Marx’s method, especially in Capital, is difficult to summarise. Widely different interpretations of his method derive from distinct views of the role and objectives of his theory and from the scope and incompleteness of Marx’s published works.1 These methodological controversies have played a significant role in the development of Marxian political economy. However, it is unlikely that they would have become as far-reaching, and developed such importance, if Marx had been less cryptic himself on method. In the postface to the second edition of Capital 1, Marx concludes that ‘the method employed in Capital has been little understood [as] is shown by the various mutually contradictory conceptions that have been formed of it’.2 In spite of this, Marx never explained his own method fully.
Marx’s reticence can be explained in at least three different ways. For Tony Smith,3 Marx downplayed the method of Capital primarily in order to make the book more accessible to his working class readers, ‘a consideration which to me outweighs everything else.’4 This hypothesis is supported by Marx’s statement that Capital ‘will … be much more popular and the method will be much more hidden than in [the Contribution].’5 Smith reasonably conjectures that the tension between the complexity of the book and Marx’s desire to find an attractive form of exposition led him to downplay the methodological aspects of Capital. However, this is insufficient explanation, because Marx repeatedly stated that he would never ‘dumb down’ his work merely in order to increase its appeal:
the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous … This is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.6
Chris Arthur offers a different explanation. He argues that Marx never explained his own method adequately because he was uncertain himself, especially about its relationship with Hegel’s method:
I have concluded that Marx himself was confused about the relevance of Hegel’s logic. Accordingly, I believe it is necessary to reconstruct the critique of capital … more consistently and explicitly than Marx.7
Arthur’s claim has potentially far-reaching implications that cannot be pursued here.8 However, it is possible to interpret the evidence in another way. This chapter argues that Marx was aware of the meaning and significance of his own method and did not downplay its importance merely in order to broaden the appeal of his work. Marx avoided a detailed explanation because, with few exceptions, his work is not primarily about methodology (or even philosophy). It is, rather, a critique of capitalism and its apologists. In his work, method generally plays an important but secondary role, and it is generally submerged within the argument.9 In the light of Marx’s works and the ensuing controversies, this chapter identifies Marx’s methodological principles and their relationship with his analysis of capitalism.
This chapter is divided into three sections. The first summarises the principles of the ‘materialist dialectic’ interpretation of Marx’s method in Capital, and reviews the implications of this interpretation of Marx’s work. The second critically analyses a recent Hegelian interpretation of Marx, the ‘new dialectics’. The third section concludes this chapter.
Lenin famously argued that:
If Marx did not leave behind him a “Logic” (with a capital letter), he did leave the logic of Capital … In Capital, Marx applied to a single science logic, dialectics and the theory of knowledge of materialism … which has taken everything valuable in Hegel and developed it further.10
This section develops Lenin’s claim in the light of the ‘materialist dialectics’ outlined by the Soviet philosopher E.V. Ilyenkov.11 Materialist dialectics presumes, first, that the concrete analysed in Capital, the capitalist economy, is integral and whole, and that this organic system of mutually conditioning things or phenomena is determining with regard to its parts, or moments.12 Second, in order to reconstruct the concrete in thought, analysis ought to mirror the structure of the concrete; in other words, it should start from the whole rather than from its parts.
In contrast, metaphysical approaches, including formal logic, tend to view the concrete as an agglomeration of ontologically independent elements linked only externally and more or less contingently.13 Metaphysical approaches are generally structured around mental generalisations. For philosophers in the tradition of Locke, Kant and Mill, this is the only legitimate procedure for conceptual development.14 Mental generalisations are based upon the arbitrary selection of certain relations or common properties for further analysis, for example, in economics, ‘labour’, ‘demand’, ‘market’ or ‘utility’.
Mental generalisations are necessary for scientific analysis because they assist the essential tasks of identification and classification. However, they have little explanatory value for three reasons. First, they are tautological; mental generalisations identify certain elements present in everything because only things with these attributes are included in the analysis. Second, mental generalisations are external to the objects. They may express either objective facts or merely subjective fictions, and it can be difficult to distinguish between the two. Third, the properties which they identify may have widely distinct levels of complexity and may represent very different aspects of the phenomena of interest, in which case their relationship with the concrete is left unclear.15 Because of these limitations, conclusions reached through mental generalisation lack general validity.
These insufficiencies can be overcome if the analysis is based, instead, upon real or concrete abstractions.16 This approach was originally outlined by Spinoza, who argued for the ‘deduction of the particular properties from the actual universal cause’, rather than the ‘deduction of the properties of things according to the formal rules of syllogistics.’17 Hegel developed Spinoza’s insight. He claimed that truth cannot be grasped through contemplation, but only through the ascent from sensual contemplation to the abstract expression of the concrete in the concept, which brings out its content and meaning (see section 1.2). Marx modified and applied this approach in his value theory and elsewhere.
Whereas mental generalisations are based upon external relations selected by the observer, real abstractions are based upon material reality, and they disclose concrete universals that include the essence of the particulars. In other words, and very simply, enquiries based upon mental generalisations can start from any feature of the concrete. In contrast, materialist dialectics selects the most important feature of the concrete, and reconstructs the other features systematically on the basis of this essence.18 The essence is the objectively most general feature of the particulars, or their ‘internal law-governed structure’; in other words, the essence comprises the logically and historically determinant features of the particulars, and it is the key to their internal relations.19 Consequently, the essence is, first, a logical category that supplies the basic mediations for the reconstruction of the concrete in thought. Second, it is the actual (rather than merely theoretical or ideal) source from which the particulars spring. Third, it is a historically emerging result.20 The essence arises as an exception from the rule, and it gradually displaces previous concrete universals to become the essence of a new set of phenomena through historical processes that can be analysed only concretely (see below, the examples of abstract labour, value and capital).21
This does not imply that the essence is always a separate entity lying either behind or underneath the phenomena, in which case its identification would require ‘unveiling’ or, alternatively, ‘piercing through’ the appearances in order to find something which, at least theoretically, can be mapped to the particulars. Rather, the essence generally exists only in and through the phenomena, and the latter are not merely the form of manifestation of the essence but, more strongly, its mode of existence.22 For example, there is no actual ‘fruit’ which is the essence of all apples, plums and oranges. There are only individual fruits whose essence, or common biological and historical traits, can be revealed analytically.
In sum, materialist dialectics examines the concrete in order to identify the material structures of determination of reality, especially the essence of the phenomena under investigation and the mediations between them. Systematic analysis of the essence and its development illuminates the links between the particulars and allows the introduction of concepts expressing these relations, which are necessary for the reconstruction of the concrete in thought.23 Eventually, this procedure outlines
a criss-crossing field of mediations which amounts to a totality: no term in the field stands as its own … [T]otalising theory requires the notion of determinate [real] abstraction. Minus the notion, the conception of a “mutual interaction” taking place between “different moments”, as is the case with “every organic whole” … amounts to banality: everything somehow affects everything else … To put bones into the flesh of totality we need to understand how terms can form and reform, or constitute and reconstitute, other terms: how one term’s mode of existence can be another term, without remainder. This logically stronger conception redeems totality, and “dialectics”, from the vague notion of mere reciprocal interaction.24
Let us discuss briefly three examples, which illustrate materialist dialectics and its differences from formal logic. The first example substantiates the claim that abstract labour is the essence of labour under capitalism. The second shows why abstract labour is the substance of value. The third explains the relationship between money, value and capital (see chapters 2 and 3).
