2.1 Introduction: critique and historical materialism

Before going into differences of and disputes over Marx’s method, it is worth noticing that one aspect is in fact undisputed, which is that it is a ‘method of critique’. Defenders of all methodological strands in Marxism agree that this is either a central or subsidiary part of the(ir) method. Thus, they agree to Marx’s methodological requirement – to a large extent taken over from Hegel – of describing the object of enquiry from within: driving the object’s (society, the economy, or theories thereof) own standards and processes/arguments to their logical conclusions, and thus assessing the object internally (instead of externally as would ‘criticism’ as opposed to ‘critique’).⁶

The subtitle of Marx’s Capital reveals what it does in this respect; it is ‘a critique of political economy’. Herewith, Marx had a double object: critique of the economy, and critique of the economists (in the German ‘Kritik der politischen Ökonomie’ it is even clearer that the object is two-fold).

Anticipating one of the conclusions of this article, I should like to stress an important corollary of the method of critique. The Marxian paradigm is one approach, along many others, to the study of current society. A fruitful development of the paradigm requires that the method of critique be applied not only to current capitalism and current orthodox social sciences, but – in the face of the particular reference practice amongst Marxians, mentioned in the Introduction – also to the work of Marx.

Looking back to Marx’s Capital it is obvious that there are outlines of the method of systematic dialectics to be found in the work. A matter of controversy, though, is where its starts, and whether this method is perhaps combined with another method, or other methods.

Throughout his work Marx adopts three distinct approaches: historical materialism, critique (as briefly outlined above), and systematic dialectics.⁷ How do these relate, particularly in Capital?

Historical materialism includes an approach to the study of history that without doubt takes distance from Hegel’s historical dialectic (rightfully so in my view). In the context of this article, I will not much amplify on this approach. I merely emphasise that for the study of a particular ‘historical material constellation’ such as capitalism, Marxists make use of its results. First, the historical materialist method should enable to differentiate ‘trans-historical notions’ from ‘historically specific categories’.⁸ In Murray’s terminology, these are ‘general abstractions’ versus ‘determinate abstractions’.⁹ This differentiation is a far from easy task. All the same, it is crucial to the Marxian method. I will come back to this in Section 3.

Second, historical materialism, apparently (see below), puts a constraint on the analysis and exposition of a particular ‘historical material constellation’, namely the requirement to set out how a particular society reproduces itself materially, its particular way of ‘sociation’.¹⁰ Marx: ‘The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.’¹¹ Murray calls this constraint the ‘general phenomenology’, comprising ‘the truth of historical materialism’ and he insists that it is ‘a presupposition’ for the systematic dialectic.¹² In the remainder of this section I will set out why I disagree with Murray’s point of view.

Apart from what I have indicated so far, historical materialism provides no methodological indication of how to set up the study of a particular ‘historical material constellation’. The method of ‘critique’ provides a further inkling, but it, too, does not indicate a starting point or the way of proceeding from it.

I would suggest (although I lack solid evidence) that this is the reason why Marx in his preparations for the writing of Capital returned to the study of Hegel’s Logic. The systematic dialectic set out there provides a method for the exposition of the object of inquiry (in this case the capitalist mode of production) ‘from within’.¹³ Thus, systematic dialectics is also a particular method of ‘critique’.¹⁴

2.2 Systematic dialectics: what to show

In outline, systematic dialectics aims to ‘show’ its object of inquiry – in the case of Capital, the capitalist mode of production. Why would one have to show something that is already there before our eyes? Because we may perceive its outcomes before our eyes, but not how it works; we may perceive the outcomes but not know how these come about and how these are interconnected; we may not perceive the structure and the processes reproducing that structure. Systematic dialectics aims to show the essential working of the object: the whole in essence.¹⁵ The whole in essence is the interconnection of all the moments necessary for the reproduction of the object.¹⁶ The emphasis on reproduction reveals that we are dealing with an organic whole, therefore “knowledge of it must take the form of a system of related categories rather than a series of discrete investigations”.¹⁷ The emphasis on ‘necessary’ reveals that we are out to lay bare first of all the continuous moments rather than the merely contingent expressions. That is, we are out to distinguish aspects and expressions that could come and go without affecting the reproduction of the system, from all the necessary moments the lack or distortion of which would make the system, the object, fall apart.¹⁸

