From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Thu Aug 02 2007 - 14:33:32 EDT
Prof. Perelman wondered about the source of a Marx quote given by Michio Morishima and George Catephores in their influential "Value, exploitation and growth: Marx in Light of Modern Economic Theory" (1978). The problem quote has Marx saying: "Political Economy, in order to give its laws greater constancy and determinacy, must present truth as accidental and the abstraction as true." Intrigued by this, I thought I would investigate - if Prof. Perelman could "never find" the source for this, something is really going wrong. The source turns out to be: Karl Marx [und] Friedrich Engels, Die Heilige Familie und Schriften von Marx von Anfang 1844 bis anfang 1845. Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung Band 3. Berlin: Marx-Engels Verlag Gmbh, 1932. p. 502 (This first attempt at a Marx-Engels collected works edited by Riazanov/Adoratskii was reprinted in 1970, and Morishima/Catephores cited the reprint). With the kind cooperation of the staff at the IISH who trucked out the Gesamtausgabe, I could establish that specific quote occurs in an 1844 or 1845 conspectus (notes and excerpts) of David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which Marx probably read for the first time in his Paris days, as he was beginning to study economics then (Marx used a 1835 French edition with annotations by Jean Baptiste Say). The literal German original of the quote reads as follows: "Die Nationaloekonomie, um ihren Gesetzen eine Grossere Konsistenz und Bestimmtheit zu geben, muss die Wirklichkeit als akzidentell und die Abstraktion als wirklich unterstellen" Morishima & Catephores's English version is thus inaccurate. "Konsistenz" does not mean constancy, but consistency. "Wirklichkeit" does not mean truth, but reality. "Unterstellen" does not mean "present" but "assume" or "suppose". "Akzidentell" in this case is Marx's German rendering of the French "accidentelle" used in Ricardo's translated text, but what is really meant is "incidental". The translation should thus be as follows: "To give its laws a greater consistency and determinacy, Political Economy must assume the reality as incidental, and the abstraction as real". Not altogether the same thing as that which Morishima/Catephores claim Marx said. To understand the significance of the quote, you really need the context of the whole paragraph, which is a comment on the distinction between natural prices and current prices. In my own translation: "On p. 111 Ricardo says, that when he speaks of exchange-value, he always means the natural price, disregarding the accidents of competition due to what he calls any momentary or incidental cause. To give its laws a greater consistency and determinacy, Political Economy must assume the reality as incidental, and the abstraction as real. Say remarks in this regard in note 1, p. 111-112 that "the natural price... would appear to be... chimerical. There are only current prices in political economy." This he proves by saying that labour, capital and land are not determined by any fixed rate of exchange [lit. festen Taxe, probably Marx germanified the French "taux" and did not mean "tax"], but according to the relationship between the quantity supplied and the quantity demanded. When Smith assumed the natural price, there existed at least the question "What role in production-costs do labour, capital and land have?". That is a question which, leaving aside private ownership, makes sense; the natural price consists in the production-costs. Thus e.g. in the community the question might be, will the land produce this or that product? Is the business worth the labour and capital invested? Through the fact that in Political Economy it becomes only more of an issue about the current price, matters are not considered anymore in relation to their production costs, and production-costs in relation to people, but as the total production in relation to the haggling over it." I did not think to consult the L&W MECW to see if it includes an English translation of these notes by Marx on Ricardo's Principles, I ran out of time. When you consider the relations of communication involved in all this, it's remarkable. First, the manuscripts were acquired from the estate and Marx's notoriously terrible handwriting mixing German and French terms had to be deciphered in the late 1920s. Then missing words had to be interpolated. Then the text was published, 88 years later, yet a scholar who read it 133 years or so later, used it in another context while mistranslating it in English, and possibly did not adequately reference it. Then another scholar wonders 163 years later where the quote really came from, or if Marx really said it. Then through the cooperation of three people plus Internet facilities maintained by other people, we find the quote again in August 2007, but we have to retranslate it, so it makes sense in the context it was originally stated. If Marx had known all this would happen, he'd be amazed. Jurriaan
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