g. a. cohen - thoughts on the grundrisse - marxism today, december 1972

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Thoughts on the GrundrisseG. A. Cohen(G . A. Cohen is a lecturer in philosophy at University College, London. He has published several articles on

Marx in academic journals)

"Marx's Grundrisse". Selected and translated byDavid McLellan. 156 pp. Macmillan. £2.50.

1. Du ring several mon ths span ning 1857 and 1858Karl Marx compiled a massive set of notes, committing to paper his current thoughts and theoriesabout polit ical economy and about the widerquestions to which he made polit ical economyrelevant. The resulting manuscript abounds inobscurity and bril l iance. Logical sequence is

frequently sacrificed to the sequence of ideas as theyoccurred in Marx's mind while he was writing. Longextracts from other authors recurrently interrupt thedevelopment of his own views, which proceeds notin one language but in a German spiced with wordsand phrases from about five other languages, notablyEnglish and French. The whole is a witness toMarx's formidable genius and learning, and alsoto his monumental untidiness. The task of turningthe manuscript into a book would require immenseeditorial skill and energy.

But i t has been done. The t ransformat ion wasperform ed between 1939 and 1941 in Moscow , bythe Foreign Languages Publ ishing House . The bookwas entit led Grundrisse der Kritik der PolitischenEkonomie {Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy)and was J,102 pages long. Some 35 of these werewritten in Au gust 1857, and intended as an Introd uct ion to Marx 's Contribution to a Critique of PoliticalEconomy which he published, with no introduction,in 1859. Kautsky presented the Introduction in thejourna l Die Neue Zeit in 1903, and it appe ared inN . I. Stone's American translation of the Contribution, which followed in 1904.

The Second World War defeated the first attemptto make the Grundrisse public. The second, by theDietz Verlag of Berlin (D D R) in 1953, was successful. The work now ran to 980 pages. An Italianedition appeared in 1956, and a French edition in

1967-8. A full English translation is in preparation,as part of the comprehensive Collected Works ofMarx and Engels, projected by Lawrence andWishart. In 1964 the latter house produced a translation of 38 consecutive pages of the Berlin edition,under the ti t le, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations}

' The translation was by Jack Cohen, and Eric Hobs-bawin provided a masterful introduction. Hobsbawmemphasised the importance of the Grundrisse, four yearsearlier than Martin Nicolaus, who receives undeservedand unsolicited credit in this regard from David McLellanon p. 3 of the work here reviewed.

The Macmillan Edition2. The work under review provides the Int roduct iononce again, followed by 21 excerpts, which coverabout 84 previously untranslated pages of theBerlin text. McLellan's selection furnishes theEnglish reader with an excellent preview of theGrundrisse's r iches. Nothing less, and nothing more .

The strictly aperitival character of the offering isnot reflected in its title. It is called Marx's Grundrisse.

Anyone famil iar wi th normal publ ishing procedureand with the Grundrisse would conclude from thebook's cover and its slender girth that i t is an essayabout th e Grundrisse, by David McLel lan. Anyonefamiliar with normal publishing procedure onlymight conclude that the Grundrisse is a short work.Both familiarit ies, together with the facts of the case,inspire a charge of misleading practice againstMessrs. Macmillan. This charge is now widely madeon the intellectual Left.

The first sentence of the inside blurb reveals thatthe book supplies selections only. But i t proclaimsthat "this is the first edition in English of substantialextracts from the Grundrisse'". But no extract herepresented is as substantial as that provided byLawrence & Wishart in 1964. The truth is that 84more Grundrisse pages have now been added to the68 which were already available.

I shall express disagreement with McLellan'sconception of the place of the Grundrisse in theMarxian corpus. Of his new translations I havenothing but admiration. They achieve clarity,l i teralness, and fidelity to Marx. His translation ofthe Introduction, however, follows Stone's, as heacknowledges. Stone's was a very bad translation,and McLellan has not changed it much. TheFL PH has just produced a new elegant Engl ishtranslation of the 1859 Contribution. It is best toread the Int roduct ion i t conta ins, and to ignore pp.

16-46 of the McLellan volume, (pp. 1-16 are McLellan's own introduction, and pp. 47-150 are thenewly translated texts.)