This provides a first guide for systematicity: we have a guide for what to show (but not yet for how). Obviously, this guide pertains to what Murray calls the phenomenological question: What is it?¹⁹ Perhaps we merely use different jargon here, but for me phenomenological research is a mainly analytic stage of inquiry prior to the research of the dialectical Darstellung (positing, positioning, presentation).²⁰ The analysis of this prior stage results in abstractions and ultimately ends up with an ‘abstract universal’. Thus the phenomenological research is the prior stage that Marx refers to as Forschungsweise, ‘the way of inquiry’.²¹ Conversely, the distinction of necessary moments from contingencies, set out in the previous paragraph, goes at the heart of the systematic dialectics proper: it is the result of the research of the dialectical Darstellung at each of its successive stages.

2.3 Systematic dialectics: how to show

How then? Foremost this is a synthetic process: synthesis of the object of inquiry as a whole.²² It has two requirements going on at the same time. First, simpler categories come before complex ones. Thus we have a succession in stages from the ‘simple’ to the complex (in the end, complex reality, “the concentration of many determinants”).²³

The difficulty, however, lies in the second requirement, which is that we equally have a movement from abstract to concrete concepts.²⁴ Here, the dialectical layering of concepts comes in. Since we set out to present the whole, we cannot just start from one simple aspect of it (what simple aspect would we choose? – is this a matter of arbitrary choice?). If you want to present the whole, you must start from the whole. That is, you must start from the abstract whole (in other terms, the abstract universal, where ‘universal’ refers to the object of inquiry, i.e., the whole – in the case of Capital, an abstract concept of the capitalist mode of production). Of course, the abstract whole also appears simple. In its simplicity it exhibits abstract unity. Equally, the abstract whole lacks concrete richness (diversity), and it also appears to lack concrete material foundations; it is unclear (or perhaps implicit) how it is reproduced. Concretisation, foundation and reproduction are the aspects of the one process that drives the systematic dialectic forward in stages. In the case of Capital these stages of movement are each time explicitly marked as a conceptual ‘transformation’ (Verwandlung – ‘conversion’ is perhaps a better translation).²⁵ This movement goes on until in the end, hopefully, one has been able to show how the initial object of inquiry reproduces itself in essence.

Still, prior to that, at each of the stages referred to, we have reference to the totality, though in degrees of abstractness. In the case of Marx’s Capital, therefore, it may seem that after the completion of each Volume, and often after the completion of its Parts, we are done. Of course, Volume I presents the totality. Of course, Volume II, Part One or Part Three presents the totality et cetera, but each time richer, more concrete, more materially founded, showing more how it reproduces itself.²⁶

All this is further complicated by the conflicts and contradictions inherent to the object of inquiry and the conceptualisation of it.²⁷ In the context of this article I refrain from going into those.²⁸

2.4 The two starting points of dialectical research

Up until now I have provided in outline the answer to the how? question: the question as to how systematic dialectics shows us the object of inquiry. Above I only briefly touched on the phenomenological analytic stage of inquiry prior to the synthetics of the dialectical Darstellung (end of §2.2). Nevertheless, here, it seems, lies the source of the basic disagreement between Murray and myself; ‘here’ or perhaps rather in the connection (or intersection?) of the analytic and the synthetic stages. Once more, this is also the stage where the methods of historical materialism and systematic dialectics touch.

Murray rightfully observes: “systematic-dialectical presentation (or systematic dialectics) is the name for the most appropriate way to present the findings of phenomenology. So, dialectical presentation is rooted in experience; it is not a matter of spinning webs a priori.”²⁹ Indeed, dialectical research has two starting points: one is non-systematic and often informal – analytical phenomenological research; the other is systematic, the formal starting point of which is the abstract universal – the starting point of the synthetic systematic-dialectical research and its presentation (Darstellung). The first research stage starts from empirical reality, the phenomena – from what one in ordinary language calls ‘the concrete’, but what Marx prefers to call the “imagined concrete”; this stage of thorough analysis results in abstractions and ultimately ends up with an ‘abstract universal’. The second research stage takes its start from the latter, gradually concretising it systematically (as set out in §2.3), until in the end it reaches back to the empirical reality that can now be comprehended in its concrete manifoldness. Or as Marx expressed it: “Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought.”³⁰

The first research stage may, but need not, have been reported on in phenomenological writings, expressed in hopefully a ‘normal’ systematic organisation of the material. These are the reports of what Hegel called the act of ‘understanding’ instead of ‘dialectical reason’.³¹ They range from newspaper reports to historical investigations and highbrow philosophical work. Phenomenological research, however, also consists in the study of such reports, as well as in the study of new empirical material. Their digestion, i.e., phenomenological research, often takes the course of a “chaotic conception of the whole”³² in ways that one can hardly report on. We try this analysis, fail and move on to the next, fail again then return to the former, and so on. Nevertheless, for a dialectician, this research might also take the shape of ‘essays’ (try-outs) in dialectics.

I believe that Marx’s work prior to the 1859 Critique of Political Economy, or perhaps prior to the Grundrisse, must be located in the research domain mentioned in the previous paragraph.

2.5 Two circles

In dialectical research and dialectical presentation, then, we see two circles going on.³³ One is the empirical circle from empirical reality via its working up by phenomenological research to ‘abstract determination’ and back via systematic dialectics to empirical reality (comprising the two research stages).

The other is a circle that systematic dialectics proper goes through (i.e., the second research stage) – from abstract universal to concrete manifoldness.³⁴ But why is this a ‘circle’? The appraisal of any systematic-dialectical presentation lies in whether or not it succeeds in providing the foundation for its starting point within the systematic-dialectical presentation itself. (Thus, its foundations do not rest in presupposed unquestionable axioms, as in the mathematical-analytical way of proceeding; nor do they rest in the first research stage – the context of its discovery so to say.) Foundation, concretisation and reproduction, we have seen, are the aspects of the same systematic-dialectical process, or movement. Thus, foundation also comes down to whether the abstract starting point and the movement from it ‘generates’ its own existence – its truth – in the sense that it generates all the moments necessary for its existence, thus the object-totality as a self-reproducing entity. Of course, we must require this, since the object-totality in question, the capitalist system, is in reality a self-reproducing entity today. So, the possible truth of the starting point, the first level of abstraction, lies in the second and so forth. Equally, the possible truth of any intermediate moment lies in all the others. In this sense all moments are part of one and the same circle.³⁵

Murray objects to “this two-way directionality of dialectical systematicity”.³⁶ In order to flesh this out, I want to consider an example from the structure of Capital. At the end of Volume I, although accumulation of capital has been presented, it appears that accumulation can in fact have no existence since the social circulation of capital has not been presented yet (Volume II). Of course, I suppose, we had in Volume I an inkling of accumulation. But it turns out that at that point accumulation is still abstract, because insufficiently founded (thus, its full reproduction is lacking: it appears that we were shown merely one moment of accumulation). Thus the existence of accumulation ‘presupposes’ (i.e., requires) its further foundation in circulation. But, of course, when we get to circulation, that ‘presupposes’ (i.e., requires) accumulation. And so on. In the previous two sentences I used the term ‘presupposition’ that Murray stresses, even if it risks confusion. ‘Presupposition’ in this sense of requirement is quite different from presupposition in the sense of postulates, assumptions, axioms.³⁷ As indicated, systematic dialectics does not presuppose, assume, the truth of the starting point: its truth has to be proven in the course of the presentation. Similarly, here, at a level more concrete than the starting point, accumulation is not presupposed – in the sense of assumed – to exist, rather the truth of the existence of accumulation has to be proven in the further course of the presentation (e.g. circulation) – although the prior presentation may already have shown part of the evidence for its existence. Thus the systematic starting point of Capital is ultimately only grounded when all the moments necessary for the reproduction of the system have been presented. At that point (level) we can be said to have provided the full foundation for the starting point, and we have come full circle.

