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The critique of politics and political economy: capitalism, communism and the state in Marx's writings of the mid-1840s.

The critique of politics and political economy: capitalism, communism and the state in Marx's writings of the mid-1840s.

Authors :
Sayer, Derek
Source :
Sociological Review; May85, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p221-253, 33p
Publication Year :
1985

Abstract

In The Poverty of Theory E.P. Thompson makes the heretical claim that Marx's 'mature' writings, for all their grandeur, in some ways mark a retreat from his pathbreaking works of the 1840s. The Grundrisse in particular, and to a lesser but still significant extent Capital, are trapped within the analytic and conceptual framework of the very political economy Marx was criticising. Two features of this framework particularly concern Thompson. First, the notion that it is possible to isolate 'the economic' from political, religious, legal, moral or cultural activities as an independent or first order object of study; second, the static and a historical character of political economy's propositions and methodology. These, he charges, are substantially reproduced in Grundrisse and only partially overcome in Capital.[1] I do not wholly endorse Thompson's view. But I do think his argument important, if at times overstated. Marx did, in the 1840s -- and not just in overtly 'philosophical' works like the 1844 Manuscripts, but above all in The German Ideology - initiate an extremely wide-ranging critique of bourgeois civilisation as a whole, which went far beyond the obvious concerns of Grundrisse and Capital. He did not return to these themes again in anything like the same detail. And part of what Marx showed in these works was precisely the impossibility of abstracting 'the economic' in the way Thompson objects to -- in Marx's writings of the 1840s, the development of capitalism is apprehended as intimately bound up with wider social changes, in politics, law, culture, morality. Moreover, Marx exhibited an eminently historical grasp of these interlinked changes. In sum, his writings of this period provide the basis of a panoramic historical sociology. Commentary has tended to neglect this: the 1840s writings have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
00380261
Volume :
33
Issue :
2
Database :
Complementary Index
Journal :
Sociological Review
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
5473315
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1985.tb00804.x