Marx's method

Various Marxist authors have focused on Marx's method of analysis and presentation (historical materialist and logically dialectical) as key factors both in understanding the range and incisiveness of Karl Marx's theoretical writing in general and Das Kapital in particular. One of the clearest and most instructive examples of this is his discussion of the value-form, which acts as a primary guide or key to understanding the logical argument as it develops throughout the volumes of Das Kapital. Various Marxist authors have focused on Marx's method of analysis and presentation (historical materialist and logically dialectical) as key factors both in understanding the range and incisiveness of Karl Marx's theoretical writing in general and Das Kapital in particular. One of the clearest and most instructive examples of this is his discussion of the value-form, which acts as a primary guide or key to understanding the logical argument as it develops throughout the volumes of Das Kapital. Marx himself presents a simplified explanation in the Appendix to the first German edition of Das Kapital published in English translation in Capital & Class. The need for this appendix was suggested by Engels and there is an exchange of correspondence concerning its purpose and form. The two principal components of marxist science are the dialectical method of logical deduction and genetic synthesis and its application to the evolution of real social history. While in each of these areas considered separately there are at least a number of scholarly works, there are few examples of substantial exegesis and fewer still successful applications of marxian method to the fundamental obstacles to class-consciousness today. This is reflected both at the general level of lack of understanding of the social nature of technological change embodied in Marx's theory of the value-form, reflected in widespread ignorance of the detail of the 'rational kernel' of Hegel's dialectic whose the principal 'forms of being' Marx used to structure the whole of the work on 'Capital'. His analytical evolution of the relation between subjective and objective development and their qualitative and quantitatively measured forms and functions which make up the logical skeleton in his presentation are almost universally ignored. Compare Hegel's Logic for instance with Marx the value-form. More than any other twentieth century marxist Lenin selfconsciously assimilated the fundamentals of this methodological approach (to the careful study of which he returned at the most critical political moments and set about the task of applying it to the 'burning questions of our movement'. His appreciation of the importance of the knowledge of real social movements is apparent from his studies: The development of Capitalism in Russia and his Notebooks on Imperialism. Lukacs' revolutionary career is made more problematic by his intellectual capitulation to the pressures of Stalinism. The essays from his period of active revolutionary leadership however are of unparalleled importance for their reassertion of Hegel's contribution to marxism. In addition his critical review of Bukharin published as Technology & Social Relations remains of seminal importance as one of the few direct attempts to deal with the problem of the methodological degeneration of communist theory on this question utilising an adequate level of theoretical and historical understanding. Rubin's 'Essays' shared this appreciation of the weakness of communist theory (as did the work of KORSCH & JAKUBOWSKI) but with the exceptions of Henryk Grossman's work at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, and Evgeny Preobrazhensky's New Economics, Rubin was in this period almost alone in articulating the central methodological content embodied in Marx's theoretical concepts. Roman Rosdolsky's valuable study The making of Marx's 'Capital' which re-emphasises the importance of use-value in Marx's two-fold analysis, was a result of his discovery of one of the rare copies of Grundrisse Marx's previously unpublished rough draft for 'Capital'.