The “inseparability of multiple aspects of the object under examination”, writes Murray, “introduces a circularity into a systematic-dialectical presentation that seems disturbing”.³⁸ His criticism becomes a bit obscure when he adds: “it is at this point that Marx parts company with the Hegelian notion of systematic dialectics”. He continues:

Marx does not leave the circle of Hegelian systematic dialectics unbroken; famously he objects to the ‘presuppositionlessness’ of Hegelian systematic dialectics and insists that science has premises, which he and Engels sketched in The German Ideology.³⁹

One page further on, he specifies these premises as follows:

human beings are needy, self-conscious, symbolizing, social, sexually reproducing animals who are in (and of) non-human nature, which they purposively transform according to their perceived wants.⁴⁰

This is what Murray calls the “general phenomenology”, which comprises historical materialism.⁴¹ Earlier on he indicates:

In Capital, Marx offers both a general phenomenology of the human predicament [the premises just cited] and a specific phenomenology of the plight of humanity under capitalism.⁴²

First of all, it should be noted that this “general phenomenology” is perplexingly thin. But that is not the point for now.⁴³ More to the point is that Murray provides no reference for his statement that Marx ‘objects to the “presuppositionlessness” of Hegelian dialectics’. I assume there is none.

However, in his scholarly 1988 book, Murray does provide a seemingly relevant citation. Its context, though, is that of history, historiography and historical materialism – quite different from systematic dialectics. He writes:

Marx’s criticisms of speculative method and the philosophical anthropology of absolute idealism establish a context for his attack on speculative historiography and for his own materialism. To see this connections, let us consider a celebrated passage from the German Ideology in which Marx expounds his historical materialism at the expense of speculative historiography: ‘With the presuppositionless Germans we must begin with ascertaining the first presuppositions of all human existence, therefore also of all history, namely the presupposition that man must be in a position to live in order to “make history” ’.⁴⁴

As Murray himself indicates, this objection to ‘presuppositionlessness’ is set out in criticism of speculative historiography. First, no one would claim that this, including Hegel’s own writings on history, is ‘systematic dialectics’. Second, historiography – including the historical materialist – indeed cannot do without presuppositions. And this equally counts for phenomenology generally.

Thus, first, there seems to be no textual evidence that Marx for his dialectical Darstellung “parts company with the Hegelian notion of systematic dialectics” in this respect, and “objects to the ‘presuppositionlessness’ of Hegelian dialectics”. Second, I fail to see how Marx “parts company” since the presentational structure of Capital is like that of a systematic-dialectical circle/circuit. What is more, if a dialectical systematic presentation is complete, or even quite a way on the track (Murray and I agree that Capital is not complete),⁴⁵ it must have the bite of ‘too’ true, and of ‘how can I break into this damn circle?’⁴⁶ Marx was well aware of this. In the Postface to the second edition of Capital he writes:

Of course the method of presentation must differ from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development and to track down their inner connection. Only after this work has been done can the real [wirkliche, i.e., actual] movement be appropriately presented. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject matter is now reflected back in the ideas, then it may appear as if we have before us an a priori construction.⁴⁷

Nevertheless, I understand, I think, what seems disturbing. ‘Circularity’ is a sin in conventional linear logic, and I guess that Murray lets himself be affected by this (his) term. I reply on two planes. First, if the reality of capitalism is such that it is a self-reproducing entity, we cannot escape from describing it as self-reproducing. Of course, it is an organic entity, and a writer is constrained to represent the organic in the pages of a book with a beginning and end page even if in fact all the arguments, as representations of real moments, hang together synchronically, rather than in the apparent page sequence.⁴⁸ We can do no better than describing the organic intention in terms of the metaphor of a circle.

