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Towards An Unknown Marx: A Commentary on the Manuscripts of 1861-63
This book is the first complete commentary on Marx's manuscripts of 1861-63, works that guide our understanding of fundamental concepts such as 'surplus-value' and 'production price'.
497 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 6, 2001
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About the author
Enrique Dussel
206 books134 followersENRIQUE DUSSEL nace el 24 de diciembre de 1934, en el pueblo de La Paz, Mendoza, Argentina. Exiliado político desde 1975 en México, hoy ciudadano mexicano, es profesor en el Departamento de Filosofía en la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM, Iztapalapa, ciudad de México), y en el Colegio de Filosofía de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UNAM (Ciudad Universitaria). Licenciado en filosofía (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina), doctor en filosofía por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, doctor en historia en La Sorbonne de Paris y una licencia en teología en Paris y Münster. Ha obtenido doctorados honoris causa en Freiburg (Suiza) y en la Universidad de San Andrés (La Paz, Bolivia). Fundador con otros del movimiento Filosofía de la Liberación. Trabaja especialmente el campo de la Ética y la Filosofía Política.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 22, 2019
April 21, 2019
This remarkable work combines great insight with great ambition. Dussel reinterprets Marx by showing how everyone else gets Marx wrong. Along the way Dussel clarifies the relationships between Marx and Hegel, Marx and the Physiocrats, Marx and Smith, Marx and Ricardo, Marx and Liberation, and Marx and Dependency Theory.
The project is to show how much Marx relied on but also altered Hegel’s method. Dussel shows how Marx read Hegel, the Physiocrats, Smith, Ricardo and whole lot more. He shows how Marx establishes what each theorist gets right and wrong. In this process, Marx uncovers and creates a set of concepts with which he will build his overall system. Marx’s aim in reading these theorists, according to Dussel, is neither to produce a history of thought nor to generate ad hoc insights from his criticism. Rather, Marx builds a conceptual system within which he has to establish the first category as well as deduce all other categories.
Dussel has his own politics to pursue. He claims early on that the key category in Marx’s system is not “totality” but “exteriority.” As Dussel says, “criticism starts from the negativity of the victim” (xv). The exterior category is “living human labor”. This claim is not meant only to show that Marx’s entire system is built on capital’s exteriorization of human labor, but also, crucially for Dussel, that Marx’s work is found on an ethical stance. More so, that his science and his ethics are one and the same.
Chapter 12 is perhaps the clearest thing I have read on Marx’s method and on what counts for Marx as science. Chapter 13 is astonishing for Dussel’s ability to go through all Dependency Theorists and tell us what each one got right and wrong. The chapter explains that “dependency” as a concept is available in Marx’s method and that therefore a science (a Hegelian/Marxist version of science, of course) of dependency can be deduced. The mistake previous theorists have made is that they have either moved from theory to history prematurely or they have compiled ad hoc categories. Dussel deduces ‘dependency’ by extending Marx’s analysis and concludes that dependency is characterized by both exploitation and what he calls domination: exploitation is the theft of the laborer’s labor; and, domination is how much of the exploited value is moved by and towards one or another national bourgeioise.
He asserts that a world revolution is not what is called for and that local liberation within states is the priority. He has an implicit theory of international relations or what he might call the relations between national capitals.
The key to the Dussel’s analysis, as far as I can tell, is two-fold: first, Dussel demonstrates the necessity of sustaining the gap between value and price, that is, between the concept and its expression, or to use Popperian terminology, between the concept and its indicator.
Second, Dussel stays entirely within Marx’s assumptions. He accepts the centrality and validity of the labor theory of value; he accepts the primacy of production over circulation; indeed, this primacy is foundational for his difference between exploitation (which occurs in production) and domination (which occurs in circulation); he accepts the primacy of logic over history and therefore their separability; he accepts that ‘forms’ or the ‘appearance of forms’ often invert and mystify reality and therefore the job of science is to locate the reality behind the mystified and festishized forms; and, he asserts that Marx’s project is ethically founded but in a manner consistent with his understanding of doing science.
