Marx's Grundrisse: Footnotes

19. See above, n. 28.

* The transition to the relation of supply, demand, prices cannot be made yet, as their development proper presupposes capital. Should not demand and, supply, in so far as they are abstract categories and do not yet express any particular economic relations, perhaps be examined already together with simple circulation or production?

** We saw earlier that the capital realization process presupposes the prior development of the simple production process. This will be the case with demand and supply as well, to the extent that simple exchange presupposes a need for the product. The (direct) producer's own need as the need for others' demand. In the course of this development itself it will be seen what has to be presupposed to it, and all this is then to be thrown into the first chapters.

*** Of course, all production aimed at direct use value decreases the number of those engaged in exchange, as well as the sum of exchange values thrown into circulation, and above all the production of surplus values. Hence the tendency of capital (1) continually to enlarge the periphery of circulation; (2) to transform it at all points into production spurred on by capital. [ed. note: Marx wrote this sentence in English. The word 'spurred' is a suggested emendation in place of the word 'occurred' which appears in the original text.]

* The role played by luxury in antiquity in contrast to its role among the moderns, to be alluded to later.

22. J. R. MacCulloch (1789-1864), statistician and economist, editor of the Scotsman from 1818 to 1828, Professor of Political Economy in London from 1828 to 1832, 'past master in pretentious cretinism', 'at once the vulgarizer of Ricardian economics and the most pitiful image of its dissolution' (Marx).

23. MacCulloch, The Principles of Political Economy, Edinburgh, 1825, pp. 166-90.

24. James Mill, Éléments d'économie politique, Paris, 1823, pp. 250-60. 25. See above, n. 33.

26. A reference to the pamphlet The Currency Question. The Gemini Letters, London, 1844, written by two upholders of the currency doctrines of the Birmingham banker Thomas Attwood, T. B. Wright and J. Harlow.

27. See Marx' Introduction, n. 17.

28. Malthus, Principles, p. 405; Definitions, pp. 258-9. Sismondi, Études, Vol. I, p. 61 n.

29. 'Socialistically': in the manner of the early utopian socialists, in particular John Gray; see above, pp. 153-6.

30. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 80-85.

31. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, pp. 244-6.

32. Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) was a socialist journalist and agitator active in the 1820s. In his economic works he developed the socialist implications in Ricardo's theory of value, in particular in Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825) and Popular Political Economy (1827).

33. Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy, pp. 245-6.

34. The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, London, 1821, pp. 17-18.

35. An Inquiry into those Principles Respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption Lately Advocated by Mr Malthus, anonymous pamphlet, London, 1821, p. 59.

36. Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy, p. 238. 37. ibid., p. 246.

37. ibid., p. 246.

38. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, pp. 266, 301, 302, 315, 372-82, in part paraphrased by Marx.

39. ibid., p. 405, note by the editor, William Otter.

40. ibid., p. 414, note by Malthus

* It is quite the same with the demand created by production itself for raw material, semi-finished goods, machinery, means of communication, and for the auxiliary materials consumed in production, such as dyes, coal, grease, soap, etc. This effective, exchange-value-positing demand is adequate and sufficient as long as the producers exchange among themselves. Its inadequacy shows itself as soon as the anal product encounters its limit in direct and final consumption. This semblance, too, which drives beyond the correct proportion, is founded in the essence of capital, which, as will be developed more closely in connection with competition, is something which repels itself, is many capitals mutually quite indifferent to one another. In so far as one capitalist buys from others, buys commodities, or sells, they are within the simple exchange relation; and do not relate to one another as capital. The correct (imaginary) proportion in which they must exchange with one another in order to realize themselves at the end as capital lies outside their relation to one another.

** Since value forms the foundation of capital, and since it therefore necessarily exists only through exchange for counter-value, it thus necessarily repels itself from itself. A universal capital, one without alien capitals confronting it, with which it exchanges—and from the present standpoint, nothing confronts it but wage labourers or itself—is therefore a non-thing. The reciprocal repulsion between capitals is already contained in capital as realized exchange value.

41. See above, note 24.

42. Say, Traité d'économie politique, pp. 142-56.

43. Marx wrote 'not else' in English here.

44. Bastiat et Proudhon, Gratuité du crédit, pp.

* It is beside the point here that capital, in practice as well as in general tendency, directly employs price, as e.g. in the truck system, to defraud necessary labour, and to reduce it below the standard given by nature as well as by a specific state of society. We must always presuppose here that the wage paid is economically just, i.e. that it is determined by the general laws of economics. The contradictions have to follow here from the general relations themselves, and not from fraud by individual capitalists. The further forms which this assumes in reality belong in the doctrine of wages.

45. For Bastiats view, see Gratuité du crédit, pp. 127-32.

46. Marx wrote 4 9/20 thalers when he meant to write 4 10/20 thalers. This naturally affects the subsequent calculations, which should be amended as follows: 80 lb. at 4 10/20 thalers a pound = 360 thalers. 360 thalers + 90 = 270. 270 216 = 54. 360 54 = 306. 54 represents 15% profit on 360 thalers.

47. The substitution of "wheat" for "grain" here and at subsequent points has no bearing on Marx's argument. He uses the two words interchangeably.

48. Samuel Jones Loyd (1796-1883, banker and economist, expert witness before the Parliamentary Commissions of 1833, 1840, 1848, and 1857, author of numerous pamphlets on money and banking, leading theorist of the Currency School in the controversy over Peel's Act of 1844, created Baron Overstone in 1860). The source of this quotation has not been found; it is most probably from the Evidence Presented to the House of Commons Select Committee of 1857, ed. J. R. MacCulloch, London, 1858.

49. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, pp. 344-7.

50. This sentence is in English in the original.

51. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, p. 139.

52. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, p. 600: 'This universal Notion contains the three moments: universality, particularity, and individuality.'