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EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES
THE RECuRRING TEMPTATIoNS oF ANTI-EQuILIBRIuM
The New York Times (March 26) reports the death of Irving Louis Horowitz, well-known sociologist and academician, at age 82. Horowitz became famous for denouncing left-wing fascists and professional savages and defending what he regarded as objective, empirical, non-ideological approaches in the social sciences. The role of empiricism as a non-ideological ideology of the right will be addressed in connection with musings on anti-equilibrium (see below). What may intrigue readers is that Horowitz was a frequent contributor to Science & Society during the 1950s, on record with two articles (one on Bertrand Russell, and one on the New Conservatism), a Communication (on Maurice Cornforths review of Harry K. Wells Pragmatism), and ten book reviews. It is fascinating to realize how many prominent mainstream intellectual figures of the 20th century, such as Horowitz, both liberals and neocons, began life as Marxists, and so found a home at S&S. Why they subsequently evolved away from their earlier commitments in the direction of the mainstream is a subject that deserves careful (empirical?) investigation! But their earlier work is still worthy of note, however much it may elude the attention of latter-day biographers, and of the individuals themselves. Also, before getting down to business, I would like to share the following, from a letter from a prisoner in California:
one of the developments I see within prisons is the rising in consciousness of the prison population. Hunger strikes in prisons here in California are more and more coming together to protest in different ways. . . . I see prisoners grappling with socialist theory and learning about revolutionary history, from Lenins Russia to Maos China, Cuba, Vietnams struggle to the groups that rose here in America, but which were quickly repressed. The development I see of prisoners is in part due to the many revolutionary publications entering u. S. prisons; Science & Society is amongst the many publications making an impact in these gulags and I thank you on behalf of the many others learning serious thought from your pages.

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Without exaggerating the role of S&S in the growth of prisoners political consciousness, this prompts me to remind readers of our campaign for gift subs, in honor of the 75th anniversary. Please contribute to our fund to support new subs, both for those who will (we hope) renew for themselves, and those (such as prisoners) who cant do that. ***** Now, what is this anti-equilibrium stuff about? Without attempting anything like a thorough statement here, lets begin with a few core ideas about cognition or knowing, drawn from Hegel, Marx and others.1 The world of sensation or perception, the first stage of knowing, presents as a vast, random, disorganized and fluctuating mass of fortuitous events. When we reach into this mass and extract from it a systematic substratum of regularity, we have found the essence underlying the appearance of perceived sense data; think of this as a second stage in the process of cognition. This stage locates an intelligible structure of relations not spontaneously visible at the outset a set of internal regularities that, to the naive view emanating from our first stage, are utterly counter-intuitive, but that derive in a non-arbitrary way from the mass of data encountered at that first stage. With this essence, or model, in tow, the reverse path of readdressing the complexity of the initial perceptions, but now organized according to the stage 2 model by means of successive concretization, leads to the third and highest level of this dialectic. Full comprehension consists, at this final stage, of the essential inner structure in dynamic association with its manifestations at the level of concrete, detailed phenomena. Initial appearance abstract revealed essence structured totality. The key to the dialectic is to avoid either stopping at stage 2, or attempting to bypass it. Now approach this from a materialist standpoint, as an analysis of material reality. Take, from Engels, this insightful aphorism: motion is the mode of existence of matter. From Hegel we have learned that the history of a thing is the thing itself. But the thing only exists, as a determinate subset of all that exists, because it has an inner regularity that distinguishes its phenomena from phenomena in general: because it has a structure. So, here is an improved aphorism: Motion and structure are the twin modes of existence of matter. Anything such as, for example, capitalism that is complex enough to be worthy of study is both structural and transformational. It is, so to say, a
1 Contributions to the following section were made by Russell Dale and Julio Huato. Here, and everywhere throughout the Editorial Perspectives pieces in S&S, criticism and commentary from all members of the journals Manuscript Collective are reflected in the final product.

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layered system that both consists of stable, determinate regularities; and is subject to inherent and constant processes of evolution, alteration, qualitative implosion/explosion, transcendence in a word, change. The simultaneous appropriation of structure/essence/abstraction/ determinacy as one aspect, and transformation/appearance/concreteness/ contingency as the other aspect, of the third cognitive stage might therefore appear as the best way to proceed with criticalrevolutionary social theory. Marx seems to have done just that in his life-long study of the political economy of capitalism: the law of value, for example, reveals the inner social structure of outwardly apparent exchange relations, and is constantly asserted precisely through its continual violation; the equations of expanded reproduction show inner necessities in the structuring of capitalist industry for purposes of accumulation, again constantly subject to being overthrown via crises. Inner structure and determinacy, however, also appear in theories of market equilibrium, even the general equilibrium of all markets taken as a single system, within mainstream capitalist economics. Equilibrium is a position of rest of a system: a set of values of the variables comprising the system toward which the system tends, and at which (once there) it will remain, in the absence of changes in underlying properties. The heart the elegant showpiece, as it has been called of neoclassical microeconomics consists in the attempt, at mid-20th century, to demonstrate that the economy (reduced, of course, to competitive markets among individuals and firms, and therefore minus the crucial distinguishing features of capitalism) has an equilibrium that is unique (there is only one), stable (the system tends towards it and not away), and socially optimal (in whatever limited sense this concept may apply). This is, of course, pure apologetics, and many on the left have been quick to recognize it as such. Thus: anti-equilibrium. Joan Robinsons iconoclastic stance toward the dominant neoclassical orthodoxy produced trenchant critiques of that orthodoxy, which, however, may often have crucially mixed together rejection of misuse of equilibrium with rejection of equilibrium as such. Janos Kornai (Anti-Equilibrium) made similar points during the 1970s. The Temporal Single System (TSS) school of Marx-based writers (they dont like the term Marxist; see the Communication by Guglielmo Carchedi, this issue) makes a point of rejecting both equilibrium and dis-equilibrium (these are closely connected, as the latter is the demonstration of forces within a system that violate its conditions of equilibrium), in favor of a nonequilibrium approach. And now we have the widely discussed work of Yanis Varoufakis, a longtime S&S contributor and Contributing Editor who has become an important commentator on the European and Greek crises. His book, Modern Political

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Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World, written together with Nicholas Theocarakis and Joseph Halevi, makes the full case. The main point is stated in an interview given by Varoufakis to Philip Pilkington (March 1):2
The essence of the economists inherent error is that they erred into thinking it is possible to tell a credible story about how values and prices are formed in complex (multi-sector) economies that grow through time. . . . [They] introduced hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) assumptions that closed their model at the expense of credulity (e.g., an assumption that the economy comprises a lone Robinson Crusoelike figure, or a single commodity, or that all exchanges occurred in a timeless universe and at a flash of a fleeting moment).

Determinacy, in other words, is purchased at the expense of realism, where realism consists of conflict, complexity, and processes in time: really-existing capitalist reality . . . refuses to fit into well-behaved models. But the qualifier really-existing is quite interesting here. Is Varoufakis saying that really existing capitalism the capitalism that appears to consciousness at the first stage of our cognitive sequence is the only object available for study? Suppose instead that we reach for the inner core of really existing capitalism; there we might find determinate relations, objective necessities, central properties, all of which may conceivably be described as a system (whose quantitative dimension will appear as a set of equations with determinate solutions, or equilibria). In this we need not suppose that any single model by itself can encompass the entirety of this inner reality. In particular, there is no equilibrium balance of class forces; this inherent tension cannot be solved. Nor do we imagine that our models can include the profligate complexity of what appears on the surface; indeed, their purpose is precisely not to do this. Finally, we do not suppose that the properties revealed in our models solutions prove the eternal, timeless, or natural character of capitalism, or establish its crisis-free properties; again, quite the opposite. The heart of the matter is a distinction which I propose, between ontological equilibrium and methodological equilibrium. Here I am borrowing from Jon Elster, whose Making Sense of Marx (1985) relied heavily on the concept of methodological individualism (where the adjective is clearly intended to separate this individualism from the more common variety found in most Enlightenment thinkers). ontological equilibrium is the view that the economy actually reaches its equilibrium (Robert Solow); that market economies are inherently stable, crisis-free, conflict-free, and productive of
2 The interview is in two parts; the quote is from part 1, found at http:// www.nakedcapitalism .com/2012/03/the-new-priesthood-an-interview-with-yanis-varoufakis-part-i.html

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both social harmony and efficiency. Methodological equilibrium, by contrast, is the use of equilibrium as a way of perceiving systemic properties, so as to grasp both the homeostatic and the transformative aspects of capitalism. Its premise is that while capitalism is tendentially and periodically unstable, it is not absolutely unstable, in the sense that it has no systemic aspects at all. Im tempted to say: if you want to overthrow and replace it, you had better first of all figure out how it works. In sum. Its an old clich, of course (and our illustrious former colleague, Annette Rubinstein, hated it), but Ill use it anyway: take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In their zeal to oppose economic orthodoxys misuse of equilibrium to establish the eternal, inevitable and beneficial properties of the system-of-the-present, many on the left go too far and reject all use of equilibrium as a methodological tool to explore capitalism at the systemic level, as well as to then apply the theory thus derived to exploration of the contradictions at the heart of this system. To reiterate: if something exists, it is (at one level) a system; if it is a system, then it has regular properties that can be described, by means of simultaneous equations or some other representation of those properties in their pure form. This is an injunction to approach time theoretically: to take certain properties (e.g., the technical and social relations of production existing at a given moment) and hold them constant, not because they ever are constant in really existing reality (that would of course be ridiculous), but because by treating them as unchanging in a given context, other things, such as prices, money wages, profit rates, interest rates, and a system-reproducing structure of output, are allowed to seek their benchmark values their equilibria and the system of such values can be studied. Structure and transformation, stasis and crisis are intertwined aspects of capitalist reality. Time and dynamics are always central. But if we worship time, we lose track of structure, just as if we worship structure we lose track of time. Both the equilibrium/structural and the transformative perspectives, then, are required, if we are to grasp capitalism as the complex reality that it undoubtedly is, and to deepen and unify Marxist research in a way that can provide a solid foundation for the practices of the left. In closing, I also note that worshiping the empirical, as Irving Louis Horowitz urged us to do, would mire us down in stage 1 of our cognitive sequence; then we can truly be prisoners of the obvious, and the difficult questions surrounding how to grasp the unity of structure and change within the reconstructed totality do not even begin to emerge. The cognitive methodology of Hegel and Marx, I am realizing, is much easier to summarize than to put into practice. D. L.

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CALL FoR PAPERS ANARCHISM: THEoRY, PRACTICE, RooTS, CuRRENT TRENDS

Science & Society is planning a special issue on the broad theme of anarchism, as appearing in both past and present-day political movements. While contributors will of course shape the content and perspectives of the issue as it develops, we especially encourage contributions within the following subject areas: 1. The nature of anarchist theory and practice, from the standpoint of historical materialism. Anarchism as a laboratory for the study of the material roots of ideology. Does the existing body of anarchist writing contribute to Marxist understandings of the state? of the nature of ruling-class hegemony? of the balance between spontaneity and organization in the struggles of working and oppressed classes and strata? of transformations in capitalism related to globalization, neoliberalism, financialization, cognitive commodities, creative labor, etc.? 2. The classical roots of anarchist thought in the works of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, and others, especially in relation to the position of Marx and Engels in the International Working Mens Association and the individual-country working-class movements of the 19th century. 3. The specific features of present-day anarchist thought. Survey of books, journals, websites, blogs. The role of new information technologies in contemporary social and political debate. 4. Anarchism in todays new social movements: the anti- and counterglobalization protests; the uprising against the WTo, Seattle, 1999; the World Social Forum and its regional and national counterparts; and the presentday occupy movement, in the united States and internationally. What is the nature of anarchisms influence, and how has it evolved? How is anarchism conceptualized in todays occupy movement, and how do these conceptions differ from classical anarchism? 5. Anarchism and black shirt practices on the left, old and new, from the 19th century to the Spanish Civil War, to the 1960s peace movements and up to the present. How central is anarchist theory to these practices? Can it be separated from them? 6. The relation between anarchism and libertarianism. Does anarchist thought transcend the distinction between political right and left? Does anarchism have a distinctive post-capitalist vision?

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While we expect contributors to innovate and shape their papers according to specific interests and views, we encourage them to contact the Guest Editors (email parameters provided below), so that completeness of coverage can be achieved, and duplication avoided, to the greatest extent possible. We are looking for articles in the 7,0008,000 word range. Projected publication is Spring 2014, so we would like to have manuscripts in hand by January 2013. Discussion about the project overall, and suggestions concerning content, should begin immediately. The Guest Editors are: Russell Dale (russelleliotdale@gmail.com); Justin Holt (jh129@nyu.edu); and John P. Pittman (jpittman@jjay.cuny.edu).

IN THIS ISSuE
Sometimes a book review becomes more than a book review (this is a different matter entirely from a book review becoming bigger than it should be!). We asked Lenin scholar Lars Lih to review the important new book edited by Richard Day and Daniel Gaido, Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record, and what emerged was a major re-reading of the permanent revolution concept, as it appeared in the thinking of German and Russian Social Democrats in the early decades of the last century. Lihs position is controversial how could it not be? and we anticipate further rounds of debate. Here I will just record my sense of the richness of this discussion, and of how sophisticated, in certain ways, thinkers like Kautsky, Lenin, Mehring, Luxemburg, Ryazanov and Trotsky were, in comparison to present-day left conceptualizations. Norwegian political economist Jrgen Sandemose (Manufacture and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism) returns to a topic that is an S&S classic referring back to the 1950 transition debate among Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy, Rodney Hilton and others, which laid the foundation for the later Brenner debate and continuing discussions in S&S and elsewhere. Taking issue with Brenners English agrarian interpretation, Sandemose also points to a strange disconnect between the chapters on manufacture and large-scale industry in Capital I and the chapters on So-Called Primitive Accumulation toward the end of that work. His careful confrontation of Marxs texts with new empirical data enriches our understanding of the emergence of capitalism in England and reinforces a sense of the complexity of the feudalism-to-capitalism transition and the need to carefully distinguish the different stages of that transition.

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Liberalism has often been seen as antithetical to socialism, and this perception is amplified in the current period of worldwide neoliberal ascendancy. Political scientist Ed Rooksby, however, urges (in his paper, The Relationship Between Liberalism and Socialism) that we restore the element of continuity between these two great doctrines, or paradigms, to its proper place. He argues that the core values of classical liberalism, especially when confronted with the issue of equality, contain immanent contradictions that lead toward socialist understanding, and that those core values must therefore be assimilated into socialism, rather than being seen as rejected or replaced by it. S&S has a long tradition of careful exegesis of Marxs texts in political economy; a look back through recent issues (which one hopes are permanently housed on readers shelves!) will reveal rich troves of material. Now Greek authors Spyros Lapatsioras and John Milios take time out from the urgency of ongoing attacks on the Greek people by European (and world) financial elites to study The Notion of Money from the Grundrisse to Capital. Without trying to summarize their argument here, I will only say that it exemplifies the distinction between textual analysis, on the one hand, and textualism, on the other. The latter term means the hortatory adulation of Marxs texts, usually in the service of propping up some preconceived political position and claiming the status of sole representative of Marxs true intentions. Lapatsioras and Milios do just the opposite: they study Marx, and the evolution of his ideas, in the search for important elements that we can carry forward in the continuing development of critical political economy. one can see important lessons for the present, as left forces tackle (to focus only on the united States for the moment) issues such as reform vs. abolition of the Fed, alternative money (Ithaca dollars), the Solidarity Economy, etc. But this clearly takes us beyond the moment. Finally, and noted briefly, Guglielmo Carchedis reply to Russell Dale on Mathematics and Dialectics in Marx. Carchedis anti-equilibrium position was referred to earlier; his unique contribution is to link his temporalist view of value theory to the foundations of dialectics, and to address the dialectical implications of Marxs mathematical manuscripts (also a topic of long standing in S&S; see Carchedis and Dales references). This is just one more important discussion that is sure to continue as we go forward. D. L.

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Science & Society, Vol. 76, No. 4, october 2012, 433462

Democratic Revolution in Permanenz

LARS T. LIH
Abstract: According to Richard Day and Daniel Gaido, the editors of Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record (2009), the basic insights of Trotskys theory of permanent revolution were shared by other prominent German and Russian Social Democrats, including Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Parvus, Rosa Luxemburg and David Ryazanov. In reality, the documents found in Witnesses show that these writers did not use the expression permanent revolution in the same way as Trotsky, namely, to link together the democratic and socialist revolutions. Rather, such expressions were used to link together episodes within the process of democratic revolution. These writers exhorted the Russian workers never to get discouraged or rest on their laurels, but rather to keep on fighting for the democratic revolution in Permanenz until final victory was reached. An essential reason for their lack of interest in Trotskys scenario was a clash over the role of the non-socialist peasantry.

W
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ITNESSES To PERMANENT REVoLuTIoN* is a collection of texts from the years 19021907, written by Russian and German Social Democrats who were intensely involved with the Russian revolution of 19051907. These documents will help to explode many clichs and stereotypes, not only about the origins of Trotskys theory of permanent revolution, but also about the more general issue of the Marxism of the Second International. The two featured authors are Karl Kautsky (eight texts, written between 1902 and 1906, totaling 170 pages) and Lev Trotsky (six texts from 1905 and 1906, totaling 140 pages). Shorter pieces from 19051907 come from the pens of Parvus, Rosa Luxemburg, David Ryazanov, Lenin
Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record, edited and translated by Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido. Leiden, Amsterdam: Brill, 2009. $270.00. Pp. xii, 682.

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and Franz Mehring. An earlier polemic from 1903 between Ryazanov and Georgii Plekhanov completes the bill. Most of these documents have not previously been available in English. Richard Day and Daniel Gaido, the editors of the volume, provide extensive commentary and present an overall interpretation, as discussed below. They bring solid credentials to their labors. Day has written a number of pioneering works about intra-Bolshevik debates in the 1920s and is perhaps best known for Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation (Day, 1973). Gaido is a younger scholar who has written a solidly useful Marxist interpretation of 19th-century American economic history (Gaido, 2006). The writers included in Witnesses are placed by the editors in a strict hierarchy of honor. At the top is Trotsky himself, who continually receives lavish praise for his brilliant prose and visionary insight. The next level consists of the other alleged advocates of permanent revolution Kautsky, Luxemburg, Parvus, Ryazanov, and Mehring who are all highly praised for their anticipation of Trotskys theory. The editors obviously feel that any association with this theory will benefit a Marxists latter-day reputation. Lenin is much lower down in the hierarchy of honor. In any disputes with other writers in this volume, he is always wrong and his comments often seem petty and incongruous in retrospect (335). Nevertheless, he is credited with some revolutionary flair.1 Lowest of all is Plekhanov, who is presented as the pedantic incarnation of the nave economic determinism popularly associated with the Second International. The present essay focuses primarily on the validity of Day and Gaidos main thesis: did or did not any of these writers anticipate Trotskys scenario of permanent revolution. Witnesses has at least two other major themes that should be mentioned, one of which I believe is a vital contribution to historical understanding, the other not so much. Many of these writers, especially Kautsky, saw Russia in a global context. Day and Gaido perform a great service in bringing this out, with the result that we find many pages devoted not only to Russia, but also to Japan and the united States. Kautsky in particular paints a portrait of a new era of revolutions and analyzes the complex interaction
1 The portrait of Lenin in Witnesses rests on the hostile stereotypes that I critiqued in Lenin Rediscovered (Lih, 2006), which evidently appeared too late to be mentioned by Day and Gaido. I therefore do not consider it necessary to comment further on their portrait of Lenin.

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of revolutionary forces on a world scale. The global perspective found in these writings opens up an unwritten chapter in the history of pre-1914 Marxism. I have found Witnesses to be an extremely valuable resource in my own research into the origins of Lenins political outlook during the war years of 19141917. Much less valuable are the hundred pages devoted to I am tempted to say, wasted on a 1903 polemic between Plekhanov and Ryazanov. The aim here is to contrast the allegedly rigid determinism of the Second International with the allegedly dialectical approach of writers such as Ryazanov. In the traditional picture painted by writers in the Trotsky tradition, Trotsky stands alone in rejecting the fatalism of the Second International (Lwy, 2010). Day and Gaido do not really challenge this traditional framework all they do is shuffle the players, moving some writers from the fatalistic slot over to the dialectical slot. But someone is still needed to play the role of fatalist, and Plekhanov is picked to be the fall guy whose obtuseness sets off everybody elses brilliance. In Socialism and the Political Struggle (1883), one of the foundational works of Russian Social Democracy, Plekhanov wrote that the absurd conclusion is attributed to Marxs teaching that Russia must go through exactly the same phases of historical and economic development as the West (Plekhanov, 1961, 79). According to Day and Gaido, Plekhanov was an ardent advocate of exactly this absurd conclusion (33). Day and Gaido thus do to Plekhanov what they rightly protest against when done to Kautsky: perpetuate caricatures that have little or no contact with a writers actual views. I find it a pity that Day and Gaido take no notice of the 1993 anthology Permanentnaia revoliutsiia, edited by Felix J. Kreisel and published in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Iskra Research. This anthology brings together many Russian texts relating to the debates in and around permanent revolution. Included are original texts of some of the documents included in Witnesses, for example, Trotskys translation and commentary of Kautskys 1906 article (discussed below). The Kreisel anthology also contains valuable material on a crucial aspect of the debate in 1905 overlooked by Witnesses, namely, the Menshevik perspective and in particular the articles of Aleksandr Martynov. Day and Gaido do not so much as mention Martynov, even though he played a central role in Social Democratic polemics at the time. Indeed, for reasons I shall set out later, Martynov more directly

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anticipated Trotskys idea of permanent revolution than any of the writers included in Witnesses. I now turn to Day and Gaidos central thesis, namely, that Ryazanov, Parvus, Luxemburg, Mehring and particularly Kautsky anticipated Trotskys scenario of permanent revolution. I admit that the exact sense intended by anticipate is unclear to me. Day and Gaido seem to mean it in a strong sense, namely, that certain writers presented the essentials of the theory long before Trotskys canonical Results and Prospects (1906). I need not try to sort this out, however, because in my view none of these writers did anticipate Trotsky, either in this strong sense or in some weaker one such as pointing the way or adumbrating specific themes. Having made a historical claim, Day and Gaido do not make a suitably historical case to back it up. one central reason for this deficiency is that they seem to be hypnotized by the expression permanent revolution. Anyone who uses this expression is assumed to be in essential agreement with Trotskys particular scenario. Instead of problematizing permanent revolution, instead of asking exactly what the expression meant in particular contexts and how different writers may have used it in different ways, Day and Gaido allow the expression itself to solve the underlying historical questions much too quickly and easily. Anyone who looks at my copy of Witnesses, scribbled over with underlinings and marginal comments from cover to cover, will realize how much this invaluable collection of documents has stimulated my own research and thinking. But I also strongly feel that the full value of the collection will only be realized if a stronger alternative to the editors own interpretation is made available. I will first try to state the underlying issues without using the expression permanent revolution. This procedure will allow us to examine different possible meanings of permanent revolution and related terms in a detailed and historical manner. Such an examination shows that the use of these expressions cannot be considered as an anticipation of the distinctive and original aspect of Trotskys particular scenario. on the contrary, these other writers were loyal to an outlook sharply distinct from Trotskys and their use of permanent revolution and similar expressions makes sense only in that context. This common outlook was not fatalistic, deterministic, or any of the other clichs flung at so-called Second International Marxism. Rather,

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these writers viewed the Russian revolution of 1905 as the beginning of a vast, hard-fought and long drawn-out process of democratic revolution. When used by writers such as Kautsky, Luxemburg, Parvus, Ryazanov and Mehring, the expression permanent revolution did not point to a transition from a democratic revolution to a socialist revolution. It pointed to a way of conducting the democratic revolution. A committee or a legislature might decide to remain in permanent session, that is, it will not interrupt its sitting with any recesses, but keep on working 24/7 until some goal is reached. Similarly, a democratic revolution could be fought continuously until the full victory of the revolution. In this case, there would be no letup in the struggle, no recess from revolutionary conflict in order to catch ones breath or to consolidate partial victories. This is what the writers collected here wanted: the democratic revolution in Permanenz. For purposes of this discussion, I will adopt the term Trotsky scenario as shorthand for the scenario of the outcome of the Russian revolution set forth by Trotsky in writings of late 1905 and 1906. The relevant writings are the two articles from late 1905 that are included in Witnesses (Social Democracy and Revolution and Foreword to Karl Marxs Parizhskaya Kommuna); the short book Results and Prospects, written in mid-1906 (easily available and therefore not included in Witnesses); and finally Trotskys commentary on Kautskys seminal article of 1906 (both the Kautsky text and Trotskys commentary are included in Witnesses).2 Among the historical questions we need to ask about the Trotsky scenario are the following: what is distinctive about the Trotsky scenario as compared to the other scenarios of revolution that were current among Russian Social Democrats? Did any other Social Democrat advocate the distinctive feature of the Trotsky scenario? Does use of the words permanent or uninterrupted imply endorsement of the Trotsky scenario? If not, what were these terms meant to convey? Why did the Trotsky scenario find so little acceptance? Witnesses provides us with solid answers to all these questions.
2 The editors would have done well to provide an exact account of Trotskys substantial textual use in Results and Prospects (1906) of his earlier articles from 1905. In Results and Prospects, Trotsky explicitly quotes two long passages from his 1905 writings; these passages can be found in Witnesses, 4445 and 5189. Much of Chapter Three of Results and Prospects is taken from Trotsky material found in Witnesses, 43742 and much of Chapter Five is taken from similar material found in Witnesses, 5147. This list does not exhaust the textual borrowings.

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What is distinctive about the Trotsky scenario as compared to the scenarios of revolution then current among Russian Social Democrats? In spring 1905, Lenin expressed his ambitious hopes for the ongoing Russian revolution (Lenin, 1905a, 14):
The revolutionary Social Democrat will dream he is obliged to dream if he is not a hopeless philistine that, after the vast experience of Europe, after the unparalleled upsurge of energy among the working class in Russia, we shall succeed . . . in realizing all the democratic transformations, the whole of our minimum program, with a thoroughness never equaled before. . . . And if we succeed in achieving this, then . . . the revolutionary conflagration will spread to Europe; the European worker, languishing under bourgeois reaction, will rise in his turn and show us how it is done; then the revolutionary upsurge in Europe will have a repercussive effect upon Russia and will convert an epoch of a few revolutionary years into an era of several revolutionary decades.

of course, this scenario was not a prediction of what would happen, but rather a statement of Lenins avowedly most ambitious hopes for what could happen. The scenario contains the following elements: a) a far-reaching democratic revolution transforms Russia; b) the socialist proletariat plays a leadership role in this revolution; c) the Russian democratic revolution sparks off a socialist revolution in Europe; d) the European revolution has a repercussive effect on Russia and accelerates the advent of socialist transformation in Russia itself. These four elements were common currency among Russian Social Democrats and informed European Social Democrats, even though there were severe disagreements about how best to realize these dreams (for example, whether or not the Social Democrats should participate in a provisional revolutionary government). The same four elements are present in Trotskys scenario as well, although he himself played no particular role in proposing and propagating them. These elements cannot usefully be seen as an anticipation of the Trotsky scenario. In what way, then, does the Trotsky scenario differ from this established consensus? The Trotsky scenario also includes the following proposition: A provisional revolutionary government dominated by the proletariat will inevitably strive to bring about a socialist transformation of Russian society even without waiting for a European

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revolution and any other course of action would discredit the whole idea of a proletarian government. A full characterization of the Trotsky scenario requires both the empirical prediction about a proletarian governments inevitable course of action and the evaluation of this course as a good thing. The empirical prediction by itself was put forward, for example, by the Menshevik Aleksandr Martynov in spring 1905. As Lenin summed up Martynovs argument:
By participating in the provisional government, we are told, Social Democracy would have the power [vlast] in its hands; but, as the party of the proletariat, Social Democracy cannot hold the power without attempting to put our maximum program into effect, that is, without attempting to bring about the socialist revolution. (Lenin, 1905b, 23.)3

The difference between Martynov and Trotsky is not the factual prediction about moving forward to socialism rather, the difference was that Martynov, in contrast to Trotsky, thought that this outcome would be a self-evident disaster that would thoroughly discredit Russian socialism.4 Lenin agreed with Martynovs evaluation, but not his factual prediction. We thus have three distinct positions: Martynov: Social Democratic participation in a provisional revolutionary government will inevitably lead to premature attempts at socialist transformation in Russia, which would be a disaster. We must therefore find some other way than governmental participation to make proletarian leadership of the revolution effective. Lenin: Premature attempts at socialist transformation in Russia would indeed be a disaster, but, luckily, Social Democratic governmental participation is possible without such foolish attempts. Luckily because such participation is the only way to carry the democratic revolution all the way to the end [do kontsa]. Trotsky: Lenin is right against Martynov, since Social Democratic governmental participation is necessary for a full-blooded democratic
3 Lenin bases his description on Martynovs Iskra articles of March 1905. The text of these articles can be found in Kriesel, 1993, 4165; see especially p. 50. 4 The relation between the Trotsky scenario and the Menshevik scenario was pointed out by the Menshevik leader Iulii Martov in his history of Social Democracy. He noted that a Menshevik resolution adopted in May 1905 also stated that if the proletariat did end up in power during the bourgeois revolution, it would be compelled to carry out its full social program. As opposed to Trotsky, however, the Mensheviks underscored the tragic nature of such an outcome (Martovs emphasis) (Martov, 2000, 155).

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revolution. Martynov is right against Lenin, since Social Democratic governmental participation will inevitably lead to attempts at socialist transformation. They are both wrong when they assume that such attempts will discredit the cause. on the contrary, a Russian proletarian government would be discredited only by a refusal to move toward socialist transformation, even prior to a European revolution. This position, and only this position, is Trotskys original contribution. This is what is meant today by the expression permanent revolution. In order to avoid confusion, I will henceforth use Trotsky scenario to refer specifically to this distinctive feature of Trotskys argument. Did Any Other Social Democrat Advocate the Trotsky Scenario? None of the writers included in Witnesses advocate the Trotsky scenario in any way. on the contrary: each of them explicitly affirms that the Russian revolution in itself that is, without a game-changing eruption of socialist revolution in Europe cannot be other than merely democratic. Franz Mehrings remarks from November 1905 are typical in this regard:
of course, the saying that miracles do not happen tomorrow also applies to the Russian workers. It is not in their power to skip the stages of historical development and instantly to create a socialist community out of the despotic tsarist state. . . . They cannot write the dictatorship of the proletariat into the new Russian constitution; but they can insert into it the universal suffrage, freedom of organization, the legally regulated working day, and unrestricted freedom of the press and speech. (4612).5

Kautsky also unambiguously states his view that Russia was undergoing a democratic revolution and that socialist revolution was not on the immediate agenda. Confusion on this issue is caused by the fact that the democratic revolution was also known as the bourgeois revolution. But, as noted earlier, the leading role of the proletariat was part of the Social Democratic consensus about the Russian democratic revolution. This consensus could be stated in paradoxical terms: the
5 In his history of Russian Social Democracy, Martov quotes this passage to demonstrate that Mehring had the correct Marxist interpretation of permanent revolution (Martov, 2000, 1567).

