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Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
Written during the winter of 1857-8, the Grundrisse was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work Capital. Here, for the first time, Marx set out his own version of Hegel's dialectics and developed his mature views on labour, surplus value and profit, offering many fresh insights into alienation, automation and the dangers of capitalist society. Yet while the theories in Grundrisse make it a vital precursor to Capital, it also provides invaluable descriptions of Marx's wider-ranging philosophy, making it a unique insight into his beliefs and hopes for the foundation of a communist state.
887 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1857
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About the author
Karl Marx
3,326 books6,730 followersWith the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
(1848) and
Das Kapital
(1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakunin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakunin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
May 8, 2008
sort of like a mixture of an economics textbook, a rollicking leninist speech to the commintern and james joyce's "finnean's wake."
October 22, 2013
The best thing Marx wrote, or in my view at least, the most readable of his works on political economy. Poetic and passionate at times, as well as truly scholarly. This is basically the detailed outline and research notes for his later more well known work, Das Kapital. There is a useful introduction and it is well indexed. The Grundrisse rewards patient study.
January 18, 2018
phew
The Grundrisse, being fragmentary, non-linear, unedited and never finished, is a whole lot more demanding than Capital, which in itself isn't a walk in the park either. It is filled to the brim with raw and not wholly assimilated information in the fields economic history and the discourse of political economy of Marx's contemporaries, oftentimes necessitating the reader to choose: am I actually interested in this? Am I in any way an audience for this, capable of understanding whatever's written? Much more than his other works, the Grundrisse is a place where Marx jotted down his developing thoughts, not an explanation of them. I personally found the first 300-or-so pages, roughly corresponding to "Part 1: On Money", altogether too abstract to permit understanding. The later half of the book (in "Part 2: On Capital") on agriculture, transportation, circulation and machinery, however, is hugely powerful and goes beyond what Marx would eventually write on the topics in Capital. As an added bonus, you get treated to prose as ominous and prophetic such as this:
Marx didn't edit this, so the reader will have to. If Capital leaves you with questions on the production and consequences of surplus value, turn to the Grundrisse. Selective recommendation.
The Grundrisse, being fragmentary, non-linear, unedited and never finished, is a whole lot more demanding than Capital, which in itself isn't a walk in the park either. It is filled to the brim with raw and not wholly assimilated information in the fields economic history and the discourse of political economy of Marx's contemporaries, oftentimes necessitating the reader to choose: am I actually interested in this? Am I in any way an audience for this, capable of understanding whatever's written? Much more than his other works, the Grundrisse is a place where Marx jotted down his developing thoughts, not an explanation of them. I personally found the first 300-or-so pages, roughly corresponding to "Part 1: On Money", altogether too abstract to permit understanding. The later half of the book (in "Part 2: On Capital") on agriculture, transportation, circulation and machinery, however, is hugely powerful and goes beyond what Marx would eventually write on the topics in Capital. As an added bonus, you get treated to prose as ominous and prophetic such as this:
Hence the highest development of productive power together with the greatest
expansion of existing wealth will coincide with depreciation of capital, degradation of the labourer, and a most straitened exhaustion of his vital powers. These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which by momentaneous suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of capital the latter is violently reduced to the point where it can go on. These contradictions, of course, lead to explosions, crises, in which momentary suspension of all labour and annihilation of a great part of the capital violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide. [21] Yet, these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overthrow. There are moments in the developed movement of capital which delay this movement other than by crises; such as e.g. the constant devaluation of a part of the existing capital: the transformation of a great part of capital into fixed capital which does not serve as agency of direct production; unproductive waste of a great portion of capital etc.
Marx didn't edit this, so the reader will have to. If Capital leaves you with questions on the production and consequences of surplus value, turn to the Grundrisse. Selective recommendation.
May 2, 2014
Obviously a thorough critique of political economy... Reviewing this seems pointless. Marx's notebooks reveal a highly useful analysis. You won't be able to un-know this book's concepts once you read it; illuminating, verbose, and sassy--as usual.
June 17, 2018
Instant classic, and also the most difficult text written by Marx that I've ever read so far. Grundrisse is the foundation of Capital, so reading this notebook is actually an archeological tracing of Marx's constructioning his thought. I'm the most surprised that there's a lot that has been omitted from Grundrisse in order to write Capital. For example, Marx dedicates quite pages to talk about the disruption in capitalism transition, which means he self-criticizes his archaic draconian view on peasants ("who were nothing but a mere sack of potato") and acknowledges the "negative transition" where there is an impossibility to achieve the true capitalistic transition in formerly agrarian societies. In practical level, Grundrisse also encourages me to have a notebook dedicated to write down commentaries on many things that I really care about, particularly on my research. Through his critiques against Say, Proudhon, (and so many names I can't keep up), we can trace his methodological approach in understanding history & materialism. There's a lot to read in this book; valorization, production, distribution, & even automation. If you read this book closely and critically, Grundrisse should be a major blow for vulgar interpretation of Marxist historical materialism and dull analysis on linear approach in understanding imperialism
March 25, 2022
you slog through abstract fights with french socialists, catty takedowns of economists you've never heard of, one million excerpts from 18th and 19th century economy and history works you'll never read, boring equations about thalers, lots of hegelian buzzwords, half-researched historical developments, and then you reach some of the greatest and most prescient passages about capitalism and the world we still inhabit and some of the most politically motivating calls to action and for a brief moment everything makes sense, the contradictions are clear, the whole project comes into focus, it all makes sense -- and then back to the equations, the fights, the hegel, the excerpts.
anyway, good book
anyway, good book
October 21, 2011
The Grundrisse was a forerunner for Marx's more famous texts. It still contains rough edges, but it begins the intricate process of treating money as a social relation, exposing the contradictions between these social relationships, and setting the results of this treatment into a historical perspective.
Marx can speak for himself on this one:
“Only with capital is exchange value posited as exchange value in such a way that it preserves itself in circulation: it neither becomes substance less, nor constantly realizes itself in other substances or a totality of them, nor loses its specific form, but rather preserves its identity with itself in each of the different substances. It therefore always remains money and always commodity.”
“Posited as a side of the relation, exchange value, which stands opposite use value itself, confronts it as money, but the money which confronts it in this way is no longer money in character as such, but money as capital. The use value or commodity which confronts capital or the posited exchange value is no longer the commodity such as it appeared in opposition to money, where its specific form was as irrelevant as its content, and which appeared only as a completely undefined substance. First, as use value for capital, i.e., therefore as an object in exchange with which capital does not lose its value-quality, as for example does money when it is exchanged for a particular commodity. The only utility whatsoever which an object can have for capital can be to preserve or increase it. … the goal-determining activity of capital can only be that of growing wealthier…” (151)
“The individual carries his social power, as well as his bond with society, in his pocket.” (157)
Marx can speak for himself on this one:
“Only with capital is exchange value posited as exchange value in such a way that it preserves itself in circulation: it neither becomes substance less, nor constantly realizes itself in other substances or a totality of them, nor loses its specific form, but rather preserves its identity with itself in each of the different substances. It therefore always remains money and always commodity.”
“Posited as a side of the relation, exchange value, which stands opposite use value itself, confronts it as money, but the money which confronts it in this way is no longer money in character as such, but money as capital. The use value or commodity which confronts capital or the posited exchange value is no longer the commodity such as it appeared in opposition to money, where its specific form was as irrelevant as its content, and which appeared only as a completely undefined substance. First, as use value for capital, i.e., therefore as an object in exchange with which capital does not lose its value-quality, as for example does money when it is exchanged for a particular commodity. The only utility whatsoever which an object can have for capital can be to preserve or increase it. … the goal-determining activity of capital can only be that of growing wealthier…” (151)
“The individual carries his social power, as well as his bond with society, in his pocket.” (157)
May 25, 2022
seems kind of dumb for me to try and “review” this since it is a collection of notebooks, but i am nothing if not a little bit dumb. this is a great record of Marx’s methodology, i don’t really have much else to say about it. lots of chapters that read like little previews for some of the coolest stuff from volume 1 (commodity fetishism is especially fleshed out by vol 1 but nice to see some of its humble beginnings). probably not worthwhile to read casually, just direct people to Capital
January 3, 2011
Comment:
The early Marx was always more interesting to me then the later Marx. This is the Marx that was still a radical philosophical anthropologist -and not an exponent of a System- in search of the animal Man. If there are only two interesting lines of descent (a large exaggeration, I know) in modern political philosophy –1: Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Postmodernism; 2: Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, Kojeve, Western Marxism – then it behooves us to be conversant in both lineages. Here the materialist dialectic is understood as activity, i.e., class struggle. Later, as Marx surrendered to the 'scientistic' strains of nineteenth century thought, the fascination became base/superstructure and systems. This last leads to the mind-numbing grotesqueries of diamat.
The early Marx was always more interesting to me then the later Marx. This is the Marx that was still a radical philosophical anthropologist -and not an exponent of a System- in search of the animal Man. If there are only two interesting lines of descent (a large exaggeration, I know) in modern political philosophy –1: Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Postmodernism; 2: Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, Kojeve, Western Marxism – then it behooves us to be conversant in both lineages. Here the materialist dialectic is understood as activity, i.e., class struggle. Later, as Marx surrendered to the 'scientistic' strains of nineteenth century thought, the fascination became base/superstructure and systems. This last leads to the mind-numbing grotesqueries of diamat.
January 16, 2018
Marx's Moby Dick
July 6, 2023
"Labour is the living, form-giving fire; it is the transitoriness of things, their temporality, as their formation by living time." - Marx
"Capitalism is a process, not a thing." - David Harvey
Infinity folding in on itself.
"Capitalism is a process, not a thing." - David Harvey
Infinity folding in on itself.
June 7, 2019
Fire!
October 25, 2021
Grundrisse es la base conceptual de toda la obra de Marx.
De momentos lo vemos ir de un tema a otro manteniendo la originalidad y espíritu crítico que lo caracteriza. Incluso hay partes de genialidad donde la filosofía florece más o donde uno se pierde por completo en los distintos momentos del circuito del capital.
¿Mejor qué El Capital? Sin duda alguna.
He aquí las bases que todo marxista debe leer.
Los Grundrisse son como los textos apócrifos de la Biblia (mucho más interesantes que las sagradas escrituras).
De momentos lo vemos ir de un tema a otro manteniendo la originalidad y espíritu crítico que lo caracteriza. Incluso hay partes de genialidad donde la filosofía florece más o donde uno se pierde por completo en los distintos momentos del circuito del capital.
¿Mejor qué El Capital? Sin duda alguna.
He aquí las bases que todo marxista debe leer.
Los Grundrisse son como los textos apócrifos de la Biblia (mucho más interesantes que las sagradas escrituras).
March 1, 2026
Finally. A slog. His most explicit metaphysical advancements. Capital of course is more refined and clearly structured, but this text elucidates the concepts which make Capital so compelling. Still, the guy who compared it to Finnegans wake is right. Damn this was a slog
February 27, 2019
Marx (1973) initiates Grundrisse with a strong critique of Richardo and Smith, and through this critique he is able to counter the claim that capitalism is an inevitable function of human nature. Marx argues that Smith and Richardo are under an illusion that the “Natural Individual [does not arise] historically, but [is] posited by nature”. He suggests this misconception is the product of the dissolution of feudal forms of society, and the new forces of production developed in the 16th century, which appear to be “history’s point of departure”. What is significant about this passage is that Marx argues the theory of ahistorical capitalist development has been a translated narrative worked onto the individual. He comments that “the individual appears detached from natural bonds which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate”. Smith and Richardo argued that the only way 16th century production could be possible is through the emergence of the individual as “naturally independent, autonomous subjects”. What Marx is trying to uncover is that it is unnecessary to depart from history in order to justify such a radical change in the economic landscape, but it is history itself which produces the individual, and history changes how they individuate themselves within society.
Therefore, Marx extends his analysis of the individual to state that a human can only individuate within society. He suggests that an individual without society is “as much as an absurdity as the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other”. For Marx, this is an impassionate divergence from Hegelian thought, as Marx states “there is no point dwelling on this any longer” (Marx 1973). Hegel argued for a teleological understanding, whereby the end of history means we will be fully rational and with God. Hegel uses dialectics to understand this, arguing that a thesis and an antithesis create a synthesis of ideas, which change through time, and this dialectic produces history. Marx discounts the idea of a dialectical production of history, and instead frames history as the definitive force of dialectical change. For Marx, history produces a society at conflict, and this conflict produces a new synthesis, leading to the progression of history.
Marx develops his dialectical analysis further than Hegel to incorporate historical understanding of a changing human nature. In Grundrisse (1973), Marx contrasts the social relationships formed in fuedal society as personal, with the material relationships formed in the bourgeois epochs. In McLellan's reading of Grundrisse, he draws on Marx’s understanding of the ‘fetishisation’ of relationships within the bourgeois economy. He considers how monetized relationships appear to be personal, whereas in reality those relationships occur purely as a result of production and exchange (McLellan 1971: 73). It can therefore be justifiable that Richardo and Smith mistook the individual to be free from the ties of dependence, as the societal transformation to monetize economic relationships alters the notion that rational individuals are freely able to exchange. Money fetishizes this relationship, and the ruling class are able to nourish these dependency relationships under the disguise of money. Therefore, Marx’s historical, materialist approach to understand the changing human nature, suggests the material qualities of money and exchange facilitate the domination of the ruling class through changing relations of production.
Therefore, Marx extends his analysis of the individual to state that a human can only individuate within society. He suggests that an individual without society is “as much as an absurdity as the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other”. For Marx, this is an impassionate divergence from Hegelian thought, as Marx states “there is no point dwelling on this any longer” (Marx 1973). Hegel argued for a teleological understanding, whereby the end of history means we will be fully rational and with God. Hegel uses dialectics to understand this, arguing that a thesis and an antithesis create a synthesis of ideas, which change through time, and this dialectic produces history. Marx discounts the idea of a dialectical production of history, and instead frames history as the definitive force of dialectical change. For Marx, history produces a society at conflict, and this conflict produces a new synthesis, leading to the progression of history.
Marx develops his dialectical analysis further than Hegel to incorporate historical understanding of a changing human nature. In Grundrisse (1973), Marx contrasts the social relationships formed in fuedal society as personal, with the material relationships formed in the bourgeois epochs. In McLellan's reading of Grundrisse, he draws on Marx’s understanding of the ‘fetishisation’ of relationships within the bourgeois economy. He considers how monetized relationships appear to be personal, whereas in reality those relationships occur purely as a result of production and exchange (McLellan 1971: 73). It can therefore be justifiable that Richardo and Smith mistook the individual to be free from the ties of dependence, as the societal transformation to monetize economic relationships alters the notion that rational individuals are freely able to exchange. Money fetishizes this relationship, and the ruling class are able to nourish these dependency relationships under the disguise of money. Therefore, Marx’s historical, materialist approach to understand the changing human nature, suggests the material qualities of money and exchange facilitate the domination of the ruling class through changing relations of production.
December 8, 2020
هذا الفصل فى النقود وهو خلاصة ما جاء عنها من حيث الوظائف وتطورها التاريخى عبر الجدل الخاص بها نجده مشابها لما جاء فى كتاب رأس المال ولكن للمدقق ان يرى فوارق جوهرية بين المقالين ففى رأس المال نجد الموضوع يتم تناوله بدرجة عالية من المنهجية ولا عجب فى ذلك حيث ان رأس المال هو مضمون الفكر الأكثر نضجاً عند ماركس وهو متأخر زمنيا عن الغروند ريسة وحيث كانت مخطوطته منقحة اكثر من مرة، وإن لم يعد ماركس منها للنشر سوى المجلد الأول الا ان مخطوطة الغروند ريسة تشمل الفكر الاقتصادى الماركسى فى طور بلورته وتعلقه بالقاعدة الفلسفية اكثر من التعلق بالبرهنة الواقعية على صحة الافكار الفلسفية كما الحال فى رأس المال حيث الاستناد الى التقارير الاقتصادية والاحصائيات وتحليل الأزمات وضرب الأمثلة وصياغة القوانين انطلاقا من التجربة ما يضفى على رأس المال صبغة اكثر واقعية وصياغة الفكرة بشكل اكثر بروزا فى حين تصاغ الافكار فى الجروند ريسة بشكل فلسفى مما يتطلب الربط المستمر بين الواقع والمنطق والخروج بوحدة عامة من هذا الجدل تنحل فيها جميع تناقضات الاقتصاد السياسى ونظام الاقتصاد الرأسمالى .