The Status of the Grundrisse3. Publications of works by Marx have polit ical aswell as intellectual repercussions; rather, theirintellectual repercussions are partly polit ical inmot ivat ion and outcome. Debates about "whatMarx really meant" reflect and aff'ect disputes aboutcurrent problems and struggles. In the 1930'srevisionist social democrats greeted with elation



M A RX I SM T OD A Y , D E CE M BE R, 19 72 373

the publ ica t ion of Marx 's Manuscripts of 1844.They c la im that the " t rue Marx" was now avai lableto the publ ic . According to them, he was a Marxmore concerned with the alienation of man ingeneral than with the oppression of the industrialworking class, and the remedy for social conflictand distress was not intransigent class war but areformist humanisation of social relations. In thelate 1950's and 1960's the same Manuscripts playeda role in the process of de-Stalinisation in EasternEurope .

Clamorous argument, which sti l l rages, followedthe publication of the Manuscripts. Some contrastedthe humanist ic Young Marx wi th the Marx ofCapital^, who was perceived as unattractivelydeterministic. Others saw the diflFerence as betweena quasi-idealist philosophic youth and a scientific

maturity. Stil l others perceived the phases of Marx'sthought as inseparable and complementary. Amongthem some read the Manuscripts as preliminarygropings towards Capital, which remained theirreference-point; but most who held the unifiedview of Marx thought the early work alreadycontained the essential doctrine.

N o w t h e Crundrisse appears, an ia termediarybetween the early writings and the late, at least asregards th e date of i ts pro duc tion. Existing exegeticalcam ps will contest i ts status, an d different polit icalmorals will be drawn. McLellan is convinced that i ti s the most important work in the Marxian corpus.He also thinks it fi ts together well with the earlywritings, and, because it also resembles Capital,proves the continuity of Marx's thought, with itsessential grounding in the early work.

I personally range myself with those who contrastthe early and the late Marx, and I think the Marxof Capital is the Marx of revolutionary and scientificimp ortan ce. T canno t argu e the case here. I shallstate my point of view summarily and dogmatically.

A BridgeMarx's early work explores and extends Hegelian

and Feuerbachian ideas which belonged to theintellectual environment of his youth. The contentof the work centres on a philosophical conception

of man, as an essentially creative natu re-trans form ing

social being, who suffers alienation when his ownnature is negated by capitalist private property.Capital is a work of objective social science, servicingrevolution by exposing the anatomy of capitalist

relations of production. The theoretical structure i tdevelops lacks and does not need the support of aphi losophy of man. This does not mean that Marxcompletely rejected the philosophy, or that traces

of his allegiance to it cannot be found in "Capital".It means that the theoretical content of Capitalis independent of i t . And that truth is not refuted bydemonstra t ions that the mature Marx st i l l caredabout man and had views of human nature. Ofcourse he did, but such considerations are irrelevantto the issue.

In the Crundrisse the mature Marx is borne . Butthe young Marx is also present in i ts pages. Whilemost of the manuscript harmonises better with thelater writings, there are distinct and importantechoes of the earlier. The young and the old Marxare different, but they are phases of one intellectuallife, and the Crundrisse bridges them. But a bridgedoes not fill a gulf. It l inks its opposite sides.

The extent of similarity between the Crundrissean d Capital, and the extent to which, on so many

issues, Capital says more clearly and instructivelywhat the Grundri.sse is trying to say, are now littlerealised, because the tradition of reading Capitalwas weakened by the impact of the early writings.^A conventionalised view of Capital came to prevail ,and people lost contact with its richness and detail .So now ideas in the Crundrisse are discovered andadmired which were already available, often inclearer form, but in a neglected place.

In his Introduction to the Contribution Marxdeclared that the anatomy of man is the key to theanatomy of the ape. The more developed form is theproper point of departure for understanding thelesser. In my opinion this principle may be adoptedas a guide to the study of the Crundrisse. T heCrundrisse are notes on which Marx drew when hecomposed Capital. In them he mined the ore heused in Capital to erect a theoretical st ructure . Thebest approach to the Crundrisse is through a priorreading of Capital.^

One can accept McLellan's description of theCrundrisse as the "centrepiece" (p. 3) of Marx'scorpus, but only in the sense that i t is the middle ofhis theoretical journey. The destination, Capital,shows where he was going. When the dust settles—it will not settle soon— Capital will recapture itsrightful pre-eminence.

Alienation in tiie "Grundrisse"

4. I concede that some important Grundrissethemes are not represented in Capital. But \ do no taccept M cLellan's co ntentio n (see pp. 8fT) that theGrundrisse is Marx's theoretical contribution in i ts

- When I mention Capital in this review I always meanit to include the Theories of Surplus Value, sometimesknown as Volume IV of Capital.

^ One reason why many people prefer the Economican d Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 to Capital is thatCapital isabout thirty times as long as the Manuscripts.

^ For example. On p. 78 M cLellan describes a discussion of capital as a productive process as "obscure",and he is right. The obscurity is relieved by readingCapital, in particular P art 11 of Volume I and Chap tersI and II of Volume II.



374 MARXISM TODAY, DECEMBER, 1 9 7 2

fullest form. In his introduction McLelian conductsan ingenuous argument in favour of the thesis thatCapital concerns only the first of six topics whichMarx had intended to cover in his economic treatise:". . . capital , landed property, wage-labour; state,fore ign t rade , world market" . The conclusion of theargum ent i s wrong. Capital deals extensively with thefirst three of the topics listed.^ And the Grundrisseincludes discussions of the significance of economicdevelopment for general historical developmentwhich Capital does not resume, but this does notshow that i t approximates more closely than doesCapital to a presentation of Marx's whole polit icaleconomy.

[ believe that McLelian has overemphasised boththe novelty of the Grundrisse and its kinship with thewritings of Marx's youth. One way in which he does

both is by exaggerating the importance of alienationin the Grundrisse.

The exaggeration is partly a product of a systematic tendency to assimilate the concepts alienatedlabour (entfremdete Arbeit) and alien labour{fremde Arbeit). Labour is alienated when byperforming it the agent dehumanises himself.

Labour is alien—so Marx uses the term '"fremde"—when it is not self-employed. In his early writingsMarx argues that alien labour is of necessityalienated labour. It does not follow that wheneverhe subsequently, as in the Grundrisse. discussed alienor hired labour, he was also occupied with thecomplex phenomenon of a l ienat ion. Only byillicit ly counting alien as alienated labou r is M cLelian

able to list a very sizeable number of pages next tothe word "alie nat ion " in his index. 1 do not denythat the idea of alienation occurs in the Grundrisse.I claim that the degree to which it is present isgrossly overestimated."

Achieving Socialism5. Throughout Marx 's mature systemat ic workthere is both a deep pessimism and a deep optimismwith respect to the prospects of achieving socialism.Both atti tude s derive from his theorem that abundanceis a necessary and sufficient condition of a successful

•' With the second in Volumes III and IV, with thethird largely in Volume I, but also elsewhere.

* The overestimation manifests itself in the titles of andintroductions to some of the excerpts. Selection 3 iscalled "Money as a Symbol of Alienation in CapitalistSociety", of the alienation, presumably, of man. But inMarx's discussion money does not symbolise alienation,but ;.v an alienated form, not of man but of exchange -value: it is "the exchange-value of commodities, severedfrom them and having its own objectified existence"(p . 60). The alienation of man is a secondary concern ofthe inquiry. There is, moreover, nothing in section 3,or in sections 4 and 13, which is not treated in similarterms in Capital, and with little implication that thealienation of man is centrally at stake.

socialist revolution. Abundance is here understoodas a level of technological attainment at which it ispossible to reduce toil (the working-day) radicallywhile satisfying the historically developed humanneeds. To believe this condition is necessary forsocialism is to be pessimistic about heroic attemptsto inaugurate i t in circumstances of relative scarcityand indust r ia l immaturi ty . But Marx 's complementary thesis, that abundance is sufficient for socialism,is optimistic, because he thought the industrialprogress impelled by capitalist profit-seeking wouldinevitably lead to the required abundance.

This theorem was available to Marxists beforeth e Grundrisse appeared. In the Grundrisse it soptimistic side receives a new and exciting philosophical elaboration. We are introduced to the ideaof a nature so transformed by science and industry

that the line between technology and nature is nolonger discernible:

The worker no longer inserts transformed naturalobjects' between the material and himself; he nowinserts the natural process that he has transformedinto an industrial one between himself and inorganicnature, over which he has achieved mastery. He isno longer the principal agent of the productionprocess: he exists alongside it. (p. 142).

Men no longer work on nature . That st ruggle ,with the social class divisions it has entailed, isover: there is no exploitation of labour becausethere is no longer any labour to be exploited.Nature has been transformed into a system, requiring supervision only, and which by its ownaction produces the environment and the objectsmen need. Men do not apply tools to nature, butregulate a new industrialised nature with whichtools have been integrated. The ravages of classsociety give way to freedom in an industrial Eden.

The theorem here elaborated poses a seriousintellectual and practical challenge to the socialistmovements of the Third World. For i t seems to rulethat atte mp ts to establish sociahsm in societies bereftof advanced technology are bound to fail . Vet thefact that Marx believed deeply in the theorem is nota proof that it is true. Southern-hemispheric socialismis particularly well-suited to contribute a disciplineddiscussion of the limits on its truth.

There is also a practical challenge, because thereis at least some truth in Marx's pessimism. It isimperative, while honestly accepting what is truein it, to defeat facile reactionary inferences that willbe drawn from it , favouring an indefinite postponement of revolution. The battle against imperialism must not be arrested by the fact that hopes aboutwhat an anti-imperialist revolution can achieve inconditions of scarcity should be modest. To discoverand practice the right policy is a difficult task. It isnot an impossible one.

i.e. tools, machines.



MARXISM TODAY, DECEMB ER, 19 72 375

London Millwrights and theCombination Acts

Ruth and Edmund Frow

Trades Unions, in the twentietli century, havedeveloped into a mighty force; a force so powerfulthat the Trades Union Congress is prepared toadvocate non-co-operation with an Act of Parliament, the Industrial Relations Act. The nineteenth

century was heralded with similar attempts tothrottle the barely formed trades combinations, ftmay be significant that the engineers of the time,the millwrights, were apparently able to circumventthe Combination Acts and continue to function asa trade union even as early as 1807.

The eighteenth century drew to a close with theechoes of the French Revolution mingled with theever increasing sounds of industrial processes. Tothose in power at the time, i t must have appeared asa highly unstable situation and one pregnant withundesirable possibili t ies. They evinced manifestationsof fear and apprehension in much of their conductand legislation. The aura of suspicion and alarmamount ing to phobia can be t raced through the useof spies and agents to combat the activity of theworkers during the first two decades of the newcentury. An obvious target for repressive measureswas the proclivity of working men to combinetogether to protect their interests and raise theirwages. The last year of the century and the firstyear of the new one were marked by the enactmentof legislation which specifically forbade the formation of any form of trade union or club whichhad the intention of using the combined power ofthe workers to dictate terms to the masters.

Wilberforce

The excuse for passing the Combination Acts was

provided by the master Millwrights. In 1799 theywere so concerned at the growing strength of themen's societies that they petit ioned Parliament tosanction the fixing of wages by a Justice of the Peaceand to suppress combinat ions among the men. TheBill was introduced by Sir John William Anderson,Member of Parliament for the City of London. TheBill , which dealt only with journeymen millwrights,reached the House of Lords. But i t was abandoned

in favour of much wider legislation dealing with alltrades. This was sponsored by William Wilberforce.

Wilberforce might be characterised as the Mrs.

Mary Whitehouse of his day. He appointed himselfas custodian of the morals of the poor and duringthe 20 years from 1790 to 1810 he let no o pp ortu nityslip of pointing out to them, "that their more lowlypath has been a l lot ted them by the hand of God;

that it is their part faithfully to discharge its dutiesand contentedly to bear i ts inconveniences," 'He set up a Society for the Suppression of Vice andamong the evidence of moral degradation which hesaw among the poor was the growing habit ofcombination to enforce standards of l iving abovetheir station in l ife. He was moved to take action tosecure the end of slavery in America, but was notable to see that the workers of the industrial revolution were equally in need to end their thraldom.So he saw no contradiction in his conduct when hesponsored the Combination Act which was finallypassedon July 9, 1799.

The journeymen millwrights were, of course,included in the wider provisions of the amendedAct. A further Act passed in 1800 made the positionquite clear. Any contract which had the intentionof raising wages, lessening the hours of work,decreasing the quality of work or any proposedinterference with what today would be calledmanagerial functions, was il legal and punishable.Moreo ver, any meeting called to discuss such matter swas il legal. The only form of workers' organisationwhich was acceptable by law was the FriendlySociety, which under the terms of an Act in 1793encouraged artisans to unite in mutual support toavoid becoming a charge upon the rates in t ime ofsickness. By this Act, a registered Friendly Societyhad protection for i ts funds and was able to sue and

be sued.The history of the 24 years during which the

Combination Acts were in force, shows that manytrades made no apparent effort to circumvent theprovisions of the Act, but formed Friendly Societiesfor mutual protection. When the Act was repealedin 1824, a proliferation of local trades societiesindicated that the letter of the law may have beenobserved but the spirit certainly had not. However,there is evidence that the highly skilled and exclusivemillwrights did not even trouble to disguise thetrade union character of their society.

g. a. cohen - thoughts on the grundrisse - marxism today, december 1972

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