Second, I am not enchanted by the axiomatic deductive method of conventional logic – and orthodox scientific practise (and neither is Murray). Why do we have to accept axioms, postulates, assumptions? What is their foundation? Any mainstream economic paper, for example, – the field I know best – starts with those, and together with the conventional rules of deduction the conclusions follow by inexorable logic. I am not saying that this necessarily produces nonsense; of course, the merit of such procedures depends on the merit of the assumptions – but here lies the weak point.⁴⁹ If assumptions are without foundation then the derived argument is circular in them.

2.6 Conclusion: the relation of historical materialism and systematic dialectics

It can now be seen why I took up some space to set out the difference between the two stages of dialectical research: (i) the analytical stage of history and phenomenology, and (ii) the synthetic stage of systematic dialectics. The first necessarily involves presuppositions. The second is – subject to failures – presuppositionless.⁵⁰ The first stage is indispensable to the second. I hope to have shown that historical materialism is therefore indispensable to systematic dialectics.

Returning to the second stage, if the object of inquiry is to reproduce itself, it must, of necessity, at least reproduce itself materially. Thus, this reproduction must be part and parcel of the systematic-dialectical presentation. It is also the case that historical materialism provides an obvious guide and check for systematic dialectics. At some point all of the ‘general’ trans-historical requirements (Murray’s general phenomenology) must be incorporated into the systematic-dialectical presentation in their determinate social form (specific phenomenology).

But next, the findings of historical materialism are also overarching to systematic dialectics regarding transitions between modes of production. In his Grundrisse Marx writes:

our method indicates the points where historical investigation must enter in … Just as, on one side the pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical, i.e., suspended presuppositions, so do the contemporary conditions of production likewise appear as engaged in suspending themselves and hence in positing the historic presuppositions for a new state of society.⁵¹

Historical materialism overarches systematic dialectics to the extent that the latter cannot but present one subject-matter at a time (e.g. capitalism); it can present extant contradictions and conflict and the way they are settled within the system, but it is unable to present transitions from one system to another.⁵²

My criticism of Murray thus amounts to his mixing up the two stages of dialectical research. If he had argued that Marx’s Capital does not adopt the method of systematic dialectics, I would have disagreed since that cannot be sustained in general. If he had argued that Capital is often defective in this respect, he would have found me on his side.⁵³ Instead he redefines systematic dialectics into what he names “Marxian systematic dialectics”, which, apparently, is what Marx does. This largely immunises Capital against improvements. My disagreements with Murray on the issue of ‘abstract labour’, taken up in the next section, follow from this.

3.1 Abstract labour: a general or/and a determinate notion?

In Reuten 1993, I set out elements of a critique of Marx – critique in the sense indicated in §2.1 – especially concerning the theory of value in the first chapter of Capital I.⁵⁴ Murray rightfully notes my conclusion that Marx, whilst laying the foundation for a theory of social value – a value-form theory – at the same time does not completely break with the naturalistic Classical labour theory of value.⁵⁵ Murray also rightfully notes that I see this critique in line with the project of Capital.

I argued especially that while Marx sets out elements of a value-form theory in that chapter, he nevertheless also relies on labour-embodied notions. The same point was already made by Rubin in his essays of 1928. However, we see in Marx not the Ricardian naturalistic labour-embodied notion, but rather a more complicated ‘abstract labour’ concept. Specifically, I argued that Marx’s theory in part may usefully be labelled an ‘abstract-labour-embodied’ theory, thus indicating his half-way break with the Classical naturalistic labour-embodied theory.⁵⁶ Regarding the introduction of the concept of abstract labour, I quoted the following passage from Marx:

If we make abstraction from its [the commodity’s] use-value, we abstract also from the material constituents and forms which make it a use-value. … The useful character of the kinds of labour embodied in them also disappears; this in turn entails the disappearance of the different concrete forms of labour. They can no longer be distinguished, but are altogether reduced to the same kind of labour, human labour in the abstract.⁵⁷

Second, with the introduction of the concept of value, abstract labour is further specified as:

merely congealed quantities of homogeneous human labour, i.e., of human labour-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure. All these things now tell us is that human labour-power has been expended to produce them, human labour is accumulated in them. As crystals of this social substance, which is common to them all, they are values – commodity values [Warenwerte].⁵⁸

