NOTES AND INDEXES
Residual editorial notes
25 editorial note entries had no resolved in-text occurrence and remain here so no source note definition is discarded.
[24] For an assessment of Darimon's De la réforme des banques see also Marx's letter to Engels of January 10, 1857 (present edition, Vol. 40, p. 90).— 51
[26] "La propriété c'est le vol" (Property is theft) is the main thesis of Proudhon's Qu'est ce que la propriété? The theory of "free credit" was expounded by Proudhon in Gratuité du crédit. Discussion entre M. Fr. Bastiat et M. Proudhon, Paris, 1850, pp. 66-74. For Marx's critique of this theory see the Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63, "Revenue and Its Sources" (present edition, Vol. 32).—61
[36] Marx means Smith's arguments (in the opening part of Chapter VI, Book I, of his work) that "in that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land" the exchange value of commodities was determined by the amount of labour time required for their production. Marx uses here the term "production costs" in the sense of "the immanent production costs of the commodity" (see Note 29).—93
[47] Marx refers to Excerpt Notebook XIV, which he compiled in London, approximately in August and September 1851.—115
[59] This refers to page 2 of the excerpt notebook Marx filled in Brussels approximately in April and May 1845. The page in question contains excerpts from pages 31-73 of Ferrier's book DM gouvernement considéré dans ses rapports avec le commerce, Paris, 1805. Ferrier says there that silver, when mined, is a commodity, for it is the object of the direct demand of those who buy it. However, he goes on to say, "silver ceases to be a commodity as soon as it becomes money, for it turns into an indispensable mediator between production and consumption and can no longer directly satisfy any need" (p. 35).—148
[61] In the manuscript, this quotation from Ganilh, although clearly referring to the "Chapter on Money", is written in the form of a note or comment in Notebook II on the opening page of the "Chapter on Capital".—151
[70] Under the conditions of a simple commodity economy, to which this refers, the exchange value of labour and the value of the products of labour coincide (at this stage Marx still speaks of the value of labour rather than that of labour power). In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he points out that the study of the higher, capitalist stage of commodity production should provide the answer to the question: "how does production on the basis of exchange value solely determined by labour time lead to the result that the exchange value of labour is less than the exchange value of its product?" (see present edition, Vol. 29).—175
[71] This refers to Bastiat's attempt wholly to reduce the exchange of commodities, both under the conditions of barter and under commodity-money circulation, to an exchange of "services" between farmers, bakers, shoe-makers, weavers, machine builders, teachers, physicians, lawyers, etc. See Fr. Bastiat, Harmonies économiques, 2nd ed., Paris, 1851, pp. 87-169. The theory of services, which Bastiat and other vulgar economists opposed to the labour theory of value, was meant to gloss over the capitalists' appropriation of the surplus value produced by wage labourers, and demonstrate the "harmony" of economic interests under capitalism. Marx wrote: "Because therefore in the purchase of services the specific relation between labour and capital is in no way involved, being either completely obliterated or altogether absent, it is naturally the favourite form used by Say, Bastiat and their consorts to express the relation between capital and labour" (see present edition, Vol. 34).—175
[77] The Roman numeral indicates the page number in a notebook which has not reached us.—192
[79] This refers to the critique of Proudhon's views on the origin and relation of use value and exchange value Marx gave in The Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter I, § 1. Proudhon considered the problem in isolation from the specific historical conditions of the development of commodity and capitalist production, basing his analysis on an arbitrary contraposition of the abstract concepts of abundance and scarcity, and utility and estimation (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 111-20).—198
[99] In his synopsis of Ricardo's book On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation (April 1851, Excerpt Notebook VIII), Marx says: "Most of Ricardo's opponents, like e.g. Wakefield, assert that he cannot explain what the surplus is. Thus suppose that a manufacturer lays out £30 for raw material, £20 for machinery, and £50 for wages. A total of £100. He sells his commodity for £110. Where does the £10 come from?" Ricardo's failure to analyse the source of surplus value is also noted by Marx in the manuscripts of 1861-63 (see present edition, Vol. 32).— 252