Labour is the purposeful expenditure of human energy in order to transform given natural and social conditions in a predetermined manner (see section 3.1). Therefore, labour mediates the metabolism between societies and their surrounding environment.25 This ‘physiological’ definition derives from a mental generalisation across all types of concrete labour. Although simple and often adequate, it may be insufficient for two reasons. First, it is excessively general; several forms of purposeful energy expenditure are not generally considered labour, for example those activities directly related to the upkeep and reproduction of the individual and the household, leisure and self-expression, and the arts. Second, this transhistorical definition is analytically sterile. Inspection of reality shows that certain types of labour, for example cooking, design, management, or personal services, can vary significantly over time and place in terms of the work process and the circumstances in which these activities are performed. In spite of the importance of these features of human labour, the physiological definition of labour cannot be developed systematically in order to explain them.
Analysis of the meaning and significance of labour under capitalism is potentially more fruitful if one departs from its essence, abstract labour. Abstract labour can be defined simply as labour performed by wage workers directly engaged in the production of surplus value (see section 3.2). This is the essence of labour under capitalism for three reasons. First, the employment of wage labour in order to produce surplus value is typical of, and defines, capitalist relations. Second, the diffusion of capitalism gradually dislocates non-capitalist production. Non-wage forms of labour tend to be marginalised, and the employment of wage workers becomes contingent upon the production of surplus value.26 Third, systematic analysis of abstract labour allows the introduction of other categories explaining the structures and social relations in capitalism, which is the guiding thread through Capital.
Under capitalism, labour generally has a double determination, it is both concrete and abstract. As concrete labour, work is a transformative activity; as abstract labour, work is subsumed by, or exists in and through, a specific social form. Abstract labour predominates over concrete labour because the performance of concrete labour generally depends upon the extraction of surplus value rather than, for example, need for the output.
This example highlights four important features of materialist dialectics. First, real abstractions reveal the essence of the phenomena under analysis, but the essence may not manifest itself in every particular.27 In the example above, abstract labour is the essence of labour under capitalism even though some labours are unpaid (e.g., voluntary work), some unpaid workers can produce surplus value (e.g., prisoners subcontracted by private firms), and some wage workers do not produce surplus value (e.g., civil servants).
Second, in contrast with mental generalisations, the meaning and significance of concepts determined through real abstraction cannot be discovered unproblematically on inspection. In other words, materialist dialectics (based upon real abstractions) and formal logic (based upon mental generalisations) are mutually exclusive points of departure for scientific analysis.
Third, materialist dialectics may lose validity if pushed beyond its logical and historical limits.28 For example, there is no direct correspondence between the stature of labour under capitalism and in other modes of production. In Capital, Marx addresses the structures and processes of social and economic reproduction under capitalism. Only a small part of the book refers to other modes of production, and there can be no presumption that Marx’s analysis can encompass them unproblematically.29
Fourth, the validation of materialist dialectic analyses includes three separate stages: determination of the meaning and significance of the concepts and their internal relationship through logical and historical investigation; the explanation of phenomena that apparently contradict the ‘internal law-governed structure’; and verification of the correspondence between the concrete and its theoretical representation.30
Value analysis is critically important for Marx, and its meaning and validity have been the subject of considerable debate.31 This example discusses Marx’s identification of abstract labour as the substance of value. Marx’s argument was famously criticised by the Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, for whom Marx derives the
“common factor” which is the characteristic of exchange value … [by] exclusion … [However] he limits from the outset the field of his search … to products of labor as against gifts of nature … To exclude the exchangeable goods which are not products of labor in the search for the common factor which lies at the root of exchange value is … a great error of method.32
Böhm-Bawerk presumes that the determination of the substance of value should be based upon a mental generalisation and the application of the rules of formal logic.33 However, this critique is invalid. Marx’s analysis does not depart from the exchange of two arbitrary commodities in given quantities, xA=yB, labour being the third or common element, and it does not follow the rules of formal logic.34 Rather, his analysis is based upon real abstraction and it follows the principles of materialist dialectics.
