Hari Kumar wrote, > > I am not quite sure if you are simply saying there was indeed a 'young > Marx" that somehow got lost in the writing of his 'maturity' and Capital.
Good point! Yes and no. I reject Louis Althusser's assertion of an "epistemological break" and find a great deal of the "young Marx" in the "mature Marx." Marx, however, was a voracious reader and observer and it would be inconceivable that he didn't learn anything new and important over the course of his life. The most important thing that Marx learned is explained in Engels's Introduction to the 1891 reprint of Marx's 1847 lecture, "Wage Labour and Capital": My alterations centre about one point. According to the original reading, > the worker sells his labour for wages, which he receives from the > capitalist; according to the present text, he sells his labour-power. And > for this change, I must render an explanation: to the workers, in order > that they may understand that we are not quibbling or word-juggling, but > are dealing here with one of the most important points in the whole range > of political economy; to the bourgeois, in order that they may convince > themselves how greatly the uneducated workers, who can be easily made to > grasp the most difficult economic analyses, excel our supercilious > “cultured" folk, for whom such ticklish problems remain insoluble their > whole life long. The distinction between labour and labour power was, of course, related to Marx's analysis of surplus value (*Mehrwert)* and the consequent division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour. The word *Mehrwert --* as distinct from* Mehrwerth --* is a neologism, used by Marx for the first time in the *Grundrisse* and indicating for his own edification the essential Englishness of the expression. Marx's *Mehrwert* was a translation of surplus value and not the other way around! Why the peculiar notion? Neither *Mehrwert* nor *Mehrarbeit* appear in Marx's work prior to his 1857 notebooks. The term surplus labour, however, appears in Marx's 1851 notebooks in his notes on *The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties*. That was, in effect, the spark that ignited Marx's own theory of surplus value. So the young Marx did not yet have the developed theory of surplus value that the mature Marx is famous for. That theory was, however, compatible enough with the younger Marx's theory of labour that Engels could credibly substitute labour power for labour in the reprinting of the 1847 lecture. Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30636): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30636 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106436332/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