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bourgeoisie was no longer a driving force in the bourgeois revolution itself! Paradox or not, this proposition was almost a commonplace in 1905, and all the writers in Witnesses state it in one form or another. But ironical references to the bourgeoisies pathetic role in their own revolution are in no way an endorsement of the Trotsky scenario. The resulting confusion is a long-standing one. In 1920, Karl Radek wrote an article that went into detail about the debates of 1905. Basing himself on Kautskys seminal article from 1906 (discussed below), Radek states that Kautsky went even further than [the Bolsheviks] did by estimating as possible the passing over of the Russian Revolution to a direct struggle for socialism. The editors quote this statement and endorse it (569), but Radek is clearly mistaken. Kautsky is perfectly clear in his 1906 article. He says that the age of bourgeois revolutions, that is, of revolutions in which the bourgeoisie was the driving force, is over in Russia as well. But (Kautsky continues) this is not a reason to call the present Russian revolution a socialist one. on the contrary, it seems unthinkable that the present revolution in Russia is already leading to the introduction of a socialist mode of production, even if it should bring social democracy to power temporarily (607, emphasis added). As shown in more detail later, Lenin fully endorsed Kautskys stand on this issue. The other writers in this volume who comment on the relatively non-bourgeois nature of the revolution also make their meaning very clear: Ryazanov (1903): The impending revolution, which will unquestionably occur on the basis of bourgeois relations of production and in that sense will certainly be bourgeois, will also, from beginning to end, be proletarian in the sense that the proletariat will be its leading element and will make its class imprint on the entire movement (1334). Luxemburg (January 1905): The immediate demands of the present uprising in Russia do not go beyond a bourgeoisdemocratic constitution; and the final result of the crisis, which perhaps indeed, very probably can last for years as a rapid succession of ebbs and flows, will possibly be nothing more than a miserable constitutional regime. All the same, the revolution that is condemned to give birth to this bourgeois bastard is more purely proletarian than all those that preceded it (359). Parvus (November 1905): The class that the revolution prepares for political supremacy [the bourgeoisie] turns out, during

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the revolution itself, to be the one least capable of controlling events (494). All of these statements make the same point in different ways. Yes, the present revolution is a bourgeois revolution, because socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat are not on the agenda. No, it is not a bourgeois revolution, because the bourgeoisie is not one of its driving forces. My citations on this issue from Parvus may surprise some readers, since the Trotsky scenario was later often termed the TrotskyParvus theory. But as it happens, both Parvus and Trotsky disassociated Parvus from the Trotsky scenario as defined here. Looking back in 1930, for example, Trotsky correctly noted that in 1905 Parvus confined the tasks of the workers government to the democratic tasks (Trotsky, 2010, 209; Lwy, 2010, 402). There are a number of reasons for the common misconception to the contrary. Two of these are germane to the present discussion: Lenins reaction to Parvus in spring 1905 and Parvus slogan of worker democracy. In January 1905, Parvus published an article, included in the present collection, entitled What Was Accomplished on the Ninth of January. According to Day and Gaido, this article was so stunning in its audacity that Lenin was taken aback and attacked Parvus for going too far too fast (2559). Day and Gaido are no doubt influenced by Isaac Deutschers account (Deutscher, 1965, 113):
[Parvus article] was the first time that any group or individual laid, on behalf of Russian socialism, open claim to power, or to the major share in it. It was a curious freak that this claim should have been first made by Parvus, an outsider to the Russian revolution, and that it should have been repudiated almost in horror by Lenin. In Lenins person the revolution seemed to shrink back appalled before the vague immensity of its own aims.6

If Lenin had actually recoiled in horror in this way, there would be strong grounds for assuming some bold innovation by Parvus. But if Parvus position was in fact stunning in its audacity, Lenin did not notice it. on the contrary, Lenin greeted Parvus article with
6 The words quoted by Deutscher come from Marxs Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). According to Day and Gaido, Lenin dismissed Parvus introduction to the windbag Trotskys pamphlet as bombastic and totally unrealistic (259). This description of Lenins reaction to Parvus is completely incorrect. Lenins abuse (including bombastic) is reserved for Trotsky; he strongly endorsed Parvus basic message.

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open-armed enthusiasm. His attitude rather is: Welcome back, Parvus! Youve been siding with those awful Mensheviks for the last year or so, but you obviously have grown sick of the opportunistic atmosphere in the Menshevik camp. Your recent article is in fact a good statement of the Bolshevik position (Lenin, 1905a). At several points in spring 1905, Lenin simply equated Parvus and the Bolsheviks on the key issue of Social Democratic participation in a provisional revolutionary government (Lenin, 1905b, 25; 1905c, 412). Lenin was indeed suspicious of the implications of some of Parvus vocabulary, for example, worker democracy.7 Lenin felt that expressions such as these implied that the provisional revolutionary government would carry out a socialist program. But Parvus did not mean to imply any such thing, as we shall see. The misleading description of Lenins reaction by Deutscher, Day and Gaido has created a gap between Parvus and Lenin on an issue where there is none.8 The writings from Parvus that are included in Witnesses allow us to state definitely what he meant by worker democracy. In fall 1905, Parvus asserted that the direct revolutionary goal of the Russian proletariat is to achieve the kind of state system in which the demands of worker democracy will be realized (493).9 Day and Gaido understand this assertion as an endorsement of the Trotsky scenario. In actuality, Parvus program rests firmly on the assumption of a significant period of bourgeois rule after the victory of the democratic revolution. For Parvus, worker democracy means all the most extreme demands of bourgeois democracy, but only as viewed from the specific angle of worker class interests. For example, the radical democrats insist on freedom of thought and speech, and the workers give this same demand a special character because for the workers [such freedoms] are fundamental guarantees for the class struggle that is, the class struggle under capitalism. Specifically worker demands such as the eight-hour day are justified by the same logic of facilitating the class struggle: Along with
7 The passages that worried Lenin can be found in Witnesses, 2701. Parvus use of worker democracy on page 268 should have reassured Lenin. 8 Day and Gaido follow Trotskyist tradition in giving much attention to the alleged clash between Lenins formula democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasantry and the formula associated with Trotsky, that is, the workers relying on the peasantry. I agree with Lenin that the actual political differences between these formulae are insubstantial (Lenin, 1909). 9 Day and Gaido translate rabochaia demokratiia as workers democracy.

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political guarantees of civil rights, the proletariat demands for itself economic guarantees of the opportunity to make use of them, that is, the right to time off from work (493). As if to remove any doubt about the issue, Parvus states explicitly that his program of worker democracy does not include either the dictatorship of the proletariat or the task of converting the bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution (493).10 We can round off this list by citing Trotsky himself. As the articles collected in Witnesses confirm, Trotsky gave no hint of the Trotsky scenario in his writings prior to November/December 1905. Indeed, he stated the following in an Iskra article from March 1905:
We say long live the democratic republic!, although we know that it will be bourgeois. . . . But just as the democratic republic and sovereignty of the people are extreme revolutionary slogans, given the existence of absolutism and the sovereignty of the Romanovs, in exactly the same way the idea of a temporary [vremennogo] revolutionary government, although a bourgeois one, stands in contrast to the tsarist government and in this way gives enormous energy to the revolution. . . . [Full victory of an uprising] means that the development of the revolution will bring the proletariat, and along with it, our party, to temporary political domination. (Kreisel, 1993, 689.)

on the evidence of Witnesses, then, none of the writers collected here including Trotsky himself, prior to November 1905 endorsed or otherwise anticipated the Trotsky scenario, that is, the proposition that a provisional revolutionary government dominated by the proletariat would inevitably strive to bring about a socialist transformation of Russian society even without waiting for a European revolution, and that this is a good thing. All, in fact, went out of their way to reject any such proposition. Day and Gaido want to make Trotsky the spokesman for a much more widely shared outlook, but their own material shows that Trotsky was both more original and more isolated than they suppose.

10 In his history of Russian Social Democracy, Martov notes that Parvus use of the ambiguous term worker democracy is the only indication in this article of Trotskys version of uninterrupted revolution (Martov, 2000, 155).

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Does use of terms such as permanent or uninterrupted imply endorsement of the Trotsky scenario? If not, what were these terms meant to convey? As we have just seen, all the writers collected in Witnesses, except Trotsky himself, rejected the idea of an immediate transition to socialist revolution in Russia. Yet the present collection clearly shows that all of these same writers advocated what they called permanent revolution or uninterrupted revolution.11 (Day and Gaido are surely correct to say that permanent and uninterrupted are used as synonyms.) Since we associate the term permanent revolution so strongly with the Trotsky scenario, these facts seem paradoxical. Let us therefore inquire into what these writers had in mind when they used the language of permanent revolution. First of all, let us bracket all discussion about Marxs earlier use of the expression Revolution in Permanenz in his 1850 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League. our aim is rather to find out what message was being sent, what course of action was being advocated, by writers who used the language of permanence in order to influence the course of the revolution of 1905. An examination of the texts collected in Witnesses shows us that the five writers who used this language Mehring, Ryazanov, Parvus, Luxemburg, and Kautsky all had a similar message in mind. Permanence and related terms were not used to link together the democratic and the socialist revolutions, but rather to link together episodes within the process of democratic revolution. The meaning given by these writers to permanent revolution and related terms in 1905 is based on a particular conception of the democratic revolution as a long drawn-out process that could easily be aborted at any point. This conception can be paraphrased as follows: For us socialists, the democratic revolution is not an end in itself, but rather a way of obtaining better conditions for the workers class struggle. The more the democratic revolution achieves in the way of secure political freedoms, the eight-hour day and extensive land reform, the more successful will be socialist efforts to organize and enlighten the working class and the more rapid will be the advent of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
11 I will not discuss a well-known use of uninterrupted revolution by Lenin in September 1905 (Lenin, 1905d, 222) except to say that I disagree with the editors (40, 449) that it implies any sort of endorsement of the Trotsky scenario.

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Social Democrats must therefore strive to carry the democratic revolution to the end, that is, to achieve the maximum possible democratic transformation. But this result cannot be achieved in a single blow. No, the democratic revolution will be a long-drawn-out process, with many advances and retreats. In particular, liberal bourgeois elites will try to halt the revolutionary process midway, after the revolution has achieved enough political freedom to suit bourgeois class purposes but before the revolution has achieved so much political freedom that the workers will be able to threaten those interests. What is achieved during the revolutionary process will set the stage for a significant period thereafter. If the workers understand this, they will not get too discouraged after a temporary defeat and they will also not relax after a revolutionary victory. The duty of Social Democracy in a democratic revolution is therefore to ensure by all means possible that the proletariat keeps up its revolutionary pressure without interruption, right until the point when the maximum freedom possible under the circumstances is achieved and the revolution has been carried out to the end. In 1905, the language of permanence was used as a way of presenting this advice about the best way to conduct a democratic revolution. Perhaps the clearest presentation is Franz Mehrings short article from November 1905, entitled The Revolution in Permanence. This article was first published in Germany. When Trotsky and Parvus soon thereafter published it in their newspaper Nachalo, they translated the title as uninterrupted Revolution. Mehring penned his article at a time when the Russian workers had just won a great victory. In october 1905, under pressure from a widespread general strike, the tsar had issued a Manifesto granting basic political freedoms. Mehring praised the Russian workers for the tenacity that led to this victory, but urged them to remain vigilant and to not lay down their weapons for an instant. Mehring was optimistic: This time the Russian working class has passed the test brilliantly by responding resolutely to the tsars manifesto: the revolution in permanence is continuing (461). As we see, what Mehring meant by the revolution in permanence is precisely the Russian proletariats continued vigilance. As shown earlier, Mehring denied that the Russian workers could skip stages of historical development or instantly create a socialist community out of the despotic tsarist state. What they could and should do is

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extract from the bourgeoisie guarantees for all these demands [for political freedom] as firm as those that the bourgeoisie will extract from the tsar for its own needs. But the workers can do all this only if they do not for an instant lay down their weapons and if they do not permit the bourgeoisie to advance even a single step without themselves taking a step forward. . . . In months or weeks they can now obtain what would take them decades of laborious effort if, after victory, they abandoned the field to the bourgeoisie. (4612.)12

The other writers who employ the language of permanence in this period all have in mind very similar advice. Writing a full two years before the outbreak of the 1905 revolution, Ryazanov saw revolution in permanence as a way of putting pressure on a Constituent Assembly in which (he automatically assumed) liberals would be in the majority:
Social Democrats must know in advance that the arena of their practical activity will not be parliament but the street. . . . Their main task will be to prevent the revolutionary tempest from cooling, to drive the revolution forward, and to lead it to its final consequences. The slogan for Social Democratic activity is revolution in permanentia not order in the place of revolution, but revolution in place of order. (131.)

In 1905, Ryazanov merely repeated this same advice more or less verbatim. (unfortunately, Day and Gaido do not call attention to this cut-and-paste job and even seem to be unaware of it.)13 Judging from the documents printed in Witnesses, Parvus did not use either the term permanent or uninterrupted [nepreryvnoe] to describe the events of 1905, but he did use the closely related term bespreryvnoe, which I will translate as continuous. In his January article, Parvus uses this word to make the same familiar point. Since the process of Russias political reconstruction will be a protracted one,

12 order of passages reversed. Mehring also discusses the international impact of the Russian revolution: Sparks from the bonfire of the Russian revolution have fallen on the working class of all the European countries (463). observations of this kind were a commonplace of the period. 13 Some of the textual differences found in Witnesses between Ryazanov in 1903 and Ryazanov in 1905 might result from different translations of the same Russian original for example, final consequences vs. extreme conclusions (131, 474). Note that, while calling for permanent revolution, Ryazanov clearly agrees with the Mensheviks that proletarian leadership must be exercised from outside the government proper.

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the country will be in a state of continuous [bespreryvnoe] agitation. In these circumstances, the government itself will be moving first in one direction and then another, and it will be necessary to struggle continuously [bespreryvno] for the expansion of political rights and for the rights of parliament in particular. (271.)14

In February 1905, shortly after the massacre of the workers on Bloody Sunday (January 9, 1905), Rosa Luxemburg wrote about the need to maintain the revolutionary situation in permanence. She goes on to explain her thought:
To counteract the pessimistic dejection of the working masses upon which the reaction speculates, to explain the intrinsic meaning and enormous results of the proletariats first attack [in this case, Bloody Sunday], to guard against the hangover that used to take possession of the masses in bourgeois revolutions as soon as the goal was not visibly attained at once, and that even tomorrow will seize Russias liberal heroes that is the vast work that first and foremost confronts Social Democracy. . . . At the present moment in Russia the most pressing need is to assist the masses after the first struggles by enlightening, stimulating and encouraging them. (370.)

unlike the liberals, who after every advance always fold up like a pocket knife (371), the workers will fight all the way to the end that is, they will finish off tsarism, call a Constitutional Assembly, and obtain the political freedom needed to carry on the class struggle in the most effective way. Luxemburgs advice (dont give up after defeats) complements Mehrings (dont rest on your laurels after a victory). In his July 1905 article The Consequences of the Japanese Victory and Social Democracy, Kautsky also uses revolution in permanence to mean a relatively long-lasting revolutionary situation:
The liberals can wail for a strong regime and look forward to the growing chaos with fearful anxiety, but the revolutionary proletariat has every reason to greet it with the highest enthusiasm. That chaos is nothing but the Revolution in Permanence [Kautskys emphasis]. And in the current Russian conditions, revolution is the situation in which the proletariat can mature most rapidly, develop its intellectual, moral and economic forces most fully,
14 I have retranslated directly from the Russian text in Kreisel, 1993, 36. Day and Gaido obscure Parvus use of this closely related term, translating its first appearance in this passage as endless and the second as continuously.

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stamp its mark most deeply on the state and society, and win from them the greatest concessions. Even if such a dominant position of the proletariat can only be temporary in a country as economically backward as Russia, it will produce enduring results that will be more extensive and profound the longer they last. (37980.)

In the previous section I showed that Mehring, Ryazanov, Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautsky all explicitly affirmed that Russia could not expect a socialist revolution prior to a European revolution. In this section, we see the same writers using the language of permanence to say something about the process of democratic revolution. To round off this discussion of the various meanings of permanent revolution and related terms, let us now turn to Trotskys articles from late 1905 in which he first sets out what I have termed the Trotsky scenario. In Social Democracy and Revolution, written in November 1905, Trotsky starts off with the same idea we have seen in other writers: permanent or uninterrupted revolution is needed to finish off tsarism:
overcoming the mighty resistance of the autocratic state and the conscious inactivity of the bourgeoisie, the working class of Russia has developed into an organized fighting force without precedent. There is no stage of the bourgeois revolution at which this fighting force, driven forward by the steel logic of class interests, could be appeased. uninterrupted revolution is becoming the law of self-preservation for the proletariat. (455.)

Trotsky then extends the same idea beyond the victory of the democratic revolution:
The complete victory of the revolution signifies the victory of the proletariat. The latter, in turn, means further uninterrupted revolution [emphasis added]. The proletariat is accomplishing the basic tasks of democracy, and at some moment the very logic of its struggle to consolidate its political rule places before it purely socialist problems. (455.)

With hindsight, we can see this prediction of further uninterrupted revolution as a first statement of Trotskys new scenario. In this article of November 1905, however, it consists only of a few throwaway lines tucked in at the end. I would hazard that few readers of this article at the time really took in what Trotsky was proposing (especially

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since the role of the democratic revolution in hastening the onset of socialist revolution was a well-known commonplace). only in Trotskys foreword to Marxs account of the Paris Commune (published in December 1905) do we get an unambiguous statement of what I have termed the Trotsky scenario. I count five passages in Trotskys foreword where he uses permanent language (including a new locution, bessrochnaia revoliutsiia or revolution without time-limits) (501, 505, 506, 507, 509). He now uses this language to defend the idea of uninterrupted revolution, linking the liquidation of absolutism and civil serfdom with socialist revolution (505). This is a new and unexpected use of the imagery of permanence one that we find in none of the other writers included in Witnesses. We thus see two distinct, even contrasting, meanings for permanent or uninterrupted revolution. one evokes the framework of democratic revolution as a long drawn-out process and points to the link between separate episodes in this process. This is the meaning found in Mehring, Ryazanov, Parvus, Luxemburg and Kautsky. The other meaning given to the language of permanence evokes the Trotsky scenario and points to the link between democratic revolution and socialist revolution. only Trotsky uses it in this way. We must conclude that the use in 1905 of terms such as permanent revolution cannot be considered in any way an anticipation of Trotskys ideological innovation at the end of 1905. The meaning of these terms that we find in the writers collected in Witnesses makes sense within another framework and only within that framework. The writers who used this language wanted democratic revolution in Russia for the ultimate sake of socialism, but they did not believe socialist construction was desirable in Russia prior to a game-changing revolution in Europe. What they wanted and thought was attainable was a complete victory of the democratic revolution democratic revolution to the end. For them, this was a sufficiently ambitious and inspiring goal. It required, so they believed, strong and unrelenting pressure from the workers. They therefore called for the democratic revolution in Permanenz. Why did the Trotsky scenario find so little acceptance? Toward the end of 1906, Karl Kautsky wrote a seminal article analyzing the revolutionary situation in Russia, entitled The

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Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution and its Prospects. Lenin and Trotsky were so taken with Kautskys analysis that both of them translated it into Russian and provided enthusiastic commentary. Day and Gaido have done a great service by including not only the Kautsky article itself but both commentaries (in the case of Trotsky, for the first time in English).15 Both Lenin and Trotsky announced their complete solidarity with Kautskys outlook. This fact leads to a paradox, since, even in his remarks on Kautsky, Trotsky insists on some strong disagreements with the Bolsheviks. The question naturally arises, who had a better grasp of Kautskys outlook, Trotsky or Lenin? Day and Gaido lean toward the view that Trotsky was more justified in his claim (44).16 Providing an answer to this specific question is a convenient way of addressing the more general issue about the reasons for the general lack of interest in Trotskys innovative scenario. My answer will be evident from what I have already said. Lenin has the better claim to kinship with Kautsky, since he and Kautsky share a definite outlook, while Trotsky, despite much overlap, disagrees with both of them on a fundamental point. The major contrast between Trotsky and Kautsky/Lenin is connected to the key question of the role of the Russian peasant as a class ally of the proletariat. opposed approaches to this issue were the main obstacle to widespread acceptance of the Trotsky scenario. During the polemics between Trotsky and the rest of the Bolshevik leadership in the 1920s, Trotskys mortal sin was said to be underestimation of the peasantry. This charge must be rejected as a red herring. True, Trotsky did not think the Russian peasants would support socialist change but this was the universal, orthodox opinion at the time of the 1905 revolution. The real disagreement lies elsewhere. Kautsky, Lenin and Social Democrats in general thought that peasant attitudes made a truly socialist government in Russia impossible and inadmissible in the near future. Trotsky also did not doubt that the peasants would be hostile to
15 Stalin also wrote a commentary on Kautskys article. He evidently found it no embarrassment to include in his collected writings the statement that Kautsky, an outstanding theoretician of Social Democracy, and the Bolsheviks are in complete agreement with each other (Stalin, 1953, 12). 16 I cannot agree with the editors comment about Kautskys deliberate ambiguity (568). For a pioneering and still useful discussion of the Russian reaction to Kautskys article, see Donald, 1993, 8793.

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socialist transformation.17 But he rejected the idea that this hostility need be a barrier to a proletarian governments program of socialist transformation, including in the countryside. This contrast is the heart of the matter. At stake was a universally accepted proposition that might be called the axiom of the class ally. This axiom is stated concisely by Kautsky in his 1906 article. If circumstances are such that the proletariat can achieve revolutionary victory only with the help of another class, then, as a victorious party, [the proletariat] will not be able to implement any more of its program than the interests of the class that supports the proletariat allow (605). Kautskys application of this axiom to Russia is straightforward. First, a class ally was definitely needed. It will not be possible [in Russia at present] for social democracy to achieve victory through the proletariat alone without the help of another class. Fortunately, there is indeed a social class in Russia whose interests make it eager to provide this help: without the peasants we cannot win in the near future in Russia (606). Kautsky is full of praise for the Russian peasant as a fighter for democratic transformation. Social change and revolution has transformed the easy-going, sleepy and unthinking creature of habit into an energetic, restless and inexhaustible warrior for the new and the better. . . . He regards the government, to whose control he has hitherto trustingly submitted, as the enemy that must be overthrown. But there is a downside to the class alliance with the peasantry: we must not anticipate that the peasants will become socialists. Kautsky explains why this is so and (as we saw earlier) draws the logical conclusion: it therefore seems unthinkable that the present revolution in Russia is already leading to the introduction of a socialist mode of production, even if it should bring Social Democracy to power temporarily (607).
17 one probable reason why Trotsky affirmed the standard Social Democratic conception about peasant resistance to socialism was that the opposite affirmation had long been an identifying mark of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). In fact, in July 1905, SR leader Mikhail Gotz used permanent in a way that is closer to Trotskys later theory than can be found in any Social Democratic writer. Gotz writes that the workers proletarians and peasants should not restrict the scope of the revolution in advance, but on the contrary they should turn it into a permanent [permanentnyi] one, oust the bourgeoisie step by step from the positions it has occupied, give the signal for a European revolution, and then draw new strength from there (Witnesses, 38, citing Perrie, 1973, 411).

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Kautskys chain of reasoning leads to his fundamental advice on revolutionary tactics in the current Russian revolution. The community of interest between the industrial proletariat and the peasantry gives Russian Social Democracy its revolutionary strength and the possibility of its victory, but at the same time it also sets the limits to the possibility of the exploitation of this victory (606).18 In his commentary, Lenin follows closely and endorses enthusiastically Kautskys logic (5835):19
Victory in the present revolution cannot be the victory of the proletariat alone, without the aid of other classes. Which class then, in view of the objective conditions of the present revolution, is the ally of the proletariat? The peasantry . . . Needless to say, Kautsky is in complete agreement with the fundamental thesis of all Russian Social Democrats [in contrast to the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries] that the peasant movement is non-socialist, that socialism cannot arise from small-scale peasant production, etc. . . . The revolution in Russia is not a socialist revolution for there is no way in which it can possibly lead the proletariat to sole rule or dictatorship . . . All these propositions of Kautsky are a brilliant confirmation of the tactics of the revolutionary wing of Russian Social Democracy, that is, the tactics of the Bolsheviks. . . . A bourgeois revolution, brought about by the proletariat and the peasantry despite the instability of the bourgeoisie this fundamental principle of Bolshevik tactics is wholly confirmed by Kautsky.

In later years, Lenin never rejected the axiom of the class ally. He either convinced himself that the Russian peasants were moving unexpectedly quickly toward collective forms of production, or he searched desperately for other ways to lead the peasants to socialism (for example, through electrification of the whole country), or he got very worried about the petty-bourgeois tendencies of the peasantry as a brake on the revolution. But he explicitly rejected any use of force to change peasant production methods in violation of perceived peasant interests (Lih, 2011).
18 I have retranslated directly from Kautsky, 1906, in order to bring out the logic of his argument more clearly. 19 The order of the passages has been rearranged. See also Lenin, 1909, where Lenin protests against a reading of Kautsky similar to that made by Radek and adopted by Day and Gaido (Lenin, 1909).

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These passages from Kautsky and Lenin show that the axiom of the class ally lies at the heart of their rejection of the possibility of a socialist revolution arising directly out of the Russian democratic revolution. When we turn to Trotsky, we find that he certainly does not reject the orthodox axiom: he accepts that the non-socialist proclivities of the peasantry set a severe limit on socialist transformation in Russia. He nevertheless ends up in a very different place from the other two writers. The peasant role in the Trotsky scenario was presented in three stages, with different emphases according to different polemical contexts: the articles of late 1905; Results and Prospects from mid-1906; Trotskys commentary on Kautsky from late 1906. The role of the peasants consisted of two episodes: first, the democratic revolution itself, and second, the period of attempted socialist transformation in Russia.20 Trotskys views on the role of the peasants in the democratic revolution, although idiosyncratic in some respects, are well within the Social Democratic mainstream. In contrast, his account of workerpeasant relations after the democratic revolution put him firmly outside the mainstream. In Trotskys articles from late 1905 in which he first announces his new outlook, we find a very reassuring account of the peasants in the democratic revolution: the peasants will support the workers, they will not support any bourgeois party, they will not form their own independent party. This is, Trotsky announces, the only possible outcome: In the situation that will be created by transfer of power to the proletariat, the peasantry will have no option but to ally with the regime of worker democracy, even if it does so with no more conscious commitment than it usually shows when associating itself with the bourgeois regime! (516).21 In Results and Prospects (1906), Trotskys conception of the role of the peasantry in the democratic revolution remains unchanged. In
20 I reach the same general conclusions as Larsson, 1970, perhaps the only scholar to examine all the relevant texts, including Trotskys commentary on Kautsky (unavailable in English prior to Witnesses). 21 This statement by Trotsky from late 1905 has an interesting later history. Trotsky included it in Results and Prospects (1906). In 1909, Martov quoted it approvingly and Lenin vigorously refuted it (Lenin, 1909, 381). In 1930, Trotsky referred to the 1909 exchange between Martov and Lenin, but without giving any of the actual quotations. In fact, Trotsky asserts that Lenins obvious misunderstandings directly prove that Lenin had never read Results and Prospects. Trotsky does not, however, explain exactly how Lenin is supposed to have misunderstood this quotation (Trotsky, 2010, 184).

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fact, he directly incorporates the passages just discussed in which he dismisses any worries about peasant support for the proletarian party in the democratic revolution. He adds new language that insists in even stronger terms that any peasant support for democratic transformation of Russia does not arise from the peasants political consciousness but rather from their political barbarism, social formlessness, primitiveness and lack of character. In Trotskys commentary on Kautsky from late 1906, we find a perceptible shift in his formulations that is no doubt due to Kautskys highly positive assessment of the Russian peasant. Gone are Trotskys barbs about peasant barbarism, replaced by compliments about the way the peasants responded to the thunder of revolution (577). To compare Trotsky in December 1905 (5156) to Trotsky in late 1906 (5778) is to see the impact of Kautskys encomium to the Russian peasant (603). I think it is fair to say that under the influence of Kautsky, Trotsky has moved closer to a Bolshevik formulation on the question of the peasant in the democratic revolution.22 Trotskys views on the peasants in the democratic revolution put him squarely into the wing of Russian Social Democracy whose main spokesmen were Lenin and Kautsky. Trotsky had considerably less respect than those two writers for the political capacities of the Russian peasant, but he nevertheless arrived at the same practical goal of some sort of worker/peasant revolutionary government. Trotskys evolving vision about developments after a successful democratic revolution was of necessity much more speculative. In his original articles from late 1905, Trotsky says nothing at all about the reaction of the peasants to any socialist changes initiated by the worker government. Evidently he had not yet really thought through this issue. Since the role of the peasantry must have been the most obvious stumbling block to acceptance of his new scenario, Trotsky considered the question more fully in Results and Prospects, the extensive defense of his position that he wrote in prison during 1906. A problem of interpretation immediately arises, since Trotsky discusses this question in two different places in his book, and the two passages might be seen as clashing. In Chapter 8, Trotsky gives advice about the form and tempo of socialist transformation in
22 A similar shift can be seen in Trotskys estimate of peasant parties such as the Trudoviks: negative in late 1905 (Witnesses, 515) and guardedly positive in late 1906 (5778) (the editorial comment on 577 is unhelpful).

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the countryside, and insists that the proletariat must act so as not to throw possible allies into the ranks of the counterrevolution. In particular, the new government should not expropriate communal and small-owner land: Politically, the new regime would make a massive blunder, as it would at once set the mass of the peasantry against the town proletariat acting as the leader [rukovoditel] in revolutionary politics (Kriesel, 1993, 1667; Trotsky, 2010, 1125). In another passage, however, Trotsky throws considerable doubt on whether the peasants were indeed a possible ally. In Chapter 6, Trotsky insists that the proletarian government must move toward collectivism in the countryside, for example, by refusing to divide up expropriated estates. In the sphere of agrarian relations, the only path open to [the proletariat] is the organization of cooperative production under communal control or organized directly by the state. But this kind of collectivism will inevitably meet opposition from the allies of the proletariat (Kreisel, 1993, 1503; Trotsky, 2010, 858). The proletarian regime will also find itself compelled to aggressively protect the agricultural proletariat, even though any such legislation not only will not meet with the active sympathy of the majority, but even run up against the active opposition of a minority of the peasantry (Kreisel, 1993, 151; Trotsky, 2010, 84). The class alliance is therefore doomed:
The insufficient degree of class differentiation will create obstacles to the introduction among the peasantry of developed class struggle, upon which the urban proletariat could rely. The primitiveness of the peasantry turns its hostile face towards the proletariat . . . The cooling off of the peasantry, its political passivity, and even more the active opposition of its upper sections, cannot but have an influence on a section of the intellectuals and the petty bourgeois of the towns . . . Thus, the more definite and determined the policy of the proletariat in power becomes, the narrower and more shaky does the ground beneath its feet become. All this is extremely probable and even inevitable. (Kreisel, 1993, 151; Trotsky, 2010, 85.)

one alternative to launching this semi-suicidal policy would be to relinquish governmental power. Since Social Democracy in power could neither administer capitalism by siding with the peasant majority against the agricultural proletariat, nor introduce socialism against the active resistance of a solid majority of the population, its political

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dominance in the democratic revolution could only be temporary. This is the course of action suggested by the axiom of the class ally. According to Trotsky, however, this same course of action would compromise the very idea of a worker government. In a comment aimed at the Bolsheviks, he elaborates:
To imagine that it is the business of Social Democrats to enter a provisional government and lead it during the period of revolutionarydemocratic reforms, fighting for them to have a most radical character, and relying for this purpose upon the organized proletariat and then, after the democratic program has been carried out, to leave the edifice they have constructed so as to make way for the bourgeois parties and themselves go into opposition, thus opening up a period of parliamentary politics, is to imagine the thing in a way that would compromise the very idea of a workers government. . . . once the proletariat has taken power in its hands it will not give it up without a desperate resistance, until it is torn from its hands by armed force. (Kreisel, 1993, 146151; Trotsky, 2010, 7585.)

In Results and Prospects, then, Trotsky sends mixed messages to the proletariat. on the one hand, the proletariat should not throw class allies into the camp of the counterrevolution. on the other hand, the proletariat will not be able to avoid throwing class allies into the camp of the counterrevolution. The importance of Trotskys commentary on Kautsky, written in late 1906, is that it shows how Trotsky himself combined these messages. For this reason, we should be grateful to Day and Gaido for making it available in English. In his commentary, Trotsky begins right where Kautsky leaves off: Kautsky carries his analysis up to the time when a deep social antagonism opens up between the proletariat in power and the influential strata of the peasant mass upon which its domination rests. What is the way out of this antagonism? (574).23 Trotsky responds to this question in a crucial passage (576) which merits close paraphrase. Trotsky argues as follows: The proletariat has given no explicit commitment to remain loyal to its class ally. It goes without saying that the proletariat in power will do everything possible to avoid a premature [emphasis added] conflict with the peasantry nevertheless, the proletariat cannot change its class nature and therefore cannot help but support the
23 I have translated gospodstvo as domination rather than power.

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agricultural proletariat, leading to an inevitable conflict with the strong peasantry.24 Trotsky goes on to dot the is and cross the ts of his earlier scenario. The proletariat will neither leave power nor refrain from socialist policies in the countryside, even though the inevitable upshot will be armed revolt and proletarian defeat:
This will be the beginning of the end. How can this conflict [with the peasantry] be resolved? of course, it will not be resolved through having representatives of the proletariat move from ministerial benches to those of the opposition. The issue will be much more serious than that. The conflict will end in civil war and the defeat of the proletariat. Within the confines of a national revolution, and given our social conditions, there is no other way out for the proletariats political domination.25

Trotskys commitment to promoting foreign revolution springs directly from the doomed situation at home. In order to escape certain defeat, the proletarian government must bring into motion all the resources of its temporary power in order to instigate European revolution.26 At this point in his argument, Trotsky returns to Kautsky: This is the route that follows from the entire revolutionary situation as Kautsky describes it, and the closing lines of his article point to exactly this conclusion. Note that Trotsky does not claim that Kautsky explicitly endorses his new scenario.27 The final paragraph of Kautskys article (607) does
24 Trotsky speaks of a conflict only with the strong peasantry (his quotation marks), but he clearly thinks these peasants will receive enough support from the mass of the peasantry and from the democratic classes in the town to defeat the proletariat in a civil war. 25 Trotskys emphasis. According to the Russian text given in Kreisel, 1993, 125, Day and Gaidos more complex should be more serious, and I have so translated. 26 But if, independent of our will, the internal dialectic of revolution does nevertheless finally bring us to power at a time when the national conditions for the realization of socialism have not yet matured, we will not begin to go backward. We will give ourselves the goal of breaking the narrow national framework of the revolution and pushing the West onto the path of revolution, just as a hundred years ago France pushed the East onto this road. The Menshevik spokesman Aleksandr Martynov wrote these words in March 1905, eight months before Trotskys breakthrough articles (Kreisel, 1993, 64). 27 Trotsky expressed himself much less cautiously in 1919 (in a foreword to a reissue of Results and Prospects) and 1922 (in a foreword to a reissue of 1905). In 1919 he writes: At that time Kautsky (true, not without the beneficial influence of Rosa Luxemburg) fully understood and acknowledged that the Russian revolution could not terminate in a bourgeois-democratic republic but must inevitably lead to a proletarian dictatorship (Trotsky, 2010, 38). In 1922 he writes: At the time, Kautsky himself fully identified himself with my views. Like Mehring (now deceased), he adopted the viewpoint of permanent revolution (Trotsky, 1971, viii). Trotsky does not repeat any of these claims in The Permanent Revolution (1930).

