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In Defense of Marxism:4

The Second Congress
A lot of nonsense has been written
about the famous Second Congress of the
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
(RSDLP) without any of it explaining the
reasons for the split. Every revolutionary
party has to go through a fairly long stage
of propaganda work and cadre building.
This period, inevitably brings about a series
of habits and ways of thinking which, over
a period of time, can become an obstacle
to transforming the party into a mass party.
If the party proves incapable of changing
these methods, when the objective situation
changes, then it becomes an ossified sect.
At the Second Congress the struggle
between the two wings of the Iskra group,
which caught everyone by surprise,
including those who were directly
involved, was due to the incompatibility
between Lenin’s position, which was that
of consolidating a revolutionary mass
party with some degree of discipline and
efficiency, and that of the members of the
old “Emancipation of Labor Group”, who
felt comfortable in their routine, saw no
need for any changes and who put down
Lenin’s position to questions of personality,
a desire to be in the limelight, “Bonapartist
tendencies”, “ultra-centralism” and all the
rest of it.
Generally speaking it is a law of
history that petit-bourgeois tendencies are
organically incapable of separating political
questions from personal questions. Thus,
when Lenin, for entirely justified reasons,
proposed removing Axelrod, Zasulich
and Potresov from the Editorial Board of
Iskra, they took it as a personal insult and
caused a scandal. Unfortunately, the “old”
activists managed to impress Trotsky, who,
being young and impressionable, did not
understand the situation and accepted at
face value the accusations that were being
made by Zasulich, Axelrod and the others.
The so-called “soft” tendency represented
by Martov emerged as a minority and
after the Conference refused to abide by
its decisions or to take part in the Central
Committee or the Editorial Board. All
Lenin’s efforts to find a compromise
solution after the Congress failed because of
the opposition of the minority. Plekhanov,
who at the Congress had supported Lenin,
proved incapable of standing up to the
pressures of his old comrades and friends.
In the end, in early 1904, Lenin found that
he had to organize “majority Committees”
(Bolsheviks) to salvage something from
the wreckage of the Congress. The split
in the party had become an accomplished
fact.
Initially Trotsky had supported
the minority against Lenin. This has led
to the false account that Trotsky was a
“Menshevik”. However, at the Second
Congress, Bolshevism and Menshevism
had not yet emerged as clearly defined
political tendencies. Only a year later, in
1904, did political differences begin to
emerge between the two tendencies, and
these differences had nothing whatsoever
to do with the question of “centralism”
or “no centralism”. They were about
the key question facing the Revolution:
collaboration with the liberal bourgeoisie
or class independence. As soon as the
political differences emerged, Trotsky
broke with the Mensheviks and remained
formally independent from both factions
until 1917.
Trotsky in 1905
On the eve of the Russo-Japanese
war, the whole country was in a prerevolutionary
ferment. A strike wave was
followed by student demonstrations. The
ferment affected the bourgeois liberals who
launched a campaign of banquets, based on
the “Zemstvos”, local committees in the
countryside which served as a platform
for the liberals. The question arose as to
what should be the position of the Marxists
towards the liberals’ campaign. The
Mensheviks were in favor of total support
for the liberals. The Bolsheviks were
radically opposed to any kind of support

