Grundrisse: Footnotes
18. The following two paragraphs are directed specifically against the scheme outlined by John Gray in The Social System, pp. 62–86.
19. This note refers to an unknown manuscript by Marx, which must be older than his work of 1851 on ‘The Completed Money System’. Possibly it refers to one of the missing parts of the manuscript of 1845–7 on the ‘Critique of Politics and Political Economy’, fragments of which are reprinted in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) 1/3, pp. 33–172, 437–583 and 592–6. The 1851 manuscript,’The Completed Money System’, is not extant in full, and remains unpublished. [MELI note.]
20. This note refers to an unknown manuscript by Marx, which must be older than his work of 1851 on ‘The Completed Money System’. Possibly it refers to one of the missing parts of the manuscript of 1845–7 on the ‘Critique of Politics and Political Economy’, fragments of which are reprinted in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) 1/3, pp. 33–172, 437–583 and 592–6. The 1851 manuscript,’The Completed Money System’, is not extant in full, and remains unpublished. [MELI note.]
21. Atistotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk V, Ch. 5, para. 14.
22. This is directed against the doctrines of the Romantic reaction, as put forward by such people as Adam Müller (Die Elemente der Staatskunst, Berlin, 1809) and Thomas Carlyle (Chartism, London, 1840).
23. Menenius Agrippa (c. 530–493 B.C.) was a Roman patrician who is said to have persuaded the plebeians to return to Rome by comparing the patricians to the stomach and the plebeians to the limbs without which the stomach could not survive.
24. ‘ … Thou visible God! / That solder’st close impossibilities, / And mak’st them kiss! … ’ (Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 3).
25. ‘that accursed hunger for gold’ (Virgil, Aeneid, Bk 3, line 57).
27. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, new edition, London, 1843, Vol. I, pp. 100–101.
28. Steuart, An Inquiry, Vol. I, p. 88.
29. The discovery of gold in California and Australia in the 1850s.
30. Sir William Petty (1623–87), the ‘founder of political economy’ (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, p. 1) and an advocate of the labour theory of value. Author of A Treatise of Taxes, London, 1667, and Several Essays in Political Arithmetick, London, 1699.
31. ‘And the pre-eminence of the land (Attica) is not only in the things that bloom and wither annually: she has other good things that last for ever. Nature has put in her abundance of stone etc. … Again, there is land that yields no fruit if sown, and yet, when quarried, feeds many times the number it could support if it grew corn’ (Xenophon, On Revenues, Ch. 1, printed in Xenophon, Scripta minora, London, 1925, pp. 193–4).
34. ‘The inhabitants of this country are unusually handsome and large. And they are frank in their dealings and not mercenary; for they do not in general use coined money nor do they know any number greater than one hundred, but carry on business by means of barter … They are also unacquainted with accurate measures and weights’ (Strabo, Geography, Bk XI, Ch. 4, section 4, London, 1917; Loeb edn, Vol. V, pp. 226–7).
35. There is no heading (1) in the original text.
37. Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, Glockner edn, Vol. IX, pp. 413–24.
38. See Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts. Lectures on Gold for the Instruction of Emigrants about to Proceed to Australia. Delivered at the Museum of Practical Geology, London, 1852. Marx’s page reference is incorrect. The last sentence comes from p. 12, but the rest of the paragraph is from p. 10. The two preceding paragraphs come from pp. 171–2 and p. 8 of this work, and the two following ones from pp. 93–5 and 95–7 respectively.
39. Jacob Grimm, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, Vol. I, Leipzig, 1848, pp. 13–14.
40. A reference to Marx’s own excerpt-book, No. XIV (1851), p. 2 of which contains the excerpt mentioned, from pp. 48–9 of Dureau de la Malle, Économie politique des Romains, Paris, 1840, Vol. I. In general pp. 180–84 are based on excerpts from Dureau de la Malle’s work.
41. J.-A. Letronne, Considérations générales sur l’évaluation des monnaies grecques et romaines, et sur la valeur de l’or et de l’argent avant la découverte de l’Amérique, Paris, 1817; W. Jacob, An Historical Inquiry into the Production and Consumption of the Precious Metals, London, 1831; A. Böckh, The Public Economy of Athens, London, 1842.
42. ‘Sandy desert rich in gold’.
43. ‘Of bronze were their implements; there was no black iron’ (Hesiod, Works and Days, line 151; Leob edn, London, 1914, p. 12).
44. ‘The use of bronze was known before iron’ (Lucretius, De rerum natura, Bk V, line 1,287).
45. ‘Mining is prohibited by an old resolution of the Senate forbidding the exploitation of Italy’ (Pliny, Historia naturalis, Bk III, Ch. 20, section 138).
46. G. Garnier, Histoire de la monnaie depuis les temps de la plus haute antiquité jusqu’au règne de Charlemagne, Paris, 1819, Vol. I, p. 7.
47. J. F. Reitemeier, Geschichte des Bergbaues und Hüttenwesens bey den alten Völkern, Göttingen, 1785, pp. 14, 15–16, 32.
48. Jacob, An Historical Inquiry, Vol. I, p. 142.
49. Dureau de la Malle, Économie politique des Romains, Vol. I, pp. 62–3.
51. Nassau Senior, Three Lectures on the Cost of Obtaining Money, London, 1830, p. 15.
52. Garnier, Histoire de la monnaie, Vol. I, pp. 72, 73, 77, 78.
53. Marx discusses James Mill’s theory more fully later on.
54. Storch, Cours d’économie politique, Vol. I, pp. 81, 83, 84, 87, 88.
55. J.C-L. Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842), Swiss political economist and historian, who held that the value of a product was determined by the quantity of labour needed to produce it, not by its cost. He was the father of the romantic-reactionary opposition to capitalism. The reference here is to Études sur l’économie politique, Vol. II, Brussels, 1838, pp. 264–5.
56. Jacob, An Historical Inquiry, Vol. I, pp. 109, 351.
57. Steuart, An Inquiry, Vol. I, pp. 395–6.
58. J. G. Hubbard (1805–89), English financier, a director of the Bank of England in 1838, later a Conservative M.P. The Currency and the Country, London, 1843, pp. 44–6. Marx’s reference (VIII, 45) is to his own excerpt-book.
59. Jacob, An Historical Inquiry, Vol. II, p. 326.
60. Steuart, An Inquiry, Vol. II, p. 389.
61. Marx may also be alluding to Hegel’s concept of schlechte Unendlichkeit (‘bad’ or ‘spurious’ infinity), an infinity of connections merely piled on top of one another (Science of Logic, Glockner edn, Vol IV, pp. 165–83).
62. Pierre le Pesant Boisguillebert (1646–1714). French judge and precursor of the Physiocrats who opposed Mercantilism, upheld free competition, and denounced the misery of the French agricultural population, which, under Louis XIV, earned him exile to the Auvergne.
63. Boisguillebert, Dissertation sur la nature des richesses, de l’argent, et des tributs, printed in Éonomistes Financiers du XVIIIe siècle, ed. E. Daire, Paris, 1843, pp. 395 and 417.
64. Kaufmannsstand: This refers above all to the merchants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who formed an ‘estate’ rather than a ‘class’.