Marx, Preface to A Critique of Political Economy with Reference to Gramsci (original) (raw)
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Antonio Gramsci’s Contribution to a Critical Economics
Historical Materialism, 2011
According to conventional wisdom, Antonio Gramsci is a political philosopher lacking in, and who avoids, a serious interest in political economy. That is a serious misrepresentation of Gramsci’s works and thought. Equally wrong is the widespread view that anything Gramsci had to say about political economy is to be found in his scattered notes on ‘Americanism and Fordism’. On the contrary, a careful rereading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks shows that Marx’s great and unfinished project of the critique of political economy plays a crucial rôle for Gramsci’s efforts to come to grips with the basics of a critical social science that could live up to the aspirations of a ‘scientific socialism’. As Gramsci was fully aware of the everyday battles of ideas in capitalist societies to be fought about the notions and tenets of popular or vulgar political economy, he did the best he could in order to understand and clarify the bases of a ‘critical’ and ‘scientific’ political economy. A politica...
2017
Marx often reflects on his place within the history of philosophy and, more broadly, the history of social development. His is a critique of the total system and of the various forms that reveal it when comprehended as parts of a whole. This involves approaching the defining social relation of the epoch—that between labor and capital—through the unavoidable detours posed by its manifestations, and also the misapprehensions that attend these. The object of this essay will be to unpack the critical subtext of Marx's notes on political economy so as to see how, cloaked in the very language of economists and socialists alike, Marx contends that the true content of certain categories constitutes a political task. To this end, I will study the first notebook of the Grundrisse, which analyzes the concept of money, as well as the early Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte that address the specific implications of production under capitalism.
1891-1937) is revered as one of the key contributors to the Marxist tradition in the 20 th century, along with thinkers as diverse as Louis Althusser, Georg Lukacs and Vladimir Lenin. His contribution entailed a revision of predominant interpretations of Marx's writings during his time, in order to address the flurry of criticisms leveled at Marxist theory (both from within and outside the Marxist tradition). More specifically, Gramsci's ideas can be described as truly political and revolutionary. He sought to formulate a variant of Marxism that would make sense of existing power relations and the political currents within Italian society; at the same time, he advocated a distinct (and extensive) course of action for his country's socialist movements. This essay will attempt to survey Gramsci's ideas by presenting the key tenets of his theoretical project against the backdrop of the Marxist tradition. Two main trends should be identified here. Firstly, Gramsci fundamentally rejects interpretations of Marx which trade on a crude materialism (and economism) -to this end, he accords a greater role to the "superstructure" and emphasizes the importance of culture, civil society, political practice, and social action. Secondly, Gramsci consistently resists mechanistic (or deterministic) readings of Marx's theory of history; instead he stresses the logic of contingency in place of a logic of necessity with regards to social change -this is evidenced in his prescriptions for political (and revolutionary)
Karl Marx and Antônio Gramsci: Theories that complement each other
Revista Científica Multidisciplinar Núcleo do Conhecimento, 2019
This article presents a reflection on the expressiveness of the work of the Italian sociologist Antônio Gramsci as well as reflects on karl marx's influence on his theory, which, among other aspects, focused on the educational scenario of the time. Through his writings, Gramsci proposes an egalitarian school and emphasizes intellectual and manual work with the objective of promoting the individual as a whole and obtaining, consequently, with this process, the transformation of society. Its concept of school understands that this environment should not be reduced to a simple place where knowledge is developed and acquired, thus encompasses a group of work market structures that help in the process of understanding this school. With this the article aims, therefore, to offer, in the general body of Marxist criticism, elements and categories that allow the reformulation of the gramscian concept of school.
the JSHET Annual Conference. Session: Revisiting Karl Marx as a Historian of Economic Theories, 2023
The editorial board of Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Japan, to which the chair of this session belongs, has been involved in editing Section IV, Volumes 17-19 of MEGA, a “historical and critical collection”. In 2021, IV/19, jointly edited by German editors in Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and Japanese scholars, was published online . This volume is a compilation of Marx’s excerpt notebooks on Money Markets and Crisis, written in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In addition, this year, the editorial work of IV /17, has begun in earnest, led by Prof. Morishita (Hokkai Gakuen University). This volume contains eight subnotebooks on the manuscripts of Capital, known as 1861–63 Economic Manuscript, and is expected to uncover new insights into the Marx's reception of history of political economy. This session aims to reexamine Marx on the history of political economy by considering the latest results of MEGA research. However, it is distinct from the Marxian Economy’s approach. Until now, Marx's critique of the history of political economy has been understood based on the Marx-Engels-Werke (MEW), i.e., Theories of Surplus-Value, edited by Karl Kautsky. Indeed, all these manuscripts of Theories of Surplus-Value were republished in MEGA by 1982. However, the influence of political parties and Marxism-Leninism has not been completely dispelled in MEGA editions before the end of the Cold War, as are typical in the preface and index of personalities. Thus, the challenge remains for contemporary researchers to “historically contextualize” Marx's thought itself by using his excerpt notebooks.
final and unalterable truths, but rather an inexhaustible source of stimulation for further study, further scientific investigations and further struggles for truth' (Luxemburg 1918, p. 371). So reads one of the first sentences of Rosa Luxemburg's contribution to Franz Mehring's Karl Marx: The Story of His Life, published in 1918 (1935 in English) to mark the occasion of Marx's 100 th birthday. That we now return to Luxemburg on the eve of his 200 th birthday is due to our interest in volumes II and III of Capital, rendered readable by Engels, but nevertheless remaining fragmentary, as a 'stimulus to thought, to criticism and self-criticism, and this is the essence of the lessons which Marx gave the working class' (Luxemburg 1918, p. 379). Luxemburg invited her readers to join, via Marx, in a process of learning and discovery. Above all, her aim was to encourage workers to think independently and base their actions on the principle of solidarity. She sought to endow the working class of her time with the ability to reflect critically upon their conditions of life and on relations of power and domination, and to struggle relentlessly for a society of the free and equal. Antonio Gramsci was one of her followers. In the 10 th of his Prison Notebooks in particular, he raises questions about Engels' treatment of the sources, about the content of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and its interpretations, and about the precise understanding of critical economy. As the teacher Luxemburg, her student Gramsci has been interested in developing educational materials to teach people about the reproduction of relations of dominance in order to better criticise them in actual practice. Such books ought to address the interconnection between the volumes of Capital while also reflecting prior works and other classic texts, new developments, problems, experiences and insights (Gramsci 1932-1935, §32-38. §41VI-VII). Luxemburg's and Gramsci's treatment of Marx's legacy and the emancipatory and solidarity-oriented struggles of the anti-capitalist movements have remained rather marginal within these: They have often been opposed, met with incomprehension or even with rejection, usually motivated by arrogance and fear. This explains, on the one hand, why the dominant ways of reception of the Marxian doctrine have produced superficial versions of Marxism, omitting any analysis and critique of more complex relations of power and domination. This is particularly true with regard to gender relations, hierarchies based on place of birth as well as ethnic and cultural background, power structures in interregional and international relations, and metabolic relations with the natural world. Taken together, these omissions constitute one of the essential reasons for the weakness of the left today. We seek to take on this weakness in a pro-active manner, in order to regain the offensive by developing a more comprehensive 'critique of political economy' and thus of social relations of domination and power. We are, therefore, confronted with the challenge of contributing to the analysis of the overall process of capital accumulation, the reproduction of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production, which entails five interrelated tasks: