AN I N T R O D U C T I O N to the T H R E E V O L U M E S of K A R L M A R X ’S C A P I T A L Michael Heinrich Translated by Alexander Locascio PB2884 / $15-95 MARXISM / ECONOMICS “An excellent little introduction to Marx’s masterpiece.” —Doug Henwood, editor, Left Business Observer “A ‘must-read’ in our time of crisis.” — Paul LeBlanc, La Roche College; author, From Marx to Gramsci “The best introduction to Capital I have read.” — Michael Perelman, California State University, Chico; author, The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism “A brilliant presentation of Marx’s Capital.” —Paddy Quick, St. Francis College; member, Union for Radical Political Economics “Likely the best short introduction to Marx’s Capital to ever appear in English.” — Riccardo Bellofiore, University of Bergamo, Italy; co-editor, Re-Reading Marx “The best and most comprehensive introduction to Marx’s Capital there is.” —Werner Bonefeld, Department of Politics, University of York “A fundamental reinterpretation and understanding of Marx’s theory.” —John Milios, National Technical University of Athens, Greece Michael Heinrich teaches economics in Berlin and is managing editor of PROKLA: Journal for Critical Social Science. He is the author of The Science of Value: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy between Scientific Revolution and Classical Tradition, and editor, with Werner Bonefeld, of Capital and Critique: After the “New Reading" of Marx. ISBN-13: 978-1-58367-288-4 MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS 146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W New York, NY 10001 www.monthlyreview.org COVER DESIGN: Ben Smyth, Grand Opening 9 781 583 672884 An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital ------------------------------------- An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital by MICHAEL HEINRICH Translated, by Alexander Locascio MR MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS New York Copyright © 2004 by Michael Heinrich All Rights Reserved Originally published as Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Eine Einführung by Schmetterling Verlag GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany © 2004 by Schmetterling Verlag GmbH. English translation by Alexander Locascio published by Monthly Review Press 2012 © by Monthly Review Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heinrich, Michael, 1957- [Kritik der politischen Vkonomie. English] An introduction to the three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital / by Michael Heinrich ; translated by Alexander Locascio. p. cm. “Originally published as Kritik der politischen Vkonomie: Eine Einf|hrung by Schmetterling Verlag GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany, c2004, by Schmetterling Verlag GmbH.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58367-288-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-58367-289-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. Kapital. 2. Marxian economics. I. Title. HB501.M37H4513 2012 335.4’1—dc23 2012019993 Monthly Review Press 146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W New York, New York 10001 www. monthlyre view, org 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface.......................................................................................................... 7 1. Capitalism and Marxism................................................................ 13 2. The Object of Critique in the Critique of Political Economy..................................................................29 3. Value, Labor, Money.......................................................................39 4. Capital, Surplus Value, and Exploitation....................................81 5. The Capitalist Process of Production ..........................................99 6. The Circulation of Capital...........................................................131 7. Profit, Average Profit, and the “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”..............141 8. Interest, Credit, and “Fictitious Capital” ...................................155 9. Crisis................................................................................................169 10. The Fetishism of Social Relations in Bourgeois Society..........179 11. State and Capital............................................................................199 12. Communism—Society beyond the Commodity, Money, and the State .....................................................................219 Bibliography............................................................................................225 Notes..........................................................................................................229 Index..........................................................................................................238 . ------------------ Preface Protest is occurring again. In 2011 the “Arab Spring” rocked the Arab world and overthrew a number of rulers, who which seemed to be invin­ cible, at least by to their people. In summer people in several countries of Western Europe were inspired by the actions of the Arab Spring. They conquered public places to protest against the policies of their govern­ ments. And in fall 2011 “Occupy Wall Street” started in New York, lead­ ing to “Occupy” movements in many other countries. With the bank­ ing crisis of 2008 more people than ever during the last decade question capitalism: is it really the system that provides freedom and wealth for the majority as it is promised by its supporters? Or is it the system that brings wealth only to the 1 percent and economic pressure and misery in at different levels to the 99 percent? Even beyond traditionally left circles, discussions about the destructive consequences of “’’capitalism are taking place. That this is not a matter of course is proven by a quick glance into the past. At the beginning of the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed as though capitalism had ultimately and globally triumphed as an economic and social model to which there was no alternative. Although there had always been many on the left who did not see a desirable alterna­ tive to capitalism in Soviet “really existing socialism,” such distinctions no AN INTRODUCTION TO KARL MARX’S CAPITAL longer seemed important. To most people, a society beyond the capitalist market economy appeared only as an entirely unrealistic utopia. Instead of protest, accommodation and resignation reigned. But it was also—and in particular—the 1990s that showed that capital­ ism, even after its apparent “final victory,” continued to go hand in hand with processes of crisis and immiseration; and Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the first war in Iraq showed that wars in which the developed capitalist countries were not only indirecdy, but indeed very direcdy involved, were by no means a thing of the past. All this was taken up in different forms by the new “counter-globalization” movement and other social movements and made the point of departure for critique. Initially, these critiques were focused on single issues and posed limited demands that remained within the framework of the system. Furthermore, the critiques often rested upon a simple black-and-white moralism. However, throughout the course of these conflicts, fundamental questions kept being asked: about contemporary capitalism’s mode of operation; about the connec­ tion between capitalism, the state, and war; and also about what kinds of changes are actually possible within capitalism. Leftist theory became important again. Every transformative practice assumes a particular understanding of that which exists. If, for example, we demand the introduction of a Tobin tax (that is, the taxation of cur­ rency transactions) as a crucial means for the “taming” of a capitalism “unleashed,” then this implies a certain theorization of the importance of financial markets, about tamed or untamed capitalism—whether or not these assumptions are made explicit. How contemporary capitalism func­ tions is not an abstract, academic question. The answer to this question has an immediate practical relevance for every anticapitalist movement. It is thus not surprising that since the end of the 1990s grand theo­ retical narratives have been en vogue again, such as Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Manuel Castells’s The Information Age, or the recently published Debt: The First 5,000 Tears by David Graeber. Such books, although very different politically and in terms of content, em­ ploy Marx’s categories to a greater or lesser extent: pardy they are used to analyze contemporary developments; partly they are criticized as ob­ solete. It is obvious that today one cannot avoid Marx’s Capital if one