And somewhat further on:

How is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the ‘value-forming [bildenden i.e., constituting] substance’, the labour contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc.⁵⁹

Murray agrees that the concept of abstract labour set out here is indeed a general, trans-historical, instead of a historically determinate notion. We also agree that both the concepts of value and use-value are meant to be determinate.⁶⁰ However, the concept of value especially suffers here from the general abstract-labour notion. If so, we cannot say that we are here on the track of a theory of the particularly capitalist kind of social form. Yet Murray and I also agree about the requirement of setting out a theory of social form instead of adopting formless general notions.

One part of the way out here for Murray is to make the concept of abstract labour a determinate one, which he calls “practically abstract labour” emphasising that, in capitalist society, labour is treated as abstract in practice.⁶¹ I could not agree more.⁶² I would also agree to distinguish two concepts, one general (abstract labour) and one determinate (practically abstract labour). This then would be one element for a reconstruction of a truly social Marxian abstract-labour theory of value.

However, Murray makes the astonishing move of delivering this as an interpretation of Marx’s theory. He interprets Marx’s one term of abstract labour to have two separate meanings, one general and one determinate (can we choose at will?). For an interpretation of the current text of Capital this just runs too fast. He writes:

But by ‘practically abstract’ labour, a term of my own device for which there is ample warrant in Marx’s thoughts and words, I mean labour that a society treats as abstract … This, then, is a historically determinate social sort of labour, which shows that Marx’s theory of value is not ‘asocial’ but a theory of social form.⁶³

Murray’s evidence for the ‘ample warrant’ is both scarce and ambiguous.⁶⁴

So he interprets Marx’s term of abstract labour to have two different meanings. In the last section of his article Murray then writes:

I agree with Reuten that an abstract labour-embodied [i.e., abstract-labour-embodied] theory is an asocial one that represents no fundamental break with classical political economy. … Where Reuten’s reasoning goes wrong, I believe, is in its failure to recognize that there are two concepts in play in Chapter One, the general concept of abstract labour and the concept of ‘practically abstract’ labour.⁶⁵

Have I gone wrong? I thought that Marx does not explicitly differentiate these concepts; I thought that Marx does not devote two terms to them in the way Murray does. Murray is quite right to point this out and I fully agree with him. But where Murray goes wrong is to propose this as an interpretation instead of a (welcome) reconstruction.

3.2 A flaw in the standard answer to the Ricardian interpretation

Why do I insist on this, when at the same time I myself hold a value-form theory distanced from labour-embodied theories of value? If Marx’s theory is not ambiguous, Murray has a problem. He then must be able to explain why so many Marxists and non-Marxists read a labour-embodied theory of value in Marx’s text (be it concrete-labour-embodied or abstract-labour-embodied).

The dubious standard answer to this question on the part of those criticising labour-embodied notions was always that Marx had been read with ‘Ricardian’ preconceptions in mind. Murray also takes this position. I doubt if this standard answer ever made rudimentary sense. At most it would apply to economists that had a university education in economics prior to 1920. Until 1910–20 most economists, at least in Britain, were still being educated with Ricardo (1817) or Mill’s (1848) version of his approach serving as their manual. In other countries such as the US, Austrian blends like Taussig’s (1911) should have done the same work. But for those trained after that time the standard answer cannot even begin to make sense. In the period since then few (Marxian) economists, and even fewer Marxian philosophers or sociologists have read Ricardo. Even fewer have read it prior to Marx’s work.

There remains the answer that students turn to Marxism and the reading of Marx after prior digestion of an introduction such as Sweezy’s The Theory of Capitalist Development of 1942 (to which Murray refers) that did the ‘harm’. I find this unconvincing. It assumes what has to be proven, namely that an introduction such as Sweezy’s does no justice to Marx.

