Grundrisse

Unearthing The Grundrisse (continuation)

After the defeat of the 1848-50 revolutions in Europe, Marx acknowledged that he failed to provide an adequate analysis of the economic foundation of society and turned from a focus on organizing to an intense, life-long study of political economy. Catalyzed by the first global economic crisis in 1857 and after 10 years of concentrated study, he started the first of seven notebooks to self-clarify his work up to that point. Not published or available outside the USSR until 1953, Martin Nicolaus provided the first—and only —English translation of all seven notebooks in 1973 as the Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy.

Unearthing The Grundrisse (continuation)

After the defeat of the 1848-50 revolutions in Europe, Marx acknowledged that he failed to provide an adequate analysis of the economic foundation of society and turned from a focus on organizing to an intense, life-long study of political economy. Catalyzed by the first global economic crisis in 1857 and after 10 years of concentrated study, he started the first of seven notebooks to self-clarify his work up to that point. Not published or available outside the USSR until 1953, Martin Nicolaus provided the first—and only —English translation of all seven notebooks in 1973 as the Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy.

Unearthing The Grundrisse (continuation)

After the defeat of the 1848-50 revolutions in Europe, Marx acknowledged that he failed to provide an adequate analysis of the economic foundation of society and turned from a focus on organizing to an intense, life-long study of political economy. Catalyzed by the first global economic crisis in 1857 and after 10 years of concentrated study, he started the first of seven notebooks to self-clarify his work up to that point. Not published or available outside the USSR until 1953, Martin Nicolaus provided the first—and only —English translation of all seven notebooks in 1973 as the Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy.

Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason

From the book: “…a potential tendency for capital in searching to maximise its monetary profit to be drawn to invest in areas that produce no value or surplus value at all. Taken to extremes, either of these tendencies [the first being the problem of technology reducing value creation] could be fatal to the reproduction of capital. In combination, and the contemporary evidence is that both trends are discernible, they could be catastrophic” (Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, David Harvey, Oxford University Press, p.105).

Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason

From the book: “…a potential tendency for capital in searching to maximise its monetary profit to be drawn to invest in areas that produce no value or surplus value at all. Taken to extremes, either of these tendencies [the first being the problem of technology reducing value creation] could be fatal to the reproduction of capital. In combination, and the contemporary evidence is that both trends are discernible, they could be catastrophic” (Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, David Harvey, Oxford University Press, p.105).

Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason

From the book: “…a potential tendency for capital in searching to maximise its monetary profit to be drawn to invest in areas that produce no value or surplus value at all. Taken to extremes, either of these tendencies [the first being the problem of technology reducing value creation] could be fatal to the reproduction of capital. In combination, and the contemporary evidence is that both trends are discernible, they could be catastrophic” (Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, David Harvey, Oxford University Press, p.105).

Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason

From the book: “…a potential tendency for capital in searching to maximise its monetary profit to be drawn to invest in areas that produce no value or surplus value at all. Taken to extremes, either of these tendencies [the first being the problem of technology reducing value creation] could be fatal to the reproduction of capital. In combination, and the contemporary evidence is that both trends are discernible, they could be catastrophic” (Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, David Harvey, Oxford University Press, p.105).

Marx’s Grundrisse

Marx viewed all his economic laws as tendencies and it is hard to deny that those tendencies are becoming more and more the realities of today’s capitalism. However, to understand our society we need to do more than reading and accepting his concepts, we must critically analyze them and look for the way of thinking that produced them. It is with this goal in my mind that we should embark on a journey through the long and complex sentences of The German Ideology and the Grundrisse.