Back of the cover and page 1 of Notebook M containing the Introduction
Thus when we speak of production, we always have in mind production at a definite stage of social development, production by social individuals. It might therefore seem that, in order to speak of production at all, we must either trace the historical process of development in its various phases, or else declare at the very beginning that we are dealing with one particular historical epoch, for instance with modern bourgeois production, which is indeed our real subject-matter. All epochs of production, however, have certain features in common, certain common determinations. Production in general is an abstraction, but a reasonable abstraction in so far as it actually emphasises and defines the common aspects and thus spares us the need of repetition. Yet this general aspect, or the common element which is brought to light by comparison, is itself multiply divided and diverges into different determinations. Some features are found in all epochs, others are common to a few epochs. The most modern epoch and the most ancient will have [certain] determinations in common. Without them production is inconceivable. But although the most highly developed languages have laws and categories in common with the most primitive ones, it is precisely what constitutes their development that distinguishes them from this general and common element. The determinations which apply to production in general must rather be set apart in order not to allow the unity which stems from the very fact that the subject, mankind, and the object, nature, are the same — to obscure the essential difference. On failure to perceive this difference rests, for instance, the entire wisdom of modern economists who are trying to prove the eternity and harmony of the existing social relations. For example, no production is possible without an instrument of production, even if this instrument is simply the hand. None is possible without past, accumulated labour, even if this labour is merely the skill accumulated and concentrated in the hand of the savage by repeated [M-3] exercise. Capital is among other things also an instrument of production, also past, objectified labour. Consequently [modern economists say] capital is a universal and eternal relation given by nature — that is, provided one omits precisely those specific factors which turn the "instrument of production" or "accumulated labour" into capital. The whole history of the relations of production therefore appears, for instance in Carey, as a falsification maliciously brought about by the governments.
If there is no production in general, there is also no general production. Production is always a particular branch of production — e.g., agriculture, cattle-breeding, manufacture, etc.—or it is
3* the totality [of production]. Political economy, however, is not technology. The relation of the general determinations of production at a given social stage to the particular forms of production is to be set forth elsewhere (later).
Finally, production is not only particular production, but it is invariably a definite social body, a social subject, that is active in a wider or narrower totality of branches of production. The relation of the scientific presentation to the actual movement does not yet belong here either. Production in general. Particular branches of production. Totality of production.
It is fashionable to preface economic works with a general part — and it is just this that appears under the heading "Production" (see for instance J. St. Mill(1))—which deals with the general conditions of all production.
This general part comprises or purports to comprise:
1. The conditions without which production is impossible. This means in fact only that the essential moments of all production are indicated. But actually this boils down, as we shall see, to a few very simple definitions, which are expanded into trivial tautologies.
2. The conditions which promote production to a larger or smaller degree, as in the case of Adam Smith's progressive and stagnant state of society.(2) In Smith's work this [proposition] has its value as an aperçu, but to raise it to scientific significance an inquiry into the degree of productivity at various periods in the development of individual nations would be necessary. Such an inquiry lies outside the actual framework of the subject, yet those aspects which are relevant to it must be dealt with in discussing competition, accumulation, etc. The answer in its general form amounts to the general statement that an industrial nation is at the height of its production when it is at all at the height of its historical development. IN FACT, a nation is at the height of its industrial development so long as gaining, not gain, is its principal aim. In this respect the Yankees are ahead of the English. Or else that for example certain racial characteristics, climates, natural conditions, such as maritime position, fertility of the soil, etc., are more favourable to production than others. This again amounts to the •tautology that wealth is the easier to produce the more— subjectively and objectively — its elements are available.
[M-4] But all that is not really what the economists are concerned with in this general part. It is rather — see for example Mill(3)—that production, as distinct from distribution, etc., is to be presented as governed by eternal natural laws independent of history, and then bourgeois relations are quietly substituted as irrefutable natural laws of society in abstracto. This is the more or less conscious purpose of the whole procedure. As regards distribution, however, men are said to have indeed indulged in all sorts of arbitrary action. Quite apart from the crude separation of production and distribution and from their real relation, it should be obvious from the outset that, however dissimilar [the mode of] distribution at the various stages of society may be, it must be possible, just as in the case of production, to [single out] common determinations, and it must be likewise possible to confuse or efface all historical differences in general human laws. For example, the slave, the serf, the wage worker, all receive an amount of food enabling them to exist as a slave, serf or wage worker. The conqueror who lives by tribute, or the official who lives by taxes, or the landowner who lives by rent, or the monk who lives by alms, or the Lévite who lives by tithes, all receive a portion of the social product which is determined by laws different from those that determine the portion of the slave, etc. The two principal items which all economists include in this section are: (1) property and (2) safeguarding of property by the judiciary, police, etc.
To this, only a very brief reply is needed: Regarding (1): All production is appropriation of nature by the individual within and by means of a definite form of society. In this sense it is a tautology to say that property (appropriation) is a condition of production. But it is ridiculous to make a leap from this to a definite form of property, e.g. private property (this is moreover an antithetical form, which presupposes non-property as a condition, too). History shows, on the contrary, that common property (e.g., among the Indians, Slavs, ancient Celts, etc.) is the earlier form, a form which in the shape of communal property continues to play a significant role for a long time. The question whether wealth develops better under this or under that form of property is not yet under discussion here. But it is tautological to say that where no form of property exists there can be no production and hence no society either. Appropriation which appropriates nothing is a contradictio in subjecto.
Regarding (2): Safeguarding of what has been acquired, etc. If these trivialities are reduced to their real content, they say more than their preachers realise, namely, that each form of production produces its own legal relations, forms of government, etc. The crudity and lack of comprehension lies precisely in that organically [M-5] coherent factors are brought into haphazard relation with one another, i.e., into a merely speculative connection. The bourgeois economists only have in view that production proceeds more smoothly with modern police than, e.g., under club-law. They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger survives, in a different form, even in their "constitutional State".
When the social conditions corresponding to a particular stage of production are just emerging or are already in a state of dissolution, disturbances naturally occur in production, although these may be of varying degree and varying effect.
To recapitulate: there are determinations which are common to all stages of production and are fixed by reasoning as general; the so-called general conditions of all production, however, are nothing but these abstract moments, which do not define any of the actual historical stages of production.