The claim that abstract labour is the substance of value is based upon three premises. First, as argued above, labour is a transhistorical condition for social and economic reproduction. Second, abstract labour is the typically capitalist form of labour, and it predominates over concrete labour. Third, value (or commodity) relations are the general form of human intercourse under capitalism, and in this mode of production value relations mediate social and economic reproduction.35 Capitalism developed historically through the generalisation of value relations, among them the monopoly of the means of production by a class of capitalists, the diffusion of commodity production through wage labour, the growth of commodity exchange, and the subordination of production by the profit motive. These value relations have established historically the predominance of abstract labour; conversely, the diffusion of abstract labour reinforces the commodification of human relations and production for profit.36 Logically, systematic development of Marx’s value analysis, founded upon abstract labour, can explain several important aspects of reality at distinct levels of complexity, including the capital relation, surplus value, competition, the distribution of labour and its products, the commodity form of non-products of labour (e.g., virgin land and pollution rights), interest-bearing capital, and so on.37
The transition between Marx’s presentation of simple commodity circulation, represented by C-M-C’ (commodity, money, another commodity), and the circuit of capital, M-C-M’ (money-commodity-more money), is often presented as a purely logical step. For example, Patrick Murray claims that:
Within simple commodity circulation … money that seeks to preserve itself as money seems to have no choice but to abstain from circulation … If money cannot preserve itself through isolation from circulation, it must preserve itself in the very act of circulating. This is precisely what the transition of money as such into money as capital effects … Hoarded away and secure from the risks of circulation, money always exists in a definite, finite amount, a fact which contradicts its logical determination as the embodiment of universal wealth … Capital, on the other hand, resolves the stagnating contradiction of money as such by positing itself as the process of valorization—the process of money going beyond its quantitative barrier, i.e., by increasing itself through circulation.38
Murray’s view, inspired by Hegel’s dialectics, is misguided, misleading and wrong (see section 1.2). It is misguided because it presumes that the concepts of money and capital are self-acting subjects which somehow actualise themselves historically because of purely logical imperatives. It is misleading because Murray’s neglect of the social, economic and historical context in which commodities, money and capital exist obscures and devalues human agency. Finally, it is wrong because Murray confuses the fact that money is qualitatively general with the presumption that it ought to become quantitatively unlimited.39
In chapter 4 of Capital 1 Marx does not ‘derive’ the concept of capital from the concept of commodity, or the capital circuit from simple commodity circulation. He merely contrasts the circuits C-M-C, M-C-M and M-C-M’ in order to demonstrate that commodity circulation cannot systematically add value, in which case exchange or ‘profit upon alienation’ cannot be the source of surplus value. In other words, although some may profit at the expense of their customers, this is not possible for all the sellers, and ‘profit upon alienation’ cannot explain social and economic reproduction under capitalism. This conclusion lends support to Marx’s argument that only the systematic exploitation of wage workers by the capitalist class can (see section 4.1).40 In short, Marx’s theory is not based upon conceptual developments. He uses materialist dialectics to investigate
a real fact—the fact that money put in capitalist circulation, passing through all of its metamorphoses, brings a return—surplus-value. Then one has to go back to establish the conditions which make this fact possible.41
Let us summarise the principles of materialist dialectics. This approach presumes that the phenomena (the particulars that make up concrete reality) are conditioned by, and generally the mode of existence of, common essences. The relationship between essence and phenomenon is determined by a range of mediations, including social structures, laws, tendencies, counter-tendencies and contingency, operating at distinct levels of complexity. Theoretical understanding of the concrete should depart from the essence and gradually reveal the mediations that establish the meaning and significance of each part within the whole. By the same token, historical studies help to identify the real (rather than merely conceptual) structures and contradictions of the concrete, whose development shapes the material reality.42 This systematic procedure allows the reconstruction of reality as the mental expression of the real articulation of the phenomena.43
Whereas formal logic builds theories using connected but ontologically independent concepts, as if they were Lego blocks, materialist dialectic theories are integrated wholes. This is attractive, because capitalism is an organic system.44 However, this approach complicates the introduction of new concepts. It is no longer possible merely to add categories and simply replace those that no longer ‘fit’. New concepts have to be developed from previously existing categories, and their introduction often sublates or, at least, demands refinement in the previous categories.45 As Engels put it, it would be wrong to
look in Marx for fixed, cut-and-dried definitions that are valid for all time. It should go without saying that where things and their mutual relations are conceived not as fixed but rather as changing, their mental images, too, i.e. concepts, are also subject to change and reformulation; that they are not to be encapsulated in rigid definitions, but rather developed in their process of historical or logical formation.46
More specifically, Arthur shows that:
In a dialectical argument the meanings of concepts undergo shifts because … the significance of any element in the total picture [cannot] be defined for good at the outset … As the presentation of the system advances to more complex, and concrete, relationships the originating definition of a concept shifts accordingly, normally towards greater definiteness, although sometimes new and broader applications of the concept come into view. Thus the dialectical method remains open to fundamental reorganisations of the material so far appropriated, as it gets closer to the truth of things.47
In sum, concepts at distinct levels of abstraction necessarily coexist in dialectical theories. Analytical progress includes the introduction of new concepts and the refinement and reproduction of the existing concepts at greater levels of complexity. Consequently, the meaning and significance of Marx’s concepts depends upon the level of analysis.48
Let us see two examples of the sublation of a relatively simple form of a concept by a more complex form. First, Marx’s concept of commodity shifts between pre-capitalist and capitalist production (see section 3.2):
The commodity as it emerges in capitalist production, is different from the commodity taken as the element, the starting point of capitalist production. We are no longer faced with the individual commodity, the individual product. The individual commodity, the individual product, manifests itself not only as a real product but also as a commodity, as a part both really and conceptually of production as a whole. Each individual commodity represents a definite portion of capital and the surplus value created by it.49
Second, the concepts of price of production and general rate of profit shift when Marx introduces the concept of commercial capital (see chapter 7):
Commercial capital … contributes to the formation of the general rate of profit according to the proportion it forms in the total capital … We thus obtain a stricter and more accurate definition of the production price. By price of production we still understand, as before, the price of the commodity as equal to its cost … plus the average profit … But this average profit is now determined differently. It is determined by the … total productive and commercial capital together … The price of production … [is] less than the real production price of the commodity; or, if we consider all commodities together, the price at which the industrial capitalist class sells them is less than their value … In future we shall keep the expression “price of production” for the more exact sense just developed.50
A Hegelian interpretation of Marx’s method, the ‘new dialectics’, has gained popularity recently among scholars.51 This section critically reviews this interpretation, in the light of the materialist dialectics explained in section 1.1.
New dialectics is not a school of thought but, rather, a Hegelian standpoint from which Marx’s work is interpreted. This approach is inspired by Lenin’s aphorism:
It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!52
New dialectics is structured by two principles. First, Hegel and Marx shared a similar method; however, where these methods lack correspondence, Marx’s work should be reconstructed along Hegelian lines.53 Second, Capital is, or should be, structured as an organised system of categories. In these systems the exposition begins with the starting category, or
the simplest and most abstract category, one from which the remaining categories of the theory can be derived … [it] must be the most abstract and simplest determination immanent to that object.54
Systematic development of the contradictions and insufficiencies in the starting category objectively ‘call’ into the system other concepts and categories, at increasingly complex levels of analysis. Every concept or category should be derived through this procedure, and any extraneous assumption with respect to the structure of the inquiry, the role of each concept in it or the relations between concepts, must be grounded eventually.55 In other words, the presentation is structured purely by logical criteria, and its architecture is determined by the categorial sequence:
Generally the presentation is one of gradual transcendence of abstract determination in a movement towards concrete determination, that is of concretisation. The presentation moves forward by the transcendence of contradiction and by providing the ever more concrete grounds—the conditions of existence—of the earlier abstract determination.56
Repetition of this procedure leads to the reconstruction of the concrete in thought:
The presentation ends when all the conditions of existence needing to be addressed are comprehended by the entire system of categories developed. The forms incorporate within themselves, and produce through their own effectivity, these conditions … [T]he totality so grounded is judged self-sufficient.57
New dialectics denies that study of the historical development of the concrete can contribute to its reconstruction in thought, in which case differences between the mode of presentation and the historical development of the concrete are irrelevant.58 Therefore, the sections of Capital that review the history of capitalism allegedly include illustrative material only. Although these sections may help to substantiate the categorial analysis, they play no essential role in the book.
This approach is elegant and appealing, and it was shown in section 1.1 that Marx employs a similar procedure in Capital and elsewhere. However, although new dialectics has much to add to previous analyses of the structure and content of Marx’s work, it is marked by four weaknesses, which make this interpretation of Marx’s method insufficient and, at times, potentially misleading.
New dialectics has not demonstrated that the unfolding of two distinct concepts, when used as alternative starting points, necessarily leads to substantially different outcomes, of which at least one is analytically unacceptable. In the context of Capital, if the unfolding of another concept rather than the commodity also led to the reconstruction of capitalism in thought there would be no immanent reason to select the commodity as the starting point of the book. In this case, the presumption that Capital is the product of systematic dialectical derivation would become open to question.59
The argument that the choice of the correct starting point and the systematic derivation of categories are sufficient to reconstruct the concrete has never been substantiated. This difficulty may be expressed as follows. If the unfolding of a relatively abstract concept, for example the ‘correct’ starting point, does not lead to the introduction of the concepts necessary for the analysis, or if the presentation requires the periodical incorporation of social and historical elements that cannot be derived from within the logical structure, some of the central claims of new dialectics would be seriously weakened. This limitation of new dialectics can be illustrated by three examples. First, it is impossible to derive the contemporary predominance of inconvertible paper money purely logically from the value forms presented in the first chapter of Capital 1 (see section 8.2). Second, the state derivation debate has shown that it is impossible to conceptualise the capitalist state in a strictly logical framework drawing from the contradictions in the commodity, at least if functionalism or reductionism are to be avoided.60 Third, it is impossible to understand the (changing) limits of state intervention in the economy purely through the analysis of the logic of capital.
Attempts to reconstruct the concrete simply through the derivation of relatively concrete categories from more abstract categories are limited because systematic analyses are context-independent, whereas the concrete is determined partly by structure and tendency, and partly by agency, counter-tendencies, context and contingency.61 Whereas tendencies arise systematically from the structure of the system, the counter-tendencies can arise at any level of abstraction, and they can shift the meaning of categories at any level.62 Therefore, even if the critiques above did not hold, and if new dialectics could capture the structural determinants of capitalism, its neglect of the historical determinations of the concrete would prevent the explanation of the counter-tendencies and the context in which they interact with the tendencies.63 This is possible only through the regular incorporation of historical material from outside the categorial system, which new dialectics is generally unwilling or unable to do. Consequently, new dialectics often cannot explain the structure of capitalism precisely enough to inform empirical analysis.64
New dialectics is idealist because it focuses primarily upon logical constructs rather than the material structures of determination of the concrete. This Hegelian approach is analytically unsound and potentially misleading because it ‘substantializes the logical or, what amounts to the same thing, logicizes the empirical’:65
It has become something of a minor vogue … to attempt to “reconstruct” Capital as an unbroken series of intertwining “dialectical syllogisms” as if the discourse of proof in Capital would be incomplete and insufficient without appeal to some “logic” which is not to be found precisely in that discourse itself, and as if Marx’s analysis were constrained to follow a conceptual ordering determined by the requirements of this “logic”, rather than the conceptual ordering proper to the analysis … being determined by the requirements for grasping its specific subject-matter. The intellectual poverty of such exercises lies in just that sort of formalistic ordering of pre-given materials which, ironically … inspired Marx’s explicit rejection of Hegelian philosophy in the first place.66
Hegel was one of the founding fathers of dialectics, and Marx ‘openly avowed … [himself] the pupil of that mighty thinker’.67 However, in spite of his admiration Marx was also heavily critical of Hegel:
My dialectical method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly the opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms into an independent subject, under the name of “the Idea”, is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only the external appearance of the idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought … With him [the dialectics] is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within its mystical shell.68
Hegel’s system is idealist, first, because for him concepts exist independently of the material circumstances or the real relations in the concrete. The concrete universal, in particular,
exists … only as a concept, only in the ether of pure thought, by no means in the sphere of “external reality”. That was … the reason why Hegel believed materialism to be impossible as philosophy (for philosophy is a science of the universal, and [for Hegel] the universal is thought and nothing but thought).69
Second, Hegel believes that ‘[t]he concrete is in the final analysis … the product of thought.’70 In contrast, for materialist dialectics conceptual derivation involves the identification of actually existing essences, concepts and mediations, in order to reconstruct in the mind the structures of determination of material reality (see section 1.1):
the process of theoretical abstraction must be founded on historical observations and must find its justification in terms of its power to understand and interpret historical experience.71
In conclusion, Marx’s method is not based on conceptual derivations. For example, Marx stated unambiguously that:
I do not proceed from “concepts”, hence neither from the “concept of value” … What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the “commodity”. This I analyse, initially in the form in which it appears. Here I find that on the one hand in its natural form it is a thing for use, alias a use-value; on the other hand, a bearer of exchange-value, and from this point of view it is itself an “exchange-value”. Further analysis of the latter shows me that exchange-value is merely a “form of expression”, an independent way of presenting the value contained in the commodity, and then I start on the analysis of the latter.72
Purely conceptual reasoning is limited because it is impossible to explain why relations that hold in the analyst’s head must also hold in the real world. More broadly, new dialectics is insufficient and potentially misleading because it aspires to reconstruct the reality purely through concepts, even though the concrete is historically grounded and, therefore, irreducibly contingent. The concrete can be analysed theoretically only if historical analysis belongs within the method of exposition. By eschewing this link new dialectics becomes unable to explain the concrete other than as the manifestation of conceptual necessity.73 In other words, the most important shortcoming of new dialectics is the failure to appreciate that the requirement that complex concepts should be derived from the contradictions in simpler ones is not the only let alone the most important feature of Marx’s method. Rather, what matters most is why, how and when new concepts and new material should be incorporated into the analysis, such that it becomes richer, more solid, and better able to reconstruct the concrete.
In spite of the substantial contribution that the new dialectics has given to the understanding of Marx’s method and the content of his works, this perspective remains insufficient to capture either the wealth of the concrete or the wealth of Capital.
This chapter has interpreted Marx’s method in Capital and elsewhere through the principles of materialist dialectics. This approach uses dialectics to identify the essential features of the concrete and their real contradictions, in order to explain the reality and the potential sources of historical change. For materialist dialectics, recognition of the fact that history and logic are inseparable is not a concession to empiricism but, rather, a consequence of the fact that reality cannot be reduced to concepts. This view was contrasted to a Hegelian alternative, the new dialectics, that interprets Marx’s method as a mechanical if dialectical set of thought processes, whose movement is largely independent of the real structures of determination of the concrete.
However, Marx’s method is primarily a flexible investigative tool, and it does not exist in the rarified domain of new dialectics. Scott rightly argues that the attempt to reduce Marx’s method
to a number of rules, as in books on formal logic, is … inappropriate since it reduces specific content to empty form … [T]he form and content of the dialectic is … inseparable from social being in general, and specific social struggles in particular … [T]he dialectic is employed only in the “method of presentation” and, unlike Engels, Marx did not … accept the idea of a universal and immanent dialectic.74
Materialist dialectics provides a context-specific platform for the analysis of capitalism, in two senses. First, it is historically limited because the phenomena and their essences change over time. Second, the analysis progresses through logical derivations and the regular incorporation of historical material. Materialist dialectics recognises that scientific investigation requires not only familiarisation with the subject as a historically existing entity, but also application of the method of analysis in such a way as to reveal most effectively the structures, tendencies and counter-tendencies associated with reality.75