================= HES POSTING ================= 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) ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]