Grundrisse: Footnotes
NOTEBOOK III: The Chapter on Capital (continuation)
1. This is the continuation from the missing final page of the previous notebook. The first seven pages of the present (third) notebook are taken up by the section ‘Bastiat and Carey’ (see pp. 883–93), which was written in July 1857. The present text begins, then, on the eighth page of the third notebook, which carries the date ‘29th, 30th November, December’ in Marx’s hand. See Grundrisse (MELI), pp. 200 n., 842 n.
2. Cf. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, para. 67: ‘I can give to someone else the use of my abilities for a restricted period … but by alienating the whole of my time I would be making the substance of my being into another’s property.’
3. As in P. Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery, London, 1836, pp. 261–2.
5. Antoine Cherbuliez (1797–1869, Swiss lawyer and economist, follower of Sismondi, although he added some elements of Ricardian theory), Richesse ou pauvreté: Exposition des causes et des effets de la distribution actuelle des richesses sociales, Paris, 1841, p. 16.
6. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, p. 753: ‘The third relation, mechanism … is a sublating (aufheben) of the means, of the object already posited as sublated, and is therefore a second sublating and a reflection-into-self.’
7. For example John Gray, The Social System, p. 36, and J. F. Bray, Labour’s Wrongs, pp. 157–76.
8. See below, pp. 316–18 and pp. 461–71.
10. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, pp. 355–85.
11. Senior, Principes fondamentaux, pp. 197–206.
12. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, p. 47, footnote by the editor, William Otter, Bp of Chichester.
13. Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes, Vol. I, p. 90.
15. Cherbuliez, Richesse ou pauvreté, pp. 58, 64.
16. For example John Gray, The Social System, p. 36, and J. F. Bray, Labour’s Wrongs, pp. 157–76.
17. In Ricardo: On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 320–37. In Sismondi: Études, Vol. I, p. 22.
18. The MELI edition gives lassen (let, leave) rather than fassen (grasp, conceive, formulate); this is almost certainly either a misprint (the first of two on that page) or a misreading.
19. Say, Traité d’économie politique, Vol. II, p. 429 n.
20. Sismondi, Études, Vol. II, p. 273.
21. This is Adam Smith’s phrase, not Ricardo’s (Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, p. 355).
22. Say, Traité d’économie politique, Vol II, p. 425.
23. ‘Capital has value, labour produces.’ Proudhon, Système des contradictions économiques, Vol. I, p. 61.
24. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, p. 633: ‘In the judgement the subject is determined by the predicate … the predicate is determined in the subject.’
26. Incidental ‘false’ expenses of production: the category into which the political economists from Adam Smith onwards relegated the cost of maintaining necessary but unproductive workers, e.g. soldiers, doctors etc.
27. Bastiat et Proudhon, Gratuité du credit, p. 180.
28. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, pp. 717–18; ‘The action passes over into rest. It shows itself to be a merely superficial, transient alteration in the self-enclosed indifferent totality of the object. This return constitutes the product of the mechanical process.’
29. Sir George Ramsay (1800–1871, philosopher and political economist, the first to distinguish between constant and variable capital), An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, Edinburgh, 1836, p. 184.
30. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, p. 131.
31. Incidental ‘false’ expenses of production: the category into which the political economists from Adam Smith onwards relegated the cost of maintaining necessary but unproductive workers, e.g. soldiers, doctors etc.
32. As in Carey, Principles of Political Economy, Pt I, p. 338.
33. Bastiat et Proudhon, Gratuité du crédit, pp. 65–74. For Marx’s later discussions of the polemic between Bastiat and Proudhon, see pp. 640–41, 754–8, 843–5.
34. ‘A distinction is to be drawn between this, on one side, and the accumulation of capitals, on the other; the latter presupposes its relations to labour, prices (fixed capital and circulating capital), interest and profit.’ Our reconstruction is based on a comparison with the passage on p. 310 where a distinction is drawn between ‘capital in the process of its becoming’ and ‘the later relations’ or ‘the specific form in which capital is posited at a certain point’. Marx is repeating this distinction here, but in a different manner.
35. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 1–3.
37. The expression in full is ‘travailler pour le roi de Prusse’ (‘to work for the king of Prussia’), i.e. to work for the purposes of another without recompense.
39. The Times, London, Saturday, 21 November 1857, No. 22,844, p. 9. ‘Negroes and the Slave Trade. To the Editor of The Times. By Expertus.’ Marx’s English in this sentence has been changed to conform to modern usage.
40. See below, pp. 419–20, 464–9, 471–514, 547–8.
41. This is a generalized reference to Malthus’s numerous discussions of value, e.g. in Principles of Political Economy, London, 1836, pp. 50–135, The Measure of Value, London, 1823, and Definitions in Political Economy, London, 1827, pp. 23–36.
42. Ricardo’s polemic against Smith, in On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 4–12; Ricardo on the effect on value of difficulties of production, pp. 60–67; the essential difference between value and wealth, p. 320; the theory of ground rent, pp. 53–75; the theory of international trade, pp. 131–61.
43. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, p. 356.
44. Victor, Marquis de Mirabeau (1715–89), was an eccentric French aristocrat converted by Quesnay to the cause of Physiocracy in the 1750s, who subsequently wrote two of the main Physiocratic works, the Théorie de l’impôt (1760) and the Philosophie rurale (1763).