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speak about the possible surprises that the Russian revolution might bring and the possible repercussive effects of a possible European revolution. I see nothing in these lines or anywhere else in Kautsky that suggests he would ever have contemplated a scenario of deliberately initiating an unwinnable civil war against the majority of the population and the proletariats class ally in the just-completed democratic revolution. My personal impression, after going through this material, is that Trotsky has diligently painted himself into a corner. In its original 1905 formulation, the idea of moving directly to socialist transformation directly in Russia sounded bold and adventurous. But the axiom of the class ally posed a stumbling block that Trotsky could find no convincing way to remove. unwilling either to challenge the orthodox axiom or to give up on his new scenario, Trotsky ended up arguing more or less as follows: The proletariat should cap its introduction of political freedoms and a thoroughgoing democratic republic by announcing its intention never to forego power voluntarily, then embarking on a policy that it knows cannot succeed, instigating in this way an armed revolt among a majority of the population, and thus deliberately creating a situation so desperate that the proletarian government can only be rescued by a foreign revolution that may or may not happen. Any other policy would discredit socialism. Trotskys attempt to adhere to the letter of the class ally axiom led to an abandonment of its spirit. At a time when most German and Russian socialist writers were trying to assure the peasants that they had nothing to fear from Social Democracy in power, Trotsky told them that the victory even of the democratic revolution would lead to a proletarian civil war with the peasantry. In any event, Trotskys inability convincingly to negotiate the axiom of the class ally is, I suggest, the main reason his new scenario found so few, if any, supporters. Trotskys ideas about peasants in the democratic revolution opened up a bridge between him and other Social Democrats, while his vision of the inevitable armed civil war between the proletariat and its class ally isolated him. Fortunately for Trotsky, only his ideas about the democratic revolution itself were practical politics up to 1917 and indeed, in my view, up at least to the end of the Civil War. Trotsky, it seems, realized this. In a speech to a party congress in 1907, Trotsky says:

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A government resting directly upon the proletariat, and through it upon the revolutionary peasantry, does not yet signify the socialist dictatorship. I shall not here deal with the further prospects before a proletarian government. It may be that the proletariat is destined to fall, as did the Jacobin democracy, in order to clear the road for the rule of the bourgeoisie. (Kreisel, 1993, 270; Trotsky, 2010, 244.)

Trotsky is saying that the really controversial parts of his scenario the parts that dealt with the future prospects before a proletarian government are not relevant to present party concerns and therefore he does not insist on them. In The Permanent Revolution, published in 1930, Trotsky gave a long excerpt from this same speech, including the passage just cited, adding the claim that the speech succinctly sums up all my articles, speeches and acts of 1905 and 1906 (Kreisel, 1993, 271; Trotsky, 2010, 245). In actuality, as we have seen, Trotskys 1907 speech deliberately sidesteps the distinctive argument of his new scenario. Indeed, Trotskys 1930 analysis of his 1905 scenario avoids any explicit discussion of the peasant scenario that he set forth in his writings of 190506, thus contributing to later confusion on the topic. This is yet another reason to welcome Day and Gaidos publication of the relevant writings in Witnesses. According to Day and Gaido, the documents collected in Witnesses to Permanent Revolution show that the Trotsky scenario was anticipated at least in its main outlines by a wider group of Social Democratic writers. It is true that Trotsky did share most of his outlook with other Social Democrats (including Mensheviks such as Martynov). Nevertheless, a careful examination of these documents and specifically of expressions such as revolution in permanence and uninterrupted revolution show that Trotsky was quite alone in regard to the really innovative part of his scenario, namely, the assertion that a proletariandominated provisional revolutionary government would inevitably lead to attempts at socialist change in Russia, even prior to a European revolution, and that any other course of action would discredit the idea of a proletarian government. A central reason for the Trotsky scenarios lack of impact was that it insisted on an inevitable civil war with the class that the Social Democrats were then trying to enlist in the democratic revolution. For this reason alone, whatever its merits as predictive analysis, the Trotsky scenario was unacceptable as a party program.

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Although the documents they have collected do not support the editors own interpretation, Witnesses still constitutes an extraordinarily valuable resource above and beyond the light it throws on the Trotsky scenario. Witnesses provides a much needed guide to revolutionary Social Democracys view of the revolutionary events of 1905 as the beginning of a long drawn-out and hard-fought battle for the vast democratic transformation of Russia. Taken as a whole, these documents create great difficulties for the standard glib explanation that anyone who did not accept the Trotsky scenario was fatalistic or pre-dialectical. The writers collected here may indeed have been unrealistic in many ways; for example, they all grievously underestimated the resilience of tsarism and the forces supporting it. But there is no mistaking the grandeur of the goal of democratic revolution to the end or the revolutionary energy that gave rise to calls for the democratic revolution in Permanenz.
3555 Marlowe Avenue Montreal, Quebec, H4A 3L8 larslih@yahoo.ca

REFERENCES Day, Richard. 1973. Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation. Cambridge, uK: Cambridge university Press. Day, Richard, and Daniel Gaido, eds. 2009. Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record. Leiden, Amsterdam: Brill, 2009. Deutscher, Isaac. 1965 (1954). The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 18791921. New York: Vintage Books. Donald, Moira. 1993. Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 19001924. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale university Press. Gaido, Daniel. 2006. The Formative Period of American Capitalism: A Materialist Interpretation. New York: Routledge. Kautsky, Karl. 1906. Triebkrfte und Aussichten der Russischen Revolution. Die Neue zeit, 25:1, 18490, 32433. Kreisel, Felix J., ed. 1993. L. D. Trotsky: Permanentnaia Revolutsiia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Iskra Research. Larsson, Reidar. 1970. Theories of Revolution: From Marx to the First Russian Revolution. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist & Wicksell. Lenin, V. I. 1905a. Sotsial-demokratiia i vremennoe revoliutsionnoe pravitelstvo (Social Democracy and the Provisional Revolutionary Government). Pp. 119 in V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., Vol. 10. online English translation at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/ sdprg/index.htm

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. 1905b. Revoliutsionnaia demokraticheskaia diktatura proletariata i krestianstva (The Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry). Pp. 2031 in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., Vol. 10. online English translation at http://www.marxists.org/ archive/lenin/ works/1905/apr/12b.htm . 1905c. S bolnoi golovy na zdorovuiu (The Guilty Blaming the Innocent). Pp. 3543 in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., Vol. 10. online English translation at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/ 1905/apr/20.htm . 1905d. otnoshenie sotsial-demokratii k krestianskomu dvizheniiu (SocialDemocracys Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement). Pp. 21524 in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., Vol. 11. online English translation at http:// www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/ sep/05e.htm . 1909. Tsel borby proletariata v nashei revoliutsii (The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in our Revolution). Pp. 37090 in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., Vol. 17. online English translation at http://www.marxists.org/archive/ lenin/works/1909/aim/index.htm Lih, Lars T. 2006. Lenin Rediscovered. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books. . 2011. Lenin. London: Reaktion Books. Lwy, Michael. 2010 (1981). The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books. Martov, Iulii. 2000 (1918). Istoriia rossiiskoi sotsial-demokratii. In Izbrannoe. Moscow. Perrie, Maureen. 1973. The Socialist Revolutionaries on Permanent Revolution. Soviet Studies, 24:3, 41113. Plekhanov, Georgii. 1961. Socialism and the Political Struggle. In Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 1. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Stalin, J. V. 1953 (1907). Preface to the Georgian edition of K. Kautskys pamphlet The Driving Forces and Prospects of the Russian Revolution. In Works, Vol. 2. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Trotsky, Leon. 2010. The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects. Seattle, Washington: Red Letter Press. . 1971. 1905. New York: Vintage Books.

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Science & Society, Vol. 76, No. 4, october 2012, 463494

Manufacture and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism

JRGEN SANDEMOSE*
ABSTRACT: Robert Brenners theory of the passage from feudalism to capitalism in England in the early modern era contends that an agrarian capitalism makes up the core of the transition. This thesis is weak, measured against fundamental insights presented by Karl Marx in different parts of Capital, I. on the other hand, in the exposition of English developments subsequent to the Tudor enclosures, in the last part of that work, So-Called Primitive Accumulation, Marx conspicuously ignores relevant insights developed in earlier chapters, on the nature of manufacture and of largescale industry. There, manufacture had appeared as a condition of large-scale industry, while advanced capitalism was seen as a result of overcoming deficiencies in the structure of manufacture. Marxs text on primitive accumulation would have benefited from being presented more in coherence with this earlier analysis. The agrarian capitalism thesis loses credibility when confronted with empirical data on English manufacture and a Marxian synthesis.

Introduction
N ATTENTIVE READING oF MARXS CHAPTERS on primitive accumulation makes clear that, while the author pays due attention to the expropriation of English peasants from the soil, the structure of English industry regardless of its forms is simply not an issue. After reflecting on this fact in section 1 below, I will go on to scrutinize the actual forms of industrial endeavor in England. Through a summary of the situation in the traditional textile
* Thanks to Kirsten Grimm and Kjell Bjrgeengen for their help in making this article readable.

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sector, in section 2, it will be contended that production relations in the handicrafts centering on woolens were not adequate as a starting block for true capitalist development. In section 3, it will be shown that several industries were potential sources for growth of capitalist relations. The argument is indebted to the investigation of the history of British coal production once forwarded by John u. Nef and today defended and reconsidered by John Hatcher and others. In section 4, I proceed to the question of the organization of manufacturing in the industries in question, testing the structure and validity of Marxian concepts against the British experience of the 16th and 17th centuries. The most important result of these investigations is that the structure of 16th-century industry contains a dynamic that creates a capitalist mass market for the first time. Passing over to a criticism of the agrarian capitalism thesis in section 5, some weight will be put on the explanatory principle endorsed by Robert Brenner. This is a Mertonian latent function where it is vital that historical change is produced by actions that are structurally uniform, but have unintended results of structural significance. Whereas this is truly a welcome principle, I find that it does not apply to the dynamic of agrarian capitalism, but on the contrary precisely to the introduction of extensive coal mining. In the structure of early British coal-based industry, which centuries later was to become the true basis even of the most advanced form of British industrialism, lies the core of the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

1. The Chapter on Primitive Accumulation

The theses in Marxs Foreword to his Critique from 1859, of the relations between the feudal and capitalist modes of production, and a fortiori feudal and capitalist social formations, committed the author to the view that there exists a distinct, identifiable historical transition from the former to the latter (cf. Marx, 1972, 89). The transition in question is investigated in the first volume of Capital primarily in Part Eight, on primitive accumulation, and secondarily in the chapters on manufacture and large-scale industry in Part Four. Part Eight is divided into eight chapters (2633). Roughly, the first three (2628) consist of an overview of how masses of English country population were expropriated from the soil from about 1470. Soon

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the scene evolves to show how the roles of capitalist, wage worker, and modern landowner key characters in the capitalist social formation are created. Let us look at what happens next. In chapter 29, called The Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer, Marx points out that expropriation and the enclosures movement had produced masses of bird-free proletarians, and asks: Where do the capitalists originally spring from? For the only class created directly by the expropriation of the agricultural population is that of the great landed proprietors (Marx, 1976, 905). The most important point in the chapter is the account of an agricultural revolution, starting about 1470 and lasting to about 1580. on this Marx says that it enriched [the farmers] just as quickly as it forced the rural population into poverty. It is not generally accepted that there was a revolution in agriculture in the technological meaning of the word at this time. The literature, to the contrary, usually finds such a revolution during the hundred-year period after 1580. Still, Marx clearly had support in the sources.1 It seems that he primarily had in mind the change that took place in the relations of production, included the expropriation of free peasants. He is brief, and mentions little more than the usurpation of the common lands, which allowed the farmer to augment greatly his stock of cattle, almost without cost, while the cattle themselves yielded a richer supply of manure for the cultivation of the soil. To this complex we should certainly add an intensification of agricultural labor. In addition, Marx points to the price revolution of the 16th century. This led to a downturn in the value of precious metals and to a corresponding upturn in the price of agricultural products, resulting in marked improvements for farmers, as well as lowering ground rents. Marx thus rounds off the chapter with a remark to the effect that it was only natural that England, even before 1600, had a class of capital farmers [Kapitalpchter] who were rich men in relation to the circumstances of the time. Thus far, Marxs exposition is in accord with the one given by Robert Brenner, which in its turn was developed from the latters article on the class structure in European agriculture prior to industrialism. The article appeared in Past and Present 35 years ago, and took its point of departure in an evaluation of Maurice Dobbs critique of Paul
1 on Marxs notion of an agricultural revolution, cf. Cooper, 1987, 146.

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Sweezys viewpoints, another 30 years earlier (Brenner, 1987a; Hilton, 1976). Vital to Brenners viewpoint is a theory that the capitalist tenant played the decisive role in the breakthrough to capitalism in England. Let us return to the summary of Part Eight. After the chapter on the capitalist tenant, there follows a chapter 30, called Impact of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. The Creation of a Home Market for Industrial Capital (Marx, 1976, 908913). Here it turns out that Marx takes for granted that the English countryside now is populated by day laborers [Tagelhner] of large-scale farmers (italics added). But to describe the changes in relations of production, he presupposes that in a given area (in Westphalia!) the production of linen goes on side by side with the production of foodstuffs. The rural handicrafts, which originated in the peasant homes, have lost their means of existence. Marx continues:
At the same time, large establishments for flax-spinning and weaving arise, and in these the men who have been set free now work for wages. The flax looks exactly as it did before. Not a fibre of it is changed, but a new social soul has entered its body. It now forms a part of the constant capital of the master manufacturer.

In short, the emergence of the new social soul implies that

spindles, looms and raw material are now transformed from means for the independent existence of spinners and weavers into means for commanding them and extracting unpaid labour from them.

Marx now calls these establishments groe Manufakturen, while Fowkes translation has large factories. At this point, the wish to uphold a normal English word usage collides with conceptual distinctions promoted by Marx, for it is important to note that the work in these establishments has little to do with that of large-scale industry. Besides, Marx seems to make a point here of describing the new social division of labor as a correlation between Gropchtern, i.e., the big farmers, and groe Manufakturen: These raw materials and means of subsistence have now become commodities; the large-scale farmer [der Gropchter] sells them, and he finds his market in the manufactures. In this correlation evidently inspired by the physiocrat Mirabeau, whom he cites at length here Marx finds the genesis of the capitalist inner market.

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The whole argument underlines the distinction that Marx had introduced between manufacture and large-scale industry. The last-mentioned form is present in advanced and fully developed capitalism, as it appeared in western Europe. The first one is present prior to large-scale industry. Manufacture, or manufactory (the specific word for this relation of production in England at the time), is a form which is dependent on handicraft; it appears when men of fortune are able to invest in labor power and in production processes, but while capitalism is still not developed enough to create an independent machinery and subsume the worker under it. Marx, consequently, maintains that when the worker is subjugated under capital in manufacture, the subsumption is only formal. Subsumption under machine-driven processes steering tool mechanisms, contrariwise, is real. As our discussion evolves, I will show that Marxs argument would have gained in strength had he operated with a more extensive concept of formal subsumption than the one to which he gives priority in this model-genesis of the English home market. It seems, then, that in Capital Marx has the same judgment as in the section in the Grundrisse called Forms Which Precede Capitalist Production, where he writes that capital in its nature is a product of circulation, and concludes:
The formation of capital thus does not emerge from landed property (here at most from the tenant [Pchter] in so far as he is a dealer in agricultural products; or from the guild . . .); but rather from merchants and usurers wealth. But the latter encounter the conditions where free labour can be purchased only when this labour has been released from its objective conditions of existence through the process of history. only then does it also encounter the possibility of buying these conditions themselves. (Marx, 1973, 505.)2

If one goes back to Marxs passages on the capital farmers, one finds no contention that the tenant is the proto-capitalist. Marxs remarks point (primarily) backward in the text, not forward towards the treatment of the history of the tenant class. He explicitly ties the question of the capitalists genesis to expropriation and the creation of wage labor:
The forcible creation of a class of free and rightless proletarians, the bloody discipline that turned them into wage-labourers, the disgraceful proceedings
2 The word Pchter is the one translated (mostly) as farmer by Fowkes.

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of the state which employed police methods to accelerate the accumulation of capital by increasing the degree of exploitation of labour.

These are facts that Marx had taken up in the third chapter in the section (28), entitled Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated since the End of the Fifteenth Century. The Forcing Down of Wages by Act of Parliament (1976, 896904). It is to this chapter we should then turn to get a glimpse of the capitalist whose genesis Marx wants to depict. To our purpose, which is now primarily to check to what extent Marxs theory is consistent with that of Brenner, this means that we have to make out whether the social forces described in Capital can be thought of as led by an agrarian capitalism. In Chapter 28, Marx underlines that the proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. Next, he goes on to analyze the lawmaking to force down wages. We cannot go into those laws in any detail. What is important is that Marx treats them as secondary phenomena related to the main theme of the growing manufactures, and does not in any specific way mention wage labor in agriculture. Also, he speaks of the historical period in question as the period of manufacture properly so-called (which he sets to 15501780), and seems to imply that it is the wages in manufacture that form his starting point. Now, we may pass over to a terrain already visited, the chapter following upon the text on the capitalist farmer. Here, Marx (as hinted above), without turning rural production relations into a main issue, makes some remarks concerning the situation in the countryside prior to the emergence of an internal capitalist market. He speaks of day laborers and of production of means of nourishment. Consequently, certain agricultural productive forces are in focus, but Marx does not describe their social context. The form of the exposition may be due to its hypothetical nature. The description of the inner market is not tied to any investigation of the English economy. What Marx does is to put forward examples of an economic model, and to the extent that he is relying on empirical examples these are taken from continental Europe and from remarks by Mirabeau. This means that Marx does not employ his theory on the manufactory, developed earlier in the same volume of Capital, to provide

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any empirical substantiation of the construction of a home market in England. With this in mind, we may now go on to the following chapter (31), called The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist (1976, 914926). Here, Marx presents the new industrial masters. But once more, the structure of the text must come as a surprise for anyone expecting a climax in Marxs empirical exposition of English developments. For what follows now actually revolves around the world market (with all its organized, violent aspects). Clearly, English economy is not in focus:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population . . . the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation.

The theme of Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist is then: brutalized commerce, violent extortion of labor time from indigenous people in the south and east, and a colonial system. All in all, it is not surprising that the exposition in Part Eight has been interpreted in different ways by Marx-inspired economists and historians. Also, it is easy to explain why Marx has attracted followers who find it fair to emphasize the role of agricultural relations when it comes to explaining capitalism starting from the concrete situation in England. For Marx definitely does not set himself to analyze developments in any form of (English) industry.

2. Industry in the Form of Domestic Handicrafts

In English historiography, there has been a tendency to connect the development of capitalism with wool production. An outstanding example is Eleanora Carus-Wilson. For her, the structure of [this] great industry in England at the close of the Middle Ages was inevitably capitalist, all because of the involvement of merchant capital: the clothiers . . . lived by the merchants (Carus-Wilson, 6823, 688). But evidently this does not localize any capitalism in the production process proper, and no investigation of the sources of accumulation of industrial capital can take its point of departure from work processes of the clothiers.

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Corresponding views among historians in the 19th century, based perhaps on dubious interpretations of production relations, may hint at why Marx found it acceptable to focus on world trade when it came to the genesis of the industrial capitalist. For the fortunes that by and by were invested in the processing of wool generally emerged in a context of export trade. Also, it is quite right that here, capitalist relations are limited to mercantile wealth, for English wool production was not developed organically with manufactory-based work. one should note that the domestic, or petty-bourgeois, organization of wool production was essentially a consequence of the strong position of the English smallholder after the Black Death (see esp. Power, 1965, 3738). The enclosures movement could not radically cut the ties between the domestic system and wool production, and the class of smaller peasants was only slowly decimated. Their existence hampered the opportunities of the capital farmer, and must have reduced a possible expansion of any agriculture based on wage labor. The Brenner Debate seems at least to show a consciousness of this by all parties. Finally, the issue is important for any transition theory based on Marxian notions of feudalism and capitalism. As Marx underlined, the transition between these western systems coincided with a negation of the negation of an originally individual property, restoring a new form of collectivity (cf. Marx, 1976, 929). Without the original existence in England of a large class of free individual peasants with access to domestic textile production, history would have taken another direction. They produced an all-pervading system of judicial presuppositions, of coinage, mutual confidence and puritanism, that helped capitalism pass from possibility to actuality. But from where did this actuality emerge?

3. Pre-Machine Manufactory Production, 15401640

It was not until some publications by Nef, starting in 1934, that one was confronted with systematic material that could be used to apply Marxs general theory of the stages of capitalism to the English case. Nef maintained that the technological upheavals after 1780 took place in an industrial environment which had been formed through a remarkable rise in productivity, technical efficiency and organizational levels in the time-span 1540 to 1640. This led to a multiplication of

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private ventures in many industries during the phenomenally rapid expansion of mining and manufacturing that began about 1575 (Nef, 1940, 106). The turning-point came with the English crowns confiscation of monastic riches. We shall now have a brief look at some of Nefs results. 1) Appearance of new industries. The changes in the relations of production that followed upon the reformation led to the introduction of a series of new industries in England. Alum and copperas [ferrous sulphate] factories, the first sugar refineries, and the first considerable saltpeter works were all introduced into the country from abroad (Nef, 1934, 56). of such enterprises, Nef writes:
The important thing about the new Elizabethan industries was that in all of them plant was set up involving investments far beyond the sums which groups of master-craftsmen could muster, even if these artisans were men of some small substance.

He mentions examples like that of John Browne, who in 1613 had 200 hands employed in his cannon foundry in Kent; 50 years earlier, John Spilmans paper mill in the same area employed scores of hands, while in gunpowder factories, also in Kent, the machinery was perhaps no less costly than at the paper mills (Nef, 1934, 7). As to the industrial infrastructure which emerged, Nef thinks it important that work on copperas, sugar and saltpeter could be done at smaller localities of production, but still needed large additional investments in special devices; to this extent, such types of production could in some ways be compared to mining, as will be seen in a moment. 2) Expansion of old industries. The possibilities for investment which were consequences of the reformation where monies from the crown were channeled to entrepreneurs led to even larger basic investments and a rising number of workers in several older industries (specifically, Nef, 1958, 47). Mining of coal and iron ore are the most important cases (see also Woodward, 1963, 162). Progress in these branches had to do with the great increase in demand for coal. Production increased about 800% in the period we are considering, something that in itself can be taken as an indicator of the capitalist character of the new production (Nef, 1934,

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10). This led to extensive technical improvements in mining. Some were able to multiply their production capacity five or ten times during the period. Analogous results appeared in the mining of copper, lead, tin and silver. Blast furnaces came into extensive use only after 1540. Steel manufactures appeared, from about half way into Elizabeths reign. 3) Discovery and application of new technical methods. Such improvements, vital to possibilities of accumulating capital, was dominated by the necessity to employ coal in great quantities.
The substitution of coal for wood frequently involved technical problems of considerable magnitude in processes other than smelting, and in industries other than metallurgy. By successful solution of a number of these problems early in the 17th century, the British were already making a positive contribution to industrial technology. (Nef, 1934, 15.)

For instance, about 1610, glass-making was transformed by the discovery of the method of closing the clay crucibles used for melting, leading also to the important invention of the cementation process for steel manufacture. Coke was discovered, helping to hasten the speed of inventions leading to the construction of new furnaces, fit to avoid the damaging effects of coal fire on the quality of the raw materials with which it came in contact (Nef, 1934, 15, 16). This conclusion of Nefs does not seem exaggerated:
It was probably not, as has been supposed, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the contrast between industrial progress in England and in continental countries was most striking, but in the two centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution. (1934, 24.)

Let us now examine Nefs results somewhat more closely, and compare them to the role of manufacture proper in Marxs theory. First, consider an example of the popular reception of the new kind of industry. For instance, the capitalist, manufacture-based character of alum production was colorfully presented in a source from 1619. one George Lowe called this type of production
a distracted worke in severall places and of sundry partes not possible to be performed by anie one man nor by a fewe. But by a multitude of the baser sort, of whom the most part are idle, careless and false in their labor.

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Such a lament could be said to reproduce some essential points in the production of the period of manufactures, as Marx presented it in Capital: We are talking about owners or foremen with ties to a core force of reliable workers. Without this, production could scarcely get started. In many branches, skilled workers were recruited from the Continent, where arts were more developed than in England (Nef, 1934, 12, passim). These were privileged employees. Downwards in the hierarchy, workers often were recruited from the ranks of the unskilled, who had had to leave their villages as a consequence of enclosures (Nef, 1934, 22). We also recognize a common feature in all kinds of manufactory, namely, a marked lack of work discipline: The complaint that the workers lack discipline runs through the whole of the period of manufacture, Marx writes (1976, 490). Lowes outburst also reveals the fear and awe in contemporary opinion of the synergetic effects of workers in cooperation. Looked at in comparison with modes of production in the Middle Ages, it was something new to experience how the results of production could be swelled up simply through letting people work together. This was a basic principle in manufacture: Starting out from handicraft production, it joined a number of workers under the same roof, and treated space and time in economical ways, so that the physical result of production became significantly more voluminous than if it had been collected from an equal number of scattered artisans. Let us now take a closer look at Marxs view of the relation between manufacture (conceived as a mode of production) and the large-scale industry that emerged later, after 1780. Rounding off his chapter on division of labor and manufacture, he says:
one of its [manufactures] most finished products was the workshop for the production of the instruments of labour themselves, and particularly the complicated pieces of mechanical apparatus already being employed. A machine-factory, says ure, displayed the division of labour in manifold gradations the file, the drill, the lathe, having each its different workmen in the order of skill. This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufacture, produced in its turn machines. It is machines that abolish the role of the handicraftsman as the regulating principle of social production. (Marx, 1976, 490ff.)3

3 The quote is from ures book, The Philosophy of Manufactures (London, 1835).

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At the beginning of the chapter Machinery and Large-Scale Industry, Marx writes:
In manufacture, the transformation of the mode of production takes labourpower as its starting-point. In large-scale industry, on the other hand, the instruments of labour are the starting point. (Marx, 1976, 492.)

He then presents the following reflection:

All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism and finally the tool or working machine. The motor mechanism acts as the driving force of the mechanism as a whole. It either generates its own motive power, like the steam engine, the electro-magnetic machine etc., or it receives its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel from the descent of water down an incline . . . (Marx, 1976, 494.)

He goes on to explain that the industrial revolution takes hold of the working machine, makes it more effective, starting a historical process that tends to steadily reduce the immediate dependence on human hands in production (and, at the same time, enforcing work discipline). From this it can be seen that Marx, if ever so indirectly, counts on a dynamic historical transition from manufacture to large-scale industry. The condition for such a transition is that both forms are connected to markets, and that both of them as Marx implies at the beginning of the chapter on large-scale industry, five chapters before the treatment of primitive accumulation aim at cheapen[ing] commodities and, by shortening the part of the working day in which the worker works for himself, to lengthen the other part, the part he gives to the capitalist for nothing (Marx, 1976, 492). In its turn, this means that the connection between these forms and their market is based on the existence of wage labor, that is, production of surplus value. The competition that we associate with the existence of a capitalist market is therefore in its origin a competition among industrial capitalists. If the industrial revolution, and thus large-scale industry as we know it today, originates through construction of working machines, it is fair to suppose that manufacture, insofar as it is engined by market imperatives based on capitalist competition, must be based on the

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development of other parts of the machinery, primarily on the motor mechanism. It was this that marked the industrial development in England between 1540 and 1780. It was no coincidence that Nef came to act as a pioneer in the analysis of this tendency: He wrote the classical work The Rise of the British Coal Industry. There, he estimated that about one-third of the expanding volume of excavated coal went to industrial purposes towards the end of the 17th century. This judgment was for some time the object of extensive criticism, but is now rehabilitated(Berg, 1996, 95). In addition, Nef put much weight on describing progress in the development of transmission, based on mechanisms powered by horses and water. The very possibility of using coal as a substitute for charcoal, a fuel which became more and more scarce as a consequence of the relatively limited forest areas in England, opened possibilities for great changes in metallurgy and mining, especially through inventions, use of machinery and big furnaces. Nef noted that the demand for labor admittedly rose not quite as fast as production, but this was because the mines became more and more difficult to utilize, because of inflowing water (Nef, 1934, 16). This in turn led to the introduction of coal-fuelled devices powered by vapor to pump water out of the mineshafts which made the excavation more costly, but whose efficiency led to the construction of scores of pumping stations at mines. This is a dynamic that points towards a capitalist economy driven by manufactory, an economy containing both a broad inner market and a proletarian population, taking part in this market. one side of the equation is that production, not least in coal excavation itself, now necessitates a more costly technical apparatus, meaning rising costs of real basic investment. It was no longer probable that individual, petty investors were able to act as industrial entrepreneurs. Nefs investigations into the size of basic investments in the period following the confiscation of monasteries tell us indirectly how important it is to conceive capitalist enterprise as a relation with its origin in circulation. Capital always starts as money fortune, and it aims to valorize itself through productive exploitation of labor. The result of capitalist activity proper is consequently a sum of money: Its movement in its totality is, in a shortened form, MM', as Marx notes in his model of reproduction a passage from a given sum of money to a larger one.

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The other side of the equation has to do with the fact that the costly total investments in the period under consideration cheapened products not only through the productivity of labor, but also through mass production of commodities. In many branches, coal contributed to a reduction in product quality, since its combustion is much more impure than that of charcoal. Simultaneously with the rise in the volume of production per time unit, it thus was impossible to limit distribution to the luxury market; products had to be sold on a mass market, and this went especially for glass manufactures and brickworks:
Quite apart from the direct influence of the substitution of coal for wood in encouraging large-scale manufacture, it is clear that the inventions making this substitution possible enabled several capitalistic industries, which would otherwise have withered, to flourish as they could not in foreign countries lacking cheap and easily accessible coal supplies. The progress during the seventeenth century of brick-making and commercial glass-making, both of which had been of little importance before Elizabeths reign, would have been impossible but for the technical changes in the processes. (Nef, 1934, 18.)

4. Empirical Notes on Marxs Manufacture

Maxine Berg is one of the few who have tried to analyze Marxs model of manufacture in connection with an empirical investigation of the rise of British industry. She stresses, rightly, how the crucial passages in Capital are in want of illustrations from contemporary England:
The best historical example Marx could find to fit the criteria of his model of manufacture was the engineering workshop of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In spite of the allusions to rural industry and centralized production, then, Marxs model of manufactures seems to have been a large workshop in the hands of a capitalist and organized on the basis of wage labour. (Berg, 1998, 63ff.)

In general, we may say that this objection to Marx reflects the fact that he chose to treat manufacture from the technical side, and consequently was not motivated to concentrate on the essential differences between the Continental European and English industrial environments.

