The Theoretic Logic Of Capital

In "The Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"(1859), Marx formulated his doctrine in a standard way, and claims that the standard formulation is also the guideline of his writing Capital wherein Marx applies his own method to the analysis of the contradictions inherent in the agent of production and their operations in connection with capitalism, a specific pattern of society.Based on deep understanding and exact reading of the text of Capital, attempt is made to show that Capital offers a logically strict argument for the claim that the operations of the contradictions inherent in the agent of capitalist production lead to the consequence that capitalism will necessarily be replace by socialism, an "ironclad necessity" which is "becoming actual". The thesis contains two parts. Part one (Chapter1) is an explanation of the theoretical problems in consideration, and Part two (Chapter2—4), the main body of the thesis, contains3chapters in correlation with3volumes of Capital, dealing with the problem how the theoretical logic of Capital represents the theoretical logic of Marx's doctrine in general.In Chapter2, it is shown that the first volume of Capital takes individual capital as its subject and examines the contradictions inherent in the micro-agent of capitalist production and their operations. The production process of micro-agent in capitalist production is the process of producing surplus values, its inherent relations is essentially that workers are exploited by capitalists. Material base, or productive means like machines, determines capitalist production to be socialized labor; while corporation and factory, the social forms of the micro-agent of capitalist production, are owned by capitalists, the characters of material base and the social forms determine that the basic contradictions inherent in the micro-agent of capitalist production is the oppositions of socialized labor to the private ownership of productive force and relations. Working class, running the material base, is representative of the socialized productive force; capitalists, the owner of the micro-agent of capitalist production, are representative of capitalist relation of production. The contradiction between the force and relations of capitalist production is incarnated as the class contradiction between proletariat and capitalists. In order to have more surplus values, capitalists seek to promote productivity, to improve the organic constitution of capitals, and to shorten the necessary time of labor of the workers. In consequence the amount of workers tend to be excessive and the contradictions between proletariat and capitalists are intensified. With the increasing amassment of capital accumulation, monopoly turns to be the fetter to the modes of production which once went together with the monopoly and flourished under the monopoly. The amassment of productive resources and the socialization of labor come to be incompatible with the crust of capitalism. The crust is going to be broken. The knell of private ownership of capitalism is going to toll. The depriving people are going to be deprived.Chapter3is dedicated to show that volume2of Capital has a special status in the logical structure of all three volumes, it is a bridge across the first and the third volumes. In volume2, Marx discloses the contradictions between the micro-agent and macro-agent of production and their operations by means of an analysis of the dynamic of capital—reproduction. Production is a process of circular motion, in the process of reproduction of individual capital and total social capital, the transformation of their material forms and the realization of value proportion are subject to a certain conditions. Because capitalist production is socialized but the resources of production are privately owned, the result is the contradiction between the ordered organization within a separate agent of production and the disorder of social productions taking together—the contradiction between micro and macro agents with regard to reproduction, the conditions of reproduction in capitalist society have to be satisfied violently by means of periodic crises of economy. The conditions of social reproduction cannot be satisfied smoothly and the periodic crises cannot be eliminated until communist society based on public ownership of productive resources become real in future.Chapter4is a demonstration that volumes3of Capital focalizes on the contradictions inherent in the macro-agent of capitalist production and their operations, it is a synthetic inquiry into the motion process of capitalist production as a whole. It examines not only various specific patterns of macro-agent of production and diverse specific forms of capital, but also a number of economic categories like price of production, profit, average profit, interests, rent of land. The formation of price of production and average profit indicates that the two great social groups, the proletariat and the capitalists, are in opposition with regard to economic interests, an opposition being visible in an essential relation within social agent of production—the relation of distribution. Marx thinks that incomes of variations are relevant to the social forms of social agent of capitalist production, it is these forms and its internal relations of distribution which make the whole society separated into two great classes of opposed economic interest. The class opposition in capitalist society as a whole is displayed as follows: in the whole society, all the surplus labors of the working class are totally appropriated by all the capitalists without any compensation. If the micro-agent of production examined in volume1can be said to be the condition of immediate capitalist production and exploitation, then macro-agent examined in volumes3would be the social condition of capitalist production and exploitation. The contradictions within capitalist production can only be lightened temporally in the way of periodic crises, indeed the real impediment to capitalist production is capital itself. The only way of eliminating crises is the elimination of capitalist system.