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As part of the exchange on the term 'neoclassical' Thomas Rusterholz 
(15/1/99) asks where Marx uses the term 'classical'. 
 
This first occurs, I think, in "Towards a Critique of Political Economy" 
on p52 where he writes "The decisive outcome of the research carried on 
for over a century and a half by classical political economy, beginning 
with William Petty in Britain and Boisguillebert in France, and ending 
with Ricardo in Britain and Sismondi in France, is an analysis of the 
aspects of the commodity into two works of labour -- use-value is reduced 
to concrete labour or purposive productive activity, exchange-value to 
labour-time or homogenous social labour". (Karl Marx, Towards a Critique 
of Political Economy, Progress Publishers 1970.) In Sowell's book 
"Classical Political Economy Considered" (Princeton 1974) this is the 
reference he gives. It may be present in the Grundrisse but I haven't 
found it. 
 
The definitive statement is quite short and appears in a footnote in 
Volume I of Capital, page 174 in the Penguin edition: 
 
"Let me point out once and for all that by classical political economy I 
mean all the economists who, since the time of W. Petty, have 
investigated the real internal framework (Zusammenhang) of bourgeois 
relations of production, as opposed to the vulgar economists who only 
foundered around within the apparent framework of those relations, 
ceaselessly ruminate on the materials long since provided by scientific 
political economy, and seek there plausible explanations of the crudest 
phenomena for the domestic purposes of the bourgeoisie. Apart from this, 
the vulgar economists confine themselves to systematising in a pedantic 
way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the banal and complacent 
notions held by the bourgeois agents of production about their own world, 
which is for them the best possible one."  
 
Karl Marx, Capital Volume I pp174-175n, Penguin 1976 
 
It is always hard to find the first reference to any term in Marx. Things 
are not made easier by the enthusiasm of the indexers who seem to use a 
conceptual, rather than a literal system for indexing, so that at least 
half of their references to "classical political economy" turn out on 
investigation to be references to Adam Smith. It's also worth noting that 
they apply terms not used by Marx which then enter the language as if they 
were Marx's.  
 
Thus though the term 'labour theory of value' appears in indexes to Marx's 
work, he never uses this term. As far as I can find out it was introduced 
by Kautsky in his "Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx" in 1905. Lenin seems 
to have adopted it in "Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism" and 
it has become almost universal in economics, though it was not Marx's term 
and I don't think it fits with his own conceptualisation of the relation 
between different schools of thought or his own theory of value. He 
himself refers either to the theory of Value, to Scientific or Classical 
Political Economy, or most specifically to the 'law of value'.  
 
I tried to assess this in my paper "THE LIMITS OF RICARDIAN VALUE: LAW, 
CONTINGENCY AND MOTION IN ECONOMICS" to the upcoming mini-conference of 
the International Working Group on Value Theory at the EEA (Boston March 
12th). This is on www.greenwich.ac.uk/~fa03/iwgvt/1999. HES listmembers 
may be interested in the many other papers to this conference which can be 
found at this site. 
 
The most extensive definition I have found in Marx is in Theories of 
Surplus Value Volume III, where he also defines vulgar political economy 
-- to which he generally contrasts classical political economy-- and, 
interestingly, 'academic' political economy which he describes as the 
'graveyard' of political economy. Apologies for the long and practically 
paragraph-free citation but I think it is worth having the whole thing in 
front of one. 
 
"Classical political economy seeks to reduce the various fixed and 
mutually alien forms of wealth to their inner unity by means of analysis 
and to strip away the form in which they exist independently alongside one 
another. It seems to grasp the inner connection in contrast to the 
multiplicity of outward forms. It therefore reduces rent to surplus 
profit, so that it Ceases to be a specific, *separate* form and is 
divorced from its apparent source, the land, It likewise divests interest 
of its independent form and shows that it is a part of profit. In this way 
it reduces all types of revenue and all independent forms under cover of 
which the non-workers receive a portion of the value of commodities, to 
the single form of profit. Profit, however, is reduced to surplus-value 
since the value of the whole commodity is reduced to labour; the amount of 
paid labour embodied in the commodity constitutes wages, consequently the 
surplus over and above it constitutes unpaid labour, surplus labour 
called forth by capital and appropriated gratis under various titles. 
Classical political economy occasionally contradicts itself in this 
analysis. It often attempts directly, leaving out the intermediate links, 
to carry through the reduction and to prove that the various forms are 
derived from one and the same source, This is however a necessary 
consequence of its analytical method, with which criticism and 
understanding must begin. Classical economy is not interested in 
elaborating how the various forms come into being, but seeks to reduce 
them to their unity by means of analysis, because it starts from them as 
given premises. But analysis is the necessary prerequisite of genetical 
presentation, and of the understanding of the real, formative process in 
its different phases. Finally a failure, a deficiency of classical 
political economy is the fact that it does not conceive the *basic form of 
capital*, i.e. production designed to appropriate other people's labour, 
as a *historical* form but as a *natural form* of social production; the 
analysis carried out by the classical economists themselves nevertheless 
paves the way for the refutation of this conception. 
 
