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Marx, Classical Political Economy and the Problem of Dynamics* Translated from German by Rick Kuhn

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Marx, Classical Political Economy and the Problem of Dynamics* Translated from German by Rick Kuhn chapter 26 Marx, Classical Political Economy and the Problem of Dynamics* Translated from German by Rick Kuhn 1 In the dominant view, Marx is merely a student of the classical political eco- nomists, someone who completed their work, or their successor.1 A precisely delineated conception is thus erected: the labour theory of value, developed by Adam Smith and Ricardo, in its innermost essence, leads to socialism. This consequence was not, however, articulated by its founders. Marx was the first to think Ricardo’s theory through to its end, as it were, providing its previously unarticulated final word.2 This conception must certainly already appear to be extremely questionable from the general position of the critique of political economy, if ‘the development of political economy and of the opposition to which it gives rise keeps pace with the real development of the social contra- dictions and class conflicts inherent in capitalist production’.3 * [Originally published as Grossman 1941a.] 1 Pareto 1902, p. 340; Croce 1914, p. 138; Schumpeter 1954, p. 15; Wilbrandt 1919, p. 101; Engländer 1928, p. 380. ‘It was Karl Marx … who, as a value theorist, was indeed the last great figure in the classical school’, Douglas 1927, p. 65. The socialists, Franz Mehring, Conrad Schmidt, and above all Rudolf Hilferding, however, are no different. See Mehring 1913b, p. 250; Mehring 1920, p. 557; Schmidt 1889, p. 112. Hilferding not only regarded Marx as an opponent and conqueror of but also as perfecting ‘Classical Economy which begins with William Petty and finds its supreme expression in Marx’, Hilferding 1981, p. 21. Maurice Dobb does not go beyond this traditional view in his new book. If Marx offered no adequate ‘proof’ of his theory of value, this was because he was not dealing with a new or unknown theory. ‘Marx was adopting a principle’, ‘The essential difference between Marx and classical political economy lay, there- fore, in the theory of surplus value’, Dobb 1937, pp. 67–8, 75. [Grossman indicated that the author of Croce’s book was Antonio Labriola, who, however, fell into the category of Marx- ist proponents of the notion that Marx’s economics were essentially Ricardian, Labriola 1910, p. 79.] 2 ‘Smith’s formulation of the problems of exchange value and of the distribution of the national product … was such as almost inevitably gave rise to the doctrines of post-Ricardian social- ists and to the labour theory of value and the exploitation theory of Karl Marx’, Douglas 1927, p. 53. Similarly, Frank H. Knight (Chicago): ‘[Marx] is certainly the thinker who above all oth- ers worked out the classical (Ricardian) theory to its logical conclusions’, Knight 1940, p. 105. 3 Marx 1989c, p. 500. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004384750_028 470 chapter 26 Marx distinguishes four phases in the development of political economy: the first embraces the period of ‘classical economics’ and the remaining three the various stages of ‘vulgar economics’. According to Marx, the identity of the historical situation combines the representatives of classical political eco- nomy into one consistent intellectual school, despite their sometimes great individual differences (e.g. between [William] Petty, [David] Hume and the Physiocrats, and between these and Smith or Ricardo).4 This was the period during which modern capitalism and consequently the modern working class emerged, thus the ‘period in which the class struggle’ between the prolet- ariat and the bourgeoisie ‘was as yet undeveloped’.5 Classical economics is the expression of rising industrial capitalism, wrestling for power. Its theoret- ical and practical thrust is not directed against the proletariat, which is still weak, but against the representatives of the old society, the feudal landowners and old-fashioned usurers. The feudal forms of ground rent and ‘antediluvian’ interest-bearing capital have ‘yet to be subordinated to industrial capital and to acquire the dependent position which [they] must assume’.6 Ricardo’s theory of ground rent, like Hume’s critique before it,7 is directed against feudal landownership. Ricardo’s theory of value does, at the same time, articulate the struggle between the capitalist class and the waged proletariat, in theory. But the industrial bourgeoisie and its theory are still ‘naive’, that is, can afford to engage in the pursuit of truth, without regard for possible dangers and implications, as yet unsuspected and in fact not yet present, which follow from its own principles. So the labour theory of value is developed without fear of emphasising in theory the contradictions between the working class and the propertied class, which can be derived from it,8 or of highlighting the distinction between productive and unproductive labour. For it was the rep- resentatives of the feudal occupations who were particularly ranked into the category of unproductive labour. Those authors are ‘classical’, according to Marx, to the extent that they express this front line position; for example John Locke in his polemic against ‘unproductive’ feudal landownership and ground rent, which according to him ‘is in no way different from usury’.9 This front line position is particularly apparent in their theory of ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ labour, in which 4 Marx 1989c, p. 275. 5 Marx 1976b, p. 96. 6 Marx 1989c, p. 463. [Editor’s interpolation.] 7 Hume 1889, Chapter 4, pp. 320–30; Marx 1994, pp. 390–1. 8 E.g. Adam Smith 1910b, p. 63, where he states that ground rent and profit eat away the wage. 9 [Marx 1994, p. 89, summarising Locke 1924, p. 36.].
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