[Marxism] Preface to the first edition of Capital

[Haines Brown]

> I have been re-reading Marx's preface to capital.. a sentence at a
> time .. and would be obliged if others can throw light on my many
> questions .. i will begin with the first:
> 
> In the 3rd paragraph of the Preface Marx writes:
> 
> " Beginnings are always difficult in all sciences."
> 
> Why are beginnings in all sciences always difficult?

Shiraz, I have two answers to your question. One is a broad generic
answer that is probably not controversial, and the other is more
adventurous and likely to cause people to scratch their heads ;-)

As for the first answer, I believe it would not be at all bold to
suggest that Marx was acutely aware of a point that is often made
today in the philosophy of science that all investigations _start_
with theory as well as empirical data, and even the empirical data
itself is loaded with observational hypotheses (the classic expression
of this standard view is that of Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, in
_Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge_). Hypotheses don't just emerge
from the empirical data spontaneously, but depend on a body of already
existing theory which offers a tool to bring meaning to the data.

In other words, a beginning must always include a body of theory which
is being taken for granted and not justified, even though it might to
a degree be obscure or contentious.

My second answer is really a specification of the first and responds
to the context for your quoted passage. Marx makes clear that what
will make his study of capital tough sledding right from the start
will be his analysis of the simple commodity. This is obviously
because the commodity is not really simple at all, but the hinge of
the whole capitalist system.

I'd argue that Marx's explanation of the commodity is challenging
because it represents a profound ontological break with the usual way
of representing things in bourgeois culture. Most things are defined
as _entities_ there by listing the empirical features that they
_happen_ to share with other things (their "essentials", which define
a conceptual category) and by listing the features that distinguish a
particular entity from all others (its "accidentals"). It is often
pointed out in the philosophy of science that this view of things is
static, reductionist, essentialist and thus metaphysical, and
precludes causal explanation.

What Marx did, I believe, was to represent the commodity, not as a
static _entity_, but as a _process_. He represented the commodity as a
unity of empirical constraints (its use value) and a causal relation
with other commodities (its exchange value). I believe it is safe to
say that to define something as a constrained causal relation is to
define it as a process. I believe today we would refine this a bit to
suggest that in a process, its empirical constraints define the
probability distribution of the possible actualizations of its causal
powers. This is not what we would view a simple idea.

Marx is generally understood to be embracing here what we would call
the position of scientific realism (which only very recently gained
legitimacy in the philosophy of science, although it was long an
assumption by practicing scientists): causal powers are real despite
their being unobservable. This ontology so clashed with the prevailing
outlook of positivism, that it required and still requires an effort
to grasp it. Hence the inherent difficulty of _Capital_, for the whole
book depends on a difficult ontological break. The economic value of a
product arises neither from its qualities nor from the marketplace,
but from the intrinsic relationship of these qualities and the
economy as a whole.
-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM