Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto

Among Marx's earliest writings. More theoretical but extremely informative to his writings prior to Capital.

Social theorists, Marxists among them, often make a sharp distinction between Marx's early work, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and everything that came after The German Ideology. In this view, the early Marx was a social philosopher who had not yet promulgated a method or constructed a coherent conceptual framework, while his later work, especially the first volume of Capital, escaped the soft amorphousness of social philosophy and gave us rigorous social and economic science through application of historical materialism. There may be merit to this distinction, but I think that, at best, it is vastly overdrawn. Either explicitly or by unmistakable implication, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts give us nearly all the basic and most compelling ideas that provide the foundation for Marx's later work. The objectively determined antagonism between capital and labor is explained with clarity and force. The fact that capital and labor constitute classes in a macro-level sense, rather than through reference to characteristics of individuals or status groups seems undeniable. The structural determination of behavior takes the focus off ostensibly rapacious capitalists and laboring class victims, making notions like "good guys," "bad guys," and even free will seem obsolete and beside the point. Determinism is the watchword. Perhaps the most insightful and interesting observation in the Manuscripts is Marx's conclusion that the more workers produce the stronger the hand of capital. The more productive the worker the more he undercuts his position with respect to capital. Technological innovations, for example, make workers more productive, but they also reduce the demand for labor and reduce labor costs. When Marx wrote the Economic and Philosophical manuscripts he had not yet made the distinction between labor and labor power, and the commoditization of labor was less clear. Furthermore, he had not yet augmented use value and exchange value with his own notion of value, measurable units which could be objectively quantified in terms of labor power. The distinction between labor and labor power, however, seems obvious even if unstated in the Manuscripts, and Marx's elaborated account of value has always seemed to generate confusion, raising all sorts of measurement problems which seem unlikely to be solved. Thorstein Veblen, generally sympathetic toward Marx's work, dismissed the labor theory of value as unduly metaphysical; probably as good a characterization as any. To his credit, toward the end of the Manuscripts, Marx engages in an hypothetical discussion of something he calls "primitive communism." This is a world fraught with envy and resentment, the product of a premature effort to produce a genuinely communist society. This illustration was used to emphasize Marx's admission that he did not know what form a genuinely communist or socialist society would take. Instead, this was something that would have to emerge historically. At the risk of gross over-simplification, I'll offer a Marxist explanation of the economic mess we share today: too many laboring people make too little money and are forced to rely on credit offered by the capitalist class. When borrowers are completely tapped out, unable to pay what they've borrowed, the system collapses. Fundamentally, this is not because loans were unduly risky, but because most people had so little that risky loans were essential to maintaining the bare rudiments of a lower-middle class life style.

This is kind of a mixed bag. It's seems more like a peek into Marx's private notebook than a fully formed treatiste per se, he's just starting here to pin down things like capital, labor, money, and the individual, and to give some basic analysis with regards to how they interact. But by the end, I was surprised at just how humanistic it turned out to be. This isn't the often cold, polemical materialism that he would develop later on, but something which is deep down concerned with the problems that capital et al. has for basic human dignity and value. Maybe I'm telgraphing too much of Heidegger into it, but it seems that what this gets at is the ways in which capitalism alienates us not just in our day to day lives, but on a more metaphysical level, from our sense of Being itself. It's a very sensitive, musing piece of writing which, for it being Marx, I found refreshing

Great read for college! Higher education! Great!

Why is it essential reading? Because Marx lays out for the first time the alienation of modern economic life. This alienation stems from our willingness and need to sell our labor as if it were something distinct from us. Marx has a different vision of human life--a life of flourishing where human beings realize their essential essence in labor, uniting private interest with communal needs. This labor would also develop our senses to be real human senses.

cool

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If you are looking for an introduction to Marx, this is an excellent place to start. I was daunted by Capital's sheer length and dryness. Though Capital does present Marx's key ideas (Surplus value and exploitation), this handy compilation gives a more humanist and accessible introduction to Marx. There are interesting explanations for the tendency of businesses towards monopoly (Marx calls it "capitals concentrated in a few hands") among other blights. Marx turns much of what now passes as basic economic laws on their head. And the explanation of estrangement of labor, which inspired Braverman's classic Labor and Monopoly Capital, is a must read that has worthwhile insights. Also included is the Communist manifesto and a wonderful exploration of the terms Marx uses. I'm giving this book five stars because a great deal of effort was put into the editing and it shows. Truly a wonderful value and introduction to Marxian thought!

Great, high quality print. Plenty of space for notes along the side. Nice to have the Manifesto and the Manuscripts in the same place too, people often take one or the other out of context.

Just arrived.

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Amazon warehouse and tech workers strike! All power to the workers! (And the book was excellent.)