الا ان اروع ما وجدته فى هذا الكتاب هى مقدمة الناشر الالمانى حيث يعرض تطور الفكر الماركسى فى سياق حياة ماركس الخاصة بشكل واف وهو موضوع نادر فى الترجمات العربية وقد ساعدتنى هذه المقدمة كثيرا فى صياغة مفهومى عن الفكر الماركسى بشكل افضل مما لو بدونها حيث تفيد احيانا بعض الاحجار الصغيرة فى اكمال البناء او دعم قوته .
ويبدو ان مخطوطة الجروند ريسة الضخمة تضم ذات الاجزاء الموجودة فى رأس المال الا ان ما ترجم منها هو هذا المجلد الاول فقط والخاص بدراسة النقود ولكن يبدو عموما ان ماركس اراد ان يتعمق فى صياغة افكاره وتأسيسها فلسفيا وهى لا تزال فى مرحلة الانضاج فى مخطوطة الجروند ريسة والتى وجدت كملاحظات شخص انهمك فى تامل فلسفى واخذ يدون فقط اعمق ومضات فكره المجرد وقد حاول الناشرون توحيد هذه الومضات المختصرة والغامضة والمتفرقة وكذلك ربطها بالشكل الناضج والمنهجى والواقعى فى رأس المال وقد نجحوا فى ذلك ولم تحجب الترجمه هذا النجاح فكانت هى الاخرى ناجحةً بذلك .
الا ان اروع ما وجدته فى هذا الكتاب هى مقدمة الناشر الالمانى حيث يعرض تطور الفكر الماركسى فى سياق حياة ماركس الخاصة بشكل واف وهو موضوع نادر فى الترجمات العربية وقد ساعدتنى هذه المقدمة كثيرا فى صياغة مفهومى عن الفكر الماركسى بشكل افضل مما لو بدونها حيث تفيد احيانا بعض الاحجار الصغيرة فى اكمال البناء او دعم قوته .
ويبدو ان مخطوطة الجروند ريسة الضخمة تضم ذات الاجزاء الموجودة فى رأس المال الا ان ما ترجم منها هو هذا المجلد الاول فقط والخاص بدراسة النقود ولكن يبدو عموما ان ماركس اراد ان يتعمق فى صياغة افكاره وتأسيسها فلسفيا وهى لا تزال فى مرحلة الانضاج فى مخطوطة الجروند ريسة والتى وجدت كملاحظات شخص انهمك فى تامل فلسفى واخذ يدون فقط اعمق ومضات فكره المجرد وقد حاول الناشرون توحيد هذه الومضات المختصرة والغامضة والمتفرقة وكذلك ربطها بالشكل الناضج والمنهجى والواقعى فى رأس المال وقد نجحوا فى ذلك ولم تحجب الترجمه هذا النجاح فكانت هى الاخرى ناجحةً بذلك .
March 19, 2014
I only read the introduction. It's fantastic. Every page is quotable.
November 8, 2018
Read Marx
August 17, 2019
"Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim." - Ovid.
March 27, 2024
Wednesday, March 27, 2024: In today's New York Times an editorial opinion columnist says that for many of today's college students, the study of the humanities is probably a direct ticket to the unemployment line, in this way suggesting that an empirico-critical perspective unrelated to the quantitative sciences is no longer considered acceptable to most employers. If that is the case, then it appears that the premise of Bill Ackman's undergraduate thesis, that Harvard University is the training ground for the rulers of society and the masters of the American people and, thereby, the de facto overseers of the business of the world, appears to be ever-increasingly sedimented in place. To begin with general concepts which, in the case of Karl Marx, stands for the notion of material production, and to move to specific examples of where these forces are in action, such as a commodity business in operation or the economic budgetary position of a nation-state, seems to be a faded concept that has become somewhat weathered and is now withering in pedagogical circles, at least as a viable concept in early educational training. Personally, I can even think back to my own instruction in Literature classes at Bard College in the mid-1990s where we were instructed to focus on the description of an incident in the text and to explicate our thesis in essay form from there, instead of just 'blindly' writing about the text in general, which I felt was more in conformity with my previous exposure to the analysis of literary art-objects. Such as it was, I suppose that in this way we were being trained for the work-world, which demands a specificity of attention in the sense that capital demands a more direct correspondence to detail in order to facilitate the creation of exchange values, which is the key concept and the entire raison d'etre behind capitalism, namely the accumulation of profit. As Marx makes clear in this text, human relations since the beginning of bourgeois society have assumed a stern character equivalent to the capital-relations behind and, essentially, is equivalent to the money-relations emanating from the equation of economic psychology inherent in those collective business performances which have come to assume a major motivating force structuring society. While visiting the many malls I went to with my mother in New York and New Jersey, in our carefree but not overly extravagant spending of the money that she earned as Head Nurse Manager of Pediatrics at Nyack Hospital buying peanut chews, sunflower seeds and various other sweets, I was exposed to a relationship to capital where production had the appearance of being identical to consumption. Today this philosophy is being promulgated in the daily newspaper of record where, it was claimed recently, the age of artificial intelligence will lead to the creation of an America where machines will do the work for us and leave us with vast amounts of additional free time. In my opinion, I feel this is mere hype and hyperbole and, moreover, is vanity masquerading as progressiveness, for it is my belief that the real rulers of society will seek to replace the idea of production by individuals with a pure concept of capital that is divested of the individual's productive capacity for labor as an inherently social benefit. What is to be our collective future? In my opinion, Marx might agree that the most significant moment of human becoming would be the tearing down of the barrier between capital and human production; however, the artificially intelligent machines that are on the horizon of the future appear only to supply the groundwork for a more absolute vision of human alienation.
September 14, 2025
“Political economy has to do with the specific social forms of wealth or rather of the production of wealth” (p. 852)
As usual with Marx, his precision and insight is inescapably enthralling at many points in the work. The famous 1857 Introduction, the sections on pre-capitalist social forms, on Bastiat and Carey, the formulations of alienation and socialist transition, and the general concept work that strings you along are all so excellent and clarifying that I am tempted to shout from the rooftops: read the Grundrisse!
But I cannot because this book is at times incredibly unruly, replete with pages and pages of commentary-less transcribed quotes, and repetitious to sometimes a nauseating degree.
So who is the book for?
Should someone just starting with Marx read the book? No, because it’s far too daunting and incomplete.
How about someone who just finished the first volume of Capital? No, because volume two directly picks up where volume one ended so, if they were interested in reading more, it should be continuous.
How about someone interested in Marx’s historical thinking? Nope! Read the books on France.
Interested in Marx’s vision of socialism? Maybe… certainly doesn’t require all 900 pages of reading.
Perhaps someone interested in dialectic more broadly? Alright, maybe you. Or you could just read the first volume of Capital very closely. Or read Hegel.
In short, the only reason to read this book is if you’ve finished all three volumes of Capital and want more insight into the guiding conceptual structure and method of exposition of the critique of political economy. This is an incredibly niche and, if I’m being harsh, almost useless endeavor for most people.
The book is incredible and demonstrates the work of production behind the masterful critique of political economy. But practically—and much to my chagrin—I would very rarely recommend the read.
As usual with Marx, his precision and insight is inescapably enthralling at many points in the work. The famous 1857 Introduction, the sections on pre-capitalist social forms, on Bastiat and Carey, the formulations of alienation and socialist transition, and the general concept work that strings you along are all so excellent and clarifying that I am tempted to shout from the rooftops: read the Grundrisse!
But I cannot because this book is at times incredibly unruly, replete with pages and pages of commentary-less transcribed quotes, and repetitious to sometimes a nauseating degree.
So who is the book for?
Should someone just starting with Marx read the book? No, because it’s far too daunting and incomplete.
How about someone who just finished the first volume of Capital? No, because volume two directly picks up where volume one ended so, if they were interested in reading more, it should be continuous.
How about someone interested in Marx’s historical thinking? Nope! Read the books on France.
Interested in Marx’s vision of socialism? Maybe… certainly doesn’t require all 900 pages of reading.
Perhaps someone interested in dialectic more broadly? Alright, maybe you. Or you could just read the first volume of Capital very closely. Or read Hegel.
In short, the only reason to read this book is if you’ve finished all three volumes of Capital and want more insight into the guiding conceptual structure and method of exposition of the critique of political economy. This is an incredibly niche and, if I’m being harsh, almost useless endeavor for most people.
The book is incredible and demonstrates the work of production behind the masterful critique of political economy. But practically—and much to my chagrin—I would very rarely recommend the read.
Read
June 11, 2024Before Marx penned Capital, he worked out his ideas in various notebooks. This book, the Grundrisse, are those notes. And given that it's a book of notes, the content doesn't cohere. There's no definite shape. You'd do better, I think, to read the first volume of
Capital
, because that's where the insights are, and only read the subsequent volumes or the Grundrisse for historical or scholarly interests.
Read
November 16, 2023TFW "the antithesis to political economy—namely socialism and communism—finds its theoretical supposition in the works of classical political economy itself" :0
If I were a marx scholar I would probably find this a very fascinating and illuminating work but I do not have econ brain
If I were a marx scholar I would probably find this a very fascinating and illuminating work but I do not have econ brain
November 22, 2025
Reading 460.pages felt like enough. :)
aan-begonnen-maar-tijdelijke-pauze
April 3, 2026So, Marx wrote a lot of books, most of them unfinished and published posthumously. Grundrisse was the alpha version of Das Kapital, the version which I have not read yet. But, it has around 10 pages in its 'introduction,' where Marx jotted down some passages on methodology. It wasn't to be read by anyone else but himself, or maybe Engels. Yet it serves as a key role in understanding why Marx took some of the methodological choices he made in Kapital. This serves as an outline/summary/review of the 10 pages on his method
When making an overview of anything, of a totality of elements, the key question you have to justify answering is: where do I begin? What is the central point; what are the simplest abstract determinants of the concrete whole? Classic political economists (Smith, Ricardo, etc), Marx writes, start off with the population. But the population as a whole presupposes many integral, component determinations of the population; determinate social relations that must be conceptually isolated. The population is composed of classes, and these classes presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. And these abstractions also presuppose even simpler determinants: value, labour, etc. The population is seen as a transhistorical, stationary fact, an immediately given that we understand as such, without further elaboration needed, as something that transcends time and was present, in the same form, in previous historico-economic structures of hierarchy, e.g. feudalism, slavery. And it's quite easy to see it as such. But what Marx argues, quite logically, is that its current manifestation is historically contingent on capitalism; its determinants differ from the previous structures. Although peoples have always lived together, the social relations between them have altered with each corresponding political economy. A feudal population under the reign of a lord, a worker population under the wage contract of a factory owner: their class relationships change with them, respectively. Thus, what might seem to be a transhistoric fact, is actually a historically contingent fact. It gives a chaotic representation of the whole. In other words, what might be seen as a logical starting point, the population, the observable concrete, is actually already composed of many simpler abstractions. The point Marx makes here, is to find the simplest determinations in capitalism to generate the totality; to create from the simplest abstract determinants, the concrete whole, the totality. As Marx puts it on p101: "The concrete is the concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse."
It might be easy to understand Marx's problem when looking at a car. The existence of the car is a fact, an observable object. But what are the core elements, the component parts that constitute a car? You have the engine, battery, car body, etc. We can go further. What are the component parts of the engine? You have the pistons, cylinders, valves, etc. Each of these components is itself composed of even smaller parts and materials, such as metal alloys, wiring, seals, and all of these functions must work together, in unity, for the engine, and thus the car, to work. In analyzing the car in this way, we go from the perceivable totality (the initial concrete), to its parts, then sub-parts, and show how it's a structured unity of elements. In other words, Marx's method is: we encounter the totality, we analyze it, and then we reconstruct it properly. We encounter the car, we analyze what its determinants are (what are the parts that constitute the car, and how do they work together to make a whole), and we rebuild the car starting with the smallest determinants. In doing so, the initital concrete is deceiving. We think we understand the initial concrete, but by analyzing its component parts and how they work in unity to perform the functions of a car, only then do we truly understand the inner workings of it. But, it's easier to understand this by using a car, physical components, rather than what Marx is talking about: social relations and abstract categories.
--------
In regard to labour and the concrete/abstract. An interesting phenomenon arises when looking at the universality of labour and its manifestations; labour being understood as a wealth-creating activity, the appropriation of nature by people. Labour, in its essential form, of course, precedes capitalism. The farmer toils the land for subsistence, the artisan creates a chair for sitting. Labour was qualitatively and quantitatively specific. Qualitatively, because the feudal peasant cannot, without a proper apprenticeship, conduct the labour of the artisan to manufacture a chair. It requires years of training to develop the artisanal skills. The results of the labour process were highly specific and noncommensurable. Quantitatively, because different labours are not socially reduced to a common quantitative standard, the labours are not yet socially equated as abstract labour. They only function as the concrete result of the labour process. The total expenditure of the product resulting from the labour process has a subordinate role to the direct result of it. A working hour of the artisan cannot be exchanged for an hour of the peasant; in other words, labour was not exchanged in quantifiable time-units with each expenditure of labour being equal (in theory) in value (assuming the labour wasn't appropriated by corvée). There wasn't a concept of abstract labour. Labour in the feudal era was qualitatively and quantitatively specific.
Now comes the capitalist era. It grabs the feudal labour process by its roots, turns it upside-down, and shakes the feudal determinants of the labour process until it loses consciousness. Labour, what was once qualitatively specific, has transformed partly into an abstracted form; a form in which different concrete labours are reduced to abstract labour, measured according to a social standard of labour-time. Of course, the labour process still creates the commodity concretely, e.g. a chair is manufactured by the artisan, but the average hours spent by the artisan to manufacture the chair, socially necessary labour time, forms a direct relation with every other kind of labour in the process of exchange; all labour is commensurable with as abstract labour. It becomes abstract labour. It is not the case that the wealth created in each labour process is identical to each other, that a chair-maker generates the same amount of wealth as a glassblower does, but that all labour is reducible into time-units; time-units that are socially equated. In capitalism, what makes labour differ from the previous political economies, is that it's only socially valid insofar it's abstract labour.
The Grundrisse's introduction actually doesn't really mention these distinctions, it's in the first chapters of Kapital. But, returning to the totality part, Marx writes on p104: "Indifference towards any specific kind of labour presupposes a very developed totality of real kinds of labour, of which no single one is any longer predominant. As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all. Then it ceases to be thinkable in a particular form alone." As labour has been generalized into quantifiable time-units which can be exchanged at the market place, the determinants consituting capitalist labour, in relation to feudal labour, have drastically changed. As, under capitalism, wage-labour becomes the dominant social form of labour where the specific character of the qualitative (concrete) output is subordinate to the quantitative (abstract) result, it presupposes 'a very developed totality of real kinds of labour.' For such a system to exist, the qualitative requirement for effective input in the labour process by the worker should be in a subordinate position to quantitative result; every kind of labour has to be socially commensurable. Therefore, labour is socially interchangeable, regardless of its concrete form, thus the indifference. The abstraction of the category of labour only achieves practical truth as a category in capitalist society, though we're inclined to think of labour possessing a universal, eternal, transhistorical character. The capitalist category of labour manifests itself totally differently from the feudal category of labour. Marx then writes: "This example of labour shows strikingly how even the most abstract categories, despite their validity -- precisely because of their abstractedness -- for all epochs, are nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within these relations." (A lot of quotes, it's just difficult to write it myself...)
As opposed to feudal, pastoral, Roman societies, it isn't ground rent or agriculture that constitute the central forms of wealth, but capital. Capital emerges as the dominant wealth-creating relation. Agriculture and ground rent become mere branches of industry under the tyrannical rule of capital. P107 "Ground rent cannot be understood without capital. But capital can certainly be understood without ground-rent. Capital is the all-dominating economic power of bourgeois society. It must form the starting-points as well as the finishing-point, and must be dealt with before landed property."
Marx concludes his few pages (he ever wrote!) on his methodology with this. I will quote it entirely.
"The order obviously has to be (1) the general, abstract determinants which obtain in more or less all forms of society, but in the above-explained sense. (2) The categories which make up the inner structure of bourgeois society and on which the fundamental classes rest. Capital, wage labour, landed property. Their interrelation. Town and country, The three great social classes. Exchange between them. Circulation. Credit system (private). (3) Concentration of bourgeois society in the form of the state. Viewed in relation to itself. The 'unproductive' classes. Taxes. State debt. Public credit. The population. The colonies. Emigration. (4) The international relation of production. International division of labour. International exchange. Export and import. Rate of exchange. (5) The world market and crises." - Marx unfortunately passed away before he could write on all of these categories. Luckily we have other Marxist scholars that have filled the gaps in Marx's writings of capitalism.