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Berg continues, with descriptions of English manufactures from the last part of the 18th century, calling Marxs conception of manufacture retrospective (Berg, 64ff). But in fact it would seem quite in order to consider manufacture in a retrospective way. It is only to be expected that one will find the presumptively classical cases in the last part of the period. Nobody, Marx least of all, could have expected to find advanced examples as early as the 1550s. on the contrary, in the middle of the 16th century we should expect to come across distinct starting points, but hardly more than that. Thus, we have to start with what Marx takes to be the essentials of manufacture, and look for such criteria. Such essential features obviously are: Capitalist organization, i.e., wage labor, based on tool labor. The manufactures developed this work in the form of handicraft, but this handicraft, even in advanced manufactures, could be reduced to single operations, performed by masses of unskilled laborers. Therefore, we should be allowed to stress the manual character of tool labor rather than its level of virtuosity, even if the latter was always present among strata of skilled workers in manufacture. As to branches in mining, it may be problematic to consider them as manufacture in the sense we are using the word here. on the other hand, it is not unreasonable to take them to depend on manual labor performed by simple tools, by cooperating people, mostly unskilled, under one roof. All of these characteristics are present in regular manufacture. A transmission machinery (in a figurative sense), namely pumping devices, was joined to the mining operations. Besides, mining was always accompanied by employment of skilled foremen. Furthermore, mining most certainly took part in the social division of labor which in one form or another was reflected in the construction of all manufactures proper. As I have already implied, it is possible to count coal mining as a condition for most of the capitalist manufacture in England. The most important thing is, perhaps, that like all manufactures, it was based on wage labor, cooperation and on formal subsumption of labor under capital. This description of what really took place in Britain (centered on coal production) fits very well with Marxs general view that a mode of production is something that emerges spontaneously. But as long as he, in critically important passages, limits his exposition of formal subsumption to classical manufacture, the description does not seem

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very adequate compared to his correct reminder that this very same manufacture towered up as an artificial economic construction, with a narrow technical basis, and therefore had to be pushed aside by a new social force (cf. Marx, 1976, 490). For this description hardly depicted those workshops, mines and mills where the real basis for a revolution in machine tools developed. However, Marxs general method and his openness to empirical variations allow for a much more sophisticated view: In his first draft for the closure of the first volume of Capital, he gives a definition that has no rigid connection with manufacture. Here we read of formal subsumption that capital can set it in motion in any existing work process, developed in more archaic modes of production (Marx, 1969, 54).4 A problematic point is that the manufactory-mode of production in this period did not manage to get a real hold over the processing of woollens. Their production was not in any particular way being centralized prior to the industrial revolution proper. An intermediate period of manufacture did not show up in these branches. However, it is just as undeniable that the economic base of Great Britain in the wake of the industrial revolution underwent a rapid change from textile-based production to heavy industry, based on coal and iron. If we look at economic development from this perspective, it should be easy to accept the need for focusing precisely on these branches in the way they were developed in the period of manufacture. Furthermore, there are many indications that the handicraftbased textile industry was intertwined with classical manufacture. Berg presents some examples:
Eighteenth-century manufacture was practiced in all manner of different settings; it was organized along many different lines, each of which was rational or legitimate in its own environment. Putting-out systems coexisted with artisan and co-operative forms of production, and all of these systems frequently interacted with some type of manufacture or proto-factory. (Berg, 7071.)

Similarly, she comments on conditions in Kentish Weald as early as in the 16th century:
4 It should be noted that Marxs work on the draft in question, known as Results of the Immediate Process of Production, went on well into the year 1865. When the author at last decided to skip it, he may have had too little time left to concentrate optimally on the version that was to take its place.

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It had a rural textile industry organized on a putting-out system which employed peasant labour, but it also had an important iron industry organized in centralized units around water-power blast furnaces. (Berg, 71.)

Kurt gren estimates that John Winchcombe, who owned a textile manufacture in Newbury, employed 1140 persons, of whom many were women and children (gren, 60). D. C. Coleman shows how the 17th-century English iron industry often took the form of
[an] integrated plant, with furnace, forge, water-course, and water wheel, [which] could demand investment on a scale open only to landowners, merchants, and others with ready access to finance. The Earl of Rutland, for example, was adding to his landed revenues, between 1600 and the 1630s, net annual profits of around 10001500 from his iron furnace and forge in Yorkshire . . . (Coleman, 1977, 88.)

Apparently, many local economies centered precisely around manufactures. In Berg, we also find instances of handicraft workers in textiles organizing manufactures to take care of specific functions for instance, mills that took over some of the preparatory work with clothes (Berg, 71). As noted by Schorsch, within the interstices of the putting-out network producermanufacturers developed (1980 1981, 421). All in all, it seems fair to consider a certain manufactures system as the actual backbone of English industry during Marxs manufacture period. Not only could the manufacture-based structure appear as a center of local economies; in fact it played a similar role in the British national economy as a whole. We have seen how practically all the types of machinery present prior to the revolutionizing of machine tools from 1780 on were developed to a relative perfection in this period. In its turn, this technology was a crucial factor in the development of a new kind of mass production during the course of the industrial revolution proper. The development of industrial capital was as dependent on motor mechanics and transmission mechanics as on machine tools. In this sense, which is not a secondary one, manufacture is to be understood as a first period of the development of industrialism, taken as a linear structure.

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5. Critique of the Brenner Thesis on Agrarian Capitalism

Now, do the reflections above really hit the main thesis of Brenner and Wood? As the latter writes, the main point for Brenner was to show that there existed an immanent transition from feudal relations to capitalist ones. He had no special intent to describe the capitalist industrial awakening in the process.
Just as Dobb and Hilton, Brenner was looking for a dynamics internal to feudalism. But the crucial difference between his approach and theirs, was that he expressis verbis was on the outlook for an internal dynamics that did not presuppose an already existing capitalist logic. Class struggle figures prominently in his argument, as it did in Dobbs and Hiltons, but in Brenner it is not a question of liberating an impulse toward capitalism. Instead, it is a matter of lords and peasants, in certain specific conditions peculiar to England, involuntarily setting in train a capitalist dynamic while acting, in class conflict with each other, to reproduce themselves as they were. The unintended consequence was a situation in which producers were subjected to market imperatives. So Brenner really did depart from the old model and its tendency to assume the very thing that needs to be explained. (Wood, 2002, 52.)

Methodologically, this is crucial. Brenner is forced to use a model which implies that the result which appeared is to be reached involuntarily an unintended consequence. As such, it can be treated as an effect of what Robert Merton calls a latent or non-manifest function (cf. Merton, 1949, 114136). It is, then, to be taken as a historical result that acts in a coercive way on those who experience it. The imperative in question appears, according to Wood, in the fact that English political relations forced the lords to build a market for leasing contracts, so that farmers in their turn were forced to compete for them a competition that led to a rise in agricultural productivity (Wood, 2002, 53). The lords consequently ended up functioning inside a purely economic regime, and the farmers developed in the same direction. For Wood, this is also the historical background for the specific relation between politics and economy in western societies, with an economy functioning without a basic need for non-economic violence or coercion.

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However, there are problems connected with such a model. For instance, one might ask why the lords should feel compelled to compete among themselves to extract riches from farmers. And even if we accept Woods and Brenners thesis that such a competition may have followed from relations internal to feudalism (and consequently cannot be described as capitalist), a still greater problem arises with the concept of a market that we meet in their work. Wood describes the historical context as follows:
The conditions of tenure were such that growing numbers of tenants were subjected to market imperatives not the opportunity to produce for the market and to grow from petty producers into capitalists but the need to specialize for the market and to produce competitively simply in order to guarantee access to the means of subsistence, and to the land itself. (Wood, ibid.)

If we are to take this literally, the market is here to be understood as an institution whose character is given, and to which one may have a different relation, and on which one may also have different degrees of dependence. Accordingly, Brenner writes of the situation in England toward the dissolution of feudalism, occurring as a consequence of Tudor enclosures:
Because in this system the organizers of production and the direct producers were separated from direct, non-market access to their means of reproduction or subsistence (especially from possession of the land), they had no choice, in order to maintain themselves, but to buy and sell on the market. This meant that they were compelled to produce competitively by way of cost-cutting, and therefore, that they had as a rule to attempt to specialize, accumulate and innovate to the greatest extent possible. (Brenner, 1987b, 214ff.)

Neither Brenner nor Wood make any attempt to define the market. Let us affirm that the market cannot be taken simply as a given institution: It is an interpersonal category, paralleling a reality constructed by men. Since the market is not material in any way (albeit always related precisely to material products), it is shaped by specific inclinations and mentalities, which are identical among those participating in it.

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What Brenner and Wood are saying is that lords and direct producers confronted a market in 15th-century England, and then became dependent on it in a new fashion. But such a market must have had its origin from feudal society. This implies that the elements of the feudal mode of production (which emerged directly from the combined relation of faith-and-coercion between lords and bondsmen related to material production) already had by its side still another element, a market. The relation between lords and bondsmen was tied to agriculture. The contract between them did not include the bondsmans activities in the domestic sphere. Here, spinning and weaving could take place independently of feudal relations. Some of these products could be sold or bartered. The unity of these three elements in fact gives us the feudal social formation, which is the feudal mode of production, with such a market added to it. This market is a mutual understanding between medieval men on the exchanging of surplus products. (This is what Wood calls the opportunity to produce for a market.) At an early stage of its development, it involved the use of coin, which by and by developed into money. Brenner and Wood might very well say that this market is a historical forerunner of the market that was connected with direct producers and landlords in the 15th and 16th centuries. However, if they mean that the same market is in the picture, an additional argument is needed. For these authors now overtly speak of a market that is constructed through the understanding that any product, not only surplus produce, is able to be sold and is expected to be. This means that we have to deal with radically changed ways of thinking, and consequently with relations of production that are quite different from feudal ones. Nefs mass market is the adequate term. But in that case, it is in industry and manufacture, and not in agriculture, that capitalist imperatives have their origin. Therefore, it seems that Brenner and Wood assume the very thing that needs to be explained. In this special case, they abstain from pointing out an earlier development that has transformed mens spiritual and practical horizon from the prevailing conditions of the feudal epoch. As for Wood, she vacillates on this point. on the property relations in English agriculture, she presents the following, comprehensive view:

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The famous triad of landlord, capitalist tenant, and wage labourer was the result, and with the growth of wage labour the pressures to improve labourproductivity also increased. The same process created a highly productive agriculture capable of sustaining a large population not engaged in agricultural production, but also an increasing propertyless mass that would constitute a large wage-labour force and a domestic market for cheap consumer goods a type of market with no historical precedent. This is the background to the formation of English industrial capitalism. (Wood, 2002, 103.)

This text lacks clarity. A decisive point is that Wood does not make a distinction in time between the expropriation of the masses and the emergence of a capitalist agriculture. (In fact, she can even be taken to mean that capitalist agriculture precedes expropriation.) This distinction has to be made, for we must assume that it is precisely the separation between masses and means of production, between the social subject and the social object, which creates that mentality, that special kind of mutual understanding, which makes it possible to say that we have reached a situation without precedence a really new market. In the text, Wood makes clear what she means by direct producers. The concept includes not only farmers, but also workers. But this welcome clarification shows precisely how fragile the theory is. It contends that it is specific for the workers in agriculture that they take part in an imperative of the market. But originally it was the landlords, and thus even the tenant farmers, who were portrayed as subjugated to this imperative. The wage workers in agriculture are real direct immediate producers. They enter the terrain of the imperative only because they are expropriated from the soil, turned into bird-free proletarians. But in this respect they do not differ at all from any other human being expropriated through primitive accumulation. As for Brenner, he argues that the triad and the capitalist structure of agriculture was the constellation behind what distinguished the English industrial development of the early modern period, [namely] its continuous character, so that agricultural improvement . . . directly and indirectly [provided] the growing home market which was necessary for industrial growth (Brenner, 1987a, 53). Empirically, this view coincides with Nefs thesis that there was in fact no hiatus in the development of the British economy in the time span between the reformation and Arkwrights inventions. What

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Brenner is saying is that this continuous development had its roots in agricultural improvement. That remains to be seen! Now, if one compares this to Marxs way of exposition, one will find a crucial difference in the fact that in Capital it is pointed out that the home market in question is generated through the transformation of the free-set workers former means of nourishment into material elements of variable capital . . . [of] the industrial capitalist (Marx, 1976, 908ff). That is, the market in question, with its specific capitalist character, is there only because an industrial proletariat is also present. on the one hand, this furnishes us with a welcome concretization of the problematic of the theme Brenner is investigating, namely the de facto structure of the market which is capable of giving (and absorbing) imperatives. But on the other hand, we are precisely at the point where we have found that Marxs argument suffers from a lack of empirical force. Instead of giving examples from contemporary English industry, he turns to a model-building inspired by Mirabeau. Towards the end of Brenners The Agrarian Roots we get some shadowy anticipations of a more realistic approach to the question of the character of the market. Brenner here describes the imperative situation by writing that the peasants, under the newly emergent social-property relations, had no choice [italics in original] but to respond to the rising market (Brenner, 1987b, 301). But clearly, this places the provenance of the new kind of market (if a new kind it was) outside the immediate circle of agricultural economics. As far as I can see, that is precisely an implied point in Brenners way of concluding these passages:
It was not . . . the rise of the market in itself which made for the rapid differentiation of the peasantry . . . but rather the social-property relationships which made the English agricultural producers fully dependent upon competitive production. (Brenner, ibid.)

However, such a dependence, so long as it is full and developed, can scarcely exist without being a mental phenomenon pervading all classes and individuals in society. It is not far-fetched to compare this to Hobbes brilliant anticipation of human fear and other mental

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states with a provenance from the unstable situation of man in unsafe times of transition. It is precisely a description of the market in its oncoming capitalist form. The capitalist market is thus not to be separated from capitalist relations of production in general. The fact that such a separation is made by Brenner may be connected with the fact that he overtly uses the concept of capital to cover means of production and investments in pre-industrial societies, and consequently terms the corresponding surplus as profit (while at the same time rent is labeled feudal!) and even operates with the concept of factor prices for such pre-capitalist relations (cf. Brenner, 1987a, 31, 33; 1987b, 213). When Brenner finally takes steps to combine his concept of social-property relations with capitalism as a system which includes industry at large, he finds that most significant is the tendency of capitalist property relations to enforce, by way of competition, a systematic drive towards specialization and improvement as an ongoing process in the economy as a whole (Brenner, 1987b, 311). But when it comes to exemplifying the technologies and the division of labor that follow, he concentrates strongly on agricultural progress, and then switches over to pointing out that the consequential freeing of labor opened the way for the rise of new industry in the neighboring vicinities, among them leather goods (connected with animal-raising in the area), lace, hosiery and cloth-making.5 He adds that in some areas, industries actually declined as a consequence of the expansion of grain-growing, and adds a short remark on the fact that there would be industry (and non-food commercial agriculture) elsewhere that would be supported by grain. The picture thus made is very well aligned with the view that English industrialization in its actual historical development was intimately dependent on capitalist agriculture, even as regards the material products manufactured. However, this way of looking at things seems unacceptable, for empirical reasons. Here, it should suffice to point to the work done by Nef and his new adherents in recent years. Nef showed that the core of the English industrialization was connected with industries that in fact
5 Somewhat later in his text, quoting Thirsk (161ff), Brenner is nonetheless accepting her views, even when they seem to imply a broader basis for industry.

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concentrated on products with no close connection to agricultural ones, and that this was the case even for industrial products making up the mass market.6 If this is the case, there is no reason to give priority to agriculture in an explanation of the emergence of the imperative. That England came to be the country where a new, general understanding of a market emerged, i.e., where a capitalist market was generated, is nothing but a consequence of the primitive expropriation in Tudor times. With a stroke, the immediate producers were placed in a new situation. They found themselves in a coercive relation that made it imperative to sell their own powers for a wage. Looked at in their immediacy, they had become potential wage workers. It is precisely such an event which is a prerequisite to call a market capitalist. Such a development had still another prerequisite, namely an extensive circulation of coin, developing into a country-wide circulation of money. If such a condition were not in place, it would be impossible for the masses to perceive their environment as a market, since it would exclude the concepts of selling and buying even of the commodity labor power. This is one of the reasons why the medieval domestic handicrafts, outside of feudal jurisdiction but inside the feudal social formation, are so important in an historical explanation of capitalism. For no matter how extensive trade and coinage circulation actually were in the European orbit, or how much the international and/or
6 This is the place to give a summary of Nefs position in contemporary historical scholarship. Problems of space forces me to a brevity which is out of proportion with the true significance of his work. As for the rehabilitation indicated by Berg, it is due above all to Hatchers comprehensive work on the coal industry (1993, esp., in general terms, 89). Cf. also Harris (1998, esp. 555), and Farnies extensive comments on the latter (Farnie, 2000). Several extant, influential comments on Nefs theses rest simply on misapprehensions. A critical one is presented in Pomeranz, 2000 (16) who overlooks the role of the early industrial coal market, and the creation of the original mass market. Furthermore, cf. Inikori (2002, 39), who writes against Nef that new industries encouraged by the government, which Thirsk noted, were not successfully developed; but Nefs point is precisely that British entrepreneurship after 1540 did not have this character. Also, Inikori (esp. 39), Musson (1978, 43) and Coleman (1977, 88, 6970) make polemics against Nefs view of Englands foreign market, while it is the home market that is obviously the main point of the discussion. Still, Inikori at least notes that Brenner disagrees with the above-mentioned writers, and that he thinks that from about 1600, a growing English home market was absorbing record imports of commodities (Brenner, 1993, 42). The existence of such a market is probably to be reconciled with the structure Nef has in mind. Brenner writes explicitly of a growing purchasing power of middle- and lower-class English people in the early Stuart period (italics added).

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intercontinental commodity exchange grew, it all went on through a market that had such domestic work as its basis. The place of the latter in the feudal social formation at an early stage was demonstrated by the form in which town handicrafts expanded. They were adapted to the hierarchy of feudalism (guild-structured hierarchies from master to apprentice to day laborer) and had a conservative stamp (prohibition of usury, rules for the curtailment of production, a manifold of holidays, and so on). Consequently, it should be clear that the model for the transition between the Middle Ages and the new age which is in the picture here, is at least as immanent as that proposed by Brenner and Wood. As regards the relation of all this to the position taken by Marx, it should be stressed that when he is writing about transitions from one historical level to another, he is not talking simply of a transition between modes of production, but primarily between social formations. From this methodological point of view, what is immanently present in the feudal social formation is not fully described through the relation between peasant and landlord which Brenner and Wood actually seem to imply. It is another matter that the transition naturally has to include the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, as Marx says (1976, 915ff). In this way, it is all the more easy to avoid possible misunderstandings of Marxs concept of primitive accumulation, a phenomenon that is not restricted to expropriation from the soil. Marx writes:
The different moments of primitive accumulation can be assigned in particular to Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and England, in more or less chronological order. These different moments are systematically combined together at the end of the seventeenth century in England; the combination embraces the colonies, the national debt, the tax system and the system of protection. (Marx, 1976, 915.)

As regards Holland and France, it certainly was not only the politics of colonialism, but also the important manufactures, more advanced than the English, which manifested themselves as such moments. When the Iberian countries are mentioned, the most likely reason is that their policy laid the foundation for all the subsequent European colonialism and overseas piracy, primarily through imports of great volumes of precious metals, some of which entered the circulation sphere related to western

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Europes material economy. In England, conditions had been laid down that made it possible for these volumes to form capitals, because they triggered by the price revolution, which they also instigated could stimulate commodity production and turn the whole of the population into a mass of points of circulation, to use Marxs expression. This moment in primitive accumulation growth of the movement of circulation is part of what made Sweezy and others suppose that capitalism emerged from trade. This was and remains incorrect, since circulation need not be reduced to trade. And capitals point of departure from circulation is, furthermore, not a starting point from money to the extent that it takes part in trade, but only insofar as it buys labor power, that is, takes part in a modern market. Independently of the volumes of Iberian means of circulation, they originally stream into a pre-capitalist feudal market, whose form is born through the domestic handicrafts of the Middle Ages. only through the expropriation of the masses do they take part in the emergence of capitalism, and then their functioning is at least as fundamental as the competition among English farmers. In fact, any theory to the effect that the genesis of capitalism lies in the expropriation of the masses in the countryside tends to break both with a commercial model and with Brenners and Woods. Nefs works give us an impressive reminder. In concluding his article from 1934 he wrote:
It is no longer possible to find a full explanation of the great inventions and the new factories of the late eighteenth century in a preceding commercial revolution which increased the size of markets. (Nef, 1934, 22ff).

Now, one can compare this with another conclusion, namely by Wood, who sums up a paragraph on agrarian capitalism by saying that
it was not merchants or manufacturers who drove the process that propelled the early development of capitalism. The transformation of social property relations was firmly rooted in the countryside, and the transformation of English trade and industry was the result more than the cause of Englands transition to capitalism. (Wood, 2002, 129.)

It may seem hard to believe, but the fact is that Wood puts forward this argument without having presented any overview of either the movement of merchant capital, or of English manufactures.

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Still worse, Wood presents her main argument concerning agrarian capitalism without seeing the need to justify it scientifically. What she is saying, through an argument one only dimly perceives at first, but which then takes on distinct contours towards the end of a book like The Origin of Capitalism, is that
the specific dynamics we associate with capitalism were already in place in English agriculture before the proletarianization of the workforce. In fact, those dynamics were a major factor in bringing about the proletarianization of labour in England. The critical factor was the market dependence of producers, as well as appropriators, and the new social imperatives created by that market dependence. (Wood, 2002, 131.)

This looks like a perception of a capitalism without any characteristics of capitalism. Without taking notice of the documented results of proletarianization inside mass production in manufactures, Wood starts out from the situation in the 17th century, 50 to 150 years after the confiscation of monasterial lands:
It is important to keep in mind that competitive pressures, and the new laws of motion that went with them, depended in the first instance not on the existence of a mass proletariat, but on the existence of market-dependent tenantproducers. Wage labourers, and especially those that depended entirely on wages for their livelihood and not just for seasonal supplements . . . remained very much a minority in seventeenth-century England. (Wood, 2002, 130.)

The problem appears distinctly in Brenners polemic against his critics in his essay on the agrarian rootsof European capitalism:
My point is simply that the different social-productive conditions which had come to prevail in England and France by the later seventeenth century made for different strategies to best protect and improve landlord incomes. In England, especially in the grain-growing regions, capitalist farmers controlled a highly capital-intensive husbandry, and the number of landholding peasants had declined drastically. In this situation landlord incomes depended on the tenants ability to farm effectively on the basis of capital investment. Capitalist profits were, in short, a condition for landlord rent. (Brenner, 1987b, 315.)

Nor was it unusual to convert arable land to pasture. Consequently, smaller farmers were thrown out, and instead a few bigger ones appeared.

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The build-up of productive units, the input of capital and the acceleration of innovation were what was required in both cases. That this was, indeed, what took place provides convincing evidence for the grip of capitalist production relations on English agriculture in this period, as well as the superiority of these relations. (Brenner, 1987b, 316.)

This may well be a correct empirical narrative concerning certain capitalist relations in England in the late 17th century. But Brenners problem is that he supposes that the same narrative gives a picture of the genesis of capitalism. Here, he cannot present other than purely verbal arguments. In a discussion of the situation prior to the start of the enclosures movement, it is forbiddingly incorrect to talk about input of capital in the above sense. In that case, we would have had to use a concept of input of fortunes, because capital is a social relation (appearing in amounts of money) which does not emerge prior to a mass proletarianization. Seen in this perspective, the thesis that capitalist relations of production first emerged in agriculture seems rather fantastic. Before the enclosures set in, we have a feudal economy, where phenomena in the market cannot be used to explain any breakthrough toward a new society.

6. Methodology of the Study of Transition

The problem for Brenner and Wood is of a methodological nature: how to explain the genesis of capitalism without taking for granted what should be proven? They criticize their forerunners for presupposing a capitalist mentality a will to investment beyond all feudal barriers, prior to capitalism itself. They want to explain the context through latent functions, whose actual results were not intended by those who made the first moves in the game. But the functions with which they operate cannot produce the expected results. However, the problem evaporates if one realizes the possibility that the latent function can be found inside a system of enterprises which (only) formally or potentially can be called capitalist, and which actually take part in a network of social division of labor. We need not go far to locate such a possibility. It is a clear theoretical option, and also an actual empirical one. As we have seen, Nef contended that the development of important (de facto) manufacturing

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branches in England at the beginning of the 17th century would have been impossible without the substitution of coal for charcoal. Furthermore, he pointed out that this had to do with the fact that coal was harder to obtain in England than in other (competing) nations. Consequently, investments in mining had to be relatively more extensive in England, stimulating the transformation of large fortunes into capital. This generated a growing demand for investment in auxiliary industries. Among these, in turn, there existed enterprises that could specialize in finishing and improvements of combustion processes. The result was a steady progression in product quality wherever coal was employed virtually the whole of the English industry. This is the crucial point: coal proved a necessity to maintain a handicraft-based economy when the reservoirs of charcoal ebbed out. It was a less adequate product, since charcoal burns in a much cleaner fashion. Thus, this innovation was to some extent a necessary step backward making a virtue of necessity. Nef presented the justified conclusion:
Wherever coal was substituted for wood in manufactures, it tended not only to increase the costs of the installation, but also to cheapen the quality of the product and reduce the prestige attaching to manual work. By cheapening the quality of the product it widened the market for it, and thus further increased the advantages of large-scale production. (Nef, 1934, 18.)

If the masses who had been proletarianized through the enclosures movement were to be transformed into modern proletarians, there had to exist an inner market for industrys own products. This is precisely what emerges through coal-based industry. To maintain the market in its existing form, industrial producers were forced to actions which transformed the market into a mass market. In this process, the proletarians took part simply because they were expropriated people who could get in contact with means of consumption only through existing money. Simultaneously, their demand increased the market still more. The original and decisive latent function did not consist in a specific relation to the market (as Brenner and Wood think), but in a transformation of this very market. The original abundance of charcoal for industrial purposes tended in itself to uphold industries dependent on pure combustion of this auxiliary material. In an economy of the precapitalist type, this implied an entrepreneurial conservatism, leaning on the given

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dependence on the high-quality luxury market. This kind of market was consistent with feudal relations, with a demand dominated by the nobility, and a mentality that, as Wood implies, was founded in the opportunity to produce for a market, not in coercion to do so. The technical deterioration that followed upon the new dependence on coal, however, compelled the entrepreneur to expand the production of use-values in order to cover his expenses as the quality fell together with product prices. With one stroke, he was placed in a position structurally identical to the one we today know as the position of the industrial capitalist. The fundamental drive to capitalist accumulation was introduced in the beginning most splendidly illustrated by the blossoming of new enterprises based on purer combustion. The entrepreneur had been forced to become a modern capitalist simply to survive in the given conditions. As Machiavelli had foreseen, the drive to survival had become a drive to expand. Simultaneously, the process of ideological disarmament of the artisan aristocracy got fully started, and the way was open, as Marx foresaw in the methodological introduction to the Grundrisse, to perceive labor as a simple category, since it actually existed as simple average labor. The advent of the price revolution in the 16th century completed the picture. It meant production to steadily rising end prices, but a tendential reduction of real wages, since workers were forced to live by purchasing products. The very need to invest in a relatively more costly basket of means of production, combined with the reduction in the price of labor power and tendentially sinking product quality, created an exclusive opportunity, since the need to use large sums of money in investments facilitated the transition to a capitalist command structure vis--vis living labor, while the same function cheapened labor power and made it possible to employ a relatively high number of workers. This was a latent function inside the development of manufactory proper, indicating that this form represented in fact the real transitional stage between feudal and capitalist society.
University of Oslo IFIKK (Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Arts and Ideas) PO Box 1020 Blindern N-0315 Oslo, Norway jorgen.sandemose@ifikk.uio.no

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gren, K. 1985. Et nytt Europa. Aschehougs Verdenshistorie, bd. 8. oslo, Norway: Aschehoug. Aston, T. H., and C. H. E. Philpin, eds. 1987. The Brenner Debate. Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. Cambridge, England: Cambridge university Press. Berg, Maxine. 1996. The Age of Manufactures 17001820. London: Routledge. Brenner, Robert. 1987a. Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. Pp. 1063 in Aston and Philpin. . 1987b. The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism. Pp. 213327 in Aston and Philpin. . 1993. Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and Londons Overseas Traders, 15501653. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton university Press. Carus-Wilson, Eleanora. 1987. The Triumph of the English Industry. Pp. 674690 in Postan and Mathias. Coleman, D. C. 1977. The Economy of England 14501750. oxford, England: oxford university Press. Cooper, John P. 1987. In Search of Agrarian Capitalism. Pp. 138191 in Aston and Philpin. Farnie, Douglas E. 2000. Review of J. R. Harris. Technology and Culture, 41 (April), 355357. Harris, J. R. 1998. Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. Hatcher, John. 1993. The History of the British Coal Industry. Volume 1. oxford, England: Clarendon Press. Hilton, Rodney, ed. 1976. The Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism. London: New Left Books. Inikori, Joseph I. 2002. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England. A Study in International Trade and Economic Development. Cambridge, England: Cambridge university Press. Marx, Karl. 1969 . Resultate des unmittelbaren Produktionsprozesses. Frankfurt, Germany: Verlag Neue Kritik. . 1972. zur Kritik der Politischen konomie. MarxEngels Werke, Bd. 13. Berlin: Dietz. . 1973. Grundrisse. Translated by Martin Nicolaus. London: Penguin. . 1976. Capital. Volume I. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin. Merton, Robert. 1949. On Theoretical Sociology. New York: The Free Press. Musson, Albert E. 1978. The Growth of British Industry. New York: Holmes & Meier. Nef, John u. 1932. The Rise of the British Coal Industry. Vol. III. London: Routledge and Sons. . 1934. The Progress of Technology and the Growth of Large-Scale Industry in Britain, 15401640. The Economic History Review, V:1, 324. . 1940. Industry and Government in France and England, 15401640. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Volume XV. New York: Russell & Russell. . 1958. Cultural Foundations of Industrial Civilization. Cambridge, England: Cambridge university Press.

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Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton university Press. Postan, M. M., and P. Mathias, eds. 1987. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Volume II: Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages. Second Edition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge university Press. Power, Eileen. 1965. The Wool Trade in English Medieval History. oxford, England: oxford university Press. Schorsch, Louis L. 19801981. Direct Producers and Rise of Factory System. Science & Society, 44:4, 401442. Thirsk, Joan. 1979. Economic Policy and Projects. The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England. oxford, England: Clarendon Press. Wood, Ellen M. 2002. The Origin of Capitalism. London: Verso. Woodward, G. W. o. 1963. A Short History of Sixteenth-Century England. London: Blanford.

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Science & Society, Vol. 76, No. 4, october 2012, 495520

The Relationship Between Liberalism and Socialism

ED ROOKSBY
ABSTRACT: Socialism is best regarded as the radicalization and transcendence of liberalism. Socialism draws on the normative principles that drove the bourgeois revolutions and which liberal society professes to embody, and demands that these ideals are more fully realized. In forcing liberalism forward in such a way, socialists push liberalism beyond itself. As tienne Balibar argues, liberalisms core normative commitments equality and liberty exist in a state of tension with their supposed institutionalization in the structures of liberal society. The very universalism of these principles generates a dynamic of struggle that tends to outrun the structural limits of liberal capitalism. Further, ideals of liberty and equality are more suitably grounded in a view of humans as irreducibly social beings rather than in liberalisms radically individualist ontology. A socialist society embodying an ethics of cooperative, reciprocal self-realization would realize liberty and equality much more fully than is possible in liberal society.

The human being is in the most literal sense a zoon politikon, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Karl Marx (1973, 84) [T]he best of liberalism is too good to be left to the liberals. Anthony Arblaster (1984, 348)

W
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HAT IS THE RELATIoNSHIP between liberalism and socialism? How can we best understand the relationship, in conceptual and historical terms, between the normative
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principles, social and political values and political practices of these two great political traditions? To ask this question, from a socialist perspective at least, is also, simultaneously, to ask what socialism is for, as I shall suggest in this paper, it is impossible to comprehend socialism as a political philosophy unless one situates it in relation to liberalism. This is because, in effect, socialism emerges out of the tension that is present at the very core of liberalism. Socialism, as I will argue, is best regarded as the radicalization and transcendence of liberalism rather than as something significantly separate from it. Socialism is the fulfilment of the central promises of liberal modernity and is, in this sense, more liberal than liberalism itself. The first part of the paper is taken up with a brief discussion of the prevailing view, among the majority of liberals as well as a significant proportion of socialist thinkers, that liberalism and socialism are largely distinct, if not completely antithetical, politicalphilosophical traditions. I also set out why it is important that socialists reject this view. I then move on to provide an exposition and definition of liberalism in terms of its core principles and its underlying ontological basis.1 Drawing on the work of tienne Balibar, I then argue that the core normative commitments of liberalism equality and liberty exist in a state of radical and unstable tension with their supposed institutionalization in the structures of liberal society. The very universalism of these principles generates a dynamic of social struggle that tends to run up against the structural limits of liberal capitalism. I move on to suggest that the ideals of liberty and equality are more suitably grounded in a view of humans as irreducibly social beings rather than in liberalisms individualist ontology.2

The Prevailing View: Socialism Versus Liberalism

It is a widely shared view among teachers and students of political theory that socialism and liberalism are largely distinct political
1 In this part of the paper I draw heavily on Anthony Arblasters The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism (Arblaster, 1984). Arblaster is not a well-known theorist. Nevertheless his book provides, in my view, one of the best Marxist surveys of the liberal tradition. It is for this reason that I draw closely on his work. 2 What follows draws mostly on secondary sources. This is because I believe, as I aim to show, that a strong understanding of the relationship between liberalism and socialism can be elaborated from an investigation, combination and further development of specific secondary source accounts.