[103] 03 In Capital, Vol. I, chapters IX, X and XI Marx analysed in detail the capitalists' tendency to prolong the working day beyond all reasonable limits. He discussed the history of English factory legislation, in particular the struggles over the Ten Hours' Bill (see Note 88). In describing the condition of the English working class, he made extensive use of the reports of Factory Inspector Leonard Horner, who upheld the workers' interests (Reports of the Inspectors of Factories to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1847-56). In his reports, Horner cited numerous infringements of the Ten Hours' Bill by factory owners, expressed, in particular, in the introduction of the so-called Relay System, which included night work and led to the prolongation of the working day.— 261
[106] 06 This refers to the 3rd edition of Ricardo's On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, London, 1821, pp. 325-26.— 266
[109] Ricardo had "production".—276
[116] On the confusion of the rate of surplus value with the rate of profit by Carey and other bourgeois economists see Capital, Vol. I, Ch. IX and Vol. Ill, Ch. VIII (present edition, vols. 35 and 37).— 296
[117] In 1786, the government of William Pitt, Jr., set up a special sinking fund to repay the growing national debt by means of taxes. The project, based on recommendations by Dr. Richard Price, provided for the government to draw loans on simple interest and grant credits on compound interest. Far from alleviating the financial difficulties, the operation of the fund caused serious complications in the sphere of government credit. In 1825 the fund was practically liquidated. For details see Capital, Vol. Ill, Chapter XXIV, and Marx's article "Mr. Disraeli's Budget", written in April 1858 (present edition, vols. 37 and 15).—298
[121] This refers to Excerpt Notebook XII (July 1851).—324
[122] T h e last sentence is Marx's rendering of the following passage from Ravenstone's Thoughts on the Funding System, and Its Effects, London, 1824, p. 46: "Where the labour of nine is required for the maintenance of ten, only one-tenth of the gross produce can be given to rent. Where one man's labour is sufficient for the maintenance of five, four-fifths will go to rent, or the other charges of the state, which can only be provided for out of the surplus produce of industry. The first proportion seems to have prevailed in England at the time of the Conquest, the last is that which actually takes place. As only one-fifth part of the people are now employed in the cultivation of the land..." (Marx refers to his Excerpt Notebook IX).— 325
[126] The page numbers refer to Marx's London Excerpt Notebook XII.— 344
[127] Should be: 4 5 . - 3 4 4 128 T h e presuppositions being what they are, the value newly added by living labour (10 thaler) would actually constitute 1/9, not Vio, of the total value of the product, as the value of the lb. of twist has decreased from 5 thaler to 4 V2 thaler and the total value of 20 lbs of twist has, accordingly, declined from 100 to 90 thaler.—360
[132] In working on this manuscript, Marx attached great importance to the logical and methodological aspects of economic research. In this connection, he repeatedly had recourse to Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik and even conceived the idea of writing a special work comparing his own materialist method with Hegel's idealist method and bringing out the rational features of Hegel's dialectics. On January 16, 1858, he wrote to Engels: "I should very much like to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified" (see present edition, Vol. 40, p. 249). In 1860, Marx copied out a number of passages from Wissenschaft der Logik in one of his notebooks. He never wrote a special work on Hegel's method, but he did compare that method with his own, in his Afterword to the second German edition of Volume I of Capital (1873).—379
[135] Demotes—a commoner assigned to a deme, a unit of local government in Attica (district of ancient Greece). Several demes constituted a phyle. Under the administrative reform of Cleisthenes (6th century B.C.) there were 10 phyles in Attica.—406
[138] "Panis et circenses"—"bread and circuses". Marx means the heyday of the Roman slave-holding state, when the lower strata of the urban population, the plebs, were excluded from production and lived largely on sops from the State and rich slave-holders, who granted "bread and circuses" to them (Juvenal, Satires, X, 81).—424, 523
[143] For Marx's comments on this proposition of Malthus' see the manuscripts of 1861-63 (present edition, Vol. 32).—467
[148] p o r Marx's comments on this proposition of Wakefield's see the manuscripts of 1861-63 (present edition, Vol. 32).—502