Against this background, I set myself the task of finding out if the first chapter of Marx’s Capital I, contrary to my own earlier readings, might perhaps consistently be read from a labour-embodied point of view – this is what my 1993 article addresses. To my own surprise – at that time – I found that it can. Moreover, I realised that the crucial value-form theoretic Section 3 can be skipped as a tedious historical account of the emergence of money.⁶⁶ Indeed I concluded that, to say the least, Marx’s theory of value is ambiguous, and that there is room for at least two lines of argument in Marx’s text, an abstract-labour-embodied theory and a value-form theory.

Murray comments on this, a bit hidden in a footnote: “Even if Reuten’s suspicions about Marx are unsustainable, he sheds light on how Marx came to be so widely misunderstood, including by Marxists.”⁶⁷ Murray’s roundabout ‘interpretation’ in fact confirms my ‘suspicions’.

Once again, if Murray’s interpretation is unambiguously obvious, he needs to explain other prevailing interpretations.

3.3 Conclusion: phenomenology, systematic dialectics and its starting point

For Murray’s reading of abstract labour to make sense (which I contest) Marx must conflate the stages of dialectical research, as indicated in §2; that is, “Marx’s” systematic dialectics interpolates phenomenological research into the systematic dialectics. If that were so, Murray could make an argument for “Marx’s” two-fold use of the term ‘abstract labour’: as general and determinate. However, that is still unconvincing since at other places in Capital I, Chapter 1 Marx carefully and explicitly distinguishes his use of general versus determinate categories. Why not then for this crucial concept of abstract labour?

In my 1993 article I indicated that it is not clear where in Capital we should trace the formal starting point of the systematic-dialectical presentation, and that the earlier sections of the book set out preparatory (phenomenological?) notions.⁶⁸ Arthur refers in this respect to the very interesting interpretation by Banaji, who suggests that we have in Capital two starting points:⁶⁹ one the immediacy of ‘the commodity’ as a preparatory analytic point of departure, the other of universality in abstract form, i.e., ‘value’ as the synthetic point of departure.⁷⁰ The former would then be a short cut representation of the first dialectical research stage mentioned in §2.4.⁷¹

Banaji’s interpretation, however, does not take away the point of Marx’s insufficient break with the classical naturalism. Banaji writes that the social properties of the commodity

appear initially as a sort of ‘content’ ‘hidden within’ their ‘form of appearance’, exchange-value. Insofar as Marx, both in Section 1 and later, calls this ‘content’ ‘value’ (cf. Capital I, p. 139 [which is at the beginning of Section 3]: “We started from exchange-value … in order to track down the value that lay hidden within it”), it is easy to fall into the illusion of supposing that value is something actually contained in the commodity. For example, it is easy to suppose that Marx means by value (as quite clearly he did at one stage) “the labour objectified in a commodity”, and then from there to proceed to the more general identification of labour with value which I.I. Rubin quite correctly polemicised against.⁷²

Is this incomplete break with the classical naturalism a defect of Marx’s theory in Capital? Quite so, in my view. However, the fruitfulness of great scientific work lies not in the consistency of its reasoning – although that helps. It rather lies in its exposition of the limits of previous thought and the degree of its break with that. Marx’s break with past thought, especially Classical Political Economy, is obvious. To expect that such a break can be thoroughly ‘clean’, consistent and unambiguous is to neglect two points: first, one (in this case Marx) cannot but start thinking in terms of past thought (and for the hypothetical case in which one would start thinking in a void, we cannot even see that it is a break); second, and relatedly, communication (writing) of the break has to take place in a language close to the language of the old view (otherwise, again, it can even not be perceived as a break).

Fundamental breaks are bound to be inconsistent. Only once we command the new language of the break, can we, in retrospect, detect the inconsistencies and the remainders of the old thought and language. For our awareness of Marx’s break we are greatly assisted by the fact that, after Marx, economics saw another break, that of Marginalist and Neoclassical Economics’ utility theory, which was equally based on naturalism, this time that of the immediate use-aspect of commodities. Paraphrasing Banaji⁷³ we might say that it is not remarkable that Marx left an incomplete and at points ambiguous work, ‘but that close to four generations of Marxists’ put more effort in interpretation and reinterpretation than in reconstruction and development of the programme.