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traditions. Indeed, the majority of mainstream textbooks providing an overview of modern political ideologies draw a clear distinction between them (see, e.g., Freeden, 1996; Adams, 1993; Heywood, 1992). This distinction is seldom absolute socialism and liberalism, it is readily conceded, share much in common but there are, it is argued, essential differences between the two that allow us to distinguish between them as largely separate, even deeply antagonistic, political ideologies. This is the prevailing view among liberals. The distinction usually boils down to purported differences in core principles.3 Socialism, it is often claimed, favors the extension of equality over the extension of liberty, whereas liberalism regards liberty as its primary value, which should be favored over equality where those two values conflict.4 Indeed, as Alex Callinicos points out (Callinicos, 2000, 23) it is one of the main assumptions of the liberal tradition that equality and liberty exist, if not in some zero-sum relationship, then certainly in a fundamental relation of tension so that in many situations one has to choose between the two. This is a view, I shall show, that socialists have good reason to reject. In a closely connected assumption,5 liberals also tend to associate socialism with the expansion of the role and scope of state power and a corresponding reduction in the relative size and significance of the private sphere the sphere of individual freedom, choice and (although many egalitarian liberals6 are less keen on it than are economic liberals) the market. This bears little relation to what most socialist theorists (working in the Marxist tradition at least) actually believe. But it also reflects one of the central limitations of liberal political philosophy its failure to develop conceptual resources necessary to think beyond certain binary and trans-historical either/or combinations: liberty/equality; individual/society; state/market. This, in turn, is rooted in the inadequacies of liberalisms assumptions about human nature and also in
3 The most sophisticated defense of this idea is in Freeden, 1996. 4 The most obvious example is the priority John Rawls assigns in A Theory of Justice to his first principle of justice (concerned with claims of liberty) and its precedence over his second principle (concerned with equality in that it articulates a presumption in favor of equal distribution of goods). 5 For liberals an increase in equality must usually involve a concomitant expansion of state power and, correspondingly, an increase in liberty usually involves a reduction in the states reach and role. 6 Egalitarian liberalism is the name I give (following Callinicos, 2000) to the school of leftleaning liberal political philosophy associated with key figures such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel.

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its congenital inability to conceive of the possibility of social relations substantially different to those that prevail under capitalism. Liberals, however, are not alone in their tendency to draw a sharp distinction between liberalism and socialism. There has been a similar long-standing tendency within socialist thought. This is not the prevailing view among socialists to the same extent that it is among liberals, but it has certainly been influential. It is a way of thinking, perhaps unsurprisingly, most immediately apparent within one of the cruder traditions of socialist thought Stalinism. In Anarchism or Socialism?, for example, Stalin makes a straightforward distinction between liberalism and socialism as mutually opposed class ideologies: The bourgeoisie has its own ideology so-called liberalism, while the proletariat also has its own ideology this, as is well known, is socialism (Stalin, 2008). Further, Mao states, in the (self-explanatorily titled) essay, Combat Liberalism, that Liberalism . . . fundamentally conflicts with Marxism (Mao, 1965, 516). Few socialists today would want to take their theoretical cues from Stalin or Mao, but this same counterposing of socialism and liberalism as stark alternatives is also to be found in more acceptable quarters of the Marxist canon of thinkers. In Our Political Tasks, for example, Trotsky is clear that liberalism and socialism are principles of two irreconcilable worlds capitalism and collectivism, bourgeois and proletariat (Trotsky, 2007), while in 1905 he presents liberalism as nothing more than a dung-heap which contaminates . . . with its own political putrefaction (Trotsky, 1972, 300) opportunist socialism. Among all Marxists it is probably Lenin, however, who has been most influential in propagating this kind of view. Time and again (e.g., Lenin, 1963; 1964; 1965) Lenin draws a sharp dividing line between liberalism and socialism, between proletarian and bourgeois ideology and between proletarian and bourgeois democracy, and this approach has left a significant mark on socialist thought ever since (for more recent examples see Putnam, 1976; Hekmat, 1993). There are several reasons why socialists should reject this approach. Foremost among these is that it is, quite simply, wrong liberalism and socialism are dialectically bound up together. of course, this is just what I aim to show in what follows. However, there are other good reasons which center on the damaging strategic and practical consequences of this approach. First, such a view concedes far too much to liberals and the capitalist social order. It involves an implicit

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surrender to the prevailing liberal view that the democratic rights and liberties that have grown up under liberalism are inextricable from the current social order. If there is some absolute division between liberalism and socialism then socialism cannot inherit liberal rights, liberties, democratic institutions and traditions and so on. Second, and more importantly, it is not simply that this view makes too many concessions to the ideological self-image of liberalism, which tends to see itself as the unsurpassable limit of political progress; it is also dangerous in that it seems to justify and indeed even require the abolition of existing democratic rights and liberties on the part of socialists in power.7 The grotesque history of Stalinism in which communist leaders explained away repression with contemptuous references to bourgeois liberalism is surely reason enough to insist on the necessity of retaining (and extending) liberal rights and liberties under socialism and thus to insist on what must follow logically from this that there is no absolute division between the liberal and socialist orders, between liberalism and socialism.

Liberalism: A Definition and Exposition

Let us move to a close analysis of liberalism so that we can start to develop a precise understanding of its intimate relationship with socialism. Those seeking to define liberalism often attempt to identify a series of fixed values that are taken to be its essential properties. Such values might include, for example: liberty, respect for the individual, autonomy, privacy, equality, democracy, tolerance, the rule of law and human rights. Less frequently now one might also come across reference to commitments that liberals were once proudly in favor of, but which today (especially among egalitarian liberals) have become slightly embarrassing, half-concealed attachments: private property, the free market, and capitalism in particular. Some of the values in this list are more convincing as possible core liberal principles than others8 liberty, privacy, human rights and tolerance, for example.
7 It is true that most socialists who take this approach do not wish to abolish valuable liberties that have grown up under liberalism, but the point is that the logic of their approach makes incoherent any rationale they might have for the incorporation of these liberties into socialism. 8 It may be worth pointing out that until relatively recently liberals were, on the whole, decidedly hostile to democracy.

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Nevertheless, these values are hardly the exclusive property of liberalism and as such do not help us to differentiate it from other political traditions. Part of the problem in seeking to define liberalism by identifying a series of core values specific to it, is that liberalism is the hegemonic political and ideological worldview (in the west at least). As such it is no longer a sharply defined political movement but, in a manner of speaking, the political condition of modernity. There are few political and ideological traditions that are clearly separate from it, simply because these other traditions are effectively situated somewhere within this politicalideological hegemonic context. Liberalism permeates the entire ideological, political and intellectual fabric of modern society. As Arblaster comments:
although liberalism no longer takes the form in most countries of a separately organized political movement, that is partly because it has no need to do so. . . . Its major battles . . . have been fought and won. And with its crusading days in the past it exists for the most part now as a widely diffused ethos, or ideology vague and somewhat directionless, no doubt, but nevertheless influential in determining attitudes and outlook at the most fundamental level, the level of assumptions which are so deeply ingrained that they are hardly ever made explicit. (Arblaster, 1984, 6.)

It is, in part, liberalisms hegemonic dominance that lends it an apparent naturalness. This is what underlies the widely shared belief that liberalism is not really an ideology at all, but simply the political articulation of some objective common sense. Despite liberalisms diffuse, hegemonic rooted pervasiveness (Arblaster, 1984, 9) it is still possible to settle on something approaching a broad definition. As Arblaster points out, it is a mistake to seek to define liberalism in fixed and abstract terms as a collection of unchanging moral and political values. It must instead be understood as a specific historical movement of ideas (Arblaster, 1984, 11). As such it has evolved over time and, further, the changes it has undergone have dialectically intertwined with more material changes in social relations and structures. In particular, liberalism has developed and altered as the loosely determined legitimating ideology of the bourgeoisie first as an expression of its revolutionary ambitions in its struggle with absolutism and the feudal ancien regime and later, with the victory and consolidation of the capitalist and liberal order, as an

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expression of its interest in the defense of property and the status quo. But it has also been shaped by the struggles of the oppressed within the bourgeois order, as, for example, the organized working class, women and black people drew on the ideals of liberalism in order to give ideological coherence to their various emancipatory campaigns. Nevertheless, there are certain continuous commitments running through the history of liberalism. At a general level, there are two major common threads specifically, a long-running, central commitment to liberty and equality. There is also a long-running commitment to a more shadowy third principle which, among modern liberals, often remains half-articulated: private property. I will say more about these central values later. our conceptualization of liberalism, however, must be based, as Arblaster argues (1984, 1314), on an understanding of its theory of human nature and society, which forms the metaphysical and ontological foundation of liberalism from which its values derive. Liberalism is not alone in this; all political philosophies have their roots in a specific understanding of the nature of humanity. So what is liberalisms metaphysical and ontological foundation? Maureen Ramsay states: Common to all variants of the liberal tradition is a distinctive conception of human nature. The most important point for liberals about human beings is the fact that they are individuals (Ramsay, 1997, 7). This foundation is at the same time ontological and ethical. It involves seeing the individual as primary, as more real or fundamental than human society and its institutions and structures and at the same time also involves attaching a higher moral value to the individual than to society or to any collective group (Arblaster, 1984, 15). Furthermore, this concept of human nature
leans towards seeing the single human being in isolation, with society or the universe as background or context . . . [and] tends therefore to impute a high degree of completeness and self-sufficiency to the single human being, with the implication that separateness, autonomy is the fundamental, metaphysical human condition. (Arblaster, 1984, 1516.)

As a fundamentally complete individual (see also Collier, 1990, 6061) the liberal human has certain fixed and pre-given, rather than socially constructed or conditioned, interests, needs and preferences. More often than not, the liberal individual is also a radical egoist who

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interacts with other individuals simply in order to satisfy his or her own pre-formed interests and preferences. The radical individualism at the core of liberalism is perhaps most clear to see in liberal political philosophys favorite conceptual device the social contract. Many of the great liberal theorists such as Hobbes9 and Locke make use of this pseudo-history of an original contract upon which society is based. Individuals, who pre-date society, come together and (metaphorically) sign what is essentially a legal contract on the basis of their own individual self-interest. The foundation of society then involves not so much the formation of a collectivity, but of a loose aggregation of individuals bound together by a series of rules and prohibitions.10 Rawls Theory of Justice is no exception; in fact, Rawls reworking of the social contract model is, in some ways, particularly individualistic. Rawls individuals come to an awareness of the necessary fundamental principles of social justice on the basis of having entered the original position, which is essentially a private psychological state experienced alone. Individuals in the original position are disembodied pure ego the inner, private core of liberal identity. All liberal values are rooted in and hence molded by this individualist ontological and ethical foundation. This is certainly so in the case of those two principles I identified as the key values of liberalism liberty and equality. Why are liberty and equality particularly central? Two reasons can be provided. First, these are the key principles proclaimed in the major declarations associated with the great bourgeois revolutions the key document of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen; and that of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence. These two revolutions in particular (along with the English overthrow of Charles I) represented decisive moments in the historical victory of liberalism over the feudal order and the central declarations that these revolutions produced can be regarded as the core ideological texts of liberalism. These documents encapsulated and articulated liberalisms normative commitments the values that liberalism wished to affirm at the
9 Many would regard Hobbes as a pre-liberal theorist. Hobbes, however, pioneered the modern idea of the rational, self-interested, self-contained individual. From this perspective he is a founding father of liberalism. 10 A major exception here is Rousseau, although many would dispute his membership in the liberal tradition.

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moment(s) of its historical triumph. The centrality of equality and liberty in these declarations is clear. The second reason is that most of the values in the longer list of principles associated with liberalism set out above can be regarded as secondary principles which can be assigned, as sub-categories, to one or other (or both) of the two main values. So autonomy, for example, can be seen as a particular form or aspect of liberty, as can respect for privacy and human rights. Democracy and the rule of law can be regarded as norms and practices which express and safeguard the equality of individuals and which also support their liberty. The liberal conception of liberty is profoundly shaped by the ontological and ethical individualism at the core of this tradition. As asocial individuals who are fundamentally complete in and of themselves, liberty for liberal man and woman is an essentially personal and private affair. To be free is to be left alone. It is this radically individualist conception of liberty that lies behind liberals profound suspicion towards the state. For most liberals the state is a necessary evil and one that must be kept constantly in check. It is significant that liberal rights, which are guarantees of personal liberties, are, primarily, guarantees against the abuse of state power. For most liberals, it is the state, not other major sites of power, that is the main threat to liberty (as well, ironically, as libertys major guarantor). In fact, liberals tend to see power in almost wholly political terms; economic power and other forms of social power are, on the whole, ignored. This provides us with some indication of the class nature of liberal ideology. The liberal conception of liberty does not spring directly from some pure ideal of human nature formulated entirely in abstraction from material class interests. Economic power under capitalism is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie and as such, that class has little need to check or curtail it. Even though economic power is political power, this may be safely ignored by the bourgeoisie. State power, however, is not and cannot be unambiguously in the hands of the capitalist class and so it is this concentrated site of power that liberalism is most concerned to guard against. The interests and concerns of property, then, underpin and define the terms of the liberal conception of liberty. I do not mean to suggest that the abstract liberal conception of human nature is itself unaffected by material interests and that the conception of liberty that springs from it is only shaped by class

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interests as it is applied to concrete social conditions structured by class divisions. The liberal conception of human nature is itself deeply conditioned by the bourgeois world view. It is not difficult to see, for example, that the atomized liberal individual reflects the atomized conditions of bourgeois society in which social ties of kinship and fealty have been dissolved and in which market competition is the norm. It is no coincidence, either, that the conceptual device of the social contract which is so central to the tradition resembles a business contract between merchants. Furthermore, the notion of private property is present at the very core of the liberal conception of the individual. The notion of self-ownership is fundamental to liberalism: the liberal individual owns himself/herself. one is ones own property. This notion of self-ownership, in fact, forms the basis for the liberal justification of property ownership more widely in the work of Locke and those working in the Lockean tradition such as Robert Nozick. It is ones self-ownership, and by extension ones ownership of ones own labor and the products of ones labor that entitles us to own, in addition, the land that we cultivate and the goods that we make.11 At the heart of the liberal tradition is indeed, as C. B. Macpherson called it, a theory of possessive individualism in which
Society becomes a lot of free equal individuals related to each other as proprietors of their own capacities and of what they have acquired by their exercise. Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. (Macpherson, 1962, 3; see also Tawney, 1921.)

So what of equality? As Ramsay points out, equality is a fundamental presumption of liberal political and moral theory (Ramsay, 1997, 68) and flows from the liberal view of human nature and from the associated liberal conception of freedom outlined above. If every individuals liberty is valuable and to be defended if all are entitled to the same rights or, in the utilitarian approach, if our interests and preferences must be given equal consideration then it stands to reason that every individual is, in some sense, of equal moral worth. The liberal view of individual liberty in itself implies equality. In all variants of the liberal view of equal moral worth the emphasis is on the idea of individuality. Liberal individuals are equal primarily in
11 Notoriously, for Locke this right of ownership does not seem to apply in the case of servants and other employees a clear indication of the class interests at play here.

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terms of their individuality; their right to make personal choices as they see fit, their right to a private, self-directed life and their right to rationally formulate their own views of the good life. This view of equality emphasises the differences among humans the distinctness of each rather than their similarities. Liberal individuals are equal in the sense that they are equally unique. It is also a highly abstract understanding of equality. The equal moral worth of individuals does not usually imply a right to material equality of wealth or condition. Just as in the case of liberty, the liberal understanding of equality tends to focus on political matters rather than more economic or social ones. What really matters for most liberals is political and legal equality. Liberal citizens are the bearers of equal abstract rights, with the same right to protection from abuse of power (usually state power) or illegitimate incursions into their private realm, with the same right to vote (at least in recent liberal thinking) and the right to be treated equally before the law. Substantive inequalities of wealth and economic power, however, are, if not completely ignored, treated as if they do not matter or as if they are somehow natural or necessary. Again, we can see the imprint of particular class interests; this approach presents little danger to property. of course liberalism cannot pretend that inequalities of wealth and power do not exist. often these inequalities are justified by reference to the uniqueness of each individual, and differences among them. Part of what it is to treat people as having equal moral worth to respect their individuality is to allow them to make their own choices, to use their capacities in ways that they see fit, and to reap the rewards that the use of these capacities brings. Liberals often deploy the concept of desert or merit in order to explain the justness of material inequalities: people deserve different levels of income and reward on account of their different talents, willingness to work, level of effort, and so on. This approach is founded on the assumption central to the liberal view of human nature that individuals are autonomous initiators of their own conduct and . . . responsible for their own actions (Ramsay, 1997, 71). others (such as Rawls) justify inequalities in more consequentialist terms by reference to necessary motivating incentives that benefit society as a whole. Certainly, many liberals, like Rawls, favor some redistribution of wealth and other material resources, but stop short of any radically egalitarian distribution. It is an axiom of much liberal thought that

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any significant move towards substantive equality must bring with it a corresponding reduction in personal liberty: equalization of resources would involve interference with individual freedom, would prevent people from receiving their just rewards for merit and contribution and, furthermore, would require a much expanded and authoritarian state. of the two key principles of liberal thought, liberty is the most important and when these two principles appear to come into conflict, liberals choose liberty. We must also pay some attention to the third principle of liberalism identified above: private property. In the classical phase of liberalism, liberals openly proclaimed their commitment to the defense of private property, but this attachment is now, among egalitarian liberals, half-concealed. The commitment still exists, though; it informs the tacit assumptions and limits of liberal thought. It is clearly rooted in the ontological individualism of liberalism, in that radically separate and egoist individuals are, by extension, also acquisitive and territorial rather than naturally cooperative, sharing creatures. It is also clearly bound up with the liberal view of freedom and equality. Property constrains particular potential extensions of (positive) liberty, ensuring that the separateness and atomistic integrity of individuals is not undermined by a conception of freedom that might emphasize a more collectivist approach. Further, private property sets inviolable limits on the extension of substantive equality. Indeed the attachment to private property clearly informs the liberal tendency to think about substantive equalities and inequalities of citizens only in terms of distributive justice. From a Marxist perspective this focus on distribution, though important, ignores the most significant determinant of social inequality: social relations of production. It is these relations that give rise to class and therefore to structured social inequalities. To focus on distribution tends to mean that one assumes a pre-given social product to be distributed and thus one ignores the conditions of its generation. In simply (and tacitly) assuming certain relations of production, liberals effectively refuse to subject basic private property relations and capitalism to serious critique. These become, in turn, both invisible and naturalized they are just there in the background. Property, then, plays something of an independent role in liberal thought and cannot be dissolved into either (or both) categories, liberty and equality. Nevertheless, it is not a core principle in the same way that liberty and equality are. It is perhaps best regarded as a

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secondary or mediating commitment mediating in that it shapes the particular way in which the ideals of liberty and equality are interpreted, anchoring them to bourgeois class interests. Private property of course has an intrinsic class character, whereas liberty and equality have an inherent universalism that may be detached from particular class interests. I shall go on to argue that the universalism of liberty and equality invests them with a certain dynamic logic that tends to bring them into conflict with the structural limits of capitalism. As we shall see, the bourgeoisie appeals to the right to private property as a means of trying to halt the unfolding of that logic.

Liberalisms Self-Subverting Dialectic

Liberalism emerged as the dominant Western political ideology in a long process of evolution punctuated by occasional sharp revolutionary bursts. This was not a rise to ideological ascendancy of some fixed and unchanging set of ideas. As a historical movement of ideas, the nature of liberalism itself developed in a process of evolution and revolution paralleling (and, indeed, dialectically reflecting and driving) the rhythm of its gradual rise to power. It was in the 17th and 18th centuries that liberalism won its most decisive political victories in the revolutions in England, America and France, each building on the ideas of the last. The fact that modern liberalism was born in violence and terror is something that it has done its best to live down ever since; this founding violence is, as Terry Eagleton puts it, thrust into the political unconscious (Eagleton, 2005) or disowned altogether. Liberalisms disavowal of its own historical foundations reflects the condition of its politicalideological ascendancy. once the ancien regime was defeated and the liberal order safely embedded, the genesis of this order in rebellion became something of an embarrassment and even a liability, because, from the start, the new order was looking anxiously over its shoulder at a potential challenger. only 60 or so years after the decisive victory of liberalism in France, after all, Europe was convulsed by the revolutions of 1848 that articulated demands for the red republic. The forceful beginnings of the liberal order had to be obscured in case they should serve as an example to others. The historical trajectory of liberalism moves, then, from revolutionary beginnings to an increasingly conservative stance. It is impossible to understand this transformation without reference to

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the class interests bound up with liberalism. The rise of liberalism was concurrent with the rise of capitalism.12 The revolutionary phase of liberalisms history reflected the ambitions of a confident, rising bourgeoisie in relation to the transformation of society and the abolition of feudal privilege. The adoption of an increasingly defensive and conservative stance from around the turn of the 19th century reflected the consolidation of the bourgeoisie as the dominant social class and the consolidation of capitalism. We have already seen how the liberal conception of human nature and society and liberalisms key values are closely bound up with a specifically capitalist worldview and with specifically bourgeois class interests. It is no surprise, then, that with the establishment and consolidation of capitalism the tenor of liberalism should switch from one of radical, emancipatory optimism to one of moderate realism and scepticism towards grand projects of social change.13 This does not mean that liberalism and capitalism are so closely bound up together as to be identical. The correspondence between them is much looser than that and, indeed, incorporates a fundamental and highly significant tension. There is, specifically, a permanent tension between the radical universalism of liberalisms key principles liberty and equality and the particular institutionalization of these principles within capitalist society. As Balibar argues, the universalism of core liberal principles imbues them with a radical logic that tends to come into conflict with, and threatens to undermine, the structural foundations and limits of bourgeois society. Balibar suggests that the political demands articulated by the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, precisely because of their universalist implications, have a kind of inner dynamic of perpetual momentum an inherent tendency to outflank themselves (Callinicos, 2000, 24), as Callinicos puts it. Continuing his summary of Balibars argument, Callinicos writes:
Ideals that were intended initially to have quite a narrow reference, to benefit primarily white men of property, proved capable of indefinite extension. The result is a process of permanent revolution in which a succession of
12 Capitalism emerged with the same rhythm of gestation: long periods of evolutionary development punctuated with rapid revolutionary bursts. 13 This conservative tenor is still much in evidence today. It is perhaps epitomized by Judith Shklars liberalism of fear, (Shklar, 1998, 320) which articulates the view that liberal capitalism is, though highly imperfect, the best attainable social order a view underpinned by anxiety that unless this order is vigorously defended things can only get worse.

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new political subjects workers, slaves, women, colonial subjects, people of colour, oppressed nationalities, lesbians and gays, disabled people . . . emerge to stake their claim to the liberty and equality won by earlier struggles. (Callinicos, 2000, 24.)

The bourgeois revolutionaries overthrew the ancien regime in the name of freedom and equality for all. Though these ideals were it seemed, packed with tacit or explicit clauses excluding women, the poor, slaves and many other groups from its ambit (Callinicos, 2000, 22), the implicit universalism of the ideals had, as it were, a tendency to overwhelm and breach these morally arbitrary, power-determined limiting clauses. Groups who were in practice excluded from the realm of liberal equality and freedom could draw on the stated or implicit universalism of these liberal principles and demand inclusion. Each rectification of injustice, moreover, drew attention to further forms of injustice so that the extension of liberty and equality moved forward in a rolling, cumulative progression. It is this that gives these key liberal principles a permanently subversive character: as long as oppression and injustice exist, these principles will be in tension (explicitly or implicitly) with the institutional and social order that claims to manifest them. This dynamic of permanent revolution does not unfold, of course, merely at the level of ideas or normative argument. The primary driving force is material struggle on the part of the oppressed. For example, political equality in terms of enfranchisement in Britain was won for working-class men, in large part, through mass mobilization on the part of organizations like the Chartists. In addition, the extension of the franchise to British women cannot be explained without reference to pressure from the Suffragists and Suffragettes.14 The introduction of reforms geared towards the improvement of working-class living and working conditions in the 19th and 20th centuries (which was an expansion of liberty and equality for the poor) is another example of the way in which struggle on the part of the oppressed impels this dynamic. Marxs classic analysis of the passing of the Ten Hours Act in Capital (Marx, 1961, 231302), for example, identifies working-class struggle as a crucial factor. For another example, Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward have identified the key role that struggle on
14 on the role of mass struggle in the extension of suffrage to working-class men, and to women, see Foot, 2005.

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the part of the working class and the poor played in the introduction of specific welfare reforms in the united States (Piven and Cloward, 1972; 1979). It is crucial to grasp that this process in which liberal ideals of freedom and equality are pushed forward and made progressively more real by the struggles of the marginalized and oppressed often brings with it, or at least implies, a far-reaching transformation of social structures. The struggle for womens equality, for example, was not won with the extension of the franchise, but is a continuing struggle that draws attention to the inequities of the prevailing sexual division of labor bound up with the particular delineation of the boundaries between private and public spheres in liberal society. Furthermore, the struggle of the organized working class for liberty and equality brings into question the fundamental relations of class exploitation that underpin capitalist society. The struggle for working-class equality is not confined to a struggle for political and legal equality; the lived experience of material social inequality, domination and subordination tends to impel the organized working class to push the struggle for the realization of equality further than merely political and legal equality will allow. Working-class struggle necessarily becomes a struggle for economic and social equality: a class struggle against class itself. Beyond a certain point, then, the perpetual dialectic of struggle for the extension of liberal ideals of liberty and equality becomes a definitely socialist struggle. The dynamic universalism of liberal ideals has an implicitly socialist logic. There is another sense in which, for Balibar, liberal ideals incorporate a socialist logic. It is not just that pushed beyond a certain point by social struggle, liberty and equality run up against private property. There is also a sense in which the core principles of liberalism, as abstract ideals, have, from the start, concealed an inner socialist identity. Balibar argues that the great revolutionary liberal declarations imply an equation of (rather than, as an orthodox reading would assume, a distinction between) the rights of man and the rights of the citizen. Thus, the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen sets out not two different kinds of right, but one: there is in fact no gap, no difference in content: they are exactly the same (Balibar, 1994, 44). It equates humanity and citizenship: the latter is not a separate sphere founded on, or derived from, the former and concerned only with political rights. Each is mutually constitutive of

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and inseparable from the other. our common humanity is our right to political participation. There is what Balibar calls an intensive universality here, in that it excludes exclusion forbids the denial of citizenship in the name of determinations of condition, status, or nature (Balibar, 2004, 312). one has a right to full participation and therefore a right to expect that impediments to full participation are eliminated. Further, the equation of man and citizen implies another the equation of liberty and equality. Balibar argues that the heart and kernel of the liberal declarations turn out to be constituted by the proposition of equal liberty or equaliberty (Balibar, 2004, 313). The proposition of equaliberty poses, in the characteristic form of a double or simultaneous negation, that equality is impossible without liberty and liberty impossible without equality (Balibar, 2004, 313). The alliance(s) of social forces that overthrew the ancien regime, Balibar argues, discovered in struggle (and this discovery was inscribed in their declarations) that the extension of liberty and of equality are necessarily identical; that the situations in which both are either present or absent are necessarily the same (Balibar, 1994, 48). This means
that the diverse forms of social and political power that correspond to either inequalities or constraints on the freedom of man the citizen necessarily converge. There are no examples of restrictions or suppressions of freedoms without social inequalities, nor of inequalities without restrictions or suppressions of freedoms . . . (Balibar, 1994, 49.)

This proposition of equaliberty is in conflict with the liberal axiom that the demands of liberty and equality pull in different directions. Indeed, Balibar suggests that the subsequent history of liberalism can be read in part as an attempt to deny and expurgate the logic of equaliberty at its heart or, rather, as a struggle within liberalism between those who wished to push it forward towards the material realization of equaliberty and those who wished to limit and halt this process. The presence, as it were, of equaliberty in the revolutionary declarations reflects the fact, Balibar suggests, that the bourgeoisie did not fully dominate the revolutionary struggle and were reliant on the support of other social forces. Its presence, too, is proof that liberalism itself is not some simple and direct expression of bourgeois class interests but is, instead, an ideological terrain of struggle. It is, furthermore, this proposition of equaliberty, secreted within the

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core of liberal ideology, Balibar suggests, that, in part, impels the permanent, implicitly socialist, dynamic of struggle described above. As all of this suggests, this tension between (the implicit logic of) core liberal ideals and the class interests of the bourgeoisie has been present since the very establishment of liberal hegemony. Indeed, one can see this conflict emerge within the English, American and French revolutions. The Parliamentarian struggle in the English Civil War soon generated a radical egalitarian challenge from within in the shape of the Levellers and the Diggers. In America, the leading figures of the Revolution were soon openly voicing fears about mob rule, and two key concerns clearly emerged during the debates in relation to the institutional and constitutional structure of the newly independent union of states: a concern to structure the political system in such a way as to protect property, and an abiding fear and anxiety about democracy (Arblaster, 1984, 200). In France, the Jacobins were, reluctantly, pushed beyond their commitment to economic laissez-faire by the demands of the poor for price controls on basic commodities. In all three cases, then, the logic of revolution, driven on by the implications of the inherently universal principles they proclaimed, carried, or threatened to carry, the restructuring of society much further than propertied interests desired. Recognizing the danger presented by the radical universalism of liberty and equality, the bourgeoisie in England, America and France responded to this threat by asserting the right to private property as a bulwark against radicalism. In all three cases radical egalitarian aspirations were quickly stamped out, but the genie was out of the bottle. In Balibars terms, the proposition of equaliberty had been declared and could not, now, be unsaid. The revolutions collectively represented the decisive victory of liberalism but, at the same time, initiated a fundamental crisis within liberalism which has dogged it ever since. Balibar comments:
the Revolution, from the beginning, is not, is already no longer a bourgeois revolution. . . . [It] is immediately grappling with its own internal contestation without which it would not even exist, and always chasing after the unity of its opposites. (Balibar, 1994, 44.)

From the moment of its victory, then, liberalism has been haunted by a spectral shadow which is, at the same time, its radical other and its real self. Equaliberty, the fullest extension of liberty and

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equality, implies, among other things, substantive equality, which in turn implies the abolition of private property. It implies democratization of the economic sphere, so that all humans can equally share in the decisions that significantly affect them. It implies, that is, an end to the specifically capitalist separation between the political and the economic. It also implies an end to the (similarly historically specific) division between state and society and the radical devolution and dispersal of power the fullest possible democratization of government. Equaliberty, in other words, implies socialism. As Marx saw, only socialism can
fulfil liberalism that is, give to liberal values . . . a more complete and substantial content and meaning than liberalism itself could conceive of. That is the point of the distinction [Marx] makes, in his early essay, On the Jewish Question, between political emancipation and human emancipation. (Arblaster, 1984, 348.)

A theoretical problem, however, arises from the notion that socialism represents the fulfilment of liberal principles. Given that liberal values are rooted in an ontological individualism, we are forced to question whether it is possible, in the end, to claim these values for socialism. Is there not an irreconcilable conflict between a political philosophy founded on the idea of the inherent sociality of humans and values derived from an individualist conception of human nature? A response to this problem can be extrapolated from the nature of the subversive dialectical dynamic of liberal values. The tendency towards a dynamic of permanent revolution that liberalism incorporates also tends to undermine liberalisms ontological foundations. In so doing, this dynamic effectively proves the ontological basis of liberalism false in practice and, simultaneously, demonstrates the fundamentally social nature of humanity. Though the key liberal values of liberty and equality were originally derived from an individualist ontology, their inner dialectical logic shows that they actually reflect and express human aspirations that are rooted in and flow from our inherently and thoroughly social nature. As we have seen, liberalisms core principles are in permanent tension with their supposed institutional expression in capitalist society and the struggle of the marginalized and oppressed tends towards the politicization of more and more of social reality. The realm of

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the private sphere under capitalism, including the economic, is increasingly opened up to politics to collective deliberation and decision-making. The promise of equaliberty and the fullest extension of liberty and equality is an inherently democratic, social and cooperative vision of justice and human fulfilment, precisely the reverse of the competitive egoism and individual completeness that liberalism posits in relation to the natural condition of humanity. This implies that the pioneers of liberalism discovered and articulated normative principles that do indeed closely map on to something inherent in our being, but that they were mistaken about the nature of that being; that they hit upon the right principles but got it wrong in relation to their understanding of precisely why these were the right principles. The powerful and enduring appeal of these ideals the fact that these universalist principles precisely succeed as universalist principles in that people have, for centuries, been prepared to struggle for their further extension and realization speaks of their close connection with something deep inside us. They capture and express something fundamental about what it is to be human. There is a dialectical unity of simultaneous continuity and change in this process. The internal dialectic of liberty and equality does not itself create a more social human nature. Rather, it progressively uncovers it. As I shall argue in more detail below, humans are inherently social creatures, something that is just as true of humans who lived at the high point of classical liberalism as of humans today. Liberalisms individualist ontology seems intuitively plausible in bourgeois society because it closely resembles the material conditions of life and work under capitalism, especially in the early period of capitalism (when liberalism is particularly self-confident). Material and political developments as industrial capitalism matures, however, such as extensive socialization of the productive forces, increasing centralization and concentration of capital and the emergence of a politically self-aware and organized proletariat help to render liberal individualist ontology less and less plausible. Moreover, struggles for the extension of liberty and equality bound up with these developments, as we have seen, have an inherently democratic and cooperative dynamic which tends to undermine liberal individualism. These struggles, however, do not arrive out of nowhere and they do not simply feed on themselves. They are impelled, in large part, by the desire for dignity, recognition and self-respect, and by the desire (which encapsulates all of this) to be

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treated as a really free and equal member of society. Humans instinctively tend to resist oppression and inequality when they suffer these things; struggles for liberty and equality are impelled by something firmly rooted in human nature. Nevertheless, the dynamic of struggle for liberty and equality also reveals, as I have argued, that real equality and freedom for all can only be achieved in conditions in which there is collective democratic control over production and other social processes and resources. Thus struggle does not create but, rather, reveals the social nature of humanity. There is, then, simultaneously both continuity in the sense that human nature has always been like this and change in that this nature is uncovered in a historical process of discovery.15 Liberty and equality, then, can be uprooted from the ontological and metaphysical core of liberalism and embedded in a more social ontological foundation. Indeed, these principles, in a manner of speaking, uproot themselves from their liberal theoretical foundations and, further, transplant themselves into more appropriate ontological soil (which although the metaphor ceases to work here has been their real foundation and source of nourishment all along).

Rooting Equaliberty in a Socialist Ontology and Ethics

Can we say more about the understanding of human nature that the inner dialectical dynamic of liberty and equality point towards? What can we say, furthermore, about the ethics that seem to flow from this view of human nature and which would undergird and give further content to the norms of equality and liberty? Why, from a socialist perspective, ought we to be free and equal? We can draw on a number of resources to sketch out an answer to these questions in particular, Marxs notion of human species-being and Terry Eagletons materialist re-interpretation of Aristotelian (and JudeoChristian) ethics. Marxs view of human nature is that we are essentially creative, laboring and producing beings. It is not just that we labor to adapt
15 It is also true that in radically expanding the forces of production capitalism creates the material basis for socialism. The material conditions in which socialism can be imagined as a real possibility only emerge at certain point in history. This is to say that full realization of our (permanent) social nature can only occur once society has progressed to a certain point.

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our surroundings and to produce for our means of survival; it is also that we choose to engage in creative and productive activity over and above what is strictly necessary for our survival or even for our comfort and find fulfilment and satisfaction in this activity. Crucially, however, this productive activity is inherently social in nature. Most of what we produce is produced collectively in some sense or another. In opposition to the ontological basis of liberal thought, we are inherently social creatures. Indeed, for Marx, human consciousness and thus our very notion of individual identity is socially generated. It is not just that we live, behave and, especially, labor socially and cooperatively; it is also that our very subjectivity, our conception of selfhood, is constituted socially. We become consciously aware of ourselves as a discrete entity distinct from the natural world and from other humans only through language, and language is inherently inter-subjective; it is a social practice. What we think including what we think about ourselves is governed by how we live and what we do and how we live and what we do is always done socially and collectively. It is for this reason that Marx refers to our species-being what we are can only be understood properly in collective terms because what we are is a property and function of the human species as a whole.16 This ontology of species-being implies an ethics of self-realization or flourishing through social interaction. Indeed Marxs and Engels elliptical comments in the Communist Manifesto in relation to their vision of a communist society where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all (Marx and Engels, 1965, 33) seem to draw upon such an ethics. Eagleton has, on this basis, attempted to sketch out a materialist ethics for Marxism. Eagleton argues that Marx was a closet Aristotelian of sorts (Eagleton, 2004, 122), by which he means that Marx felt that humans live well when they act to realize their own nature and that there was a particular way of living which allowed us to be at our best for the kind of creatures we are (Eagleton, 2004, 123). The main difference between Marxs (tacit, submerged) ethics and those of Aristotle is that for Marx self-realization must be an inherently reciprocal and interpersonal process because, as we have seen, we are social creatures. What this means, Eagleton explains, is that we become the occasion
16 For a much more developed account of Marxs social ontology one in which the fundamental entities that compose society are individuals in social relations (Gould, 1978, 1) or social individuals see Gould, 1978. It is closely compatible with what I argue.

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for each others self-realization. It is only through being the means of your self-fulfilment that I can attain my own, and vice versa (Eagleton, 2004, 122). The political form of this ethic, he continues, is known as socialism, which can be regarded as a form of politicized love, or reciprocity all round (Eagleton, 2004, 122; see also Gould, 1978). It is fairly easy to see how a society that was organized to allow for this reciprocal flourishing would embody a radical form of equality and freedom. Human individuals would be equal in the sense that all would have an equal right to flourish and to realize their own capacities. Such a right would necessarily imply equality of access to the material resources necessary for self-actualization. Without such substantive equality such a right would merely be a formal right, which is to say that it would not be as real for some as for others. Humans would be equal in a much more real and concrete form than they are under liberalism in which political and legal equality coexists with massive material inequalities of wealth, access to resources, and so on. But there is a further sense in which such a society must necessarily be an equal one. Eagleton points out that you cannot really have this process of reciprocal self-realization except among equals (Eagleton, 2004, 170). The mutual reciprocity here, that is, implies equality: such a process could not co-exist alongside domination, exploitation or other inequalities of power (including, of course, economic power). Furthermore, such a society would realize a radical form of freedom freedom in a positive sense that encourages people to develop and express their nature and capacities. But it is also clear that such self-expression could not be forced on people by others. It is clear, too, that this process of reciprocal self-actualization would rely for its very existence on liberties such as freedom of expression, freedom of association and the free circulation of ideas. What is more, this kind of social organization in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all seems to be in close accordance with Balibars proposition of equaliberty that the fullest extension of equality is dependent on the fullest extension of liberty, and vice versa. The key principles that liberalism proclaims, then, and which, as we have seen, really do express something fundamental about human aspirations, can be grounded in Marxs notion of human speciesbeing and an ethics of reciprocal self-realization which flows from that understanding of human nature. We ought, then, to have liberty

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and equality because the realization of these principles is a necessary condition and constituent part of the realization of our nature. It is worth saying that this conception of the significance and value of liberty and equality is not reliant on metaphysical, supernatural or abstract claims. This approach grounds liberty and equality in our species-being: we value, and aspire towards, freedom and equality simply because we are the kind of creature that thrives on freedom and equality. It is just in our nature. As Eagleton points out: Nature is a bottom-line concept: you cannot ask why a giraffe should do the things it does. To say It belongs to its nature is answer enough. You cannot cut deeper than that (Eagleton, 2004, 116). ultimately this approach rests, as Eagleton suggests, on the particularly materialist observation that we are the kind of creature that best flourishes under conditions of freedom and equality because of the kind of body we are born with. The human body is geared to complex production and communication (Eagleton, 2004, 157); our nature, our species-being, and thus our collective interest in the realization of equaliberty is rooted in the physical form that we take. We could say that equaliberty is simply in our bones.

Conclusion
I have argued that socialism should be seen as the radicalization and transcendence of liberalism. Socialism is the radical fulfilment of the key ideals of liberty and equality proclaimed by liberalism but which liberalism itself cannot fully realize. Despite the prevailing view among liberals (but also held by many socialists) that liberalism and socialism are substantially, even wholly, distinct political doctrines, there is a fundamental tension between the implicit logic of the core principles of liberalism and the structural limits of capitalist society. Liberty and equality have a kind of internal expansive universalism; there is a permanently subversive quality about them that incites and drives on social struggles for their greater realization which threatens to undermine private property. These liberal ideals can only be fully realized in a socialist society. The internal dialectical dynamic of liberty and equality, therefore, undermines liberalisms individualist ontology. An understanding of human nature founded in Marxs notion of species-being and an associated ethic of reciprocal self-realization

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provides a much more compelling basis in which to root the values of liberty and equality.
Ruskin College Wolton Street Oxford OX1 2HE United Kingdom rooksby.ed@gmail.com

REFERENCES Adams, Ian. 1993. Political Ideology Today. Manchester, England: Manchester university Press. Arblaster, Anthony. 1984. The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism. oxford, England: Blackwell. . 1987. Democracy. Milton Keynes, England: open university Press. Balibar, tienne. 1994. Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx. London: Routledge. . 2004. Is a Philosophy of Human Civic Rights Possible? New Reflections on Equaliberty. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103:23 (Spring/Summer), 31122. Callinicos, Alex. 2000. Equality. Cambridge, England: Polity. Collier, Andrew. 1990. Socialist Reasoning: An Inquiry into the Political Philosophy of Scientific Socialism. London: Pluto Press. Eagleton, Terry. 2004. After Theory. London: Penguin. . 2005. The Roots of Terror. Red Pepper (September). http://www.redpepper. org.uk/The-roots-of-terror Foot, Paul. 2005. The Vote: How it Was Won and How it Was Undermined. London: Viking. Freeden, Michael. 1996. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. oxford, England: oxford university Press. Gamble, Andrew. 1981. An Introduction to Modern Social and Political Thought. Houndmills, England: Macmillan. Gould, Carol C. 1978. Marxs Social Ontology: Individuality and Community in Marxs Theory of Social Relations. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Hekmat, Mansoor. 1993. Democracy: Interpretations and Realities. www. marxists. org/archive/hekmat-mansoor/1993/07/democracy.htm Heywood, Andrew. 1992. Political Ideologies: An Introduction. Houndmills, England: Macmillan. Lenin, V. I. 1963. Liberal and Marxist Conceptions of the Class Struggle. Pp. 119124 in V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. . 1964. The State and Revolution. Pp. 381492 in V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.

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. 1965. The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. Pp. 227325 in V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Macpherson, C. B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. oxford, England: oxford university Press. Mao Tse-tung. 1965. Combat Liberalism. Pp. 514516 in Arthur P. Mendel, ed., Essential Works of Marxism. New York: Bantam Books. Marx, Karl. 1961. Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Vol. I. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. . 1973. Grundrisse. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1965. The Communist Manifesto. Pp. 1344 in Arthur P. Mendel, ed., Essential Works of Marxism. New York: Bantam Books. Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. 1972. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. London: Tavistock. . 1979. Poor Peoples Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. New York: Vintage. Putnam, Ruth Anna. 1976. Rights of Persons and the Liberal Tradition. Pp. 90110 in Ted Honderich, ed., Social Ends and Political Means. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ramsay, Maureen. 1997. Whats Wrong with Liberalism? A Radical Critique of Liberal Political Philosophy. London: Leicester university Press. Shklar, Judith N. 1998. Political Thought and Political Thinkers. Chicago: university of Chicago. Stalin, J. V. 2008. Anarchism or Socialism? www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ stalin/works/1906/12/x01.htm Tawney, R. H. 1921. The Acquisitive Society. London: G. Bell and Sons. Trotsky, Leon. 1972. 1905. London: Allen Lane (Penguin). Trotsky, Leon. 2007. Our Political Tasks. www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/ tasks/index.htm

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Science & Society, Vol. 76, No. 4, october 2012, 521545

The Notion of Money from the Grundrisse to Capital

SPYROS LAPATSIORAS AND JOHN MILIOS*
ABSTRACT: There is a significant conceptual difference in the way that the notion of money is constructed in two major Marxian texts, the Grundrisse and Capital. Two separate strands of theory (or theoretical movements) contribute to this shaping of the concept of money, evolving and combining with each other in a different way in each text. There is also a difference in the structuring of proof: In the Grundrisse money is conceived of as a symbol that is made effective either by virtue of the argument that the commodity has a dual existence and so must be duplicated by a process of symbol making, or via the conception that in the exchange relation xA = yB there is a notional third that is to be hypostasized in some material. In contrast, in Capital money is thought to be created spontaneously as an indispensible element of the circulation process, on the basis of the value expression in the relation xA = yB. These distinctions turn out to be highly significant.

I. INTRoDuCTIoN 1.1. Our Subject

W
*

E PRoPoSE To DEAL WITH TWo TEXTS of Marx: the Grundrisse (18571858), and Capital.1 our subject involves a comprehensive interrogation of two statements, one in

The authors would like to thank the Editor and four anonymous referees of Science & Society for their helpful comments, which enabled them to improve the quality of this paper. 1 The present paper does not include analysis of the conceptual shifts between the consecutive editions of Capital. We cite excerpts from Vol. I of Das Kapital (English translation, Marx, 1976a) but at a number of points we also consult Marx, 2002 (bilingual text, annotated by Hans Ehrbar). For the Grundrisse our reference is Marx, 1993, also taking into account Marx

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each text, which have the character of conclusions pertaining to the conceptual status of money. In the Grundrisse money is presented as an outcome of the necessarily dual existence of the commodity: the commodity achieves a double existence, not only a natural but also a purely economic existence, in which latter it is a mere symbol, a cipher (Buchstabe/ zeichen) for a relation of production, a mere symbol for its own value (Marx, 1993, 141).2 In Capital there is a perceptible shift away from this formulation: The fact that money can, in certain functions, be replaced by mere symbols of itself gave rise to another mistaken notion, that it is itself a mere symbol (zeichen). . . . In this sense every commodity is a symbol (zeichen), since, as value, it is only the material shell of the human labor expended on it . . . (Marx, 1976a, 185).3 If we assume that words mean what they appear to mean, then it is immediately obvious that there are differences between these assertions, which evidently comprise an accretion of contrary definitions of money. According to the Grundrisse money is a symbol; according to Capital it is not. Marx appears to subscribe both to a nominalist theory of money and to a metallist theory, with money possessing internal value. The discussion of whether money shall be comprehended as a commodity is not merely of academic interest to Marxists, especially as the current financial crisis unfolds: indicatively Bryan and Rafferty (2006a, 15361) maintain that derivatives are the present-day form of commodity money. In our text we do not specifically examine whether Marxs theory of money is a commodity theory. What preoccupies us more are the prerequisites for such an inquiry.4
1976b, 1981b and the observations of Arthur, 2006, on the translation in Marx, 1993. For A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) (henceforth Contribution) we use Marx, 1981a, consulting Marx, 1971. 2 Corresponding formulations follow on pp. 1434ff. These formulations served as a point of departure for Rosdolskys (1977) analysis, specifically in chapters 45 see, e.g., 1134). Rosdolsky maintains that Marx presents a symbol theory of money. A more recent critique of Rosdolskys interpretation is developed by Nelson (1999, 748). The present paper provides an alternative interpretation to both. 3 For translation of the term zeichen we follow the already existing translations. Nevertheless, zeichen is to be distinguished from symbol. We cannot go into this subject here (the necessity for drawing a distinction is indicated in note 43) and our basic conclusions are not affected. 4 The predominant interpretation of Marxs theory of money as presented in Part I of Capital is that it is a commodity theory of money indicatively, see Schumpeter (1994, 699701). In recent years, however, there has arisen, primarily among Marxists, a current that rejects this interpretation. The reader can find a survey of different views on Marxs theory of money in Moseley, 2005.

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We propose, without further preliminaries, to put forward the thesis that is at the heart of our interpretation: namely that there is a unifying element in both texts, an intention, namely conceptual production of money (and above all the commodity) as a necessary hypostasization of capitalist social relations.5 The juxtaposition of these divergent assertions raises the additional question of how the intention of the writing is to be reconciled with the two formulations. In the present paper we will give an account of the different ways in which the concept of money is constituted in the Grundrisse and in Capital,6 which in turn lead us to these statements.

1.2. Questions of Methodology

Two points concerning specific methodological questions in our reading: a. In Marxs text terms appear that function as preliminary concepts in the process of presentation. This means that the conceptual system has not yet been defined and developed in a way required for these terms to comprise concepts, which allow knowledge of the object they seek to be appropriated cognitively. In our text we call these terms practical concepts. Their semantic function is to show the direction we must look, the theoretical location towards which we must turn, if the appropriate concepts are to be developed that secure knowledge of the object.7 The term social action in the second chapter of Capital functions as an example of a practical concept, as we shall see in what follows. b. Althusser (1978, 226) argues that in Capital there is not only a primary order of presentation but also secondary orders of presentation interrupting or traversing the former, which he calls concrete or historical analyses. Nevertheless, the fact that they cannot be integrated into the form of the primary order indicates the limits of the primary order of presentation. The position of externality is not however secondary, because its insertion also has a theoretical function. It is thus inserted in order to show that other theoretical elements are needed above and beyond the primary one if the effect
5 Marx, 1991, 5156, 649; Marx, 1974, 458, 4634, 4667, 477, 483; Marx, 1993, 44750, 6378, 879. See also Milios, Dimoulis and Economakis (2002, chapter 3). 6 We shall also make mention of the Contribution but, for reasons of space, only cursorily. 7 For more detail: Althusser, 1969, 2427.

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is to be achieved that is promised by the primary one, but the mode of presentation as a whole imposes limitations. on the basis of our reading, if there is to be an examination of the theoretical production of money (and naturally of the commodity)8 what is needed is a posing of the question of coherence between the 1st and 2nd chapters of Capital. We detect that their theoretical function can be subsumed under the preceding bipolar primary/secondary order of presentation. This bipolarity is also to be seen in the Grundrisse, albeit in a different manner, as we will argue below.

1.3 The Limitations of the Text

The sequence of presentation does not follow the chronological sequence of the texts. The reasons for this are: a) our thesis that exposition of the concept of money in Capital solves problems that emerge in the corresponding exposition of previous texts. Support for this thesis can be furnished only partially here, where we try to demonstrate, via the recomposition of elements of these texts, their different apodictic structure, and map the semantic shifts. b) To make Capital our point of departure is helpful from the viewpoint of offering a clean presentation, with a maximum of textual economy, highlighting the bipolar primary/secondary order of presentation and its theoretical function. In other words, for the purpose of highlighting the anatomy of the preceding texts, we give prominence to the presentation followed in Capital. Above and beyond the limitations that will be perceived by the reader, there are at least three others to be included: a) For reasons of textual economy we choose not to elaborate on a number of questions that are the subject of present-day discussion on the Marxist theory of money. b) For the same reasons, again, we will focus on the differences between the texts and not on examination of the factors that led Marx, from the Grundrisse to the various editions of Capital, into a continuous reformulation of the concept of money.9 c) We discuss only qualitative issues, not referring to quantitative aspects of the question.
8 Henceforth when we refer to the theoretical production of the money form, the reader should take into account that this is a cognate for production in the commodity form (Marx, 1976a, 154, 160, 181, 187). 9 Focusing on the differences has evident consequences for our text in terms of the comprehensiveness of the presentation of the concept of money.

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II. MoNEY IN CAPITAL

Very schematically, in Capital Marx undertakes the conceptual production of money via the following route. Starting from the representation of a social division of labor the representation of a society of commodity owners the problem of the power of the product owned by each person as a demand on the products of others labor is solved within the framework of a special mechanism of exchange.10 Bringing his product to the market, each producer confronts it as a claim, so to speak, on a certain quantity of all representations of social labor (Marx, 1974, 142). What interests him is the power of this claim and the extent of that power.11 The degree to which the money form (and the correlative commodity form) become established determines how far the organizational problem posed by this specific form of the social division of labor is to be solved. The outlines of the solving procedure may be presented schematically in the form of a thesis:
Thesis 1: We can divide theoretical production of the commodity and money form in Capital into two major aggregates of theoretical movements, or strands of theory: a) analysis of the theoretical structure of exchange, i.e., of value as a social relationship (first chapter: the commodity), b) its enrichment through a practice (second chapter: exchange), that is to say the conditions under which value as a social relationship is organized and consolidated.

Some preliminary clarification of Thesis 1 in relation to the order of presentation in Capital: We do not include as part of the theoretical production of the money form the third chapter of Capital. To be more precise, we consider that this theoretical production is temporarily suspended,12 in the passage: Commodities first enter into exchange ungilded . . . forms of motion of the process of exchange
10 We simply note the location at which the potential will appear for the contradictory requirements of the capitalist social division of labor to acquire a non-contradictory form. Since the producers do not come into social contact until they exchange the products of their labors, the specific social characteristics of their private labors appear only within this exchange (Marx, 1976a, 165). 11 What initially concerns producers in practice when they make an exchange is how much of some other product they get for their own (Marx, 1976a, 167). 12 Temporarily, because for the definitions to be made final there must be an introduction of the concept of capital: the definition of money as potential capital (see Marx, 1991, 477) cannot be posited at this point in the Marxist exposition.

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at the beginning of the sub-section entitled The Metamorphosis of Commodities (2nd sub-section of the 3rd chapter) which summarizes in the form of a conclusion the findings of the preceding analysis.13 Here we have a description of the commodity and the money form as inverse and opposed relations of value and use value and as adequate forms of organization of the exchange process. To the extent that it is implicated in the process of composition of the price form, as foreshadowed (Marx, 1976a, 163) in the first chapter and on the basis of the distinction we have introduced, the first sub-section of the third chapter is part of this theoretical production.14 The determinations of the money form in the remaining sections evidently enrich and theoretically modify the concept of money, but they are not part of the solution to the problems of the conditions favoring the existence of a society of commodity owners, and of production of the forms that this requires.15

2.1 The First Strand of Theory

For reasons of textual economy we will focus on theoretical production of the money form, taking as our starting point the third sub-section of the first chapter of Capital I and indeed confining the discussion to the simple form of value that is presented there.16 More specifically, through exposition of the simple form of value, xA = yB, there is a demonstration of the cellular composition of the forms commodity and money.17 This constitutes a polar
13 Marx, 1976a, 199. Bidet considers that the commodity is indeed a unity of use-value and value, but this unity is not completed in the individual commodity, it articulates the relation between commodities (2007, 256) and this is not unrelated to the rationality of commodity production (2007, 2567). This paragraph shows, however, that unity pertains to each single commodity whose composition is effected through the mediation of money. 14 Arthur (2004) similarly incorporates the price form into the theoretical production of money 15 As Itoh and Lapavitsas (1999, 40) aptly remark: That is, what money does follows from what money is. 16 We make a distinction between value, value magnitude and exchange value. Value as a concept is determined by substance, form and magnitude. Exchange value is a derivative concept. Also see Rubin (1972, 10915). 17 The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money-form (Marx, 1976a, 163). Also, in the first edition of Capital: The simple form of value is, so to speak, the cell form or, as Hegel would say, the in itself of money (Marx, 1983, footnote 16; corresponding expression in ibid., 42). In the Appendix to the first edition (Marx, 1978a, 144, 150), there is an explicit affirmation of the structural similarity between the money form and the simple form of value. In the text we place the terms commodity and money in quotation marks,

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relationship: one of ordering based on the formula A expresses its value in B. In terms of this analysis, B is the bearer of the equivalentrelationship form. This equation, a concrete solution to the problem of commensurability, indicates that there is an abstraction from the labor of A and that it is reckoned in the same way as any other labor, in this instance type B labor. It also indicates that there is an abstraction from use value A and that it is reckoned like any other use value, provided that it is in the right proportion, in this instance B. It is thus Bs function to appear as the value of A. As such it loses its distinguishing features. Its specific use value is erased and it acquires a use value directly convertible into any other commodity, in this instance A, while at the same time not expressing its value but only a proportion of its material or, more precisely, the material that is valid only as value materiality (Wertmateriatur), as money.18 Through this analysis the commodity is defined as a relationship. A, a use value, is a commodity (in the relationship xA = yB it is in relative value form i.e., it expresses its value in terms of another use value), which is brought into relationship with money, representing its value. The commodity, in other words, is defined as the element occupying the position C (in the ordered relationship CM), where the site of use value is position C and the position of the value of C is M. Correspondingly, money is the body that the specific MC ordering is entifying, position M being the place of appearance of the value and C being the possible use values of M.19 In this analysis M has the function of presenting20 value and appearance, measuring its value and at the same time acting as a general

implying that these are not theoretically finalized equivalent forms. Nevertheless they are forms that articulate their essential characteristics. The interest of these statements is that they highlight the apodictic procedure that is pursued in Capital as compared to that of the Grundrisse, without there being any requirement for full elaboration of the money form. 18 Marx, 1976a, 199. We translate the term Wertmateriatur as value materiality in preference to materialization of value. 19 Here, for purposes of textual economy, we make an obvious leap in our analysis. But taking into account the paragraph Commodities first enter . . . of the process of exchange (Marx, 1976a, 199), footnote 18, and the fact that from the moment the price form has been produced, the general relative value form has the same shape as their original relative value form (Marx 1976a, 189), we may easily make the necessary connections if we think of B as M, that is to say as money, without prejudice to the conclusions to be drawn from our reading. 20 For the use of the term presenting rather than the more usual representing we refer readers to Arthur, 2005, 217.

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equivalent (a special use value to be exchanged directly with every other commodity).21 At this point a first restriction should be noted to the range of elements with the potential to become money. The mechanism through which the value of A is expressed in B is a form whereby whatever is on the right-hand side of the equation xA = yB appears as the value of A. From the moment that the value relation xA = yB comes into application, B is qualitatively equated with A (Marx, 1978a, 136). But in the context of the analysis of value form we cannot replace B with a piece of paper, for example. Because our starting point is a society of commodity owners, it is a condition for the possibility of the value form that a product22 be posited as B. These cellular forms lead, through the apodictic exposed by Marx, to the commodity and money forms. We do not propose here to trace the entire course of this apodictic process, but we will describe the main points.23 More specifically, the transition to the money form is conveyed via the following three points a, b, c: a. Marx calls the totality of simple expressions of value of a commodity the total or expanded form of value. Every other product that is brought up against A in an exchange relationship (A = B or A = C or . . .), is an appearance of the value of A, in accordance with the analysis of the simple value form. b. As Marx seems to be suggesting, a reversing of the total form of value of a commodity, of B for example, gives us the general form of value.24 Reversal of the total form of value (A = B and C = B and . . .) provides to all commodities (A, C, . . .) one body (in this instance B), as a form of their value. For the first time in the analysis value acquires the form that corresponds to its concept (Marx, 1976a, 158).
21 Not only general equivalent, as asserted by Itoh and Lapavitsas (1999, 339); cf. Lapavitsas, 2005. 22 In our view Marxs theory shows that the capitalist mode of production does not require commodity money (Milios, et al., 2002, chs. 2 and 3). Nevertheless, the analysis of the value form in the first chapter of Capital demands that a commodity becomes money. See also Arthur, 2004, 62, footnote 44. 23 For a complete description, Arthur, 2004. 24 The reversal of the total form of value into the general form of value has met with objections as to the validity and/or consistency of the Marxist conceptual production of money. Cartelier (1991, 259), for example, considers that the reversal of the expanded (total) form does not generate anything but the expanded form itself, so that we do not have a transition to the form of the general equivalent and thus merely have money as a postulate. His conclusion stands only if one overlooks the polarizing character of the value expression. See Arthur, 2004, 37, 45, and Robles-Baez, 1997.

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c. But the transition from the total form of value to the general form of value is not also transition to the money form and specifically to money. There can be as many general forms of value as there are commodities, something that stands in contradiction also to the requirements of a single and uniform expression of value.25 In the first edition of Capital it is indeed presented as a special form (form IV) while in the subsequent editions and the Appendix to the first edition, although it does not appear as a special form, there is recognition of the possibility of multiple general value forms (there are demonstrable traces of their presence, and its effectual character).26 To make the transition to the money form from the general value form, one commodity must be chosen/excluded to play the role of general equivalent.27 The process of excluding one commodity in order to become the general equivalent is a subject for the second chapter. Before proceeding, however, let us note a second restriction to the range of potential bodies to be excluded from becoming as money. For the task of reversing the total form of value, the body to be assigned the place of general equivalent must be in the relative value form in the total form of value. It must therefore be a commodity.

2.2 The Second Strand of Theory

This strand of theory is introduced and expounded in Capital through social praxis, a subject introduced in the 2nd chapter, entitled Exchange Process. The brief second chapter (only 10 pages compared to the 53 pages of the first chapter) starts with the observation that commodities cannot themselves go to market and perform exchanges in their own right. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are the possessors of commodities (Marx, 1976a, 178). So at this point the text introduces the commodity owners who, acting in accordance with

25 If therefore each commodity opposes its own natural form to all other commodities as the general equivalent form, all commodities exclude all others from the general equivalent form, and therefore exclude themselves from the socially valid presentation of their magnitudes of value (Marx, 1983, 43). 26 Marx, 1976a, 162; Marx, 1983, 43; Marx, 1978a, 148. 27 Marx does not use the term choose, which we meet with in Arthur (2004, 556), but the term exclude (Marx, 1978a, 14850 and Marx 1976a, 162).

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the binding framework of forms outlined in the first chapter,28 end up directing (not with aforethought but subject to the objectivity of the terms of the value form) the various potential general forms of value to the money form, to the extent that the value of commodities accordingly expands more and more into the material embodiment of human labor as such (Marx 1976a, 183), that is to say to the extent that the capitalist mode of production emerges. To understand the theoretical function being served by the order of presentation in the short second chapter we must have in mind the following two problems. a. In the first chapter, through analysis of the value form, it is shown that given the concept of value, the fundamental forms (commodity, money) shaping the mechanism of exchange are derivatives of this concept, that is to say the necessary and adequate forms are produced by means of which our experience is organized.29 Nevertheless, such an indication does not comprise conceptual constitution of the conditions for its generation and existence. But the existence of this cannot be a logical consequence, and Marx is aware of this, particularly in Capital.30 b. It is therefore in the second chapter that the theoretical elements are to be found that explain the emergence of value as a social relationship. It is nevertheless evident that these theoretical elements are not made manifest. Because of the order of presentation Marx has
28 The laws of the commodity nature have manifested themselves in the natural instinct of the commodity owners (Marx, 1976a, 180). The first chapter provides us with the spontaneous ideological forms constituted by individuals as subjects of exchange. on this subject see Milios, et al. (2002, chapter 4); Knafo, 2002. For present purposes we note that in the fourth sub-section of the first chapter (The fetishism of the commodity and its secret) Marx shows that individuals cannot help acting spontaneously as vehicles for the economic forms previously developed, that is to say in accordance with the conditions that compose the commodity form CM and the money form MC. In another formulation: The principle of the overall process of commodity production, the law of value, is not the object of immediate experience for the producer. And the latter has no need for it in his practice, which is governed by other indicators, i.e., market prices, which show him the path to follow. Because of this, commodity relations appear to him only through the categories of exchange (Bidet, 2007, 271). 29 According to Marx, analysis of the value form proves that the form of value springs from the concept of value (Marx, 1983, 43); correspondingly in Marx, 1976a, 152. Arthur observes that in the first chapter Marx derives money as the form necessary to constitute value objectively (2004, 37). 30 Cartelier thinks that there is a weakness in Marxs procedure, namely its inability to generate money as a logical consequence: Money is not proven to be the logical consequence of the generalization of the relative form of value (1991, 268). But in our view Marx did not even plan to generate money simply as a logical consequence.

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chosen to follow, they cannot be posited at this point. Insofar as the monetary and the commodity form are products of the value expression, mention should be made of capital as is quite properly noted and argued from a number of different theoretical perspectives in Milios, et al. (2002, chapters 23), and Arthur (2002, 3334 and chapter 5). The difficulty is evident and takes the form of an array of prerequisites analogous with those ascertained by Marx in his introduction to the chapter on primitive accumulation (Marx, 1976a, 6756, 7412, 8734). For the coin to become money, the product a commodity, barter exchange, what is required is the appearance of capital in circulation and the formal subordination of previous social forms to capitalist social relations. It is however also necessary that there should be circulation, that is to say the commodity, money, exchange as a given precondition for capital, as soon as it makes its first appearance. A precondition which will be generated by the capitalist production relation in the course of its reproduction and as its consequence. To put it somewhat differently, all premises of the process appear as its result, as premises produced by the process itself (if we except the form of capital, MCM, that conveys precisely this circular relationship).31 It is necessary, on the basis of the order of presentation, for there to be reference to the commodity and to money prior to the existence of the commodity and money form, or for there to be reference to everything (money, the commodity, exchange, the capital relation of production) simultaneously, that is to say in a single theoretical movement, and not in any special order of presentation. The solution Marx chooses has two aspects. First, it refers to this co-constitution/co-structuring of exchange through early capitalist relations by means of a practical concept: the term social custom (or social action, social process), which is used by Marx to explain the emergence and consolidation of the money form.32 Second, in this chapter, the previous theoretical structure (CM, MC) is enriched through a practice, in other words provided with subjects: commodity owners, who act in accordance with tangible

31 Indicatively, this formulation appears also in: Marx, 1976a, 716; 1991, 9578; 1993, 256, 31920, 45960. 32 In this chapter we will not find a comprehensive historical explanation of the manner in which the capitalist exchange relationship is constituted, nor as a result will we find elucidation of the way in which social action is defined or how it functions. See section 2.4 ff.