for the liberals and came out with strong
criticism of their press exposing them in
the eyes of the working class. Trotsky had
the same position as the Bolsheviks, which
led him to break with the Mensheviks.
As of that moment, up to 1917, Trotsky
remained organizationally separate from
both tendencies, although on all political
questions he was always much closer to
the Bolsheviks than to the Mensheviks.
The revolutionary situation was
maturing rapidly. The military defeats of
the Tsarist army added to the growing
discontent which erupted during the
9th January 1905 demonstration in St.
Petersburg, which was brutally put
down. Thus began the 1905 revolution
in which Trotsky played an outstanding
role. What role did Trotsky play in the
1905 Revolution, and in what relation did
he stand to Lenin, and the Bolsheviks?
Lunacharsky, who at that time was one
of Lenin’s right hand men, writes in his
memoirs: “I must say that of all the Social-
Democratic leaders of 1905-06 Trotsky
undoubtedly showed himself, despite
his youth, to be the best prepared. Less
than any of them did he bear the stamp
of a certain kind of émigré narrowness of
outlook. Trotsky understood better than
all the others what it meant to conduct the
political struggle on a broad national scale.
He emerged from the revolution having
acquired an enormous degree of popularity,
whereas neither Lenin nor Martov had
effectively gained any at all. Plekhanov
had lost a great deal, thanks to his display
of quasi-Cadet [i.e. liberal] tendencies.
Trotsky stood then in the very front rank.”
(Lunacharsky, Revolutionary Silhouettes,
p. 61.)
This is not the place to analyze the
1905 revolution in detail. One of the best
books on this question is Trotsky’s 1905,
a classical work of Marxism, the value of
which is enhanced by the fact that it was
written by one of the most outstanding
leaders of that revolution. (Also see Alan
Woods’ recent publication, Bolshevism—
the Road to Revolution )
Still only 26 years of age, Trotsky
was the chairman of the Petersburg Soviet
of Workers’ Deputies, the foremost of
those bodies which Lenin described as
“embryonic organs of revolutionary
power”. Most of the manifestos and
resolutions of the Soviet were the work
of Trotsky, who also edited its journal
Izvestia. On major occasions he spoke both
for the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and for
the Soviet as a whole. The Bolsheviks, in
Petersburg, had failed to appreciate the
importance of the Soviet, and were weakly
represented in it. Lenin, from exile in
Sweden, wrote to the Bolshevik journal
Novaya Zhizn, urging the Bolsheviks to
take a more positive attitude to the Soviet,
but the letter was not printed, and only saw
the light of day, thirty-four years later. This
situation was to be reproduced at every
major juncture in the history of the Russian
revolution; the confusion and vacillation of
the Party leaders inside Russia, when faced
with the need for a bold initiative, without
the guiding hand of Lenin.
In 1905, Trotsky took over the
journal Russkaya Gazeta and transformed
it into the popular revolutionary paper
Nachalo, which had a mass circulation, to
put over his views on the revolution, which
were close to those of the Bolsheviks and
in direct opposition to Menshevism. It was
natural that, in spite of the acrimonious
dispute at the Second Congress, the work
of the Bolsheviks and Trotsky in the
revolution should coincide. Thus, Trotsky’s
Nachalo and the Bolshevik Novaya Zhizn,
edited by Lenin, worked in solidarity,
supporting each other against the attacks
of the reaction, without waging polemics
against each other. The Bolshevik journal
greeted the first number of Nachalo thus:
“The first number of the Nachalo
has come out. We welcome a comrade in
the struggle. The first issue is notable for
the brilliant description of the October
strike written by Comrade Trotsky.”
Lunacharsky recalls that when
someone told Lenin about Trotsky’s success
in the Soviet, Lenin’s face darkened for a
moment. Then he said: “Well, Comrade
Trotsky has earned it by his tireless and
impressive work.” In later years, Lenin
more than once wrote positively about
Trotsky’s Nachalo in 1905.
As Chairman of the famous St.
Petersburg soviet, Trotsky was arrested
together with the other members of the
soviet and exiled once more to Siberia
after the defeat of the revolution. From
the accused bench, Trotsky delivered a
rousing speech from the dock which turned
into an indictment of the Tsarist regime.
He was finally sentenced to “perpetual
deportation” but in fact remained in
Siberia for only eight days before escaping.
In 1906 he again went into exile, this
time to Austria, where he continued his
revolutionary activity, launching a paper
from Vienna called Pravda. With its simple
and attractive style, Trotsky’s Pravda soon
achieved a popularity which no other
Social Democratic publication could match
at the time.
The years of reaction following
the defeat, were probably the most difficult
period in the history of the Russian Labor
movement. The masses were exhausted
after the struggle. The intellectuals were
demoralized. There was a generalized
mood of discouragement, pessimism and
even of desperation. There were many
cases of suicide. On the other hand, in this
generalized reactionary situation, mystical
and religious ideas spread like a black cloud
over the intellectual circles, finding an echo
inside the Labor movement in a series of
attempts to revise the philosophical ideas
of Marxism. In these difficult years, Lenin
dedicated himself to an implacable struggle
against revisionism, for the defense of
Marxist theory and principles. But it
was Trotsky who provided the necessary
theoretical basis upon which the Russian
revolution could resurrect itself from the
defeat of 1905 and go on to victory.

In Defense of Marxism:3

In March 1903, Lenin formally
requested the inclusion of Trotsky as a
seventh member of the Editorial Board.
In a letter to Plekhanov, he wrote: “I am
submitting to all members of the Editorial
Board a proposal to co-opt
“Pero” as a full member of the
Board. (I believe that for co-option not
a majority but a unanimous decision is
needed.)
“We are very much in need of a
seventh member both because it would
simplify voting (six being an even number)
and reinforce the Board.
“’Pero’ has been writing in every
issue for several months now. In general
he is working for Iskra most energetically,
delivering lectures (and with tremendous
success) etc. For our department of
topical articles and items he will be not
only very useful but quite indispensable.
He is unquestionably a man of more than
average ability, convinced, energetic, and
promising. And he could do a good deal
in the sphere of translation and popular
literature.
“We must draw in young forces:
this will encourage them and prompt
them to regard themselves as professional
writers. And that we have too few of such
is clear-witness 1) the difficulty of finding
editors of translations; 2) the shortage of
articles reviewing the internal situation,
and 3) the shortage of popular literature.
It is in the sphere of popular literature that
‘Pero’ would like to try his hand.
“Possible arguments against: 1)
his youth; 2) his early (perhaps) return
to Russia; 3) a pen (without quotation
marks) with traces of feuilleton style, too
pretentious, etc.
“Ad 1) ‘Pero’ is suggested not for
an independent post, but for the Board. In
it he will gain experience. He undoubtedly
has the ‘intuition’ of a Party man, a
man of our trend; as for knowledge and
experience these can be acquired. That he
is hardworking is likewise unquestionable.
It is necessary to co-opt him so as finally to
draw him in and encourage him…”
However, Plekhanov, guessing
that Trotsky would support Lenin, placing
him in a minority, angrily vetoed the
proposal.
“Soon after,” adds Krupskaya, “Trotsky
went to Paris, where he began to advance
with remarkable success.”
These lines by Lenin’s lifelong
companion are all the more remarkable for
having been written in 1930, when Trotsky
was expelled from the Party, living in exile
in Turkey and under a total ban inside the
Soviet Union. Only the fact that Krupskaya
was Lenin’s widow saved her from Stalin’s
wrath, at least for the time being. Later on
she was forced by intolerable pressure to
bow her head and accept, passively, the
distortion of the historical record, though
to the end she steadfastly refused to join
in the chorus of glorification of Stalin,
who, in the pages of her biography, plays
a minimal role-which, in truth, reflects the
real situation. Unfortunately, this early
collaboration between Lenin and Trotsky
was brought to an abrupt halt by the split at
the Second Congress of the Russian Social
Democratic Labor Party.

In Defense of Marxism-2

In Defense of Marxism

Trotsky and Iskra

The young Social Democratic
movement was still scattered and almost
without any organization. The task of
organizing and uniting the numerous
local Social Democratic groups inside
Russia was taken up by Lenin together
with Plekhanov’s exiled “Emancipation of
Labor Group”. With Plekhanov’s backing
Lenin launched a new paper, the Iskra,
which played the key role in organizing
and uniting the genuine Marxist tendency.
All the work of producing and distributing
the paper and maintaining a voluminous
correspondence with Russia was carried
out by Lenin and his indefatigable
companion Nadyezhda Krupskaya. Despite
all the obstacles, they managed to smuggle
Iskra into Russia clandestinely, where it
made an enormous impact. Very quickly
the genuine Marxists united around the
Iskra, which by 1903 had already become
the majority tendency in the Russian Social
Democracy.
In 1902 Trotsky turned up on
Lenin’s doorstep in London, where
he joined the staff at Iskra, working
closely with Lenin. Although the young
revolutionary, who had just arrived from
Russia, was not aware of it, relations on the
Editorial Board were already tense. There
were constant clashes between Lenin and
Plekhanov over a series of political and
organizational questions. The truth of the
matter was that the old activists of the
“Emancipation of Labor Group” had been
seriously affected by the long period of
exile, when their work had been limited
to that of propaganda on the fringes of
the Russian labor movement. It was a
small group of intellectuals, who were
undoubtedly sincere in their revolutionary
ideas, but who suffered from all the vices
of exile and small circles of intellectuals.
At times, their methods of work were
more those of a discussion club, or of a
circle of personal friends, than those of a
revolutionary party whose aim was that of
taking power.
Lenin, who practically did the
most important part of this work, with the
help of Krupskaya, struggled against these
tendencies, but with very little results. He
had placed all his hopes in the calling of a
Party Congress, in which the working class
rank and file would have put order “in their
own house”. He placed a lot of hope on
Trotsky whose writing skills had earned
him the nickname “Pero”—the Pen. In the
earliest edition of her Memoirs of Lenin,
Krupskaya underlines the high opinion
Lenin had of the “Young Eagle”
Lenin was desperately looking for
a capable young comrade from Russia to
co-opt onto the Editorial Board in order to
break the deadlock with the old editors. The
appearance of Trotsky, recently escaped
from Siberia, was eagerly seized upon by
Lenin in order to make the change. Trotsky,
then only 22 years old, had already made
a name for himself as a Marxist writer,
hence his party name Pero (the Pen). In the
earliest editions of her memoirs of Lenin,
Krupskaya gives an honest description of
Lenin’s enthusiastic attitude to Trotsky.
Since these lines have been cut out of all
subsequent editions, we quote them here in
full:
“Both the hearty recommendations
of the ‘young eagle’ and this first
conversation made Vladimir Ilyich pay
particular attention to the new-comer. He
talked with him a great deal and went on
walks with him.
“Vladimir Ilyich questioned him
as to his visit to the Yuzhny Rabochii
[the Southern Worker, which adopted a
vacillating position between Iskra and
its opponents]. He was well pleased with
the definite manner in which Trotsky
formulated the position. He liked the way
Trotsky was able immediately to grasp
the very substance of the differences and
to perceive through the layers of wellmeaning
statements their desire, under the
guise of a popular paper, to preserve the
autonomy of their own little group.
“Meanwhile, the call came from
Russia with increased insistence for
Trotsky to be sent back. Vladimir Ilyich
wanted him to remain abroad and to help in
the work of Iskra.
“Plekhanov immediately looked
on Trotsky with suspicion: he saw in him
a supporter of the younger section of
the Iskra editorial board (Lenin, Martov,
Potresov), and a pupil of Lenin. When
Vladimir Ilyich sent Plekhanov an article
of Trotsky’s, he replied: ‘I don’t like the
pen of your Pen.’ ‘The style is merely a
matter of acquisition,’ replied Vladimir
Ilyich, ‘but the man is capable of learning
and will be very useful’.”

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In Defense of Marxism: In Memory of Leon Trotsky

In Defense of Marxism:
In Memory of Leon Trotsky



Lev Davidovich Trotsky was,
alongside Lenin, one of the two greatest
Marxists of the twentieth century. His
whole life was entirely devoted to the
cause of the working class and international
socialism. And what a life! From his
earliest youth, when he worked through
the night producing illegal strike leaflets
which earned him his first spell in prison
and Siberian exile, until he was finally
struck down by one of Stalin’s agents in
August 1940, he toiled ceaselessly for
the revolutionary movement. In the first
Russian Revolution of 1905, he was
the chairman of the Petersburg Soviet.
Sentenced once again to Siberian exile,
he again escaped and continued his
revolutionary activity from exile. During
the First World War, Trotsky adopted a
consistent internationalist position. He was
the author of the Zimmerwald Manifesto
which attempted to unite the revolutionary
opponents of the War. In 1917, he played
a leading role as the organizer of the
insurrection in Petrograd.
After the October Revolution
Trotsky was the first Commissar for
Foreign Affairs and was in charge of the
negotiations with the Germans at Brest-
Litovsk. During the bloody Civil War
when Soviet Russia was invaded by 21
foreign armies of intervention, and when
the survival of the Revolution was in
the balance, Trotsky organized the Red
Army and personally led the fight against
the counterrevolutionary White armies,
travelling thousands of kilometers in the
famous armored train. Trotsky remained
Commissar for War until 1925. “Show me
another man”, he (Lenin) said, thumping
the table “capable of organizing in a year
an almost exemplary army and moreover
of winning the esteem of the military
specialists.” These lines reproduced in
Gorky’s memoirs accurately show the
attitude of Lenin to Trotsky at this time.
Trotsky’s role in consolidating the
first Workers’ State in the world was not
confined to the Red Army. He also played
the leading role, together with Lenin, in
the building of the Third International, for
the first four congresses of which Trotsky
wrote the Manifestos and many of the most
important policy statements; the period
of economic reconstruction in which
Trotsky reorganized the shattered railway
systems of the USSR. In addition, Trotsky,
always a prolific writer, found time to
write penetrating studies, not just on
political questions but on art and literature
(Literature and Revolution) and even on
the problems faced by people in everyday
life in the transitional period (Problems of
Everyday Life).
After Lenin’s death in 1924,
Trotsky led the struggle against the
bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet
State—a fight that Lenin had already
begun from his death-bed. In the process
of the struggle, Trotsky was the first to
advocate the idea of five-year plans, which
was opposed by Stalin and his followers.
Thereafter, Trotsky alone continued to
defend the revolutionary, democratic
and international traditions of October.
He alone provided a scientific Marxist
analysis of the bureaucratic degeneration
of the Russian Revolution in works like
The Revolution Betrayed, In Defense of
Marxism and Stalin. His writings of the
period 1930-40 provide us with a veritable
treasure-house of Marxist theory, dealing
not only with the immediate problems
of the international labor movement (the
Chinese revolution, the rise of Hitler in
Germany, the Spanish Civil War), but of
all manner of artistic, philosophical and
cultural questions.
This is more than enough for
several lifetimes! Yet, if one were to
examine the life of Trotsky objectively,
one would be compelled to agree with
the appraisal which he himself made of it.
That is to say, despite all the extraordinary
achievements of Trotsky, the most
important period of his life was its last
ten years. Here one can say with absolute
certainty that he fulfilled a task which
nobody else could have fulfilled—namely,
the fight to defend the ideas of Bolshevism
and the spotless tradition of October in the
teeth of the Stalinist counterrevolution.
Here was Trotsky’s greatest and most
indispensable contribution to Marxism and
the world working class movement. It is an
achievement upon which we are building
to this day. The present article does not
pretend to be an exhaustive account of
Trotsky’s life and work. For that, not
an article but several volumes would be
needed. But if this very insufficient outline
serves to encourage the new generation to
read Trotsky’s writings for themselves, my
purpose will have been achieved.
The Early Beginnings
On 26th August 1879, just a
few months before the birth of Trotsky, a
small group of revolutionaries, members
of the underground terrorist organization
Narodnaya Volya, announced the death
sentence for the Russian Tsar, Alexander
II. Thus began a period of heroic struggles
of a handful of youths against the whole
of the state apparatus which was to
culminate on 1st March 1881 with the
assassination of the Tsar. These students
and young intellectuals hated tyranny and
were prepared to give their lives for the
emancipation of the working class, but
they believed that all that was needed to
“provoke” mass mobilizations was the
“propaganda of the accomplished fact”.
In reality, they attempted to substitute
the bomb and the machine gun for the
conscious movement of the working class.
The Russian terrorists actually
succeeded in assassinating the Tsar. In spite
of all this, all the efforts of the terrorists
led to nothing. Far from strengthening the
mass movement, the acts of terrorism had
the opposite effect of strengthening the
repressive apparatus of the state, isolating
and demoralizing the revolutionary
cadres and, in the end, leading to the
complete destruction of the Narodnaya
Volya organization. The mistake of the

“Populists” lay in a lack of understanding
of the fundamental processes of the Russian
revolution. In the absence of a strong
proletariat, the terrorists looked for another
social layer on which to base the socialist
revolution. They imagined that they had
found this in the peasantry. Marx and
Engels explained that the only class which
can carry out the socialist transformation
of society is the proletariat. In a backward
semi-feudal society like Tsarist Russia the
peasantry will play an important role as an
auxiliary of the working class, but cannot
substitute itself for it.
To begin with, the majority of
youth in Russia in the 1880s were not
attracted to the ideas of Marxism. They
had no time for “theory”: they demanded
action. With no understanding of the
need to win over the working class by
patiently explaining, they took up arms
to destroy Tsarism through individual
struggle. Lenin’s elder brother was a
terrorist. Trotsky started his political life in
a populist group and probably Lenin also
got involved in the same way. However,
populism was already in a process of
decline. By the 1890s what had been an
atmosphere permeated with heroism had
become one of depression, discontent
and pessimism among the circles of
intellectuals. And in the meantime, the
labor movement had entered the scene of
history with the impressive strike wave
of the 1890s. Within a few years, the
superiority of the Marxist “theoreticians”
compared to the “practical” individual
terrorists had been proved by experience
itself with the spectacular growth in the
influence of Marxism in the working class.
Beginning first with small
Marxist circles and discussion groups,
the new movement became more and
more popular among the workers. Among
the young activists of the new generation
of revolutionaries, was the young Lev
Davidovich Bronstein, who began his
revolutionary career in March 1897, in
Nikolaev, where he organized the first
illegal workers’ organization, the South
Russian Workers’ Union. Lev Davidovich
was arrested for the first time when he was
only 19 years old and spent two and a half
years in prison, after which he was exiled
to Siberia. But he soon escaped and, using
a false passport, succeeded in getting out
of Russia and joining Lenin in London. In
one of those ironies in which history is so
rich, the name on the passport was Trotsky,
the name of one of the jailers which Lev
Davidovich has chosen at random and was
later to gain world-wide fame.

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Karl Marx and the Classics

Karl Marx and the Classics
Crises and the Capitalism



Marx developed his economic theory, under the rubric of A Critique of
Political Economy, mainly in the period 1857-1867. It is a well-defined
system, structured as a logical array of original concepts and analyses based
on Marx’s notions of value and surplus-value. Marxian economics emerged
from Marx’s earlier historic-sociological analyses and is formulated along
with a new methodological approach.
However, from the moment of Marx’s death, it had already become
apparent that Marxist theory and Marxist economic analysis would
accommodate not only one interpretation, and do not evolve on the basis of
a single, and unique, theoretical direction. On the contrary, the existence of
Marxism is always interwoven with the formation of various Marxist trends
or schools, which as a rule are constructed at the base of contradictory and
opposed theoretical principles, positions and deductions. This phenomenon
is universal, and has taken place in all of the countries where Marxism was
developed.
The contradictory picture of Marxist theory can be partly interpreted
by its conflictual and revolutionary character, i.e. by the fact that it is
constituted as a critique to the established economic and social order and
the ruling forms of ideology that aim to consolidate it. In its struggle with
the ruling theoretical disciplines, Marxist theory often intertwines with it, in
the means that certain bourgeoisie ideological forms are being reproduced
within Marxist analysis. At the same time, the development of Marxist
theory is affected by the political conjuncture, as Marxism, besides a
theoretical discipline becomes also a mass ideology of the Left, influencing
the modes in which theory develops.
The above mean, on the one hand, that Marxist theory acquires the
form of a necessarily conflicting and schismatic science, and on the other,
that the Marxist economist, social scientist or researcher should take a
position in the conflict, the object of which is Marxist theory itself.


However, universal is the belief among Marxists that there is only one
authentic interpretation of Marx’s writings, the one shared by the person (or
school) stating the argument.
The authors of the present book share the opinion that the schismatic
character of Marxist theory shall also be attributed to the contradictory
character of Marx’s mature economic writings themselves, as Marx did not
remain consistent to his own theoretical system of the Critique of Political
Economy, i.e. to his rupture with the Ricardian value theory of “labour
expended”, but often slipped back to the Ricardian system of thought.
Marx’s Critique of Political Economy constitutes not a “correction” of
Classical Political Economy’s “mistakes” or “misunderstandings”, but the
formation of a new theoretical domain, shaping thus a new theoretical
object of analysis and a new theoretical “paradigm” of argumentation.
Unlike the Ricardian, Marx’s theory of value is a monetary theory. The
value of a commodity cannot be determined as such, but only through its
form of appearance; it cannot be determined in isolation but only in
relation with all other commodities in the exchange process. This
exchange-value relation is materialised by money. In Marx’s system, no
other “material embodiment” of (abstract) labour and no other
quantitatively defined form of appearance (or measure) of value can exist.
As money comprises the only form of appearance of value, both quantities
do not belong to the same level of abstraction. In other words, they are
incommensurable, and consequently they cannot be the subject of
quantitative comparisons and mathematical calculations. In Marx’s system,
value does not belong to the world of empirically detectable (and
measurable) quantities; only money does.


Marx formulated the arguments of his theoretical rupture with the
Ricardian theory of value mainly in the Manuscripts 1857-58, (first
published in 1939-41 as Grundrisse, Foundations of the Critique of
Political Economy), in his A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy (first published 1859) and in Volume 1 of Capital (first published
1867). The same arguments are also to be found in his other works of the
period (the Manuscript 1861-63, a part of which was first published during
the period 1905-10 under the title Theories of Surplus Value, and the
Manuscript 1863-65, containing all drafts of Volumes 2 and 3 of Capital
which were edited and first published by Engels in 1885 and 1894
respectively).
However, he used a highly abstract and mainly philosophical mode of
presentation, which makes the comprehension of his theory rather difficult.

More important, in his writings of the period 1861-65, Marx becomes
ambivalent towards Classical Political Economy: He repeatedly retreats to
the Ricardian theory of value, thus abandoning his own theoretical system
of the Critique of Political Economy.
Summarizing our argument we may say that Marx’s economic
writings comprise two different discourses:
a) The theoretical system of the Critique of Political Economy, which
is mainly developed (albeit in a “philosophical” way of presentation, which
makes its understanding not easy) in the first part of Volume 1 of Capital,
in the 1859 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in the
Grundrisse and is repeated in his other works; and,
b) a sophisticated version of the Ricardian Political Economy of value
as “labour expended”, which is to be found mainly in sections of Volume 3
of Capital, such as the “Transformation of Commodity Values into Prices
of Production” or the theory of “Absolute Ground-Rent” and at other parts
of his 1861-65 writings. This second discourse seems to have influenced
most contemporary approaches to Marxist value theory.
In Part I of the present Book (Value and Money) we reconstruct what
we consider to be the first discourse, i.e. the tenets of Marx’s theoretical
system of the Critique of Political Economy, which was formed on the
basis of a rupture with Ricardian Political Economy.
In Part II (Theory of Value and Ideology) we illustrate the conceptual
problems arising with respect to ideology and the capitalist power relations
from Marx’s way of presentation of his value theory, and more specifically
from the way that he introduces the concept of capital and the capitalist
mode of production.

