Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Scholarship
Author(s): Roman Rosdolsky, David Bathrick and Anson Rabinbach
Source: New German Critique, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 62-72
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487739
Accessed: 07-03-2017 13:16 UTC
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German Critique
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Comments on the Method of
Marx's Capital and its Importance
for Contemporary Marxist Scholarship
by Roman Rosdolsky
The organizers of this colloquium wisely chose to sum up its major theme
in the one brief sentence: The critique of political economy today. In so
doing they have obviously attempted to express two things. First, in Capital
Marx was not merely concerned with a critique of this or that national
economic theorem or school, indeed, not even with a critique of what he was
accustomed to characterizing as "bourgeois economy." Rather, he aimed at
the critique of political economy in toto. That is to say, Marx was concerned
with the critique of a science of social relations of production, which "are
always tied to things and appear as things," and which, for that reason, are
and must remain caught within the categories of "reification." Second, it
seems to me that through the choice of this topic, the attempt was made to
express the continued immediacy of Marx's dialectical method of investi-
gation even after a hundred years. From this point of view, his economic
work can rightly be seen as the "critique of political economy today."
It is obvious from the above, that we consider the method of Capital to be
the most valuable and lasting element of his whole economic edifice, and for
that reason, see as the central task of Marxist scholarship today, the study
and application of this method.
There is hardly an aspect of Marx's theory which has been treated more
negligently than the method of Capital. By this we do not mean in any way
to belittle the theoretical achievements of former Marxists. Here we might
include not only such gifted or original Marxist thinkers as R. Luxemburg,
V. Lenin and M. Trotsky, but we could also point to Hilferding's classic,
Das Finanzkapital or to the brilliant economic analyses of Otto Bauer.
Nevertheless, many Marxist theoreticians must be subjected to the same
criticisms that Marx himself levelled at classical political economy, when he
accused it of "brutal interest in content (Stoff)" and a "lack of interest in
grasping the differences in the form of economic relations."
Of course there are good reasons for this neglect of method. It was under-
standable as long as socialist theoreticians saw their main task as popu-
larizing the Marxist theory of value and surplus value. (In this regard
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COMMENTS ON MARX'S METHOD 63
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64 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE
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COMMENTS ON MARX'S METHOD 65
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66 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE
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COMMENTS ON MARX'S METHOD 67
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68 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE
1. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of the Political Economy (New
York, 1973), pp. 650-651. Although no quotations were cited in the published text, we have
included a few citations to English editions where it seemed helpful. -Eds.
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COMMENTS ON MARX'S METHOD 69
2. Ibid., p. 310.
3. Ibid., p. 331.
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70 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE
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COMMENTS ON MARX'S METHOD 71
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72 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE
7THE
'INSUItGEIT
8OCIOLOgIST
In Recent Issues
STATE AND RULING CLASS G. William Domhoff (Vol. 4 No. 3)
TRACKING IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES Fred Pincus (Vol. 4 No. 3)
THE SUB-PROLETARIAT: DARK SKINS AND DIRTY WORK Martin Oppenheimer (Vol. 4 No. 2)
THE NEW MATERIALISM AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE Roger B. Neill (Vol. 4 No. 2)
OPEN ADMISSIONS: A NEW FORM OF TRACKING? Ellen Kay Trimberger (Vol. 4 No. 1)
ACADEMIC FEMINISTS AND THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT Ann Leffler. et al. (Vol. 4 No. 1)
RESOURCES FOR INSURGENT METHODOLOGY
Harvey Mollotch and Marilyn Lester (Vol. 3 No. 4)
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE EVERYDAY WORLD IN MARX AND SCHUTZ
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