-------
Marx starts off Kapital with the commodity-form, a form that's not contingent with capitalism and even precedes it. Why did he start with the commodity?
production
distribution
exchange
consumption
When making an overview of anything, of a totality of elements, the key question you have to justify answering is: where do I begin? What is the central point; what are the simplest abstract determinants of the concrete whole? Classic political economists (Smith, Ricardo, etc), Marx writes, start off with the population. But the population as a whole presupposes many integral, component determinations of the population; determinate social relations that must be conceptually isolated. The population is composed of classes, and these classes presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. And these abstractions also presuppose even simpler determinants: value, labour, etc. The population is seen as a transhistorical, stationary fact, an immediately given that we understand as such, without further elaboration needed, as something that transcends time and was present, in the same form, in previous historico-economic structures of hierarchy, e.g. feudalism, slavery. And it's quite easy to see it as such. But what Marx argues, quite logically, is that its current manifestation is historically contingent on capitalism; its determinants differ from the previous structures. Although peoples have always lived together, the social relations between them have altered with each corresponding political economy. A feudal population under the reign of a lord, a worker population under the wage contract of a factory owner: their class relationships change with them, respectively. Thus, what might seem to be a transhistoric fact, is actually a historically contingent fact. It gives a chaotic representation of the whole. In other words, what might be seen as a logical starting point, the population, the observable concrete, is actually already composed of many simpler abstractions. The point Marx makes here, is to find the simplest determinations in capitalism to generate the totality; to create from the simplest abstract determinants, the concrete whole, the totality. As Marx puts it on p101: "The concrete is the concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse."
It might be easy to understand Marx's problem when looking at a car. The existence of the car is a fact, an observable object. But what are the core elements, the component parts that constitute a car? You have the engine, battery, car body, etc. We can go further. What are the component parts of the engine? You have the pistons, cylinders, valves, etc. Each of these components is itself composed of even smaller parts and materials, such as metal alloys, wiring, seals, and all of these functions must work together, in unity, for the engine, and thus the car, to work. In analyzing the car in this way, we go from the perceivable totality (the initial concrete), to its parts, then sub-parts, and show how it's a structured unity of elements. In other words, Marx's method is: we encounter the totality, we analyze it, and then we reconstruct it properly. We encounter the car, we analyze what its determinants are (what are the parts that constitute the car, and how do they work together to make a whole), and we rebuild the car starting with the smallest determinants. In doing so, the initital concrete is deceiving. We think we understand the initial concrete, but by analyzing its component parts and how they work in unity to perform the functions of a car, only then do we truly understand the inner workings of it. But, it's easier to understand this by using a car, physical components, rather than what Marx is talking about: social relations and abstract categories.
--------
In regard to labour and the concrete/abstract. An interesting phenomenon arises when looking at the universality of labour and its manifestations; labour being understood as a wealth-creating activity, the appropriation of nature by people. Labour, in its essential form, of course, precedes capitalism. The farmer toils the land for subsistence, the artisan creates a chair for sitting. Labour was qualitatively and quantitatively specific. Qualitatively, because the feudal peasant cannot, without a proper apprenticeship, conduct the labour of the artisan to manufacture a chair. It requires years of training to develop the artisanal skills. The results of the labour process were highly specific and noncommensurable. Quantitatively, because different labours are not socially reduced to a common quantitative standard, the labours are not yet socially equated as abstract labour. They only function as the concrete result of the labour process. The total expenditure of the product resulting from the labour process has a subordinate role to the direct result of it. A working hour of the artisan cannot be exchanged for an hour of the peasant; in other words, labour was not exchanged in quantifiable time-units with each expenditure of labour being equal (in theory) in value (assuming the labour wasn't appropriated by corvée). There wasn't a concept of abstract labour. Labour in the feudal era was qualitatively and quantitatively specific.
Now comes the capitalist era. It grabs the feudal labour process by its roots, turns it upside-down, and shakes the feudal determinants of the labour process until it loses consciousness. Labour, what was once qualitatively specific, has transformed partly into an abstracted form; a form in which different concrete labours are reduced to abstract labour, measured according to a social standard of labour-time. Of course, the labour process still creates the commodity concretely, e.g. a chair is manufactured by the artisan, but the average hours spent by the artisan to manufacture the chair, socially necessary labour time, forms a direct relation with every other kind of labour in the process of exchange; all labour is commensurable with as abstract labour. It becomes abstract labour. It is not the case that the wealth created in each labour process is identical to each other, that a chair-maker generates the same amount of wealth as a glassblower does, but that all labour is reducible into time-units; time-units that are socially equated. In capitalism, what makes labour differ from the previous political economies, is that it's only socially valid insofar it's abstract labour.
The Grundrisse's introduction actually doesn't really mention these distinctions, it's in the first chapters of Kapital. But, returning to the totality part, Marx writes on p104: "Indifference towards any specific kind of labour presupposes a very developed totality of real kinds of labour, of which no single one is any longer predominant. As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all. Then it ceases to be thinkable in a particular form alone." As labour has been generalized into quantifiable time-units which can be exchanged at the market place, the determinants consituting capitalist labour, in relation to feudal labour, have drastically changed. As, under capitalism, wage-labour becomes the dominant social form of labour where the specific character of the qualitative (concrete) output is subordinate to the quantitative (abstract) result, it presupposes 'a very developed totality of real kinds of labour.' For such a system to exist, the qualitative requirement for effective input in the labour process by the worker should be in a subordinate position to quantitative result; every kind of labour has to be socially commensurable. Therefore, labour is socially interchangeable, regardless of its concrete form, thus the indifference. The abstraction of the category of labour only achieves practical truth as a category in capitalist society, though we're inclined to think of labour possessing a universal, eternal, transhistorical character. The capitalist category of labour manifests itself totally differently from the feudal category of labour. Marx then writes: "This example of labour shows strikingly how even the most abstract categories, despite their validity -- precisely because of their abstractedness -- for all epochs, are nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within these relations." (A lot of quotes, it's just difficult to write it myself...)
As opposed to feudal, pastoral, Roman societies, it isn't ground rent or agriculture that constitute the central forms of wealth, but capital. Capital emerges as the dominant wealth-creating relation. Agriculture and ground rent become mere branches of industry under the tyrannical rule of capital. P107 "Ground rent cannot be understood without capital. But capital can certainly be understood without ground-rent. Capital is the all-dominating economic power of bourgeois society. It must form the starting-points as well as the finishing-point, and must be dealt with before landed property."
Marx concludes his few pages (he ever wrote!) on his methodology with this. I will quote it entirely.
"The order obviously has to be (1) the general, abstract determinants which obtain in more or less all forms of society, but in the above-explained sense. (2) The categories which make up the inner structure of bourgeois society and on which the fundamental classes rest. Capital, wage labour, landed property. Their interrelation. Town and country, The three great social classes. Exchange between them. Circulation. Credit system (private). (3) Concentration of bourgeois society in the form of the state. Viewed in relation to itself. The 'unproductive' classes. Taxes. State debt. Public credit. The population. The colonies. Emigration. (4) The international relation of production. International division of labour. International exchange. Export and import. Rate of exchange. (5) The world market and crises." - Marx unfortunately passed away before he could write on all of these categories. Luckily we have other Marxist scholars that have filled the gaps in Marx's writings of capitalism.
-------
Marx starts off Kapital with the commodity-form, a form that's not contingent with capitalism and even precedes it. Why did he start with the commodity?
production
distribution
exchange
consumption
Read
February 4, 2026It might be unfair to mark this as finished but it’s a reference book of scattered notes. I sampled its foundation and will continue sampling in the future.
Read
March 7, 2018great read..i love it
August 8, 2025
Grundrisse is what happens when Karl Marx sits down to write a foundational work on economics but forgets he’s not actually writing for an audience—he’s writing for the inner circle of Karl Marx.
It is the literary equivalent of an open-mic rant where the performer refuses to get off stage and starts connecting the plight of 19th-century textile workers to the metaphysics of Greek gods, the Roman slave economy, and whatever was floating in his coffee at the time.
If Capital is an overly long opera with a bad libretto, Grundrisse is the six-hour drunken rehearsal in which the chorus keeps falling asleep, the lead is making up their own lines, and the orchestra is playing three different symphonies at once.
It is—at least in theory—the Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. In practice? The only foundation here is a cracked basement filled with loose notes, self-interruptions, and intellectual furniture that never gets assembled. “Grundrisse” in German means “outline”, but this outline is so sprawling and formless that you could use it as a cautionary tale in project management seminars.