In Part III (Theory of Value and Prices. Marx’s Ambivalence towards
Classical Political Economy) we critically illustrate what we consider to be
the second discourse in Marx’s writings, which adheres to the Classical
tradition of Political Economy.
Finally, in Part IV of the book (The Circuit of Social Capital, the
Profit Rate and Economic Crises) we make use of our theoretical
conclusions from the previous Parts, to focus on subjects such as crisis
theory, instability, and the Circuit of Social Capital, which are related, on
the one hand, to the present economic conjuncture, and on the other, to
modern debates on value and Marxian economic theory.
Dimitri Dimoulis would like to thank the Universidade Bandeirante
(São Paulo, Brazil) for supporting and funding a Research Project on Law
and the Economy. All authors express their thanks to Howard

Engelskirchen, Spyros Lapatsioras and Dimitris Sotiropoulos who have
read and commented on this book. The errors that might remain are of
course theirs.

After Effects cs4 note

IMPORT AND ORGANIZE SOURCE

Things get more complicated if you are dealing with multiple

image sequences in a single folder. If you’ve never run

into this or can simply keep the practice of one sequence

per folder, great, skip ahead. Otherwise, it’s better to use

the Import dialog.

With the Import dialog, it doesn’t matter which specifi c

image in a sequence you select; they are all imported

provided you select only one. By holding the Shift or Ctrl

(Cmd) key as you select more than one frame, however,

you can

. Specify a subset of frames to be imported instead of an

entire a sequence

. Select frames from more than one sequence in the

same folder; a Multiple Sequences checkbox appears to

make certain this is really what you want to do

. Specify sets of frames from multiple sequences (a combination

of the above two modes)

This is, in many ways, a work-around for the fact that the

After Effects importer doesn’t group a frame sequence

together the way other compositing applications do.

By default, if a sequence has missing frames (anywhere

the count doesn’t increment by 1), a color bar pattern is

inserted with the name of the fi le presumed missing, which

helps you track it down (see “Missing Footage,” later in this

chapter).

The Force Alphabetical Order checkbox in the Import

dialog is for cases where the frame does not increment by

1. Say you rendered “on twos,” creating every other frame

from a 3D app; check this box and you avoid color bars on

every other frame.

Want to be rehired repeatedly as a freelancer or be the

hero on your project? Make it easy for someone to open

your project cold and understand how it’s organized.

An ordinary project can be set up like the one shown

often leave only the main composition in the

root area of the project and place everything else in an

appropriate subfolder.On a more ambitious project, it’s worth organizing a project

template so that items are easy to fi nd in predictable

locations. Chapter 4 offers suggestions.

Context-Clicks (and Keyboard Shortcuts)

Stay away from the bar—the top menu bar, that is. I often

refer to context-clicking on interface items. This is “rightclicking”

unless you’re on a Mac laptop or have an ancient

one-button mouse, in which case you can hold down the

Control key. Here’s what happens:

. Context-click a layer in the Timeline for access to the

full Layer menu, minus a few less useful items, such

as the Adobe Encore submenu, and with killer additions

such as Reveal Layer Source in Project and Reveal

Expression Errors.

. Context-click on a layer in a Composition viewer for

many of the same items, plus the Select option at the

bottom of the menu, which gives you all of the items

below your pointer (Figure 1.6).

. Context-click a panel tab to reveal the panel’s menu

(also found at the upper right), where a bunch of

options that even advanced After Effects users hardly

know exist can be found, such as the View Options for a

Composition viewer.

. Context-click an item in the Project panel to, among

other things, reveal it in the Finder or Explorer.

Having these kinds of options right under cursor keeps you

focused.

Missing Footage

After Effects will link to any source footage fi le that can be

found on your system or network, source which can easily

become unlinked if anything moves or changes. To relink

an item, fi nd it in the Project panel and double-click it (or

Ctrl+H/Cmd+H), or context-click and choose Replace

Footage > File.

This is also a surreptitious way to replace a source fi le

without any fuss or bother. If instead you need only to

reload or update a source, context-click and choose

Reload Footage (Ctrl+Alt+L/Cmd+Option+L). You can

even edit a fi le in its source application and update it automatically

in After Effects with Edit > Edit Original (Ctrl+E/

Cmd+E), as long as you don’t try anything tricky like saving

it as a new fi le.

Sometimes it’s diffi cult to locate a missing fi le or frame in

your project. You may have used the Find Missing Footage

checkbox in previous versions, and you may wonder where

it has gone. You’re not alone.

To search for particular types of footage in your project,

including missing source, use search (Ctrl+F/Cmd+F)

in the Project panel and the following commands

. missing is the replacement for the Find Missing Footage

checkbox

. unused gets you all of the source that isn’t in any comp

. used

. Text strings that appear in the Project panel (say, tif

or Aug 26)

Make sure to check out that last one; it’s a totally new

option in After Effects CS4. The date column in the Project

panel may be hidden by default; context-click to reveal

it, then type in yesterday’s date using a three-letter month

abbreviation; the Project panel now displays only the items

that were introduced or updated yesterday.

Unrecognized fi le formats are grayed out in the After

Effect Import dialog. Typically, adding a missing threecharacter

extension solves this, although some obscure

formats simply do not work cross-platform (for example,

Mac-generated PICT on Windows); see the “Source Formats”

section later in this chapter for the most useful and

universal file types to use.

Because every project is likely to be moved or archived at

some point (you are making backups, right?), it’s best to

keep all source material in one master folder; this helps

After Effects automatically relink all of the related fi les it

fi nds there at once, thus avoiding a lot of tedium for you.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx
Born: 1818, Trier, Prussia (Germany)
Died: 1883, London, England
Major Works: The Communist Manifesto (with Engels: Manifest der Kommunisten, 1848),
A Contribution to tile Critique of Political Economy (1859), Capital (Das Kapital, 3 vols.:
1867, 1885, 1894)

Major Ideas:
·  The whole of what is called world history is the creation of human labor.
·  Capitalist development prevents human beings from reaching their full potential as
self-determining beings.
·  Only when capitalists are overthrown, private properly is abolished, and communal
ownership of the means of production is established by an initial dictatorship of the
proletariat can economic justice be achieved.
The impact of Karl Marx's philosophy and theories of social development cannot be
overestimated. His ideas of human relationships and capitalist development have brought
about changes in the world during the past hundred years that will be felt for years and
perhaps centuries to come. Revolutions have been started with the goal of developing a state
utilizing Marx's ideas as the foundation. We have seen such revolutions in Europe, Asia,
Africa, and South America. Even where his ideas of social organization have ultimately been
rejected, the effects of his influence tend to be profound (as in the recent rebellions against
Soviet domination).
Karl Marx was born into a family that had recently converted from Judaism to
Protestantism. His father was a lawyer. At the age of seventeen, Karl attended the University
of Bonn to study law, but his behavior at the university (drinking, dueling and so forth) led
his father to withdraw him from Bonn and send him to the University of Berlin.
At the University of Berlin, Marx decided to major in philosophy, and he joined a group of
radical students and lecturers known as the "Young Hegelians," who maintained that religion
is nothing more than a human invention designed to explain the unexplainable. Marx's time
with the Young Hegelians was significant in his intellectual development.

Marx began to raise critical questions about the role of ideas: in the shaping of social
organizations and in social relationships. He became interested in using knowledge as a
means for emancipating the victims of society, and he argued for the unity of theory and
practice. As a result of his association with the Young Hegelians, he became editor of the
Rheinische Zeitung in 1842--a radical newspaper critical of the treatment of the
disadvantaged by both Prussia and Russia. In January 1843, the newspaper was shut down by
the government.
In April of 1843 Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, his childhood sweetheart. After
months of trying to obtain an academic position but being unable to do so, he and his wife
left for Paris, where they lived until 1845.
Paris was a gathering place for radicals and revolutionaries and was a center of political
activity. Marx met many radical socialists during this period, but of all the relationships he
developed during those years the most significant was his friendship with Friedrich Engels,
with whom he later wrote the Communist Manifesto. In 1844, Marx helped found an
influential radical journal (the German-French Annals) and began the writing of his
economic and political essays.
In response to his attacks on the Prussian aristocracy, the Prussian government on April 16,
1844, issued an order for Marx's arrest on the charge of high treason. The French
government then expelled him from Paris, and he moved to Brussels, where he lived in exile
for three years.
In 1847, the Communist League commissioned Marx and Engels to write a document about
its aims and beliefs; the resultant document was the Communist Manifesto, published in
1848.
While in Brussels, Marx had helped to buy arms for an abortive workers' revolution and, as a
result, he was no longer welcome in Brussels. In 1849, he moved to London, where he
remained for the rest of his life.
In 1851, Marx became the London correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune
(although most of the articles were actually written by Engels). He remained with the paper
for approximately ten years. From 1864-72, he was involved in the International Working
Men's Association (the First Internationale). This group was not as radical as the Communist
League; although they supported workers' rights and attempted to organize workers in
England, France, Germany, and Poland, they did not advocate communism or violent
revolution.
The first volume of Das Kapital (Capital) was published in Germany on September 14, 1867.
The first translation appeared in Russia in 1872, and the English translation followed in
1887. Marx was working on Das Kapital for nearly twenty years but was unable to finish it
before his death. Engels brought out the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in
1895.

The basic premise of Marxism is that our perception of the material world is conditioned by
the society we live in. History is a process of the continuous creation, satisfaction, and
recreation of human needs. Fundamentally, the history of the world's societies has been a
history of the struggle for wealth and private property, and labor is the force of that struggle.
As human beings struggle with their environment in an attempt to satisfy their needs, they
are limited by the conditions of the societies in which they work: technology, ideology,
divisions of labor, and so forth. Therefore, human history is determined by the relationships
of labor to ownership.
In The German Ideology (written with Engels and published 1845-46), Marx discussed for
the first time in detail his understanding of human history and the development of
capitalism. According to Marx, the various stages of the division of labor can be categorized
as preclass systems, Asiatic societies, the ancient world, feudalism, and the origins of
capitalist development.
Preclass societies are characterized by communal ownership of property and a simple
division of labor (gender related). Nomadic groups tended to develop these types of
societies. The Asiatic societies were the earliest kind of class societies with powerful tyrants
as rulers. In what Marx calls the ancient societies, land became private property, large cities
were created, and a slave population came into being; there was a large gap between the rich
and the poor. The feudal societies developed in Europe with the downfall of the Roman
Empire: A large class of serfs worked the land for a small class of aristocrats. With the rise of
commercial trading cities such as Venice and Genoa, feudalism came to an end and
capitalism took its place. Capitalist societies are characterized by two major classes: the
bourgeoisie-those who control capital (wealth and the means of production)-and the
proletariat (the laborers who produce wealth and are used as means toward that end).
According to Marx, all of these societies except for the Asiatic follow each other in
sequence. The Asiatic societies can exist in the same time-frame as preclass and ancient
societies. All types of societies, however, are determined by the social regulation of labor. In
other words, the economic structure of society determines the legal and political
superstructure as well as the dominant social consciousness of the society, the laws, and the
dominant class. The prevailing ideology is the ideology of the ruling class, the owners of the
means of production. For Marx, the means of production include tools, machines, land, and
the technology needed to utilize them for productive purposes.
In a capitalistic system, the bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, control
the economic and political structures of "their" society; the power to shape society lies in the
hands of the owners, and they maintain their position through a dominating ideology. The
interests of the capitalist are preeminent and tend to be in conflict with the interests of those
who comprise the remainder of society. The institution of private property is indispensable
to any capitalist ideology.
The proletariat (and the nonworkers) make up the remainder of society, and they suffer from
the domination of the capitalist owners. But until they become a self-conscious group and
overcome the factors of alienation and false consciousness brought about by the

manipulative techniques of the bourgeoisie, they cannot challenge and overcome the power
and ideology of the capitalists.
Alienation is the workers' state of being "other," resulting from domination by those whose
power comes from the workers; the workers, hence, are opposed by forces of their own
creation that confront them as alien forces. In capitalist societies, work is a means to an end
(the end being the wealth of the owners). According to Marx, work should be the end,
related to the interests of the workers. Alienation in work is fourfold: The workers are
alienated from (1) the products of their labors, (2) the forces of production (3) themselves,
and (4) the community.
The workers work for others and produce objects over which they have no control, objects
that they may or may not need For them, work becomes a mere job, undertaken in order to
acquire the wages by which material goods can be purchased. The goods that are bought by
the workers may be goods that they themselves have produced; hence, the workers are, in
effect, paying for their own labor with the money received for producing the goods they
purchase. Since workers do not own the means of production, they lose control over their
own ability to create through labor: They lose their freedom. Consequently, the workers,
through losing their freedom by being used as mere instruments, are dehumanized in the
process of being perpetually dominated by the owners of capital.
False consciousness is another factor acting as a barrier to the proletariat's move into a class
for itself. "False" consciousness is the contradiction between understanding and practice.
Workers in a capitalist society may believe themselves to be free, but in practice they are the
slaves of the dominating class, the owners. Workers who believe that social mobility is open-
-that by their labor they can change their class status--can accept class inequalities, but if in
practice they find that they cannot move from the working class to the class of owners, they
begin to question their understanding.
In the questioning of their understanding, the workers who have suffered from false
consciousness will begin to see how their interests as workers are similar and will move
toward organizing on the basis of those common interests. In the process of organizing, the
workers become a class for themselves, the "proletariat."
When the laboring class, the proletariat, emerges as a class conscious of its status and of the
causes of its oppression, it undertakes a struggle for control with the bourgeoisie. When the
bourgeoisie is overcome, through violent revolution if necessary, a new society emerges, one
that is classless and in which private property is abolished.
To understand Marx's conception of social change, one has to understand the concept--
derived by Marx from Hegel--of dialectical materialism. Hegel wrote of dialectical processes-
-opposing forces producing through conflict a resolution or synthesis: Through the conflict
of opposites, thesis and antithesis, a new order or synthesis emerges. In the case of opposing
social forces, Marx pointed out, a new social order emerges rooted in material conditions.
Before the classless society resulting from the abolition of private property and involving the
common ownership of the means of production can be attained, Marx argued, the proletariat

has to destroy all remnants of bourgeois society. A dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary
to ensure the orderly removal of the vestiges of bourgeois power. The duration of that
dictatorship varies according to the conditions in the society being transformed. Once the
state has succeeded in achieving a classless society, it withers away, since it is no longer
needed.
A major criticism of Marxism is directed to the notion of inevitability, the theory that class
differences must lead to conflict resulting in a new social order: Capitalism, because of its
inherent contradictions, must give way to socialism and communism. If the theory were true,
one would expect that revolutions culminating in communism would have occurred in the
United States and Great Britain rather than in Russia and China. Critics of Marxism suggest
that societal change is not evolutionary but situational: Change of the kind Marx envisaged is
not inevitable but may occur when circumstances both permit and encourage movements
leading to shifts in power.
Another major criticism of Marxism is directed toward Marx's theory of economic
determinism, the view that the dynamic relationships in a society are determined solely or
primarily by economic factors: Wealth, power, and prestige are affected primarily by
relationships to the means of production. This unidimensional approach, according to the
critics, does not adequately address such factors as race and gender. Accordingly, Marx
minimized the effects of racism and sexism by reducing them to economically determined
class relations.
Finally, critics of Marx contend that Marx's ideal of the classless society is unrealistic and
utopian. For one thing, the Communist states have so far not achieved their objective of
becoming classless societies and, consequently, they have not withered away as dictatorships;
on the contrary, either the dictatorial ruling classes have persisted, using violence and
intimidation to maintain power over the people, or they have themselves been displaced by
groups desiring a new social order. After all, it is pointed out by critics, all human societies
involve inequalities that persist; when one kind of imbalance is corrected, another takes its
place. In fact, to conceive a "society"--which necessarily involves the attempt to organize
classes of persons into an effective whole--as "classless" is itself a contradiction in terms.
Further Reading
Avineri, Shlomo. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1976. Avineri stresses the significance of Hegel's influence on
Marx.
Jordan, Z. A. The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism: A Philosophical and Sociological
Analysis. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977. A comprehensive study of the philosophy of
dialectical materialism. Jordan argues that dialectical materialism has never been a single,
continuous, or uniform doctrine. He suggests that Marxism is not a coherent body of
thought but a "wide and vaguely circumscribed collection of views, often incompatible with
each other."

Moore, Stanley. Marx on the Choice Between Socialism and Communism. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980. Moore carefully distinguishes between socialism and
communism, and discusses Marx's changing views on the transition to a Communist society.
Tucker, Robert. Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972. One of the first books in English to reevaluate Marx in light of
Marx's own writings.