Louis Althusser Reading Capital Étienne Balibar Translated by Ben Brewster First published by François Maspero, Paris, 1968 © 1968 by Librairie François Maspero This translation first published 1970 © NLB 1970 Prepared © for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo, [email protected] (September 2002) [ Part 1 ] Translator's Note 6 Foreword to the Italian Edition 7 Part I: From Capital to Marx's Philosophy 11 (Louis Althusser ) [ Part 2 ] Part II: The Object of Capital 71 (Louis Althusser ) 1. Introduction 73 2. Marx and his Discoveries 79 3. The Merits of Classical Economics 83 4. The Errors of Classical Economics: An Outine for a Concept of Historical Time 91 5. Marxism is not a Historicism 119 6. The Epistemological Propositions of Capital (Marx, Engels) 145 7. The Object of Political Economy 158 8. Marx's Critique 165 9. Marx's Immense Theoretical Revolution 182 Appendix: On the 'Ideal Average' and the Forms of Transition 194 [ Part 3 ] Part III: The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism 199 (Étienne Balibar ) 1. From Periodization to the Modes of Production 209 2. The Elements of the Structure and their History 225 3. On Reproduction 254 4. Elements for a Theory of Transition 273 [ Part 4 ] Glossary 309 Index 325 Louis Étienne Althusser Balibar Reading Capital ( Part 1 ) Translated by Ben Brewster First published by François Maspero, Paris, 1968 © 1968 by Librairie François Maspero This translation first published 1970 © NLB 1970 Prepared © for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo, [email protected] (September 2002) Translator's Note 6 Foreword to the Italian Edition 7 Part I: From Capital to Marx's Philosophy 11 (Louis Althusser ) page 6 Translator's Note on References: In the original French text of Reading Capital, quotations from Capital were taken from the Éditions Sociales version. The first three volumes of this edition, containing Volume One of Capital, are in the French translation of Joseph Roy, originally published by Maurice La Châtre in 1872, and discussed in the letter from Marx to La Châtre which is printed on p. 9. This translation, the proofs of which Marx read and corrected, modified the German original in many respects, both in order to simplify the text for French workers, and to incorporate Marx's later corrections and additions. This being the case, in this English translation of Reading Capital, I have translated the quotations from Volume One according to Roy's French text; and references are given both to the three Éditions Sociales volumes (T.I, T.II, and T.III) and to the corresponding passage in Lawrence and Wishart's edition of the English translation by Moore and Aveling (Vol. I). The French translations of Volumes Two and Three of Capital are more orthodox, so quotations are taken from the English translation published by Lawrence and Wishart, with minor modifications to bring them into closer accord with the German text where this is important for Althusser's or Balibar's argument. References to Volumes Two and Three are to this English edition (Vol. II and Vol. III). The occasional references to the German text are given to the edition by Dietz Verlag of the Werke of Marx and Engels, in which Das Kapital occupies the twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth volumes (Bd. XXIII, Bd. XXIV and Bd. XXV). Quotations and references to the Theories of Surplus Value are taken from the English translation of the Dietz Verlag edition of 1956-66, two volumes out of three of which have been published by Lawrence and Wishart in 1964 and 1969 (Vol. I and Vol. II). The 1857 Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie have been translated from the German text and references are given to the volume with the latter title published by Dietz Verlag in 1953, referred to as Grundrisse, and where applicable to Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, translated from the Grundrisse by Jack Cohen and Eric Hobsbawm (Lawrence and Wishart, 1964) referred to as PCEF. Other references are explained when they occur. Ben Brewster page 7 Foreword to the Italian Edition 1. This edition of Reading Capital differs from the first edition (Lire le Capital, Vols. I and II, Maspero, Paris 1965) in several respects. On the one hand, it is an abridged edition, since we have omitted a number of important contributions (the papers of Rancière, Macherey and Establet) in order to allow the book to be published in a smaller format. On the other, it is a revised and corrected edition, and therefore in part a new edition: several pages, notably in Balibar's text, were published in French for the first time in this edition. However, the corrections (cuts and additions) we have made to the original text concern neither the terminology nor the categories and concepts used, nor their internal relations, nor in consequence the general interpretation of Marx's work that we have given. This edition of Reading Capital, although different from the first, and abridged and improved, therefore strictly reproduces and represents the theoretical positions of the original text. 2. This last comment was a necessary one. Indeed, out of respect to the reader and simple honesty, we have maintained an integral respect for the terminology and the philosophical positions of the first edition, although we should now find it indispensable to correct them at two particular points. Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the 'structuralist' ideology (we said very clearly that the 'combination' to be found in Marx 'has nothing to do with a combinatory'), despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to 'structuralism' (determination in the last instance, domination, overdetermination, production process, etc.), the terminology we employed was too close in many respects to the 'structuralist' terminology not to give rise to an ambiguity. With a very few exceptions (some very perceptive critics have made the distinction), our interpretation of Marx has generally been recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion, as 'structuralist'. We believe that despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to the 'structuralist' ideology. It is our hope that the reader will be able to bear this claim in mind, to verify it and to subscribe to it. On the other hand, we now have every reason to think that, despite all page 8 the sharpening it received, one of the theses I advanced as to the nature of philosophy did express a certain 'theoreticist' tendency. More precisely, the definition of philosophy as a theory of theoretical practice (given in For Marx and again in Part One of Reading Capital ) is unilateral and therefore inaccurate. In this case, it is not merely a question of terminological ambiguity, but one of an error in the conception itself. To define philosophy in a unilateral way as the Theory of theoretical practices (and in consequence as a Theory of the differences between the practices) is a formulation that could not help but induce either 'speculative' or 'positivist' theoretical effects and echoes. The consequences of this error in the definition of philosophy can be recognized and delimited at a few particular points in Part One of Reading Capital. But with the exception of a few minor details, these consequences do not affect the analysis that we have made of Capital ('The Object of Capital ' and Balibar's paper). In a forthcoming series of studies, we shall have the opportunity of rectifying the terminology and correcting the definition of philosophy. Louis Althusser NOTE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION For the conjuncture in which this text was prepared (1965), for its character as a theoretico-ideological intervention in that conjuncture, and for its theoretical limits, lacunae and errors, the reader should refer to the pres- entation, 'To My English Readers,' in For Marx. Louis Althusser, 17 May 1970 page 9 To the citizen Maurice La Châtre Dear Citizen, I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of Das Kapital as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working-class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else. This is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once. This is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. Believe me, dear citizen Your devoted, KARL MARX London, 18 March 1872. page 10 [blank] page 11 Part I From Capital to Marx's Philosophy Louis Althusser page 12 [blank] page 13 The following papers were delivered in the course of a seminar on Capital held at the École Normale Supérieure early in 1965. They bear the mark of these circumstances: not only in their construction, their rhythm, their didactic or oral style, but also and above all in their discrepancies, the repetitions, hesitations and uncertain steps in their investigations. We could, of course, have gone over them at our leisure, corrected them one against the other, reduced the margin of variation between them, unified their terminology, their hypotheses and their conclusions to the best of our ability, and set out their contents in the systematic framework of a single discourse -- in other words, we could have tried to make a finished work out of them. But rather than pretending they are what they should have been, we prefer to present them for what they are: precisely, incomplete texts, the mere beginnings of a reading. 1 Of course, we have all read, and all do read Capital. For almost a century, we have been able to read it every day, transparently, in the dramas and dreams of our history, in its disputes and conflicts, in the defeats and victories of the workers' movement which is our only hope and our destiny. Since we 'came into the world', we have read Capital constantly in the writings and speeches of those who have read it for us, well or ill, both the dead and the living, Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, Stalin, Gramsci, the leaders of the workers' organizations, their supporters and opponents: philosophers, economists, politicians. We have read bits of it, the 'fragments' which the conjuncture had 'selected' for us. We have even all, more or less, read Volume One, from 'commodities' to the 'expropriation of the expropriators'. But some day it is essential to read Capital to the letter. To read the text itself, complete, all four volumes, line by line, to return ten times to the first chapters, or to the schemes of simple reproduction and reproduction on an enlarged scale, before coming down from the arid table-lands and plateaus page 14 of Volume Two into the promised land of profit, interest and rent. And it is essential to read Capital not only in its French translation (even Volume One in Roy's translation, which Marx revised, or rather, rewrote), but also in the German original, at least for the fundamental theoretical chapters and all the passages where Marx's key concepts come to the surface. That is how we decided to read Capital. The studies that emerged from this project are no more than the various individual protocols of this reading: each having cut the peculiar oblique path that suited him through the immense forest of this Book. And we present them in their immediate form without making any alterations so that all the risks and advantages of this adventure are reproduced; so that the reader will be able to find in them new-born the experience of a reading; and so that he in turn will be dragged in the wake of this first reading into a second one which will take us still further. 2 But as there is no such thing as an innocent reading, we must say what reading we are guilty of. We were all philosophers. We did not read Capital as economists, as