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Source: "Why Karl Marx Studied Political Economy," Beijing Review 18, no. 36, 5 September 1975, 12-13.
Transcribed by an HC, April 26, 2005
September 5, 1975
[Transcriber's introduction (April 26, 2005): Marx put much emphasis on the theory of surplus value and died at his desk while revising the manuscript for the third volume of Capital . The proletariat is concrete in the world, and there is the international proletariat, but that does not mean every oppressor nation in the world has a proletariat as a class. Today, the typical oppressor-nation working class (so that excludes Poland, Russia, and others), along with the rest of its oppressor nation, is an exploitive parasite on the backs of oppressed-nation proletarians, several oppressed-nation proletarians for every typical Euro-Amerikan worker. The undocumented and lumpen proletariat, especially oppressed nationalities, is the center of gravity of the revolutionary forces within the united $nakes of AmeriKKKa.)]
by Hsueh Kung
In his Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," Marx sketched the course of his studies in political economy. Though he took up law in university, what he studied most were history and philosophy. As editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in 1842-43, he experienced for the first time the embarrassment of having to take part in discussions on the so-called material interests of the various classes in society. This provided the first occasions for occupying himself with economic questions. Later, his critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of right led him to the important conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life, the sum total of which Hegel combined under the name of "civil society" meaning in fact the capitalist mode of production. Since the anatomy of that mode of production is the task of the science of political economy, Marx began his studies in it.
Fundamentally speaking, what compelled Marx to turn to studies in political economy lay in the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. From the 1830s onwards, the bourgeoisie in Britain and France secured the political power they had seized and the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was developing and taking more and more open and acute forms. In France, the Lyons workers staged two insurrections, one in 1831 and the other in 1834. The British proletariat launched the nationwide Great Charter Movement to win political rights in the 1830s and 1840s and textile workers in Germany's Silesia rose up in arms in June 1844. Though ending in failure, all these struggles marked the development of the international workers' movement towards independent political struggle.
However, what dominated the workers' movement at that time were various bourgeois, petty-bourgeois and utopian socialist trends of thought. The utopian socialists also criticized capitalist society and advocated doing away with it. They tried to persuade the rich that exploitation was immoral and dreamt of the emergence of a better system. But utopian socialism "could not explain the essence of wage slavery under capitalism, nor discover the laws of the latter's development, nor point to the social force which is capable of becoming the creator of a new society" (Lenin: The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism ); it could only sink into day-dreaming. The in-depth development of the proletarian revolutionary struggle urgently needed guidance by scientific revolutionary theory and called [p. 13] for eradication of the influence of bourgeois trends of thought and utopian socialism on the workers' movement. It was for the very purpose of laying the theoretical foundation for the proletarian revolution that Marx studied political economy.
Over a long period covering several decades, Marx personally participated in the practical class struggle of his time. While applying materialist dialectics to sum up the experience of the proletarian revolutionary struggles, he did a great amount of theoretical study. Inheriting the outstanding results of studies by his predecessors and incisively analysing the capitalist mode of production, he wrote Capital , thus completing the criticism of the bourgeois political economy and creating the Marxist one.
In Capital , a splendid and voluminous work of science, Marx, "beginning with the commodity, the simplest element of capitalism, . . . made a thorough study of the economic structure of capitalist society." (Mao Tsetung: Rectify the Party's Style of Work .) Proceeding from an analysis of the commodity, he scientifically expounded and proved the contradictions between use value and value, between concrete and abstract labour and between individual and social labour , and this led to the discovery that these contradictions consist of the rudiments of all antagonisms and conflicts in capitalist society.
On the basis of the labour theory of value, Marx profoundly analysed the origin of surplus-value, unveiled the secret of workers' exploitation by capitalists and elucidated the deep economic roots of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In the light of a scientific analysis of capital accumulation, he disclosed the basic contradiction in capitalist society -- that between socialized production and capitalist form of appropriation of the fruits of production, pointed to the proletariat's great historical mission and reached the revolutionary conclusion [:] that socialism is bound to replace capitalism [,] and the dictatorship of the proletariat is bound to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
With the theory of surplus-value as its cornerstone , Marxist political economy is, in essence, based on the materialistic conception of history, and the creation of the former in turn scientifically proves the latter. Engels pointed out in Anti-Duhring : "These two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx . With these discoveries socialism became a science."
Marxist political economy is a science for the proletarian revolution and an important component part of Marxism. Lenin pointed out: "The most profound, comprehensive and detailed confirmation and application of Marx's theory is his economic doctrine." (Karl Marx) The scientific conclusions in Marxist political economy have armed the proletariat ideologically and theoretically and guided the proletariat of various countries to fight for the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
A science dealing with the relations of production, political economy is of a strong class nature and Party character. In class society, the relations of production are nothing but class relations, and the studies of the former are bound to directly involve the fundamental vital interests of different classes. In his preface to the first German edition of Capital , Marx pointed out: "In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest."
In the course of studying political economy and writing Capital , Marx met with one obstacle after another as well as inconceivable difficulties. Apart from fighting political persecution by the reactionary governments of various European countries, he had to rebut the wildest and most barbarous personal attacks by bourgeois scholars. More often than not he had to grapple with poverty caused by the capitalist system. Living in destitution, several of his children died of disease in their childhood. When Marx was to send his finished manuscripts of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy to the press, he could not even afford to buy the stamps. Poverty seemed to have driven Marx and his family into an impasse. But undaunted by these difficulties, he pressed forward with unmatched revolutionary will and determination and took an active part in revolutionary practice all his life, fighting heroically for the creation of the proletarian revolutionary theory. Even on March 14, 1883 when Marx breathed his last in his armchair, the manuscripts of the third volume of Capital which he had been revising were spread on his desk.
To overthrow reactionary capitalist rule, it is necessary to study political economy well. Today it remains necessary to study it well in order to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. In his important instruction on the question of the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Chairman Mao, applying the Marxist world outlook and methodology to observe and analyse socialist society, put forward a host of cardinal theoretical and practical questions to be solved in the historical period of socialism and set the important militant tasks of combating and preventing revisionism and deepening the socialist revolution. The system of ownership, distribution according to work, commodity system and exchange through money as mentioned in his important instruction on the question of theory are all basic theoretical questions in Marxist political economy. Therefore, only by studying Marxist political economy well and going into the thick of practical struggle to carry out investigation and study can we arrive at a better understanding of these basic principles and have a clear picture of the law of class struggle in socialist society, so as to help consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat.