Revenues and
their Sources
Capital Volume 3, Part 7,
Revenues and their Sources
The last part of the last
book of Capital begins as Volume 1 ended, with a reminder that capital is not a
thing, but it is a relationship. In Part 1 of our chosen text, Chapter 48,
The Trinity Formula (download linked below) Marx writes:
“Capital, land, labour! However, capital
is not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to
a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and
lends this thing a specific social character. Capital is not the sum of the
material and produced means of production. Capital is rather the means of
production transformed into capital, which in themselves are no more capital
than gold or silver in itself is money. It is the means of production
monopolised by a certain section of society, confronting living labour-power as
products and working conditions rendered independent of this very labour-power,
which are personified through this antithesis in capital…”
Shortly afterwards, Marx
turns to a summary of the illusory and impossible conception of the same
relationship as seen by self-serving “vulgar” bourgeois economists, starting
like this:
“Vulgar
economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in
doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who
are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us,
then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward
appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd
and perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more
self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it,
although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be
superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly
coincided. Thus, vulgar economy has not the slightest suspicion that the trinity which it takes as its point of
departure, namely, land — rent, capital — interest, labour — wages or the price of labour,
are prima
facie three
impossible combinations.”
Later in this paragraph
(section III of the chapter), Marx refers to Volume 1 (“Book 1”) and contrasts
the irrational bourgeois concept of value with the true understanding of
surplus value.
To finish by returning to
Engels’ introductory remarks: Yes, Capital Volume 3 is important. It is not
superfluous. Volume 3 is directly helpful in the current circumstances of
“Global Economic Meltdown” and “Debt Crisis”. But Volume 3 does not render
Volume 1 redundant. On the contrary, Volume 3 relies upon and leans upon Volume
1 and constantly confirms Volume 1, throughout.
The last Chapter of Capital
Volume 3 is Chapter 52, “Classes”,
and it ends: “[Here the manuscript
breaks off.]”
Engels provided a supplement
to Volume 3 which can be found on MIA, here.
Picture:
A representation of the Christian “Holy Trinity”. “Pater”, “filius” and “spiritus sanctus” are Father, Son and
holy spirit (Holy Ghost), and “deus”
is God. “Est” means “is”, and “non est” means “is not”. These are “prima
facie” three impossible
combinations. If all are God, then it follows in logic that all must be the
same as each other; but the diagram says they are not the same as each other.
This is a logical “non sequitur”
(i.e. “it does not follow”).
Marx is not challenging
Christianity. Christians may, as some of them do, accept the Trinity as an
article of faith, while others may say (as do the Jesuits, for example) that
the Trinity may be a mystery, but we must constantly strive to understand it.
Marx is rather saying that
the Christian Trinity is not reconcilable by logic, and the bourgeois Trinity
of capital, land, and labour likewise does not constitute three of a kind, and,
like the Christian Trinity, this bourgeois Trinity it does not constitute a
logical unity.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Capital Volume 3,
Chapter 48, The Trinity Formula.
