By MARCELLO MUSTO*
The word capitalism was rarely used by Marx, and was also absent from the first great classics of political economy.
Although Karl Marx is considered the foremost critic of capitalism, he rarely used the term. The word was also absent from the early classics of political economy. Not only did it not appear in the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, it was not used by either John Stuart Mill or Marx’s generation of contemporary economists. They used the term capital—common since the 13th century—but not the term capitalism, which is derived from it.
The term capitalism did not appear until the mid-19th century. It was a word used mainly by those who opposed the existing order of things, which also had a much more political than economic connotation. Some socialist thinkers were the first to use this word, always in a derogatory way. In France, in a reprint of the famous work Work organization, Louis Blanc argued that the appropriation of capital – and, through capital itself, of political power – was monopolized by the wealthy classes.
These classes concentrated it in their own hands and thus restricted access to it for other social classes. Far from trying to overthrow the economic foundations of bourgeois society, Louis Blanc declared himself in favor of “the suppression of capitalism, but not of capital.” In Germany, the economist Albert Schäffle, ridiculed with the epithet “armchair socialist,” in his book Capitalism and socialism, defended state reforms to alleviate the bitter conflicts that were spreading widely, due to the “hegemony of capitalism”.
From its first use, there was no shared definition of the concept of capitalism. However, this difficulty changed later, when the term spread widely and gained popularity. The works Modern capitalism, by Werner Sombart, and The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, by Max Weber, both published at the beginning of the 20th century, were intended to show – despite some differences – the essence of capitalism in the spirit of initiative, in cold rational calculation and in the systematic search for personal benefit.
They contributed greatly to the popularization of this term. However, it was above all thanks to the spread of the Marxist critique of society that the word capitalism – to which the Encyclopedia Britannica did not dedicate an entry until 1922 – he acquired a citizenship card in the social sciences.
Furthermore, after having been marginalized, if not explicitly rejected, by the theoretical discourse of the main currents of political economy, it was through Marx's work that the concept of capitalism gained centrality even in this discipline. Instead of being conceived as synonymous with political decision-making practices aimed at benefiting the dominant classes, through Marx it acquired the meaning of a specific system of production, based on the private ownership of factories and the creation of surplus value.
Marx's unwitting contribution to the propagation of the term "capitalism" was somewhat paradoxical. Completely absent from the books he published, even in his manuscripts the term Capitalism was used very sporadically. It only appeared on five occasions, always and passant, and without him ever providing a specific description of the expression. Marx probably considered that this notion was not sufficiently focused on political economy, but rather was linked to a critique of society that was more moral than scientific. Indeed, when he had to choose the title of his magnum opus, chose to use the term “capital” and not “capitalism”.
Instead of this word, he preferred others that he considered more appropriate to define the existing economic and social system. In floorplans, he referred to the “mode of production of capital”, while a few years later, starting with the Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63, he adopted the formula “capitalist mode of production”. This expression also appears in the First Book of The capital, whose famous opening paragraph reads: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production predominates appears as an immense collection of commodities.” From then on, in the French translation, as well as in the second German edition, of Volume I of The capital, Marx also used the formula “capitalist system”. He repeated it in the preliminary drafts of the famous letter to Vera Zasulich in 1881.
In these and several other writings on the critique of political economy, Karl Marx did not provide a concise and systematic definition of what the capitalist mode of production was. The modus operandi of capitalism can only be fully understood by connecting the multiple descriptions of its dynamics contained in The capital.
In Volume I, Marx stated that “the characteristic feature of the capitalist epoch is the fact that labor power also assumes the form of a commodity belonging to the worker himself, while his labor assumes the form of wage labor.” The crucial difference with the past is that workers do not sell the products of their labor—which under capitalism are no longer their property—but their labor itself.
For Marx, the capitalist production process is based on the separation of labor power and working conditions, a condition that capitalism “reproduces and perpetuates” to ensure the permanent exploitation of the proletariat. This mode of production “forces the worker to constantly sell his labor power in order to live and constantly allows the capitalist to buy it in order to enrich himself.”
Furthermore, Marx emphasized that capitalism differs from all previous modes of productive organization for another peculiar reason. It consists in the “unity of the labor process and the process of value creation.” He described the capitalist production process as a mode of production that has a dual nature: “on the one hand, it is a process of social labor for the manufacture of a product, on the other hand, it is a process of valorization of capital.”
What drives the capitalist mode of production is “not use value or pleasure, but exchange value and [its] multiplication.” The capitalist was described by Marx as a “fanatic of the valorization of value,” a being who “unscrupulously compels humanity to produce for the sake of producing.”
In this way, the capitalist mode of production generates the expansion and concentration of the proletariat, together with an unprecedented level of exploitation of the workforce.
Finally, although it certainly focuses on economics, Marx's analysis of the capitalist system was not directed exclusively at the relations of production, but constituted a comprehensive critique of bourgeois society that included the political dimension, social relations, legal structures and ideology, as well as the implications that they determine for each individual.
Therefore, he did not consider capital as “a thing, but as a specific social relation of production, belonging to a specific historical formation of society”. Therefore, it is not eternal and can be replaced – through the class struggle – by a different socio-economic organization.
*Marcello Musto is professor of sociology at York University (Canada). Author, among other books, of The Old Marx: An Intellectual Biography of His Last Years (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/4i40IZv]
Translation: Eleutério FS Prado.
Originally published on the portal Without permission.
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