Abstract
Marx’s Capital replies to the question: What kind of a society is capitalism? The aim of this book is to present to readers the answer he found. As preparation for the full-fledged analysis of capitalism that will follow, in this introduction Otani provides an overview of the characteristic points of Marx’s analysis. Some of the issues clarified here include the conception of society based upon labour, the laws of social reproduction, the laws governing the replacement of historical societies, and the cognitive method and manner of demonstration, necessary for a scientific understanding of society.
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Notes
- 1.
For Marx the Critique of political economy was not only a critique of the theories of preceding economists but also of the system of capitalist economy itself. In 1858, he wrote: «The work I am presently concerned with is a Critique of Economic Categories or, if you like, a critical exposé of the system of the bourgeois economy. It is at once an exposé and, by the same token, a critique of the system» (Marx 1858: Marx 1983, p. 270; Marx’s emphasis).
- 2.
I frequently use the expression «labouring individual» in this book to stress the importance of grasping the acting subjects of every society as individuals. The term «labourer» literally means a labouring person in general, but is now commonly used in to mean «a person doing unskilled manual work for wages». So I will use the term «worker» when dealing with a person working for wages, instead of «labourer».
- 3.
Abstraction here refers to extracting a specific aspect or aspects within one’s thought, from the many aspects of a real thing, while setting aside other aspects. Abstraction is a decisively important means of thought within human cognition, particularly scientific cognition.
- 4.
«Human labour» in the sense of the «labour of human beings» is a translation of Marx’s German term die menschliche Arbeit (definite article «die» attached), whereas «human-labour» is a translation of his term menschliche Arbeit (no article attached), and the distinction between the two is clear.
- 5.
There is a persistent and widespread misconception that the «twofold character of labour» is a concept peculiar to commodity production, even though in every society, where wealth must be produced through labour, that labour needs to be considered from the two aspects of being a transforming action and an expenditure of human labour. Those who hold this misconception—when dealing with the decrease in the quantity of labour necessary to produce a product that accompanies the development of productive power of labour and the distinction between requisite labour and surplus labour discussed in 7 Sect. 1.4.2—do not perceive that this is the expenditure of human labour regardless of differences in the concrete transforming act of labour. What could this be called if not «abstract labour»?
- 6.
Here we assume that the yearly products, not only the means of consumption but also the means of production, are used up in the following year.
- 7.
Here, for the sake of simplification, we assume the productive power of labour does not change. But what would be the case if the productive power of the current year rose compared to the previous year? If the quantity of total labour for the current year (lt2) is the same as that of the previous year, there would naturally be an increase in the quantity of the new product produced through the same quantity of labour. However, the new labour (lt2) that is a production cost within the total product of the current year, which has become materially greater than the previous year, is the same as the previous year (i.e. the quantity of total annual labour is the same as the previous year). If the entirety of the new product of the current year is consumed during the current year, the quantity of products consumed will be greater than in the previous year, so that a surplus product that is not consumed will arise if the quantity of products consumed are the same as in the previous year. This means that there is an emergence or increase of surplus labour, as we will soon discuss. Also, with the development of productive power, there was a decrease compared to the previous year in the quantity of labour necessary for the production of the various means of production that reappear in the same material form, but since the means of production consumed in the current year are produced with the labour-power of the previous year, the production cost of the reappearing means of production is the quantity of labour necessary to produce them in the previous year. When the reappearing means of production enter into the production for the following year, however, their production cost is the quantity of labour necessary to produce them under the productive power of the current year, so it will decrease compared to the production cost for them calculated for the current year.
- 8.
Usually the terms «necessary means of livelihood» (necessary product) or «necessary labour» (necessary labour-time) are used instead of «requisite means of livelihood» (requisite product) and «requisite labour» (requisite labour-time), but in the body of this book the term «necessary labour-time» is used in the sense of the «labour-time necessary to produce a commodity», so to avoid confusion I have adopted this new terminology.
- 9.
The term «fund» that will appear repeatedly refers to goods or money of a certain magnitude that must carry out a certain use or be prepared. Also, goods or money secured for some aim are called a «fund».
- 10.
In order for the individuals convert their freely disposal time to labouring time some «historical circumstances» were necessary. Marx writes: «Favourable natural conditions can provide in themselves only the possibility, never the reality of surplus labour, nor, accordingly, the reality of … a surplus product … Suppose now that an East Indian bread-cutter … requires 12 working hours a week for the satisfaction of all his needs. Nature’s direct gift to him is plenty of leisure time. Before he can apply this leisure time productively for himself, a whole series of historical circumstances is required; before he spends it in surplus labour for others, compulsion is necessary» (Marx 1872: Marx 1976, pp. 650–651; my emphasis).
- 11.
Needless to say, different social forms will have markedly different ways—both quantitatively and qualitatively—of distributing products to the requisite means of livelihood and to the surplus product. Particularly in the case of class-divided societies, the requisite means of livelihood are inevitably meager in both quantity and quality compared to the surplus product. However, the content of the requisite means of livelihood is certainly not something fixed, but rather subject to change depending on changes in the power relation between classes. The crux of the matter is that, in any form of society, the total product of society is divided into one part that enters into the reproduction of the labouring individuals, and another part that exceeds it. The significance of this point is overlooked by those who think that the distinction between requisite labour and surplus labour only pertains to class-divided society.
- 12.
The adjectives, «Asiatic», «Greek-Roman», and «German» are used to distinguish these forms from each other according to the region where each form was observed in its typical shape within history. But all of the forms existed, to a greater or lesser extent, in regions throughout the world.
- 13.
Ownership is premised on labour in a society based on some form of community or the petty producer’s mode of production in which production is carried out by those possessing their own means of production, so that the owners are at the same time workers, whether it is ownership via the community or the ownership of dispersed individuals. But in the relations of commodity production the relation between ownership and labour is completely reversed. At the foundation of the social-relation of people within labour, the legal relation of private ownership is established. This point will be discussed in 7 Sect. 2.4.3.
- 14.
. Figure 1.35 depicts the «petty proprietor’s mode of production», which refers to the production of individual producers who own and administer their own land and other means of production. This mode of production, as depicted in the diagram, exists more or less within any society before Association, and was particularly widespread during the transitional period from feudal society to capitalist society, but it never formed dominant relations of production within history. Capitalism is established by separating individuals who carry out labour qua owners from their means of production, thereby steadily wiping out the petty proprietor’s mode of production.
- 15.
Although decisively important for the method of political economy, I will not touch on the dialectical method here. An object must be grasped within its dialectical movement for the theoretical development of political economy, but an abstract explanation of this, before the reader has come into contact with the concrete setting in which dialectics appears, would invite misunderstanding. Although I have set aside discussion of the dialectical method, readers with an interest in the issue can consult footnote 14 of 7 Chap. 2.
References
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Marx K (1872) Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Bd. 1. Buch 1: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals. 2. verb. Aufl. Hamburg. English edition: Marx K (1976) Capital. A critique of political economy. Vol. 1 (trans: Howkes B). Penguin Books
Marx K (1858) Letter to Ferdinand Lassalle, 22 February 1858. English edition: Marx K (1983) Marx-Engels Collected Works. Vol. 40. Progress Publishers et al. New York
Statistics Bureau Japan (2017) Survey on labour-power in 2017. Tokyo
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Otani, T. (2018). Introduction: The Conception of Society Based upon Labour and the Tasks of Political Economy. In: A Guide to Marxian Political Economy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65954-1_1
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