempted to inherit them by criticising and solving the deadlocks in the classical theories from within. In such an attempt Marx consciously and systematically clarified the historical character of a capitalist economy.
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Notes
G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts ( 1821) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970 ) S. 24.
L. A. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums ( Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1841 ).
Marx later in 1845 formulated such insufficiencies in Feuerbach’s materialism briefly in the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, in K. Marx, F. Engels Collected Works (Moscow; Progress Publishers, 1975-, This Collected Works is abbreviated to MECW hereafter), vol 5. pp. 3ff. The thesis eleven ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’ is particularly famous.
K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy translated by W. Ryazanskaya (Moscow; Progress Publishers, 1970) p. 20. English translation ‘the guiding principle’ from German original ‘Leitfaden’ in this edition seems too strong and may be misleading.
I follow here the wording in K. Marx Selected Writings, ed. by D. McLellan ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 ) p. 389.
F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature ( Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954 ).
F. Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism (Anti-Duhring) translated and edited by A. Lewis ( Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1907 ).
F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific ( 1880) (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1918 ) p. 93.
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P. M. Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary Society (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), contains a sharp critique of such a tendency in Soviet society. We shall return to this issue in Part IV.
K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848, in MECW, vol. 6 ) pp. 477–519.
K. Marx, Grundrisse, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (rough draft), translated by M. Nicolaus (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1973 ).
K. Marx, Zur Kritik der Politischen Okonomie (Manuscript 1861–1863), in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, 2. Abteilung, Band 3, 6 vols. (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1976–82 ).
T. Kuhn, The Structure of the Scientific Revolution ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 ).
R. Wilbrandt, Karl Marx (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 4. Aufl. 1920) s. 97.
K. Kuruma [’For Confirmation of Marx’s Theory of Crisis’ (1930) in his Studies in the Crisis Theory] ( Tokyo: Otsuki-Shoten, 1965 ).
V. S. Vygodski, The Story of a Great Discovery, translated by C. S. V. Salt (1973) p. 118. An editorial note to the vol. 23 (Das Kapital, vol 1) of Marx-Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1962) s. 844. The editor’s preface to Theories of Surplus Value, part 1, ibid. p. 16.
See also A. M. Kogan, [The Plan of the Critique of Political Economy and ‘Capital’], translated from Russian by Y. Nakano (Tokyo: Otsuki-Shoten, 1979).
H. Grossmann, ‘Die Änderung des ursprunglishen Aufbauplans des Marxschen “Kapital” und ihre Ursachen’, Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, xiv - 2 (1929) 305ff.
K. Tribe, ‘Remarks on the theoretical significance of Marx’s Grundisse’, Economy and Society (May 1974) highly appreciates Grossmann’s argument on this point in a survey of the debates on the plan problem in the appx I, while it does not refer to weaknesses in Grossmann’s standpoint.
F. Behrens, Zur Methode der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1952) s. 31–48.
R. Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx’s ‘Capital’, translated by P. Burgess (London: Pluto Press, 1977 ) p. 54.
M. Itoh, book review: ‘The Making of Marx’s’ Capital, Science and Society, xLIl-3 (Fall 1979 ) p. 362.
K. Uno, [The Theory of Crisis], (Tokyo: Iwanami-Shoten, 1953.), appx 1.
Cf. K. Uno, Principles of Political Economy (Brighton: Harvester Press; Atlantic Highlands, N. J. Humanities Press, 1980) pp. xxi-xxiii.
M. Itoh, Value and Crisis ( London: Pluto Press; New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980 ) pp. 39–42.
K. Uno’s methodology is presented in more detail with favourable assessments from different angles in T. Sekine, ‘Uno-Riron: a Japanese Contribution to Marxian Political Economy’, Journal of Economic Literature, 13–3 (September 1975);
R. Albritton, A Japanese Reconstruction of Marxist Theory (London: Macmillan, 1986), and M. Itoh, Value and Crisis, ch. 1.
e.g. K. Suzuki ed., [Principles of Political Economy], 2 vols (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1960, 1962)
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E. Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgabe der Sozialdemokratie ( Stuttgart: Dietz, 1899 ).
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Cf. e.g. Ch. 1 of P. Baran and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital ( New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1966 ).
Part I Economic Schools and Ideologies
M. Dobb, Theories of Value and Distribution since Adam Smith ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973 ) p. 1.
M. Weber, ‘Die “Objektivität” sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, XIX (1904).
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© 1988 Makoto Itoh
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Itoh, M. (1988). The Marxian Theory of Capitalism. In: The Basic Theory of Capitalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19107-9_3
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