Marxism, Capital and Capitalism: From Hegel Back to Marx

This paper takes issue with Marxist perspectives that tend to view capital and capitalism as one and the same endless logic. It begins with an ideal typical Marxist political economy of capitalism that has come into vogue in recent decades. The analysis of capitalism offered by this political economy is then compared with the very different configuration of present day capitalism, in which the value form is in retreat and other forms of surplus labour extraction merge with it in complex ‘illogical’ ways. The disparity between conceptual categories and the concrete realities of capitalism is then located to Hegelian Marxism, a project to transform Marxism into a suffix of Hegelianism. The paper explains that this perspective pays little heed to Marx’s warnings about how one ought to employ Hegel’s dialectic method with respect to capital and considers the consequences. The paper then puts forward reasons why Marxism on its own terms can distinguish between capital and capitalism and analyses the declining ...