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goals and the rules posited by the expression of value and the value magnitude of their products, i.e., the preceding theoretical structure. Enrichment of our theoretical structure, through a practice and the evocation of social custom, resolves the question of transition from the general value form to the money form, insofar as this practice becomes the predominant organizational practice in the sphere of production. Marx does not offer a strict selection mechanism, if by this term we mean a formal demonstration of the choice of one commodity as money. Even less can there be a question of terms of choice, but rather terms of emergence/predominance. Marx refers us to the conditions under which choice and the necessity of choice become possible.33 The reason for this absence is that the mechanism of exclusion of a product in the place of money is nothing more or less than the conditions under which the capitalist mode of production emerges and becomes predominant. But it does offer the theoretical potentiality for exchange, commodity and money to constitute different facets of the same process as it is self-organized in a social relationship without any presence that is transcendent in terms of the conditions of the problem: for example the state. In other words, retaining the economicsocial relationship as ground for the constitution of social forms and a constant in their organization of social forms. For the purposes of what follows we shall retain one conclusion, extracted from both chapters: exchange, commodity and money are defined simultaneously, are co-structured, co-constituted.

2.3. Digression on Other Theoretical Contributions

In this section we will examine recent theoretical contributions to examination of the unity between the first two chapters of Capital.
33 Lapavitsas writes: If money did not exist, the contradictions between use value and value would indeed be pacified, but the point is to show that the contradictions logically induce the emergence of money (Lapavitsas, 2005, 555). He also thinks that the emergence of money may be an analytical process, a becoming that unfolds from the first stage of the form of value through the subsequent three stages. But the transcription of the forms of value into terms appropriate to barter and into procedural terms does not explain the appearance of money. Nor is it possible to show why a particular commodity is chosen, other than by evoking social custom, as Marx himself also does. Moreover, without reference to capitalist production relations one cannot explain money as capitalistic money, as Bryan and Rafferty (2006b) aptly note.

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Heinrich (2004) puts forward the view that the distinction between the first and second chapters can be described as a difference between form analysis itself (the content of chapter 1) and form-oriented analysis of action, which is the content of chapter 2. Arthur argues that in sum, Chapter 1 as a whole is not studying the process of exchange; neither is it about proposals for exchange, it is asking what it is to be a commodity (2004, 38). Bidet thinks that Chapter 1 presents a set of conditions of possibility of a commodity structure (2007, 235) while in Chapter 2 Marx turns . . . to the question of the origin of money, but this time in a historical style (2007, 233) or in other words he confronts the problem of the conditions of its historical emergence. None of the abovementioned viewpoints is in conflict with the viewpoint we propose. Nevertheless, the formulations of Heinrich and Bidet tend to overlook the unity between the two chapters, that is to say the interconnectedness of the different theoretical movements they represent. Specifically Bidet (2007, 2335), overlooking the significance of the second chapter, appears to think that theoretical production of the money form takes place in the first chapter. Arthurs formulation becomes comprehensible if we reflect that by the term exchange it connotes the deliberate action of subjects. The term theoretical structure of exchange which we propose does not include the activity of subjects but the structure that is assembled in response to the question what it is to be a commodity, which is posed by Arthur also (2004, 38). We nevertheless maintain that the second chapter is a necessary theoretical movement for there to be a conclusion to the exposition commenced in the first chapter. Indeed if we take into account that analysis of the value form is in accordance with a Hegelian-type dialectic,34 both the form IV presentation in the first edition and the presentation in the second chapter represent a critique of the pretensions of the Hegelian dialectic.

2.4. Digression on the Limitations of a Hegelian-Type Dialectic

It is possible to discover, in an older text by Marx, the origins of the necessity of the second strand of theory in Capital (and not only in Capital but also in the Grundrisse, as we will see below). In the Critique
34 This thesis is defended, for example, in Arthur, 2002, and in Albritton and Simoulidis, 2003. A critical approach is to be found in Bidet, 2007 (chs. 7 and 9), and in Saad-Filho, 2002 (1520).

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of Hegels Philosophy of Right, Marx gives his assessment of the process by which Hegel produces the concept of the monarch.
Hegel here defines the monarch as the personality of the state, its certainty of itself. . . . It is obvious that personality and subjectivity, being only predicates of the person and the subject, exist only as person and subject; and indeed that the person is one. But Hegel needed to go further, for clearly the one has truth only as many ones. The predicate, the essence, never exhausts the spheres of its existence in a single one but in many ones. (Marx, 1978b, 2278.)

This critique represents the enlistment by Marx of Hegel against Hegel. Because from the moment that Hegel carried out this theoretical production of the monarch as institutional form, the question: who is the monarch? is treated as a question of chance, that is to say a nontheoretical question belonging to the realm of historical contingency. This critique also unfolds in an unexpected way, in Capital, in the passage from the general form of value to the money form. It is evident in the first edition where there is the intervention of Form IV, but also in the following editions, as well as in the Appendix where the traces of its theoretical presence linger on (Marx, 1976a, 162; Marx, 1983, 43; Marx, 1978a, 148). Its theoretical presence amounts to a critique of the demand that the form of the general equivalent, which could be compared to the monarch (as one) be equated with the money form. As a kind of reductio ab absurdum it indicates that there are many ones (forms of the general equivalent) and no logical transition to the money form. Nor is the transition, or rather the transformation, of the concept of the general value form into the money form treated by Marx as a question of pure historical contingency. He arranges for it to be mediated by the second chapter, in which he shows that there are tendencies that shape historical contingency. Specifically it can be ascertained: a) That the precapitalist forms of exchange practice that appear in the second chapter are inherently determined by the forms by means of which exchange is organized. They are prerequisites for capitalist forms of organization.35 b) That they are nevertheless not the forms that are organizable under the capitalist mode of production.36 c) That they will change with the
35 This is shown by the use of value forms to describe precapitalist forms of exchange. 36 Indicatively: The direct exchange of products has the form of the simple expression of value in one respect, but not as yet in another (Marx, 1976a, 181).

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emergence of the capitalist mode of production (given that there will be establishment of the money form). They are transformable in the way that is necessary; they include the potential for transformation.37 d) That what is required is something that transcends the inherent organizational tendencies of exchange: social habit, the emergence of the capitalist mode of production,38 the money form all this does not emerge as the preordained outcome of unfolding of the logical organization of exchange. In other words: historical contingency does not operate in a void, indeterminately, but under the impulse of specific tendencies, while at the same time these tendencies require something that transcends them so that they are finally transformed into elements of the structure of the capitalist mode of production.39

III. MoNEY IN THE GRUNDRISSE

The text of the Grundrisse has a different point of departure from Capital. It commences not from the commodity but from a critique of views on the establishment of labor money (see also Rosdolsky, 1977, 97108; Nelson, 1999, 45). The consciousness that a Critique of Political Economy treatise should start from the commodity is something that is late in coming almost at the end of the text (Marx, 1993, 8812). We can present the theoretical production of money in the Grundrisse by means of a thesis.
Thesis 2: We have two strands of theory, as with the later theoretical organization of Capital, which conceptually produce money as a special type of commodity, for example gold. The first strand might be called the symbolmaking theoretical strand: Gold is able to be money not because labor has been expended to produce it but because it possesses the qualities of a value symbol, because that is to say value can be projected in its material, as
37 Indicatively: The general equivalent form comes and goes with the momentary social contacts. . . . But with the development of exchange . . . it crystallizes out into the money-form (Marx, 1976a, 183). 38 . . . the value of commodities accordingly expands more and more into the material embodiment of human labor as such (Marx, 1976a, 183). 39 This is why the forms that appear in the second chapter are (insofar as they are described in a similar manner) but at the same time are not (insofar as capitalist production does not yet exist) the forms of value of the first chapter. What we have is a transitional state of preliminary conditions which as they come together to structure exchange are at the same time appropriately transformed as a result of this same structuring.

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it can in a piece of paper. In the second strand of theory gold is also money because the self-constitution (or in the present context self-grounding) of the structure of exchange has imposed a product, that is to say something that is the result of labor and thus claims the title of value, as a symbol of value.40

Let us take a closer look at the Grundrisses exposition of this.

3.1 The First Strand of Theory

In the Grundrisse the opposition to notions of instituting labor money is the field within which the concept of money takes shape. Briefly, and in accordance with the needs of the present study, the chief argument for institution of labor money derives from the Ricardian labor theory of value as a proportion of expended labor. Given that the value of a product is determined by the hours of labor that are expended on its production, why is the price of the product not expressed in symbolic money that will register the hours of labor? For Marx the school of Proudhon (Gray) was the recognized exponent of this viewpoint. The key question posited by Marx in his critical reading of the arguments in favor of the institution of labor money is as follows: does not the bourgeois system of exchange itself necessitate a specific instrument of exchange? (Marx, 1993, 127), for an obvious theoretical reason: the belief that there is a type of instrument that can resolve the difficulties linked to the bourgeois system of production overlooks the point that the difficulties concerned are attributable not to the instrument but to the system itself. The concept of money appears initially as a theoretical production: because as value commodities are equivalents, it follows that every commodity finds itself in a quantitative and not in a qualitative relationship with all other commodities. In other words there explicitly emerges in the text the question of the commensurability of two different commodities as physical quantities and use values, an issue which is resolved by the mode of existence of the commodity as value.
40 The questions posed by Reichelt (2007) fall outside the province of this paper in that we are not concerning ourselves with the concept of capital and its relation to the concept of value. We might nevertheless draw attention to the way Reichelt overlooks the fact that theoretical production of the concept of money, both in Capital and in the Grundrisse, have an input into, and are demanded by, both of the strands of theory we have detected.

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As a value, a commodity is an equivalent for all other commodities in a given relation. As a value, the commodity is an equivalent. . . . As value, it is money (Marx, 1993, 141). Thus, in order to be exchanged the commodity must be represented in a mode of existence different from its physical mode of existence. our requirement is that commodities have a different mode of existence, that is to say appear differently to experience from how they appear as physical magnitudes or useful objects. The same product cannot be duplicated and appear simultaneously as disparate (particular use-value) and equivalent (value). This second existence must symbolize the value relations of the products the social relationship of equalization of the products41 and constitute an element of general recognition, a role that could be played even by a piece of paper (Marx, 1993, 141). In other words: the structure of exchange of the commodities requires the addition of an element, the symbol of value, which functions as the form in which the commodities are analyzed when they are equated as values. Through this symbol the product acquires the characteristics of a commodity; it becomes possible for it to appear as a commodity.42 3.1.1. The first strand of theory in relation to Capital. This theoretical production appears similar to the corresponding one in Capital. Nevertheless, there are significant differences. While in Capital the simple value expression xA = yB is primary and spontaneous, as B is posited in a necessarily primary sense in the position of money, in the Grundrisse the primary expression is the relation of A and B with labor time: xA = yB = 1/k of labor time (Marx, 1993, 143). Therefore, in the relation xA = yB there is a notional third that is reified/hypostasized as a symbol in some material. That which in Capital appears as an objective process of primary expression appears in the Grundrisse as a
41 It [the commodity] must be exchanged against a third thing which is not in turn itself a particular commodity, but is the symbol of the commodity as commodity, of the commoditys exchange value itself; which thus represents, say, labour time as such, say a piece of paper or of leather, which represents a fractional part of labor time. (Such a symbol presupposes general recognition; it can only be a social symbol; it expresses, indeed, nothing more than a social relation.) (Marx, 1993, 144). 42 We see in this text, as in Capital, that the presence of money enables the commodity to appear as such within the structure of exchange: In its natural existence, with its natural properties, in natural identity with itself, the commodity is neither constantly exchangeable nor exchangeable against every other commodity. . . . We must first transpose the commodity into itself as exchange value in order then to be able to compare this exchange value with other exchange values and to exchange it (Marx, 1993, 142).

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duplication. We have the objective constitution of value in our mind, as a relation which is based on labor time, and which is activated in exchange, as commodities are put into circulation whose value must be represented in the form of a thing.43 In other words the conceptual production of money as a symbol of value in the Grundrisse may be conceived of as an activity of the collectivecreative imagination, projecting a more-or-less ready-made material in schematic format.44 In the Grundrisse, to examine another aspect, abstraction of the use value from a commodity is enacted on the commodity itself (the argument being that the commodity as value has a dual existence and so must be duplicated). The remainder from the abstraction, value, being qualitatively different from the body of the commodity, must acquire another body as a condition of the exchange process. In Capital, by contrast, we have from the outset a relation between two productbodies xA = yB, and the value of A is expressed in B. The use
43 Commodities are equivalents because as values they can be reduced to labor time: Thus I equate each of the commodities with a third; i.e., not with themselves. This third, which differs from them both, exists initially only in the head, as an idea (Vorstellung), since it expresses a relation; just as, in general, relations can be established as existing only by being thought about, as distinct from the subjects which are in these relations with each other (Marx, 1993, 143). Because labor time as the measure of value exists only as an ideal (Marx, 1993, 140). We translate the term Vorstellung as idea, following the Geraets, Suchting and Harris proposal in Hegel (1991, xlvii, 348, fn 5), on the distinction between Begriff (concept) and Vorstellung (notion/idea), with the additional admission that Marx employs the key distinctions of the philosophical tradition of (idea) in conjunction with the question of representation of relations. This is very important, because it expresses through it the action of the creativeproductive imagination, as one would say in the Kantian terminology. Note that in Hegel (1971) there is no question of the objectivity of its action or the materiality of its results: a) it aims at making itself be and be a fact (211); b) this generates signs (zeihen), like a flag which means something different from what it shows immediately, and not merely symbols (Symbol), which preserve a closer relationship with the content (212); and c) leads to the formation of language (214). Because the labor time that equates the two commodities is an idea (Vorstellung), that idea is not adequate, given that the natural qualities of commodities conflict with the requirements of measurement, and given that the commodity as value to the commodity owner can be exchanged not with one other commodity but with a totality of commodities in succession (Marx, 1993, 144). A commoditys being able to act as an exchange value presupposes that the commoditys exchange value obtains a material existence separate from the commodity (Marx, 1993, 145). This separated existence is money. It is worth noting that in the first edition there is a shift: value and abstract labor are not characterized as an idea (Vorstellung) but as the remainder from abstraction, of use value from the commodity and of the specific purpose of the concrete tasks, respectively. This remainder is the commodity as value, that is to say the materiality of abstract labor (Gegenstndlichkeit der menschlichen Arbeit), which is described as a thing made of thought (ein Gedankending) or a phantom spun by the brain (Flachsgewebe zum Hirngespinst) (Marx 1983, 30). The subjects touched upon here cannot be elaborated upon more systematically in this paper. 44 Produktive Einbildungskraft: Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B152, B179181, A118, A123, A140142; and Hegel, 1971, 2103.

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value of B, like the potential for value expression of B, is not abstracted by us but is in practice cancelled because B serves merely as the value expression (of A). In Capital money is not produced conceptually as representation of the common labor time of two commodities, or of the value of one commodity, but as result of the relationship between two things; that is to say, it is undertaken exclusively through the exchange process and by virtue of the conditions of its possibility.

3.2 The Second Strand of Theory

The second strand of theory deals with the question of how symbolism is organized. In this connection we shall examine how the relation and social construct commodity value acquires perceptible existence, as a symbol. How, that is, the concept of money is organized as the exchange value of a commodity, as a separate form of existence accompanying the commodity itself (Marx, 1993, 142). Let us commence with the first issue. Historically and in the time of Marx the role of money was played by gold. The question faced by Marx was: How is the symbol of value to be represented through the commodity gold? Why, in other words, does money, which could be merely a piece of paper, take the form of gold?45 Marx finds the solution in the historical prerequisites and the historicity of the form of exchange. This at the same time provides us with the conditions under which the value symbol acquires validity and general recognition.46 In the first place, in exchange, commodities are exchanged with commodities. This means that some commodity was used as a medium so that exchange could take place. This commodity was not in general use as a medium of exchange at all times and in all places. Exchange networks are established at specific times and in specific places and using some commodity as a medium. This does not yield the specific
45 Exchange value as such can of course exist only symbolically, although in order for it to be employed as a thing and not merely as a formal notion, this symbol must possess an objective existence; it is not merely an ideal notion, but is actually presented to the mind in an objective mode (Marx, 1993, 154). 46 As in Capital: The need for exchange and for the transformation of the product into a pure exchange value progresses in step with the division of labor, i.e., with the increasingly social character of production. But as the latter grows, so grows the power of money, i.e., the exchange relation establishes itself as a power external to and independent of the producers (Marx, 1993, 146).

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structure of exchange that characterizes the capitalist mode of production. Nor does it mean that the product that is used as a medium constitutes money from the beginning.47 It does, however, mean that for capitalism to become the dominant form of production, the capitalist forms of production must exist and must count among the alreadyestablished and valid forms of exchange. Capitalist practices transform it into the form that can make possible their extended reproduction. The material by means of which value is represented cannot be posited from outside the structure of exchange, by a power transcending the process of production and circulation. It is the latter that posits it as an element adequate for its functioning.48 Exchange involves the exchange of products. This means that some product is assigned the role of symbolizing value. Some product because as a product it is an intrinsic element in the exchange. A piece of paper, on the other hand, would require the presence of a power transcending exchange that would make it a general commodity, a socially valid form of value.49 When, however, a commodity, gold for example, acquires the role of representing the value of commodities, that is to say comprises a symbol of value, the qualities we demanded of money are fulfilled. This theoretical production does not, however, entail that the gold form is the standard or characteristic form of money for the capitalist mode of production. It is just the element by means of which it is generated. The structural, and in its historicity immutable, element is that the structure of exchange required the embodied existence of a value symbol. The form it will take is a matter to be negotiated. The value symbol can take different forms, as is evident from Marxs (1993, 123) assertions and analyses. The second strand, the process of organizing the symbolization of value, is an objective social process. Value itself, like the general social character of work, is notional in character, but this does not mean that

47 In fact the commodity which is required as medium of exchange becomes transformed into money, into a symbol, only little by little (Marx, 1993, 144). 48 The material in which this symbol is expressed is by no means a matter of indifference, even though it manifests itself in many different historical forms. In the development of society, not only the symbol but also the material corresponding to the symbol are worked out a material from which society later tries to disentangle itself (Marx, 1993, 145). 49 Money . . . i.e., the universal commodity must itself exist as a particular commodity alongside the others, since what is required is not only that they can be measured against it in the head, but that they can be changed and exchanged for it in the actual exchange process. . . . Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises out of exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same (Marx, 1993, 165).

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it is lacking in objectivity and the corresponding materiality.50 Commodities reflect social relations; the abstraction, or idea, however, is nothing more than the theoretical expression of those material relations which are their lord and master (1993, 164) and are objectified; the objectification of the general, social character of labor (and hence of the labor time contained in exchange value) is precisely what makes the product of labor time into exchange value (1993, 168).

3.3. Digression on the Text of the Contribution51

In the Contribution there is a different proposal, encapsulating the theoretical production of money: Money is not a symbol (Symbol), just as the existence of a use value in the form of a commodity is no symbol (Symbol) (Marx, 1981a, 49). In the Contribution, the point of departure is the commodity. Money is produced from exchange without the evolution of forms of value being distinguished from such exchange (Marx, 1981a, 419; see also Arthur, 2004, 38). Through the exchange relation and the activity of commodity owners there appears a general equivalent that resolves the problem of the social form with its basis in exchange. But no sufficient distinction is drawn between the money form and the general form of value (Marx, 1981a, 48). The two different strands of theory, of theoretical exposition of the (re)presentation of value in money and of exchange that we encounter both in the Grundrisse and in Capital merge into one, comprise a single strand of theory. The theoretical justification is to be found in the Contribution: . . . and thus the exchange process becomes at the same time the process of formation of money (Marx, 1981a, 52). In the Contribution, the idealism of the exposition in the Grundrisse52 is evidently corrected and the conceptual production of money
50 Indicatively: Labor time cannot directly be money . . . being a general object, it can exist only symbolically, and hence only as a particular commodity which plays the role of money (Marx, 1993, 168). 51 Particularly in Ch. 1, 2762. 52 It will be necessary later, before this question is dropped, to correct the idealist manner of the presentation, which makes it seem as if it were merely a matter of conceptual determinations and of the dialectic of these concepts. Above all in the case of the phrase: product (or activity) becomes commodity; commodity, exchange value; exchange value, money (Marx, 1993, 151). Nevertheless, we note that the shift that is effected also solves in the most categorical way the problem that in order to deal with James Steuarts theory of the ideal measure, what is required is an explicit enlistment of the concept of commensurability (Marx, 1993, 789800). This question cannot be further elaborated here.

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reduced to one theoretical movement that is based on an objective process. Thus exchange, the value relation xA = yB, is the field of action of value expression and the place where the forms commodity and money are organized, just as in Capital.53 But this merging of the two strands of theory does not allow for sufficient distinction between the general form of value and the money form, and even more so does not make it clear that the form of value is a form that corresponds to the concept of value. Apart from this it precludes drawing of the distinction between the conditions of possibility and the conditions of existence of value as a social relation, as we argued in section 2. Marx in Capital accepts the interweaving of two different theoretical strands for constitution of the money form, as in the Grundrisse, but now the field of analysis is the value expression relation xA = yB. The argumentation of the Contribution is now functioning as a theoretical given.

IV. THE SHIFT BETWEEN GRUNDRISSE AND CAPITAL

In the preceding sections we have shown that the theoretical production of money, both in the Grundrisse and in Capital, is effected via the elaboration of two separate strands of theory: one strand which emerges from interrogation of the social relationship based on capitalist exchange and another strand which, based on the fact of the initial movement, attempts to sketch out the conditions under which the money form is to be organized. We also showed that money in the Grundrisse has already been produced theoretically as a symbol, with the exchange process then undertaking to organize this representation in a commodity. Although we cannot imagine exchange without money, Marxs argument, pursued with great persistence, is that the process of demonstration is split in two. We acquire the ability to conceive of money through abstraction from one commodity, after which we examine how it is materialized in a body. By contrast, in Capital the theoretical production of money
53 Note that the bipolar character of the value expression (that is such a basic feature of its mode of articulation in Capital), in conjunction with a preliminary model for the simple value form, is also detectable in the Grundrisse but is not employed for the theoretical production of money (Marx, 1993, 2057). Compare: Gold or silver money. . . . their title is not a title to value, i.e., they are not measured in a third commodity, but merely express fractional parts of their own substance . . . in the last analysis an intrinsic property of all money (Marx, 1993, 1334).

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requires the involvement of both strands of theory, having secured (in at least three ways) the necessity for money to be the body of some product in the first strand of theory. First, premising the necessity for commensurability of the commodities;54 second, by way of the value relation xA = yB; and, third, through the fact that reversion of the total form to the general form of value necessarily ends with a commodity as general equivalent. In this securing process a key difference may be detected in the second strand of theory as between the two texts.55 In the Grundrisse, unlike in Capital, what is endeavored is the rendering of a commodity into the body of money. InCapital this is no longer necessary. The difficulty solved by Capital (and the Contribution) is palpable. If money is produced as a symbol of value, the road is now open for the viewpoint that money could be replaced by symbols, not necessarily labor-time chits, by means of a collective subject. It would thus be possible for the determinant in the last analysis to be not the mode of production but the political forms. The conceptual production of money must thus be exposed, starting from a society of commodity owners who practice exchange so that the appearance of value is effected in one commodity.
Spyros Lapatsioras: Department of Economics University of Crete University Campus, 14100 Rethymno, Crete, Greece spirosla@gmail.com John Milios: Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law National Technical University of Athens zografou Campus, 15780 zografou, Athens, Greece john.milios@gmail.com

54 In Capital (and in the Contribution), Marx premises commensurability and henceforth value and abstract labor, which is also attributable to the fact that he chooses to give first place to his critique of Ricardo that is to say, the introduction of the concept of abstract labor as the substance of value (Milios et al., Ch. 2; Lapatsioras, 2006). 55 For reasons of textual economy we do not propose to examine the difference between them. But in any case the important point in our opinion is that their theoretical function should be established.

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Albritton, Robert, and John Simoulidis, eds. 2003. New Dialectics and Political Economy. Basingstoke, England/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Althusser, Louis. 1969. For Marx. London: Penguin. . 1978. Avant-propos. In Grard Dumnil, ed., Le concept de loi conomique dans Le Capital. Paris: Franois Maspero. Arthur, Christopher J. 2002. The New Dialectic and Marxs Capital. Leiden, Amsterdam: Brill Academic Publishers. . 2004. Money and the Form of Value. Pp. 3562 in The Constitution of Capital: Essays on Volume 1 of Marxs Capital, ed. R. Bellofiore and N. Taylor. Basingstoke, England/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. . 2005. Reply to Critics. Historical Materialism, 13:2, 189222. . 2006. A Guide to Marxs Grundrisse in English. Available at www.psa.ac.uk/ spgrp/marxism/online/arthur.pdf Bidet, Jacques. 2007. Exploring Marxs Capital: Philosophical, Economic and Political Dimensions. Leiden, Amsterdam/Boston, Massachusetts: Brill Academic Publishers. Bryan, Dick, and Michael Rafferty. 2006a. Capitalism with Derivatives: A Political Economy of Financial Derivatives, Capital and Class. Hampshire, England/ New York: Palgrave Macmillan. . 2006b. Money in Capitalism or Capitalist Money? Historical Materialism, 14, 7595. Cartelier, Jean. 1991. Marxs Theory of Value, Exchange and Surplus Value: A Suggested Reformulation. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 15:3, 25769. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1971. Philosophy of Mind. Part three of The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. oxford, England: oxford university Press. . 1991. The Encyclopaedia Logic. Indianapolis, Indiana/Cambridge, England: Hackett Publishing Company. Heinrich, Michael. 2004. Ambivalences of Marxs Critique of Political Economy as obstacles for the Analysis of Contemporary Capitalism. Historical Materialism Conference, London (october 10). Available at http://www.oekonomiekritik.de Itoh, Makoto, and Costas Lapavitsas. 1999. Political Economy of Money and Finance. Basingstoke, England/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Knafo, Samuel. 2002. The Fetishizing Subject in Marxs Capital. Capital and Class, 76, 14575. Lapatsioras, Spyros. 2006. Simple Value Form, Commodity and Money: Reading Part 1 of Volume 1 of Capital. Theseis, 95, 4786. (In Greek.) Lapavitsas, Costas. 2005. The Emergence of Money in Commodity Exchange, or Money as Monopolist of the Ability to Buy. Review of Political Economy, 17:4, 54969. Marx, Karl. 1971. zur Kritik der politischen konomie. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. . 1974. Theorien ber den Mehrwert. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. . 1976a. Capital. Volume I. London: Penguin. . 1976b. konomische Manuskripte 185758. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. . 1978a. The Value Form. Appendix to the First Edition of Capital. Trans. M. Roth, and W. Suchting. Capital and Class, Vol. 4, 134150.

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. 1978b. Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Pp. 203333 in Karl MarxFriedrich Engels Werke. Band 1. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. . 1981a. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. London: Lawrence & Wishart. . 1981b. konomische Manuskripte 185758. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. . 1983. Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen konomie. Erster Band. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. . 1991. Capital. Volume III. London: Penguin Books. . 1993. Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft). London: Penguin. . 2002. Das Kapital. Volume I. Available at www.econ.utah.edu/~ehrbar/akmc. htm Milios, John, Dimitri Dimoulis, and George Economakis. 2002. Karl Marx and the Classics. An Essay on Value, Crises and the Capitalist Mode of Production. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. Moseley, Fred, ed. 2005. Marxs Theory of Money: Modern Appraisals. Basingstoke, England/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nelson, Anitra. 1999. Marxs Concept of Money. The God of Commodities. London/New York: Routledge. Reichelt, Helmut. 2007. Marxs Critique of Economic Categories: Reflections on the Problem of Validity in the Dialectical Method of Presentation in Capital. Historical Materialism, 15:4, 352. Robles-Baez, Mario. 1997. on Marxs Dialectic of the Genesis of the Money Form. International Journal of Political Economy, 27:3, 3564. Rosdolsky, Roman. 1977. The Making of Marxs Capital. London: Pluto Press. Rubin, Isaak Illich. 1972. Essays on Marxs Theory of Value. Detroit, Michigan: Black And Red Press. Saad-Filho, Alfredo. 2002. Value of Marx: Political Economy for Contemporary Capitalism. London/New York: Routledge. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1994. History of Economic Analysis. London: Routledge.

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COMMuNICATION

Science & Society, Vol. 76, No. 4, october 2012, 546549

MATHEMATICS AND DIALECTICS IN MARX: A REPLY

1. In February 2009, in a private communication, Russell Dale shared with me some pertinent and important remarks about my article, Dialectics and Temporality in Marxs Mathematical Manuscripts, published in this journal in 2008. At that time, I could not answer properly because I was working on my latest book, Behind the Crisis (Brill, 2011). In the meantime, Russell Dales remarks have been published in the october 2011 issue of this journal. This short note is my long overdue reply, with apologies for the delay. 2. My perceptive critic submits two orders of questions. The first relates to the more technical aspects of Marxs method of differentiation. I will not dwell on them because, as I mentioned in my article and as recalled by Russell Dale, I examine Marxs method of differentiation not as a mathematician would but because it reveals what I think is Marxs dialectical view of social reality. Rather, I will focus on the second order of questions because it is these that are central to my article. They are: What is dialectical logic? What is its relation to formal logic? Can mathematics as a branch of formal logic be applied to dialectical logic, and more specifically, is equilibrium applicable to a dialectical analysis of social reality? I investigate these topics in detail in Behind the Crisis, to which I refer the interested reader. Here, due to constraints of space, I can only provide some elements of a more complete picture. 3. Dialectical logic. In my view, Marxs dialectics as a tool of social research is based upon four principles. a) Social phenomena are always both realized and potential; i.e., reality has a double dimension, what has become realized and what is potentially existent in what has become realized. b) 546

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Social phenomena are both determinant and determined; i.e., a realized social phenomenon is determinant if it causes the realization of its own potentialities through its interaction with other phenomena. These are the determined phenomena. upon their realization, they become the conditions of reproduction or supersession of their determinant phenomenon as well as of other phenomena. Consequently, c) social phenomena are subject to constant movement and change. d) Social phenomenas movement (change) is tendential, i.e., at any given level of abstraction (given a section of reality under scrutiny), some social phenomenon is the tendency and others are the countertendencies. These four principles are extracted from Marxs work and thus from a class analysis of social reality. They apply only to that reality and not to nature. True, there are similarities with natural phenomena. For example, water is potentially ice. Similarly, money is potentially capital. But water can turn into ice without human volition and consciousness. The same cannot be said of money becoming capital. These four principles are similar to the three principles of Engels dialectics of nature. But the essential difference is human volition and consciousness. A theory resting on human agency cannot be applied to phenomena, for example tidal waves, that are indifferent to that agency and to social classes. It would be mistaken to subsume the dialectics of nature to the dialectics of society or vice versa. The two worlds are radically different. Humans can change natural phenomena but this does not alter the ontological difference between society and nature. This is why Engels dialectics of nature cannot be applied to society. of course, neither I nor anybody else can claim that this is (or is not) what Marx had in mind. But I have shown in various works that this view fits perfectly into his theory. Not only does it solve a number of problems, both imaginary and real, but it allows the development of his theory in conformity with its class content. It is in this sense that this approach can be considered to be Marxs own. 4. The relation of dialectical logic to formal logic. The difference between formal and dialectical logic can be exemplified by comparing the first principle of dialectical logic (social phenomena are always realized and potentially existent) with formal logics first principle, the law of identity. This latter states that something is always equal to itself, i.e., A = A. Then, A cannot be different from A. Either A = A or A A. For dialectical logic, on the contrary, A = A and at the same time A A because A as a realized phenomenon is always equal to itself, but as a potential inherent in the realized A, it is different from the realized A. Let Ar indicate the realized A and Ap the potential phenomena inherent in Ar. Then, {Ar = Ar and Ar Ap} is the famous unity in contradiction. For formal logic, A only exists without superscripts, so that A = A is true and A A is a mistake. For dialectical logic

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Ar = Ar is true if we analyze the realized reality but Ar Ap is equally true if we consider both aspects of reality, the realized and the potential. A dialectical contradiction is a contradiction between what has become and what can become, as contradictory to what has become. In social reality it is the contradictory class content of social phenomena that makes them different from themselves and thus which can cause both their supersession and the supersession of other phenomena. Ar can cause the supersession Br, but this is possible because Bp makes the supersession of Br possible. Without Bp there would not be the supersession of Br; without their inherent contradictory potentialities social phenomena could not change. What is, then, the relation between the two types of logic? Formal logic, by excluding the realm of potentialities and thus change, is a static view of reality. Therefore, it is functional for the theorization of the status quo. Conversely, dialectical logic is a dynamic view of reality. Nevertheless, if the class content of formal logic is the opposite of, and excludes, that of dialectical logic, the principles of formal logic can and should be applied within dialectical logic because the rules of formal logic, and only those rules, apply to the realm of the realized. To temporarily disregard Ap in order to analyze separately Ar and subsequently Ar Ap is a procedure that is not only valid but useful. one can analyze a certain state of affairs by taking a snapshot of it. But the latter, a static view, should not be mistaken for the real movement. 5. The theoretical status of equilibrium. It is from this angle that Marxs reproduction schemes should be seen. They are not a theorization of society moving towards equilibrium. They quantify the values and quantities of the means of production that have to be exchanged for the values and quantities of the means of consumption for the economy to reproduce itself, either on the same or on an extended scale. They show that exchange in these proportions is theoretically possible. But this is a static picture because it overlooks (purposely) the forces potentially present in the economy that propel it towards crises, so that the possibility of an equilibrium situation is not only improbable in reality but also irrelevant in theory. Within a dynamic view, this is a chance event and not the center of gravity around which those proportions fluctuate. Even if those quantities were to materialize, equilibrium in exchange could not stop the fall in the profit rate and thus the economys march towards crises and self-supersession. More generally, I do not object to using equilibrium in economic analysis. To consider social reality from a static perspective, through formal or mathematical logic, can improve our knowledge of that reality. But I do object to theorizing the economy or society as being in a state of equilibrium or tending towards it, as if a chance occurrence were the essence of a reality. Social reality and its reproduction or supersession cannot be theorized as being in (or tending towards) equilibrium, not even as a first step in the

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inquiry. Let me make a comparison. I can theorize labor as all those who do not own the means of production and then proceed to disaggregate it as productive and unproductive, objective and mental, etc. These differences do not erase their common features, the lack of ownership of the means of production. Every step in the disaggregation builds upon the previous ones and on the results previously achieved and enriches our understanding of the object of analysis. Not so if the economy is theorized as a system being in or tending towards equilibrium. The reason is that equilibrium presupposes lack of time. Time either exists or it does not. If we assume that it does not exist, any results achieved by subsequently introducing time negate the previous ones. For example, for simultaneism the inputs of a production process can also be the outputs of the same process. But this is impossible within a temporal view. The choice is between two mutually excluding theorizations, one presupposing time and the other denying it. In theory, one is free to choose either one or the other approach. But from the point of view of class struggle, if one chooses equilibrium, one explicitly or implicitly negates time. If there is no time, there is no change. If there is no change, labors struggle is muted. It is not by chance that this is the view of bourgeois economics. But it is unfortunate that it has become the view also of many Marxists. Guglielmo Carchedi
Looiersgracht 19e 1016VR, Amsterdam The Netherlands Carchedi38@gmail.com

REFERENCES Carchedi, Guglielmo. 2008. Dialectics and Temporality in Marxs Mathematical Manuscripts. Science & Society, 72:4 (october), 415426. . 2011. Behind the Crisis. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Dale, Russell. 2011. Guglielmo Carchedi on Marx, Calculus, Time and Dialectics. Science & Society, 75:4 (october), 555566.

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REVIEwS

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable. New York: Viking, 2011. $30.00. Pp. 608. There have been few figures in African American history as iconic as Malcolm X. upon his 1965 assassination he was largely reviled by the mainstream media, beloved by a small segment of the activist African American community, and misunderstood by most Americans. The 1965 posthumous publication of his autobiography (written with the assistance of Alex Haley) became a best seller and a staple of college reading lists. In Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Manning Marable, one of the more prolific scholars of the African American experience, takes the autobiography as his beginning outline and fills it out with his original research including interviews, FBI and other government files, Malcolms diary, and other archival and manuscript sources while assiduously pointing out discrepancies between the archival record and the autobiography. Marables use of the term reinvention in the subtitle is meant to give structure to the narrative of the subjects life, reflecting how Malcolm changed himself and his public image to reflect the different circumstances he found himself in. Marables biography contextualizes Malcolms life within the broad sweep of African American history. Consequently the reader learns not only about Malcolms life and activities and Marables level of detail reflects both his training as a historian and the twenty years of research he put into this work but also about the context: the history of the struggle against African American oppression, of Black nationalism, of Islam in the African American community, and of the acceleration of the movement for democratic rights, i.e., the civil rights movement. unsurprisingly, Marables treatment of Malcolms sexual experiences and sexuality (he alleges that Malcolm engaged in homosexual acts as a youthful hustler and that he and his wife probably engaged in adulterous affairs) 550

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have been the focus of much of the initial critical reaction to the book. As one might expect, many of the criticisms are mired in homophobia, Puritanism, distorted notions of masculinity, and a misreading (or non-reading) of the sources that Marable cites. However the focus on these issues obfuscates one of the central contributions of Marables work: detailing the last year of Malcolms life. Malcolms legacy rests largely on his activities from March 1964 to February 1965 the first date marking the month he left the Nation of Islam and the latter date the month he was murdered. Had Malcolm died in early 1964, without ever leaving the NoI, he would probably be relegated to a sidebar in African American history certainly not the towering figure and folk hero he became. The point of contention surrounding Malcolms last year is: In which direction was his thought evolving? Clearly, as Marable documents, Malcolm was rethinking most of his previously held politics. He was becoming increasingly anti-imperialist and questioning the legitimacy of capitalism. But was he becoming a social democrat, Marxist, Maoist, Trostkyist, or Leninist? And was he honestly attempting to build unity with the existing civil rights movement? Those are issues on which activists and scholars are yet to agree. Marables detailed accounting of that last year paints a compelling portrait of a man besieged on all sides. Members of the Nation of Islam were threatening him with death for his apostasy. He was concerned with being able to support his family. He was attempting to start two organizations the religious Muslim Mosque Incorporated and the secular organization of Afro-American unity (oAAu). In the midst of all of this he spent nearly five months of the last year of his life traveling abroad in Africa. Having left an organization (the NoI) that equipped him with a totalizing worldview, it is unrealistic to think that Malcolm could construct a completely different worldview in one year especially in the midst of the turmoil within his life. Marable successfully captures this tension. However, in attempting to give logic to Malcolms thought in that last year, Marable falls into the trap of most of Malcolms admirers. That is, he tends to interpret Malcolms words through the prism of his own beliefs. After noting Malcolms comments that its impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism and that, in his (Malcolms) experience, people with a strong anti-racist commitment were usually socialists, Marable concludes: What Malcolm seemed to be saying was that the Black Freedom Movement, which up to that time had focused on legal rights and legislative reforms, would ultimately have to take aim at Americas private enterprise system (336). This is an example of a biographer reading his own thoughts into the thoughts of his subject. While Marable does overstate the role of socialist and anti-capitalist ideas in Malcolms thought, he is clear

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that at the time of his death Malcolm was not a liberal reformer (482). He remained a Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist, who never abandoned self-determination as a goal for African Americans and never ceased to see himself first and foremost as a Black man (482485). Although Malcolm did frequently mention socialism usually while addressing forums sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party it was usually dropped from his vocabulary when addressing predominately African American audiences. A close reading of the available speeches given in that last year makes it clear that Malcolm never veered far from a race-based analysis of African American (and African) oppression. Less than a week before his death Malcolm delivered a speech to an African American audience in Rochester, New York (published in February 1965: The Final Speeches). In that speech there was no talk of imperialism or capitalism; it was black versus white. In the Rochester speech Malcolm was also highly critical of the civil rights movement. Disparagingly referring to Dr. King as the Right Reverend, he denounced the push for voting rights legislation as a foul trick (169). This was at the time when the entire movement was focusing on the federal protection of voting rights as the next step towards the completion of formal democracy. Given his attitude, it was unlikely Malcolm was going to be instrumental in any broad united front with this movement. Marable does hint at the root of the philosophical foundation of Malcolms disconnect with the civil rights movement. He notes: Social change that matters to most people occurs around practical issues they see every day, yet Malcolm still failed to appreciate the necessary connection between gradual reforms and revolutionary change (406). In other words, Malcolm had not developed a dialectical view of the relation between reform and revolution. This led him to a misunderstanding of the role of the struggle for democracy. Not seeing that connection blinded him to the logic of the struggle for the immediate goals of the civil rights movement. In any case, Malcolms last year saw him develop from a rather doctrinaire NoI leader to one whose ideas were expanding beyond the worldview dictated by a narrow theology. Rather than a life of reinvention, a more appropriate subtitle might have been a life interrupted, as Malcolms views were in the process of developing. From the sources documented by Marable, it is not clear in which direction they were going or where they would have led. There is evidence that Malcolm could have evolved into a socialist, an Islamic fundamentalist or returned to the NoI. Marables book has already created a firestorm of discussion in the print world and especially in electronic discussions (see www.brothermalcolm.net for a listing). While Marable has written the definitive biography of Malcolm X, there are many avenues of inquiry that remain open. It is unfortunate

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that Marable, who died just before publication of this book, is not around to join in the discussion. He has presented future scholars and activists with the empirical work to further serious study of Malcolms ideas and impact. That he has painted a portrait of a man not an icon is something that will continue to unsettle many. Timothy V Johnson
Africana Studies Librarian Bobst Library New York University New York, NY 10012 timothy.johnson@nyu.edu

The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time: Socialism in the Twenty-First Century, by Istvn Mszros. Foreword by John Bellamy Foster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008. $29.95. Pp. 479. Historical time, for Mszros, is not the abstract time of physical theory and cosmology, but the time in which our actual human lives unfold. And, Mszros warns us over and over, time is running out for us if we do not meet the challenge and imperative to change the system of capital that imperils nature and humanity today. We must rise to the immensely difficult but essential task of creating socialism, that is, a real alternative to the system of capital that now dominates us. This book is a powerful and useful if also flawed introduction to Mszros 1995 opus, Beyond Capital, covering many of the same themes, if often only in miniature. The essays in the current collection were written over the ten years from 1997 to 2007. At least one-third of the book was written before 2002. Crisscrossing through the Introduction and ten essays (there is also a useful foreword by John Bellamy Foster) are the themes already familiar from Beyond Capital of capitals ability to destroy humanity, its wastefulness, its hegemonic hold over the world, its relentless, brutal expansion, its mystifying insistence that there is no alternative to its rule, and its utter unreformability, implying the need for genuine social revolution, not just superficial political changes at the top. Since the early 1970s, capital has been in a structural crisis. This is a foundational crisis, distinct from the conjunctural or cyclical crises of past generations. Structural crisis implies that capital is on the ropes, seeking ever more brutal, heavy-handed solutions to meet the contradictions that constantly arise for it. In the last quarter of the book, Mszros discusses some of the ways that the united

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States, in particular, seeks increasingly to resolve these contradictions by force, in addition to the more traditional economic coercion. Further, the differential rate of exploitation the relative, apparent prosperity of some of the workers of the so-called advanced capitalist countries compared with workers in poorer countries is shrinking. The privileged conditions of some workers, that is, is eroding as capitals structural crisis proceeds. Also familiar in this work are the themes of the need to learn from the Soviet experience much about how to create and how not to create socialism, and of Mszros controversial distinction between capital and capitalism. We are left with not only the critique of capital, but also an understanding of the urgent need for developing a hegemonic alternative to capital, along with discussion of what that alternative will necessarily look like. Central features of an alternative to capitals rule are outlined in the books ninth and longest chapter, Socialism in the Twenty-First Century: it must be irreversible, international, focused on continual education for all, and it must engage the full participation of all the associated producers; it must create substantive, not just formal equality; it must be rationally planned and focused on production for human use rather than for the accumulation of capital; and it must definitively end the separation between politics and production that has been a hallmark of bourgeois society. Mszros urgency and focus on the very real dangers of environmental catastrophe and self-annihilation through nuclear and other modern weapons is welcome and pours off of nearly every page. But there are problematic aspects of his approach as well. I will discuss just two of these. Mszros distinction between capital and capitalism has a clear use in his overall conceptualization: capitalism is the specific system that arose a few hundred years ago, premised on capital and its accumulation. But the rule of capital is a more primordial matter. The Russian Revolution and the ensuing uSSR got rid of capitalism, but not the rule of capital. Thus, the uSSR was a post-capitalist capital system. It ultimately reverted back to capitalism, because even without capitalism, the rule of capital remained and such a system is insufficient as a permanent foundation for socialism. What is the rule of capital in this sense, then? Mszros seems to argue that it is primarily the fact of the extraction of surplus value. Extraction of surplus value is older than capitalism (e.g., roughly: feudal rent amounts to surplus value). It continued in the uSSR not by the economic extraction of surplus value from free labor, as in capitalism, but by the political extraction of surplus value (roughly, the product above Soviet workers wages that was appropriated by the Soviet state and thence distributed without consulting the workers themselves). Thus, Mszros distinction between capital and capitalism can be looked at as, possibly, a fourth position concerning the uSSR. The three classic positions are: 1) the Stalinist view that the uSSR was

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socialist, or even communist; 2) the classical Trotskyist view that the uSSR was a degenerate workers state; and 3) the state-capitalism view, rejected by Trotsky but picked up by many after World War II like Tony Cliff and his followers in England. Mszros adds to these three views the fourth view that the uSSR was a post-capitalist capital system. The ultimate value of this view cannot be worked out here, but it must be assessed against the previous views and is not wholly unproblematic. It is interesting to note that almost all references to the capital/capitalism distinction in this book occur in the essays that were written between 1997 and 2001. I can find, at any rate, only one reference to the distinction, on p. 252, in the material written since 2001. A more serious problem is the marginal treatment of race and gender questions. While there is some discussion of gender issues, there is almost no discussion at all of racism and white supremacy (racial supremacy is mentioned in passing on p. 334). This is most acute with respect to Africa and Africans. While there are numerous references to India and China, African nations are mentioned only a handful of times, in spite of the fundamental role they play in the world economy as suppliers of essential resources and the brutal methods with which the capital system steals these crucial inputs (e.g., the genocide in D.R. Congo since 1996 that has savagely taken perhaps 6,000,000 lives). In the united States racial attitudes and white supremacy have been major problems some have argued that they are the major problem standing in the way of a successful and thriving labor movement (see pp. 9293ff for Mszros views). The idea that socialism can be discussed without serious consideration of race and gender is, unfortunately, still a common feature of much socialist literature today, as in this case. This is not helpful to socialism, over all, even if many important points get made along the way in such writing. Russell Dale
66 West 94th Street, #2B New York, NY 10025 russell_eliot_dale@yahoo.com

The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 19451970, by Carl Mirra. Foreword by Howard Zinn. Kent, ohio: Kent State university Press, 2010. Pp. 224. The title of this book is well chosen. Staughton Lynd, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, is truly an admirable radical. He has also been throughout his adult life a great agitator, educator, organizer and public intellectual. If

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not as well known today as E. P. Thompson and Noam Chomsky, he nevertheless belongs in their company. We are therefore indebted to Carl Mirra, who teaches at Adelphi university and who first met Lynd while he was speaking out against the Iraq war in 2003 at a history conference, for being the first to undertake the task. Regrettably, he essentially stops in 1970 and devotes only a few pages to Lynds next 40 years, during which time Staughton and his wife Alice have lived and worked in Youngstown, ohio, as labor lawyers, activists in the struggle to save the steel industry in the Pittsburgh and Youngstown regions, and as tireless opponents of the death penalty. Mirra sticks closely to off-the-shelf conventions of the biography genre and starts by informing the reader that Staughtons parents were Robert and Helen Lynd, the authors of Middletown (1927), which remains to this day arguably the best study of an American community (Muncie, Indiana) ever written. Staughton appears to have enjoyed a happy childhood in New York City and a first-rate education, first at the prestigious Ethical Culture School and then at Harvard. When he graduated, the Cold War and the Korean War were raging, and he was promptly drafted into the Army. That didnt last long, as his request for Conscientious objector status was refused and he was instead given a dishonorable discharge which took years of appealing to overturn. There followed three years in a Georgia communal society called the Macedonia Cooperative Community, which Mirra correctly views as a profoundly formative experience for him, along with his marriage to Alice Niles. So was his appointment to the history faculty at Spelman College in Atlanta, which soon took him right into the heart of the civil rights movement. Parts of the book are very well done. The chapter devoted to Lynds l964 directorship of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Schools is superb. The chapter on his scholarly writings on politics and society in the age of the American Revolution is a useful introduction and a timely reminder of why his books still appear on history graduate seminar reading lists. I dont know any better treatment than Mirras of the 1964 Democratic National Convention, which refused to seat Fannie Lou Hamer and other delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party but instead seated the regular and racist Mississippi delegates. The chapter on Yales firing of Lynd will not have to be redone any time soon. Finally, there is a full and accurate chapter on the American Historical Association convention of 1969 at which Lynd received roughly one third of the votes for president. Some topics, however, are not handled so well. Mirra is not clear on how Lynd became a socialist. No doubt one can argue that with a pedigree like his, young Staughton was highly likely to be attracted to radical politics. But

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that still leaves completely unexplored why he did not become a supporter of either the Communists or the Trotskyists, who were after all the two biggest political shows in New York in the 1940s to the left of the Democrats and right-wing social democrats. The same goes for his years as an undergraduate at Harvard; the only thing we learn from Mirra is that he was a member of the John Reed Club for a while and was active in Henry Wallaces 1948 campaign for president. More important is Mirras virtual silence on Lynds relationship whatever Mirra takes it to have been to Students for a Democratic Society. To be sure, Lynd was a college teacher, not a student, in the 1960s and so might never have actually been a dues-paying member. But SDS was the national organization of the New Left. Without exception the old left counterposed its own organizations to SDS for example, the DuBois Clubs, which were plainly a creature of the CPuSA or the Trotskyist Young Socialist Alliance, which equally plainly was a creature of the Socialist Workers Party. I am sure that Lynd had considered views regarding SDSs strategy, tactics and prospects. But one will not learn from Mirra what they were. only in one short passage does Mirra report that Lynd had serious reservations about SDSs decision to frontally challenge the Democrats on the Vietnam war at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This may well be part of a broader problem. Mirra is just not very good at conveying a sense of what the movement felt like in the 1960s. My final criticism is that Mirra is sometimes a bit too quick to defend Lynds political practice and theoretical orientation and reluctant to subject them to critical analysis. one wonders if Mirra is fully aware just how heterodox and radical Lynds ideas were and still are. With the exception of the anarchists, has anyone of late on the left rejected any and all versions of centralized organizational structures as completely as Lynd? Who then or now agrees with Lynd that the biggest mistake the CIo ever made was to sign contracts? These days virtually all soi-disant Marxists share Lynds view that a crude basesuperstructure version of Marxism that relegates things like values and ethics to mere superstructure should be rejected out of hand, a welcome development for which Lynd and his generation of old new left writers deserve considerable credit. Finally, there is the question of participatory democracy vs. representative democracy. Lynd himself has recently and reluctantly concluded that we probably must settle for as democratic a version of representative democracy as possible. This is not to suggest for a moment that any or all of Lynds answers are the correct ones, much less the correct Marxist ones, but rather that these are matters which everyone on the left ought to be wrestling with.

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If this review sounds a bit testy in places, it is because I reckon myself a friend and comrade of Staughton. He deserves the best. Mirra is pretty good. one hopes that more and even better writing about him will follow. Joe White
523 Main Street Harmony, PA 16037 jwdw@zoominternet.net

Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights and the New York City Teachers Union, by Clarence Taylor. New York: Columbia university Press, 2011. $55.00. Pp. x, 372. Today, public education in the united States is under attack. Schools, especially in working-class and African American communities, face multiple crises caused by reduced funding. Furthermore, increased reliance on highstakes standardized testing combined with pressures for more regimented teaching and discipline have undermined the social role of public schools as institutions dedicated to democratic values. At the same time teachers unions are accused of being the cause of these crises by demanding high pay and defending incompetent teachers. Parents, teachers and their allies have organized to defend public education. But more than funding is at issue here. It is difficult to present an alternative model of democratic public schooling when it seems that there are few models out there. But there have been alternatives. In this book, Clarence Taylor shows how during the 1930s and 1940s the Teachers union in New York City combined the struggle for better pay and working conditions with a vision of democratic, anti-racist education. The history of the New York City Teachers union is the history of the road not taken in public education. In the period of its greatest strength and influence the Tu fought to make New York Citys public schools into a model of democratic education in which all parents, all teachers, and all children were respected. When this union was destroyed by the red scare of the 1950s it was more than a loss for the trade union movement; it was a loss for the schools and working-class communities of New York City. Central to this history is the role of Communist teachers who were elected to lead the union in 1935, and who made it into a powerful institution. Between 1935 and 1950 this union was a factor in a number of distinct yet interrelated histories. First, the Tu was a laboratory for Communist activity in trade unions. Historians have examined the role of the Communist Party

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in industrial unions, and how the attack on the left meant the weakening of unions during the red-scare period. Taylors book fits into this tradition, especially in pointing out how Communists made excellent trade unionists because they were Communists, not in spite of it. Second, the book shows how the Teachers union addressed the role of public education and put teachers in the forefront of the struggle to eradicate racism, segregation and ethnic chauvinism in classroom instruction. The Tu fought for inclusion of African American history in the public school curriculum, demanded an end to discrimination against African American teachers, and worked with community organizations (including other unions) to be part of an emerging community-based civil rights movement. Finally, the union was a pioneer in representing professional workers, and engaged in trade union practices which reflected commitments that the teachers had to their jobs as teachers. The destruction of the Tu under the onslaught of the red scare of the late 1940s and 1950s shows how anti-Communism not only affected the radical individuals who lost their livelihoods (although it did that) but also distorted the process of democratization that emerged from the struggles of the 1930s and continued in the midst of the anti-fascism of the World War II years. That process of democratization remains stalled 50 years later. The Tu was founded in 1916 as Local 5 of the American Federation of Teachers. From the early 1920s there was a Communist caucus within the union, which, because of the unions commitment to academic freedom for teachers, operated openly. Communists were elected to leadership in 1935 because they advocated for greater militancy in defense of teachers economic interests, and were especially concerned with combatting racism and discrimination. What is interesting here is that the Communists were able to achieve this influence even while engaging in what appears, in retrospect, as a certain revolutionary rhetorical excess. As leaders of the Teachers union, Communists distinguished themselves as militant trade unionists, much as did their counterparts in the industrial unions of that time. But as important as their trade unionism was, it was the Tus efforts to bring teacher and community voices into the discussion of education itself that distinguished the Tu from other left-led unions of the period. Primarily they involved the union in struggles for equal education for Black children and this led them to build close alliances with African American parents and community organizations. The union also became committed to broad curricular reform emphasizing what would now be called multi-culturalism and fought for the inclusion of teachers voices in issues of subject matter. Beginning in 1948 a coalescence of national and local individuals and organizations began an attack on the Teachers union as part of the drive to eliminate Communists from American life. The national red scare was at

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full throttle, and the city politicians, the major newspapers, and school boards began to target Communists in the Tu. This was further aided by the FBI and the national institutions of anti-Communism. While waging this battle under very difficult conditions, the Teachers union finally went under as a union in the early 1950s. It remained as an organization of teachers until it voted to dissolve after the rise of the AFT in 1964. This book could have been stronger in two areas. First, the author regularly asserts that Communist teachers were dedicated to serving teachers, not the interests of the Communist Party, either in the united States or the Soviet union. Yet in doing so he seems to accept that there was a difference between being loyal Communists and militant unionists. This canard has been refuted in much of the recent historical writing of both American Communism and American labor history. As in the case of Communists who were militant autoworkers or longshoremen, there was no contradiction between these teachers political ideology and their trade union activities. Being a militant trade unionist was what committed Communists did. Second, the books story would have been stronger had it highlighted the contributions the Tu made to the combined struggles for unionism and quality education issues that we are still fighting today. Because the struggle over the nature and quality of education is so critical today, this book should be read by teachers, parents and all who wish to defend the idea of public education, and perhaps make it more democratic. It is useful to know that there once was an organization that brought together the struggles for labor rights, for African American equality, and for the full development of each child. It is a framework that remains necessary. Paul C. Mishler
Indiana University Program in Labor Studies 1700 Mishawaka Avenue South Bend, IN 46634 pmishler@iusb.edu

Americas Back Yard. The United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror, by Grace Livingstone. London/New York: Zed Books/ Latin America Bureau, 2009. Paper, $32.95. Pp. 270. Relations between the united States and its neighbors to the South have generated heated controversy among participants and scholars alike. British journalist Grace Livingstones examination focuses on recent years. The text divides into two unequal parts. After a brief introduction, the next seven

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chapters present an overview concentrating upon events since the Cold War. Three topical chapters then discuss drugs, money, and culture. The author argues that there exists a remarkable degree of continuity in u. S. foreign policy despite differing outlooks of presidents. . . . all administrations . . . have sought to defend strong, orderly capitalist states; democracies if possible, dictatorships if necessary (3). often the uSA has created and/or propped up authoritarian regimes while working systematically against governments showing tendencies towards an independent foreign policy or demonstrating an egalitarian slant. The books strong point is not theory, but rather presentation of data and cases. This is not a class analysis or even an analysis of capitalism and its need for expansion, but rather a presentation showing concretely how the u. S. government has tried to dominate Latin America with the aid of local elites. The historical chapters cover the main facets of u. S. policy: its role in the Guatemalan Coup of 1954, actions against the Cuban Revolution, the Alliance for Progress, support of right-wing regimes in the 1970s, Reagan and Central America, and Bushs War on Terror comprising aggressive unilateralism and preemptive action to try, in vain as it turned out, to reassert u. S. hegemony. The topical chapters that follow comprise the works heart. Livingstone argues that u. S. policies seldom achieve their stated goals. The Alliance for Progress touted land reform, but fewer than one million people got land; the vast majority of rural dwellers received nothing, and the proportion of landless families actually increased. At the same time, little or no distribution of wealth occurred (3940). The uSA turned Plan Colombia, originally a local peace and development proposal of 1999, into an operation that derailed the peace process, exacerbated the civil war, poisoned large tracts of land, endangered human health, and failed to reduce by a single gram the amount of cocaine entering the uS (119). After 20 years of stabilization plans and structural adjustment, the percentage of Latin Americans living in poverty increased (188). The united States pushes free trade, while subsidizing its own farmers, wiping out poor growers in Mexico and Central America (201). Impressive documentation supports the authors case. Lengthy quotes from actors and official documents allow details to emerge and lend a tone to the discussion. She has effectively used congressional testimony and recently declassified information, as well as interviews with individuals up and down the social scale. Citations from manuals used at the National War College or given to Latin American military trainees at the School for the Americas provide a tinge of reality (some might say unreality) to the text. Numerous footnotes allow the reader to explore further. The author has included extensive hard data in easily readable charts and graphs.

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Another of the books strengths is inclusion of material from individuals involved, as well as selections by writers and artists, among them: Cuban patriot Jos Mart, Nicaraguan poet Rubn Daro, and Chilean singer Victor Jara. Inevitably in a book rife with names, places, and dates, errors appear. Ex-Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleisher would surely be horrified to see his name appear as Ali (137). The late Ricardo Montalban, whose Hollywood career spanned six decades, would be mortified to find out that he was a polo-playing Argentine instead of a Mexican dreamboat (219). Some progressives may be put off by the authors categorical hostility toward the Soviet union and her references to Cuba as a totalitarian state, but they will agree fully with her dissection of u. S. policy and assessment of its ultimate motives. The last chapter discusses how the two cultures (Anglo, Latino) view each other. The author reproduces cartoons and cites books and movies to show prejudices against Latinos. one interesting section dwells upon the latinization of the united States, which contains the worlds third largest Spanish-speaking population and third largest Latino economy. A lengthy section examines u. S. corporate penetration of the Latin American TV and news markets. Livingstone concludes that most Latin Americans have a love/ hate relationship with the united States. The postscript hints that change is in the wind. Increasingly, Latin America looks elsewhere than to the north. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela in particular have opened up significant trade relations with China and to a lesser degree other non-traditional markets. The Latin American countries only ask for a level playing field instead of one law for rich nations, another for poor. An end to u. S. duplicity would help too. Why condemn Venezuela for human rights abuses while condoning and even fostering them in Colombia? The uSA sponsors terrorist attacks and biological warfare against Cuba, but has arbitrarily put that country on the terrorist list. Livingstone concludes that military and economic policy have been intertwined since 1848, and that the united States has undertaken, in conjunction with local elites, any number of repressive interventions. She argues that this will not end until local militaries are brought under democratic control, civil society gains significant strength to intervene, and, equally important, the u. S. electorate holds its own leaders responsible for their anti-democratic, inhumane conduct. Just how this might happen, unfortunately, is never discussed. Finally, on an ironic note, she points out that u. S. policies in Latin America have only resulted in more migrants, and will continue to do so. What goes around comes around. Hobart A. Spalding
hspalding@cnpt.org

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EDIToRIAL PERSPECTIVES An Embrace Across the Generations, As We Begin our Fourth Quarter Century The Socialism Discussion WidensAnd This Is Just the Beginning! Whither the occupy Movement: Models and Proposals The Recurring Temptations of Anti-Equilibrium ARTICLES Baragar, Fletcher and Robert Chernomas. Profits from Production and Profits from Exchange: Financialization, Household Debt and Profitability in 21st-Century Capitalism 319 Campbell, Al. Introduction [to Special Issue, Designing Socialism: Visions, Projections, Models] Chernomas, Robert. See Baragar, Fletcher Cockshott, Paul and Allin Cottrell. Question 1: Why Socialism? Question 2: Feasibility and Coordination Question 3: Incentives and Consciousness Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces Question 5: Social and Long-Term Planning Cottrell, Allin. See Cockshott, Paul Devine, Pat. Question 1: Why Socialism? Question 2: Feasibility and Coordination Question 3: Incentives and Consciousness 563 154 172 215 151 195 213 230 251 140 3 139 283 425

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Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces Question 5: Social and Long-Term Planning Ding, Xiaoqin, Peihua Mao and Xing Yin. Question 1: Why Socialism? Question 2: Feasibility and Coordination Question 3: Incentives and Consciousness Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces Question 5: Social and Long-Term Planning Hahnel, Robin. Question 1: Why Socialism? Question 2: Feasibility and Coordination Question 3: Incentives and Consciousness Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces Question 5: Social and Long-Term Planning Harnecker, Marta. Question 1: Why Socialism? Question 2: Feasibility and Coordination Question 3: Incentives and Consciousness Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces Question 5: Social and Long-Term Planning Laibman, David. Question 1: Why Socialism? Question 2: Feasibility and Coordination Question 3: Incentives and Consciousness Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces Question 5: Social and Long-Term Planning Lapatsioras, Spyros and John Milios. The Notion of Money from the Grundrisse to Capital Li, An. See Xie, Fusheng Li, Zhongjin. See Xie, Fusheng Lih, Lars. Democratic Revolution in Permanenz Ludlam, Steve. Aspects of Cubas Strategy to Revive Socialist Development Mao, Peihua. See Ding, Xiaoqin Milios, John. See Lapatsioras, Spyros Rooksby, Ed. The Relationship Between Liberalism and Socialism

234 253 158 176 199 238 257 161 180 202 219 261 163 187 206 220 243 167 191 210 226 247 521

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Sakellaropoulos, Spyros. on the Causes and Significance of the December 2008 Social Explosion in Greece

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Sandemose, Jrgen. Manufacture and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism 463 Starosta, Guido. Cognitive Commodities and the Value-Form 365 Weeks, John. The Theory and Empirical Credibility of Commodity Money 66 Xie, Fusheng, An Li and Zhongjin Li. Guojinmintui: A New Round of Debate in China on State Versus Private ownership 291 Yaffe, Helen. Che Guevara and the Great Debate, Past and Present Yin, Xing. See Ding, Xiaoqin REVIEW ARTICLES Devinatz, Victor. Struggling Against u. S. Labors Decline under Late Capitalism: Lessons for the Early 21st Century Ellner, Steve. Complexities of the Social Alternative Saxton, Alex. Terry Eagleton and Tragic Spirituality Sotiris, Panagiotis. The Gramscian Challenge CoMMuNICATIoN Carchedi, Guglielmo. Mathematics and Dialectics in Marx: A Reply 546 BooK REVIEWS Buhle, Paul. From Kaballah to Class Struggle: Expressionism, Marxism, and Yiddish Literature in the Life and Work of Meir Wiener, by Mikhail Krutikov Dale, Russell. The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time: Socialism in the Twenty-First Century, by Istvn Mszros Devine, James G. Pluralist Economics, ed. by Edward Fullbrook Elich, Gregory, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, by David N. Gibbs 393 270 95 105 11

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Garner, Roberta. Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World, by Eugenie Samuel Reich 117 Gimenez, Martha E. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity, by Loic Wacquant 411

Harris, Jerry. The Communist Experience in America: A Political and Social History, by Harvey Klehr 132 Heideman, Paul M., Bonfire of Illusions: The Twin Crises of the Liberal World, by Alex Callinicos 130

Jablonowski, Mark. Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship, by Jesus Huerta de Soto 277 Johnson, Timothy V. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable 550

Laibman, David. Capital as a Social Kind: Definitions and Transformations in the Critique of Political Economy, by Howard Engelskirchen 409 Li, Minqi. Global Capitalism in Crisis: Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System, by Murray E. G. Smith 417 Maerhofer, John. zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx, by Chris Harman Mavroudeas, Stavros D. The Capitalist Cycle, by Pavel Maksakovsky Mishler, Paul C. Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights and the New York City Teachers Union, by Clarence Taylor Munk, Michael. The Politics of Genocide, by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson Smith, Murray E. G. Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness. Volume I: The Social Determination of Method, by Istvn Mszros Spalding, Hobart A. Americas Back Yard. The United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror, by Grace Livingstone 127 125 558 115 406

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White, Joe. The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 19451970, by Carl Mirra 555

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