This position is quite different as regards *vulgar political economy*, 
which only becomes widespread when political economy itself has, as a 
result of its analysis, undermined and impaired its own premises and 
consequently the opposition to political economy has come into being in 
more or less economic, utopian, critical and revolutionary forms. For the 
development of political economy and of the opposition to which it gives 
rise keeps pace with the *real* development of the social contradictions 
and class conflicts inherent in capitalist production. Only when political 
economy has reached a certain stage of development of the social 
contradictions and has assumed well-established forms - that is, after 
Adam Smith - does the separation of the element whose notion of the 
phenomena consists of a mere reflection of them take place, i.e. its 
vulgar element becomes a specific element of political economy. Thus 
*Say* separates the vulgar notions occurring in *Adam Smith's* work and 
puts them forward in a distinct crystallised form. *Ricardo* and the 
further advance of political economy caused by him provide new nourishment 
for the vulgar economist (who does not produce anything himself); the more 
economic theory is perfected, that is, the deeper it penetrates its 
subject-matter and the more it develops as a contradictory system, the 
more it is confronted by its own, increasingly independent, vulgar 
element, enriched with material which it dresses up in its own way until 
finally it finds its most apt expression in academically syncretic and 
unprincipled eclectic compilations. To the degree that economic analysis 
becomes more profound it not only describes contradictions, but is 
confronted by its own contradictions simultaneously with the development 
of the actual contradictions in the academic life of society. 
 
Accordingly, vulgar political economy deliberately becomes increasingly 
*apologetic* and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the 
ideas which contain the contradictions. because he finds the 
contradictions in Smith relatively underdeveloped, *Say's* attitude still 
seems to be critical and impartial compared, for example, with that of 
*Bastiat*, the professional conciliator and apologist, who, however, 
found the contradictions existing in the economic life worked out in 
Ricardian economics and in the process of being worked out in socialism 
and in the struggles of the time. Moreover, vulgar economy in its early 
stages does not find the material fully elaborated and therefore assists 
to a certain extent in solving economic problems from the standpoint of 
political economy, as, for example, *Say*, whereas a Bastiat needs merely 
to busy himself with plagiarism and attempts to argue away the 
*unpleasant* side of classical political economy. 
 
But Bastiat does not represent the last stage. He is still marked by a 
lack of erudition and a quite superficial acquaintance with the branch of 
learning which he prettifies in the interests of the ruling class. His 
apologetics are still written with enthusiasm and constitute his real 
work, for he borrows the economic content from others, just as it suits 
his purpose. The last form is the *academic* form, which proceeds 
"historically" and, with wise moderation, collects the "best" from all 
sources, and in doing this the contradictions do not matter; on the 
contrary, what matters is comprehensiveness. All systems are thus made 
insipid, their edge is taken off and they are peacefully gathered together 
in a miscellany. The heat of apologetics is moderated here by erudition, 
which looks down benignly on the exaggerations of economic thinkers, and 
merely allows them to float as oddities in its mediocre pap. Since such 
works appear when political economy has reached the end of its scope as a 
science, they are at the same time the *graveyard* of this science ." 
 
Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value Volume III pp501-502 , Lawrence and 
Wishart 1972 (Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1864, Lawrence and Wishart 
1994, folio 991-992). Emphasis in original 
 
The first usage I could find in Theories of Surplus Value appears in 
Volume I page 299. However practically the whole of Theories of Surplus 
Value consists in an evaluation of classical and vulgar political economy 
so in a sense, the whole manuscript is about it. 
 
"The glorification of servility and flunkeyism, of tax-gatherers and 
parasites, runs through the lot of them. Compared with these, the rough 
cynical character of classical economy stands out as a critique of 
existing conditions."  
 
Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value Volume I, Lawrence and Wishart 1969 
p299. (Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1864 folio 416) 
 
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