The experience of reading Grundrisse is less like following a structured argument and more like accidentally intercepting someone’s private brain dump during a manic phase.
One moment, Marx is on about the labour theory of value. The next, he’s knee-deep in an anthropological detour about Roman law.
Before you can finish processing that, he’s suddenly dissecting ancient Greek society with the seriousness of a man who forgot he was supposed to be talking about money. This is stream-of-consciousness economics with the dial turned up to 11, with Marx writing as though the faster he produces words, the more correct they become.
And my god, the tangents. The man starts with commodities and ends up on metaphysical conceptions of time like he’s auditioning for a philosophy department that no one asked to open. It’s as if Hegel, Feuerbach, and an encyclopaedia of world history all fell into a blender, and instead of hitting “purée”, Marx just left it on “chunky”.
Every page is so overloaded with conceptual debris that reading it feels like carrying furniture up a spiral staircase—heavy, awkward, and involving far too many unnecessary turns.
Marx, to his credit—or perhaps detriment—never intended this for public consumption. Grundrisse is essentially his private scratchpad, and that’s exactly how it reads: pages upon pages of mental scaffolding without any of the final polish that might make it digestible.
But even allowing for that, the sheer density of jargon, obscure historical references, and abrupt topic changes suggest a man either completely unconcerned with clarity or actively hostile to it. Engels, Marx’s lifelong PR manager and co-author of his legacy, later tried to frame Grundrisse as “essential” to understanding Capital.
That’s a bit like calling your friend’s 4 a.m. voicemails “a crucial prelude to their TED Talk.”
Historically, this book had zero immediate impact—partly because no one outside Marx’s study saw it until the 20th century, but also because even the faithful wouldn’t have made it past page 50 without collapsing. And when it finally did emerge in the 1930s and beyond, the reaction among serious economists ranged from “What is this?” to “Why would you do this to yourself?”
Marxists hailed it as “the hidden treasure”, which is accurate if you define treasure as “a chest full of unlabelled keys, none of which open anything in particular.”
The core ideas that do emerge—if you’re willing to dig through the rubble—are familiar: the labour theory of value, the alienation of the worker, and the inevitability of capitalist collapse. But in Grundrisse, these are not presented as coherent, linear arguments. Instead, they are embedded in the swampy marshland of Marx’s digressions. One section might give you a sharp, compelling critique of capital’s tendency to subsume all aspects of human life under its logic.
The next will swerve into a hundred-page meditation on pre-capitalist modes of production, complete with speculative anthropology that modern scholars wouldn’t touch with a hazmat suit.
And here’s the kicker: most of Grundrisse is, from the standpoint of modern economics, completely irrelevant. Marx treats economic value as something objective and rooted solely in labour, ignoring the subjective valuation that underpins much of today’s price theory.
He has no grasp of marginal utility, no patience for innovation as a driver of value, and no framework for understanding market dynamics beyond the class struggle. Reading Grundrisse in 2025 for practical economic insight is like consulting a mediaeval physician on how to perform keyhole surgery.
But it’s not just economic obsolescence at play—it’s the style, or lack thereof. Marx’s writing in Grundrisse is a combination of 19th-century German academic sludge and a compulsive need to cover every tangent that crosses his mind.
Sentences run on for entire paragraphs, qualifying themselves into oblivion. You can almost hear the mental gears grinding as he tries to out-Hegel Hegel. The effect is exhausting, as though Marx is challenging you to keep up, daring you to prove your revolutionary credentials by sheer endurance.
And yet, there is an undeniable fascination in seeing Marx unfiltered. If Capital is the curated museum exhibit of his thought, Grundrisse is the chaotic backroom storage where the unfinished, broken, and mislabeled pieces are piled high.
You get to witness his process—the leaps, the contradictions, the sudden illuminations followed by philosophical cul-de-sacs. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a raw rehearsal tape: unwatchable for casual audiences, but catnip for those who want to study the artist’s unedited moves.
The tragedy—and the comedy—is that Engels, ever the loyal executor, tried to retrofit coherence onto this mess. He talked about it like it was the Rosetta Stone of Marxist economics when in reality it’s more like the scribbles in the margins of a student’s textbook. Engels’ PR spin on Grundrisse is one of history’s great acts of ideological salvage, the kind of brand management usually reserved for pop stars after a disastrous live performance.
That anyone today still pretends Grundrisse is essential reading for understanding capitalism is a testament not to its content, but to the stubbornness of Marxist canon-building.
From a modern perspective, Grundrisse is an artefact, not a manual. Its pre-industrial obsessions, deterministic view of history, and labor-centric economics have been overtaken by globalised trade, automation, and the reality that capitalism has proven far more adaptable than Marx could imagine.
Yes, inequality is real, and yes, capitalism has deep structural flaws—but you won’t find a viable 21st-century fix hidden in Marx’s 19th-century metaphors about ancient societies. If anything, Grundrisse reminds us that even brilliant minds can produce work that is, in large part, a dead end.
That doesn’t mean it’s worthless. For historians of thought, it’s a goldmine of raw material showing how Marx wrestled with the problems of his time. For literary masochists, it’s an endurance test. For everyone else, it’s an unwieldy monument to overthinking—a book that confuses density with depth, tangents with insight, and verbosity with authority.
In the end, Grundrisse is both a warning and a wonder: a warning about the perils of releasing your unedited drafts to the world and a wonder that anyone—let alone generations of political theorists—could maintain the patience to sift through it.
It is at once a testament to Marx’s restless intellect and a monument to his inability to self-edit. It’s the economic theory equivalent of a director’s cut so indulgent that the studio had to lock the reels in a vault for a century.
Final verdict? Grundrisse is the prequel that should have stayed in the drawer. It’s a philosophical fever dream masquerading as foundational economics, an intellectual Rube Goldberg machine that turns simple concepts into elaborate contraptions only to deliver the same conclusion Marx always starts with: capitalism bad, communism good, history inevitable.
If Capital is a bad opera, Grundrisse is the all-night rehearsal where everyone is drunk, the costumes are still in the laundry, and the orchestra is playing in a different key. It is, in short, the unfiltered, uncooked, and unhinged mind of Marx—and that’s both its curse and its peculiar charm.
It is the literary equivalent of an open-mic rant where the performer refuses to get off stage and starts connecting the plight of 19th-century textile workers to the metaphysics of Greek gods, the Roman slave economy, and whatever was floating in his coffee at the time.
If Capital is an overly long opera with a bad libretto, Grundrisse is the six-hour drunken rehearsal in which the chorus keeps falling asleep, the lead is making up their own lines, and the orchestra is playing three different symphonies at once.
It is—at least in theory—the Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. In practice? The only foundation here is a cracked basement filled with loose notes, self-interruptions, and intellectual furniture that never gets assembled. “Grundrisse” in German means “outline”, but this outline is so sprawling and formless that you could use it as a cautionary tale in project management seminars.
The experience of reading Grundrisse is less like following a structured argument and more like accidentally intercepting someone’s private brain dump during a manic phase.
One moment, Marx is on about the labour theory of value. The next, he’s knee-deep in an anthropological detour about Roman law.
Before you can finish processing that, he’s suddenly dissecting ancient Greek society with the seriousness of a man who forgot he was supposed to be talking about money. This is stream-of-consciousness economics with the dial turned up to 11, with Marx writing as though the faster he produces words, the more correct they become.
And my god, the tangents. The man starts with commodities and ends up on metaphysical conceptions of time like he’s auditioning for a philosophy department that no one asked to open. It’s as if Hegel, Feuerbach, and an encyclopaedia of world history all fell into a blender, and instead of hitting “purée”, Marx just left it on “chunky”.
Every page is so overloaded with conceptual debris that reading it feels like carrying furniture up a spiral staircase—heavy, awkward, and involving far too many unnecessary turns.
Marx, to his credit—or perhaps detriment—never intended this for public consumption. Grundrisse is essentially his private scratchpad, and that’s exactly how it reads: pages upon pages of mental scaffolding without any of the final polish that might make it digestible.
But even allowing for that, the sheer density of jargon, obscure historical references, and abrupt topic changes suggest a man either completely unconcerned with clarity or actively hostile to it. Engels, Marx’s lifelong PR manager and co-author of his legacy, later tried to frame Grundrisse as “essential” to understanding Capital.
That’s a bit like calling your friend’s 4 a.m. voicemails “a crucial prelude to their TED Talk.”