Indeed, Marx gets nothing wrong accept that he did not live long enough to finish his project.
All these assumptions and assertions are contested, it turns out: some argue that the labor theory of value is not relevant, others that it is wrong; some refuse the priority of production over circulation; some will accept the essentially Hegelian method of doing science but argue that forms clarify reality rather than mystify it; some assert the inseparability of logic from history; and, many argue that Marx would have be repelled by the claim that his project is ethical. I have made it my job to establish a kind of map of where Marx’s interpreters fall on these issues.
I am dazzled by Dussel’s insights on Marx work, Marx’s reading of others, and on the meaning of liberation and dependency. I am amazed by his achievement, if also a bit shaken that I knew so little about Dussel’s engagement with Hegel, Marx, and classical political economy.
If Dussel retains for Marx the exteriority of human labor, the simultaneity of Marx’s ethics and science, and the labor theory of value as the foundation for exploitation, he does so at the cost of not producing a criticism of Marx. Noticeably absent are the ethical or, at least, historically progressive claims that Marx makes for capitalism.
Still, a generous reading of Dussel sees him as completing Marx’s project while also deducing Dependency Theory and by enriching the philosophy of liberation.
I cannot finish the review without replicating a fascinating passage in which Dussel riffs on Wittgenstein:
“To historicize the real economic system, and hence the capitalist political economy, means to de-fetishize its universality, claim of eternality; it means to criticize its intention to confuse itself with the ‘nature of things itself’. But such intent of placing the totality of the capitalist (real and theoretical) economic system as a moment of the reality which comprises it (from living labor) allows him to issue an ethical judgment. Wittgenstein is right when he says that if there no exteriority exerted on the world as totality, there could be no sense of judgment, and that ‘ethical is the mystical’. Marx, on the contrary, considers that the totality of the capitalist world (both really and theoretically) has sense, and an unjust or perverse ethical sense. 200-201
In other words, when standing apart from the totality of the capitalist world (which in reality is founded on the exploitation of living labor at the production level, but theoretically hides its origin because it wants to base all its theory only on the world of commodities), Marx, in solidarity with the interests of the proletariat, can exert a critical, ethical-practical, theoretical-scientific judgment and provide the proletariat with a revolutionary-political consciousness…201
I love this passage because I think it captures the essential tension within our scholarly work – the tension between trying to understand the world versus trying to change it, the tension between understanding as a form of forgiving versus understanding as a form of intervening. This is where Marx is relative to Hegel, I might say.
This remarkable work combines great insight with great ambition. Dussel reinterprets Marx by showing how everyone else gets Marx wrong. Along the way Dussel clarifies the relationships between Marx and Hegel, Marx and the Physiocrats, Marx and Smith, Marx and Ricardo, Marx and Liberation, and Marx and Dependency Theory.
The project is to show how much Marx relied on but also altered Hegel’s method. Dussel shows how Marx read Hegel, the Physiocrats, Smith, Ricardo and whole lot more. He shows how Marx establishes what each theorist gets right and wrong. In this process, Marx uncovers and creates a set of concepts with which he will build his overall system. Marx’s aim in reading these theorists, according to Dussel, is neither to produce a history of thought nor to generate ad hoc insights from his criticism. Rather, Marx builds a conceptual system within which he has to establish the first category as well as deduce all other categories.
Dussel has his own politics to pursue. He claims early on that the key category in Marx’s system is not “totality” but “exteriority.” As Dussel says, “criticism starts from the negativity of the victim” (xv). The exterior category is “living human labor”. This claim is not meant only to show that Marx’s entire system is built on capital’s exteriorization of human labor, but also, crucially for Dussel, that Marx’s work is found on an ethical stance. More so, that his science and his ethics are one and the same.
Chapter 12 is perhaps the clearest thing I have read on Marx’s method and on what counts for Marx as science. Chapter 13 is astonishing for Dussel’s ability to go through all Dependency Theorists and tell us what each one got right and wrong. The chapter explains that “dependency” as a concept is available in Marx’s method and that therefore a science (a Hegelian/Marxist version of science, of course) of dependency can be deduced. The mistake previous theorists have made is that they have either moved from theory to history prematurely or they have compiled ad hoc categories. Dussel deduces ‘dependency’ by extending Marx’s analysis and concludes that dependency is characterized by both exploitation and what he calls domination: exploitation is the theft of the laborer’s labor; and, domination is how much of the exploited value is moved by and towards one or another national bourgeioise.
He asserts that a world revolution is not what is called for and that local liberation within states is the priority. He has an implicit theory of international relations or what he might call the relations between national capitals.
The key to the Dussel’s analysis, as far as I can tell, is two-fold: first, Dussel demonstrates the necessity of sustaining the gap between value and price, that is, between the concept and its expression, or to use Popperian terminology, between the concept and its indicator.
Second, Dussel stays entirely within Marx’s assumptions. He accepts the centrality and validity of the labor theory of value; he accepts the primacy of production over circulation; indeed, this primacy is foundational for his difference between exploitation (which occurs in production) and domination (which occurs in circulation); he accepts the primacy of logic over history and therefore their separability; he accepts that ‘forms’ or the ‘appearance of forms’ often invert and mystify reality and therefore the job of science is to locate the reality behind the mystified and festishized forms; and, he asserts that Marx’s project is ethically founded but in a manner consistent with his understanding of doing science.
Indeed, Marx gets nothing wrong accept that he did not live long enough to finish his project.
All these assumptions and assertions are contested, it turns out: some argue that the labor theory of value is not relevant, others that it is wrong; some refuse the priority of production over circulation; some will accept the essentially Hegelian method of doing science but argue that forms clarify reality rather than mystify it; some assert the inseparability of logic from history; and, many argue that Marx would have be repelled by the claim that his project is ethical. I have made it my job to establish a kind of map of where Marx’s interpreters fall on these issues.
I am dazzled by Dussel’s insights on Marx work, Marx’s reading of others, and on the meaning of liberation and dependency. I am amazed by his achievement, if also a bit shaken that I knew so little about Dussel’s engagement with Hegel, Marx, and classical political economy.
If Dussel retains for Marx the exteriority of human labor, the simultaneity of Marx’s ethics and science, and the labor theory of value as the foundation for exploitation, he does so at the cost of not producing a criticism of Marx. Noticeably absent are the ethical or, at least, historically progressive claims that Marx makes for capitalism.
Still, a generous reading of Dussel sees him as completing Marx’s project while also deducing Dependency Theory and by enriching the philosophy of liberation.
I cannot finish the review without replicating a fascinating passage in which Dussel riffs on Wittgenstein:
“To historicize the real economic system, and hence the capitalist political economy, means to de-fetishize its universality, claim of eternality; it means to criticize its intention to confuse itself with the ‘nature of things itself’. But such intent of placing the totality of the capitalist (real and theoretical) economic system as a moment of the reality which comprises it (from living labor) allows him to issue an ethical judgment. Wittgenstein is right when he says that if there no exteriority exerted on the world as totality, there could be no sense of judgment, and that ‘ethical is the mystical’. Marx, on the contrary, considers that the totality of the capitalist world (both really and theoretically) has sense, and an unjust or perverse ethical sense. 200-201
In other words, when standing apart from the totality of the capitalist world (which in reality is founded on the exploitation of living labor at the production level, but theoretically hides its origin because it wants to base all its theory only on the world of commodities), Marx, in solidarity with the interests of the proletariat, can exert a critical, ethical-practical, theoretical-scientific judgment and provide the proletariat with a revolutionary-political consciousness…201
I love this passage because I think it captures the essential tension within our scholarly work – the tension between trying to understand the world versus trying to change it, the tension between understanding as a form of forgiving versus understanding as a form of intervening. This is where Marx is relative to Hegel, I might say.
March 26, 2021
The man is the biggest expert on Marx ever. I so love them both.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews