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As textual evidence to support his unusual interpretation that the
"capitalist mode of production" includes non-capitalist forms of
production (such as worker coops and the putting-out system), Gil offers
one sentence fragment from deep in Volume 3 of Capital (in Part 5 on
interest). The sentence fragment is the following:
Concealed in this idea, moreover, is the still greater nonsense
... that the capitalist mode of production could proceed on its course
without capitalist production. (p. 501)
Then Gil says: "I challenge anyone on the list to make sense of that
phrase if the "capitalist mode of production" is taken as identical to
"capitalist production" *by definition*."
OK! I gladly accept the challenge!
The first point is that I am NOT arguing that the capitalist mode of
production is IDENTICAL to capitalist production. Rather, the capitalist
mode of production consists of TWO "SPHERES" (as Marx called them), the
sphere of PRODUCTION and the sphere of CIRCULATION, as Marx said in many
places. Marx never said anything like the capitalist mode of production
also includes non-capitalist modes of production! Not in Gil's sentence
fragment, nor anywhere else that I know about. Rather, the capitalist
mode of production consists of these two spheres of production and
circulation.
The sentence fragment quoted by Gil simply means that it is nonsense that
interest-bearing capital, which operates solely within the sphere of
circulation of the capitalist mode of production, could receive interest
without surplus-value being produced in the sphere of production of the
capitalist mode of production.
This meaning of the "capitalist mode of production" is made very clear I
think by a consideration of the context of the sentence fragment quoted by
Gil and of Marx's overall logical method, especially the relation between
the total amount of surplus-value and the individual component parts of
profit, interest, rent, etc.
In Part 5 of Volume 3, interest is explained as one component of the total
amount of surplus-value produced by capitalist production as a whole. As
in all of Volume 3, this total amount of surplus-value produced by
capitalist production as a whole is taken as given, as already determined
by the Volume 1 analysis of capital in general (i.e. the total social
capital). Marx's subject in Part 5 is how this total amount of
surplus-value produced by capitalist production is divided between
industrial capitalists and financial capitalists. This is what Marx meant
in Chapter 5 of Volume 1 and elsewhere when he said that interest-bearing
capital is explained as a "secondary, derivative form" of capital, derived
from the "primary form" of industrial capital, i.e. capital invested in
capitalist production. The interest income of interest-bearing capital is
derived from the surplus-value produced by productive capital.
One of Marx's main points in Part 5 is that, once the total surplus-value
is divided into interest and profit of enterprise, then interest APPEARS
(to capitalists and to bourgeois economists) to be a SEPARATE SOURCE of
income, INDEPENDENT of the capitalist production that produced it.
(This is Marx's general point in Volume 3 as a whole about all the
different "forms of appearance" of surplus-value, including merchant
profit and rent.)
(I)nterest appears as a surplus-value that capital yields in and
of itself and which it would yield even without productive
application. (p. 501)
Marx commented that, from the point of view of individual capitalists,
this appearance is correct: an individual capitalist can indeed lend his
capital and receive an interest, without investing in
production. However, Marx argued further, from the point of view of the
total social capital, this appearance of interest as an independent source
of income is absurd. For the total social capital, without capitalist
production, there could be no surplus-value and, without surplus-value,
there could be no interest.
Taken generally, i.e. when we apply it to the whole social
capital, as it is done by some vulgar economists and even
given out as the basis of profit, this is of course quite
absurd.
Following this sentence is the sentence from which Gil's fragment comes
(with upper-case denoting the rest of the sentence left out by Gil):
Concealed in this idea, moreover, is the still greater
nonsense THAT CAPITAL COULD YIELD INTEREST WITHOUT FUNCTIONING AS
PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL, i.e. WITHOUT CREATING SURPLUS-VALUE, OF
WHICH INTEREST IS SIMPLY ONE PART; that the capitalist mode of
production could proceed on its course without capitalist
production.
It seems to me that both the general context of this passage within Marx
overall logical method (Volume 3 is about the distribution of the
surplus-value produced by capitalist production) and the part of the
passage emphasized in upper-case ("that capital could yield interest
without functioning as productive capital") make it abundantly clear that
the meaning of this sentence is that it is nonsense to think that
interest-bearing capital operating in the sphere of circulation of the
capitalist mode of production could receive interest as income without
surplus-value being produced in the sphere of production of the capitalist
mode of production.
So, my conclusion once again is that when Marx said in the first sentence
of Chapter 1 that he is considering the commodity as the product of the
"capitalist mode of production," he means that he is considering the
commodity as the product of capitalist production.
To further support this interpretation, there are many passages in which
Marx explicitly stated that the commodity that he starts with in Chapter 1
is a product of capitalist production. For example, from the "Results",
We began with the commodity, with this specific social form of
the product - for it is the foundation and premiss of
CAPITALIST PRODUCTION... We regard the commodity
as just such a premiss and proceed from the commodity as
CAPITALIST PRODUCTION IN ITS SIMPLEST FORM. (C.I. 1059-60)
As another example, there is also the following very similar passage from
the 1861-63 Manuscript, in which capitalist production and the capitalist
mode of production are used interchangeably:
We start from the commodity, this specific social form of
the product, as the foundation and prerequisite of
CAPITALIST PRODUCTION... (T)he prerequisite, the
starting-point, of the formation of capital and the
CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION is the
development of the product into a commodity...
It is as such a prerequisite that we treat the commodity,
since we proceed from it as the SIMPLEST ELEMENT
OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION. On the other hand,
the product, the result of CAPITALIST PRODUCTION,
is the commodity. What appears as the element is later
revealed to be its own product.
(MECW, vol. 32, pp. 300-01 or TSV, vol. 3, p. 112)
And one other passage from Part 4 of vol. 3 on commercial capital in which
the "capitalist mode of production" is explicitly connected with
capitalist production:
Within the CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION - i.e. once CAPITAL
TAKES COMMAND OF PRODUCTION itself and gives it a completely altered
and specific form - commercial capital appears simply as capital in a
particular function. (p. 444)
And, it could be added (as Marx did in many places) that the particular
function of the commercial capital Marx is analyzing is located in the
sphere of circulation of the capitalist mode of production.
Gil, do you still think that what Marx meant by the "capitalist mode of
production" included non-capitalist forms of production? If so, how do
you interpret the passages above? And what further passages can you
provide to support this odd interpretation?
I look forward to further discussion of Marx's logic in Chapter 5 (it is
not "irrelevant" if capitalist production is assumed), but I would first
like to clarify Marx's meaning of the "capitalist mode of
production." Because, if my interpretation of the "capitalist mode of
production" is correct, then, just like the commodity analyzed in Chapter
1 is the product of capitalist production, so also the surplus-value
analyzed in Chapter 5 is the product of capitalist production and the
capital analyzed in Chapter 5 is capital invested in capitalist production
(as Marx tells us explicitly).
Comradely,
Fred
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