Historically, this book had zero immediate impact—partly because no one outside Marx’s study saw it until the 20th century, but also because even the faithful wouldn’t have made it past page 50 without collapsing. And when it finally did emerge in the 1930s and beyond, the reaction among serious economists ranged from “What is this?” to “Why would you do this to yourself?”
Marxists hailed it as “the hidden treasure”, which is accurate if you define treasure as “a chest full of unlabelled keys, none of which open anything in particular.”
The core ideas that do emerge—if you’re willing to dig through the rubble—are familiar: the labour theory of value, the alienation of the worker, and the inevitability of capitalist collapse. But in Grundrisse, these are not presented as coherent, linear arguments. Instead, they are embedded in the swampy marshland of Marx’s digressions. One section might give you a sharp, compelling critique of capital’s tendency to subsume all aspects of human life under its logic.
The next will swerve into a hundred-page meditation on pre-capitalist modes of production, complete with speculative anthropology that modern scholars wouldn’t touch with a hazmat suit.
And here’s the kicker: most of Grundrisse is, from the standpoint of modern economics, completely irrelevant. Marx treats economic value as something objective and rooted solely in labour, ignoring the subjective valuation that underpins much of today’s price theory.
He has no grasp of marginal utility, no patience for innovation as a driver of value, and no framework for understanding market dynamics beyond the class struggle. Reading Grundrisse in 2025 for practical economic insight is like consulting a mediaeval physician on how to perform keyhole surgery.
But it’s not just economic obsolescence at play—it’s the style, or lack thereof. Marx’s writing in Grundrisse is a combination of 19th-century German academic sludge and a compulsive need to cover every tangent that crosses his mind.
Sentences run on for entire paragraphs, qualifying themselves into oblivion. You can almost hear the mental gears grinding as he tries to out-Hegel Hegel. The effect is exhausting, as though Marx is challenging you to keep up, daring you to prove your revolutionary credentials by sheer endurance.
And yet, there is an undeniable fascination in seeing Marx unfiltered. If Capital is the curated museum exhibit of his thought, Grundrisse is the chaotic backroom storage where the unfinished, broken, and mislabeled pieces are piled high.
You get to witness his process—the leaps, the contradictions, the sudden illuminations followed by philosophical cul-de-sacs. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a raw rehearsal tape: unwatchable for casual audiences, but catnip for those who want to study the artist’s unedited moves.
The tragedy—and the comedy—is that Engels, ever the loyal executor, tried to retrofit coherence onto this mess. He talked about it like it was the Rosetta Stone of Marxist economics when in reality it’s more like the scribbles in the margins of a student’s textbook. Engels’ PR spin on Grundrisse is one of history’s great acts of ideological salvage, the kind of brand management usually reserved for pop stars after a disastrous live performance.
That anyone today still pretends Grundrisse is essential reading for understanding capitalism is a testament not to its content, but to the stubbornness of Marxist canon-building.
From a modern perspective, Grundrisse is an artefact, not a manual. Its pre-industrial obsessions, deterministic view of history, and labor-centric economics have been overtaken by globalised trade, automation, and the reality that capitalism has proven far more adaptable than Marx could imagine.
Yes, inequality is real, and yes, capitalism has deep structural flaws—but you won’t find a viable 21st-century fix hidden in Marx’s 19th-century metaphors about ancient societies. If anything, Grundrisse reminds us that even brilliant minds can produce work that is, in large part, a dead end.
That doesn’t mean it’s worthless. For historians of thought, it’s a goldmine of raw material showing how Marx wrestled with the problems of his time. For literary masochists, it’s an endurance test. For everyone else, it’s an unwieldy monument to overthinking—a book that confuses density with depth, tangents with insight, and verbosity with authority.
In the end, Grundrisse is both a warning and a wonder: a warning about the perils of releasing your unedited drafts to the world and a wonder that anyone—let alone generations of political theorists—could maintain the patience to sift through it.
It is at once a testament to Marx’s restless intellect and a monument to his inability to self-edit. It’s the economic theory equivalent of a director’s cut so indulgent that the studio had to lock the reels in a vault for a century.
Final verdict? Grundrisse is the prequel that should have stayed in the drawer. It’s a philosophical fever dream masquerading as foundational economics, an intellectual Rube Goldberg machine that turns simple concepts into elaborate contraptions only to deliver the same conclusion Marx always starts with: capitalism bad, communism good, history inevitable.
If Capital is a bad opera, Grundrisse is the all-night rehearsal where everyone is drunk, the costumes are still in the laundry, and the orchestra is playing in a different key. It is, in short, the unfiltered, uncooked, and unhinged mind of Marx—and that’s both its curse and its peculiar charm.
May 3, 2023
I found Grundrisse to be far more readable than I expected it to be - based on the fact that it is drawn from Marx's unpublished notebooks and was never intended for publication. It is absolutely filled with fascinating insight across the whole range of political economy. It also very noticeably more "Hegelian" in tone than Capital (although some of that may be the influence of what I've read in between reading Capital and Grundrisse). As you might expect bearing in mind how it came to be published, it is not written in an organised way or to make well ordered specific points. It is a set of notes written while working through his reading on political economy. This makes it more disorganised and harder reading than other works, but in lots of ways more interesting. Definitely worth the effort.
I'm slowly adding the rough notes I made while reading Grundrisse to this page on my blog: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
April 2023: second reading, this time accompanied by David Harvey's newly published "Companion to Marx's Grundrisse". It remains a fascinating but challenging read. It is possible to see Marx developing what will become the structure and analysis of all three volumes of Capital, arriving finally (on page 881) with what will become - reworded - the opening words of volume 1. In Grundrisse this is "the first category in which bourgeois wealth presents itself is that of the commodity". In Capital that becomes "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities'".
There is a strong emphasis on Capital as a whole, as a 'totality' where each individual part in analysis is influenced by the construction of the complete flow. I'll write about Harvey's book separately, but among other things he emphasises this element with his position that Marx presents Capital as 'value in motion'.
It remains a rewarding book that is worth the effort, with access made easier by Harvey's Companion.
I added some thoughts on the circulation of capital after reading Grundrisse for the second time on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
I'm slowly adding the rough notes I made while reading Grundrisse to this page on my blog: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
April 2023: second reading, this time accompanied by David Harvey's newly published "Companion to Marx's Grundrisse". It remains a fascinating but challenging read. It is possible to see Marx developing what will become the structure and analysis of all three volumes of Capital, arriving finally (on page 881) with what will become - reworded - the opening words of volume 1. In Grundrisse this is "the first category in which bourgeois wealth presents itself is that of the commodity". In Capital that becomes "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities'".
There is a strong emphasis on Capital as a whole, as a 'totality' where each individual part in analysis is influenced by the construction of the complete flow. I'll write about Harvey's book separately, but among other things he emphasises this element with his position that Marx presents Capital as 'value in motion'.
It remains a rewarding book that is worth the effort, with access made easier by Harvey's Companion.
I added some thoughts on the circulation of capital after reading Grundrisse for the second time on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
July 30, 2023
MARX’S REDISCOVERED NOTEBOOKS FROM 1857-8
The Foreword explains, “This is a series of notebooks rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857-8. The manuscript became lost in circumstances still unknown and was first effectively published, in the German original, in 1953… Marx considered these workbooks to contain the first scientific elaboration of the theoretical foundations of communism… they add much mew material, and stand as the only outline of Marx’s full political-economic project. The manuscripts display the key elements in Marx’s development and overthrown of the Hegelian philosophy. They… are a sourcebook of inestimable value for the study of Marx’s method of inquiry.” (Pg. 7; NOTE: page numbers refer to a 904-page paperback edition.)
Marx wrote in the Introduction, “The object before us, to begin with, MATERIAL PRODUCTION. Individuals producing in society---hence socially determined individual production---is, of course, the point of departure.” (Pg. 82) Later, he adds, “Thus production, distribution, exchange and consumption form a regular syllogism; production is the generality, distribution and exchange the particularity, and consumption the singularity in which the whole is joined together. This is admittedly a coherence, but a shallow one.” (Pg. 89)
He notes, “We have here reached the fundamental question, which is no longer related to the point of departure. The general question would be this: Can the existing relations of production and the relations of distribution which correspond to them be revolutionized by a change in the instrument of circulation, in the organization of circulation? Further question: Can such a transformation of circulation be undertaken without touching the existing relations of production and the social relations which rest on them?” (Pg. 122)
He states, “The VALUE … of all commodities (labor included) is determined by their cost of production, in other words by the labor time required to produce them. Their PRICE is the exchange value of theirs, expressed in money… Labor money denominated in labor time would therefore equate the REAL VALUE (exchange value) of commodities with their nominal value, price, money value… The value of commodities as determined by labor time is only their average value.” (Pg. 136-137)
He argues, “Negro slavery---a purely industrial slavery---which is, besides, incompatible with the development of bourgeois society and disappears with it, PRESUPPOSES wage labor, and if other, free states with wage labor did not exist alongside it, if, instead, the Negro states were isolated, then all social conditions there would immediately turn into pre-civilized forms.” (Pg. 224)
He says, “Capital is not a simple relation, but a PROCVESS, in whose various moments it is always capital. This process therefore to be developed. Already in ACCUMULATED labor, something has sneaked in, because, in its essential characteristic, it should be merely OBJECTIFIED labor, in which, however, a certain amount of labor is accumulated. But accumulated labor already comprises a quantity of objects in which labor is realized.” (Pg. 258)
He explains, “Within the production process, the separation of labor from its objective moments of existence---instruments and material---is suspended. The existence of capital and of wage labor rests on this separation. Capital does not pay for the suspension of this separation which proceeds in the real production process---for otherwise work could not go on at all… We see therefore that the capitalist, by means of the exchange process with the worker---by indeed paying the worker an equivalent for the costs of production contained in this labor capacity, but appropriating living labor for himself---obtains two things free of charge, first the surplus labor which increases the value of his capital; but at the same time, secondly, the quality of living labor which maintains the previous labor materialized in the component parts of capital and thus preserves the previously existing value of capital.” (Pg. 364-365)
He states, “there is a limit, not inherent to production generally, but to production founded on capital. This limit is double, or rather the same regarded from two directions. It is enough here to demonstrate that capital contains a PARTICULAR restriction of production---which contradicts its general tendency to drive beyond every barrier to production---in order to have uncovered the foundation of OVERPRODUJCTION, the fundamental contradiction of developed capital…” (Pg. 415)
He observes, “It is posited within the concept of capital that the objective conditions of labo0r---and these are its own product---take on a PERSONALITY towards it, or, what is the same, that they are posited as the property of a personality alien to the worker.” (Pg. 512)
He says, “Surplus value thus measured by the value of the presupposed capital, capital thus posited as self-realizing value---is PROFIT… the surplus value is profit; and capital as capital, the producing and reproducing value, distinguishes itself within itself from Itself as profit, the newly produced value. The product of capital is PROFIT.” (Pg. 746)
He argues, “Profit as we still regard it here, i.e. as the profit of capital AS SUCH, not of an individual capital at the expense of another, but rather as the profits of the capitalist class, concretely expressed, can never be greater then the sum of the surplus value. As a sum, it is the sum of the surplus value, but it is this same sum of values as a proportion relative to the total value of the capital, instead of to that part of it whose value really grows; i.e., is exchanged for living labor. In its immediate form, profit is nothing but the sum of the surplus value expressed as a proportion of the total value of the capital.” (Pg. 767)
He explains, “In regard to INTEREST, two things are to be examined: Firstly, the division of PROFIT into interest and profit… The difference becomes perceptible, tangible as soon as a class of monied capitalists comes to confront a class of industrial capitalists. Secondly, Capital itself becomes a commodity, or the commodity (money) is sold as capital. This it is said, e.g., that capital, like any other commodity, varies in price according to demand and supply. These then determine the rate of interest. Thus here capital as such enters into circulation.” (Pg. 851)
This book will mostly interest those studying the development of Marx’s thought.
The Foreword explains, “This is a series of notebooks rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857-8. The manuscript became lost in circumstances still unknown and was first effectively published, in the German original, in 1953… Marx considered these workbooks to contain the first scientific elaboration of the theoretical foundations of communism… they add much mew material, and stand as the only outline of Marx’s full political-economic project. The manuscripts display the key elements in Marx’s development and overthrown of the Hegelian philosophy. They… are a sourcebook of inestimable value for the study of Marx’s method of inquiry.” (Pg. 7; NOTE: page numbers refer to a 904-page paperback edition.)
Marx wrote in the Introduction, “The object before us, to begin with, MATERIAL PRODUCTION. Individuals producing in society---hence socially determined individual production---is, of course, the point of departure.” (Pg. 82) Later, he adds, “Thus production, distribution, exchange and consumption form a regular syllogism; production is the generality, distribution and exchange the particularity, and consumption the singularity in which the whole is joined together. This is admittedly a coherence, but a shallow one.” (Pg. 89)
He notes, “We have here reached the fundamental question, which is no longer related to the point of departure. The general question would be this: Can the existing relations of production and the relations of distribution which correspond to them be revolutionized by a change in the instrument of circulation, in the organization of circulation? Further question: Can such a transformation of circulation be undertaken without touching the existing relations of production and the social relations which rest on them?” (Pg. 122)
He states, “The VALUE … of all commodities (labor included) is determined by their cost of production, in other words by the labor time required to produce them. Their PRICE is the exchange value of theirs, expressed in money… Labor money denominated in labor time would therefore equate the REAL VALUE (exchange value) of commodities with their nominal value, price, money value… The value of commodities as determined by labor time is only their average value.” (Pg. 136-137)
He argues, “Negro slavery---a purely industrial slavery---which is, besides, incompatible with the development of bourgeois society and disappears with it, PRESUPPOSES wage labor, and if other, free states with wage labor did not exist alongside it, if, instead, the Negro states were isolated, then all social conditions there would immediately turn into pre-civilized forms.” (Pg. 224)
He says, “Capital is not a simple relation, but a PROCVESS, in whose various moments it is always capital. This process therefore to be developed. Already in ACCUMULATED labor, something has sneaked in, because, in its essential characteristic, it should be merely OBJECTIFIED labor, in which, however, a certain amount of labor is accumulated. But accumulated labor already comprises a quantity of objects in which labor is realized.” (Pg. 258)
He explains, “Within the production process, the separation of labor from its objective moments of existence---instruments and material---is suspended. The existence of capital and of wage labor rests on this separation. Capital does not pay for the suspension of this separation which proceeds in the real production process---for otherwise work could not go on at all… We see therefore that the capitalist, by means of the exchange process with the worker---by indeed paying the worker an equivalent for the costs of production contained in this labor capacity, but appropriating living labor for himself---obtains two things free of charge, first the surplus labor which increases the value of his capital; but at the same time, secondly, the quality of living labor which maintains the previous labor materialized in the component parts of capital and thus preserves the previously existing value of capital.” (Pg. 364-365)
He states, “there is a limit, not inherent to production generally, but to production founded on capital. This limit is double, or rather the same regarded from two directions. It is enough here to demonstrate that capital contains a PARTICULAR restriction of production---which contradicts its general tendency to drive beyond every barrier to production---in order to have uncovered the foundation of OVERPRODUJCTION, the fundamental contradiction of developed capital…” (Pg. 415)
He observes, “It is posited within the concept of capital that the objective conditions of labo0r---and these are its own product---take on a PERSONALITY towards it, or, what is the same, that they are posited as the property of a personality alien to the worker.” (Pg. 512)
He says, “Surplus value thus measured by the value of the presupposed capital, capital thus posited as self-realizing value---is PROFIT… the surplus value is profit; and capital as capital, the producing and reproducing value, distinguishes itself within itself from Itself as profit, the newly produced value. The product of capital is PROFIT.” (Pg. 746)
He argues, “Profit as we still regard it here, i.e. as the profit of capital AS SUCH, not of an individual capital at the expense of another, but rather as the profits of the capitalist class, concretely expressed, can never be greater then the sum of the surplus value. As a sum, it is the sum of the surplus value, but it is this same sum of values as a proportion relative to the total value of the capital, instead of to that part of it whose value really grows; i.e., is exchanged for living labor. In its immediate form, profit is nothing but the sum of the surplus value expressed as a proportion of the total value of the capital.” (Pg. 767)
He explains, “In regard to INTEREST, two things are to be examined: Firstly, the division of PROFIT into interest and profit… The difference becomes perceptible, tangible as soon as a class of monied capitalists comes to confront a class of industrial capitalists. Secondly, Capital itself becomes a commodity, or the commodity (money) is sold as capital. This it is said, e.g., that capital, like any other commodity, varies in price according to demand and supply. These then determine the rate of interest. Thus here capital as such enters into circulation.” (Pg. 851)
This book will mostly interest those studying the development of Marx’s thought.
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