Defending Marx 2: A Market Economy Is Necessarily Capitalist!

2006/9/4 12:39:18

Even Martians know that Marx's Capital begins with the commodity. Why begin with the commodity? This was the result of Marx's deep deliberation. In fact, in his numerous earlier economic notebooks, Marx considered many possible starting points. But the reason for beginning with the commodity ultimately comes down to one thing: the necessary requirement of the materialist conception of history that Marx founded.

Everyone on Earth knows that Marx's labor theory of value and his theory of surplus value are the specific forms that historical materialism takes under capitalist historical conditions. The history of capitalist society, in the final analysis, is the history of the birth, existence, decay, and extinction of commodities. A capitalism without commodities is certainly an illusory concept, but a commodity economy that is not capitalist is equally a chimera—tortoise hair and rabbit horns!

The category of capitalist society encompasses the reality and possibility of all the evolving relations of capitalist society. When examining the various relations of capitalist society from the standpoint of the economic base, what necessarily appears is the various real relations corresponding to the category of commodity economy. On this point, nothing has changed either before or after Marx. And the appearance and development of the commodity economy category from the standpoint of the economic base necessarily leads to the emergence of all kinds of capitalist social relations. The commodity economy category necessarily evolves into the capitalist category—on this point, nothing has changed either before or after Marx.

The commodity economy—or in other words, the market economy—is entirely equivalent to the economic base of capitalist society. Unless Marx's fundamental conclusion in historical materialism that the economic base determines the superstructure is invalidated, the conclusion that a commodity economy must give rise to a capitalist superstructure is unavoidable! That is to say, "capitalism is necessarily a market economy, and a market economy is necessarily capitalist!"—this is the necessary conclusion of Marx's historical materialism. To deny this, one must deny Marx's historical materialism, and to deny Marx's historical materialism is to be without Marx!

Marx's Capital begins with the commodity, and this is ultimately because Marx's historical materialism necessarily leads to the conclusion that "capitalism is necessarily a market economy, and a market economy is necessarily capitalist!" Standing on Marx's position of the real totality, for the commodity—the most common phenomenon of capitalism—to become the starting point of Capital is entirely natural. Between Marx and the denial of "capitalism is necessarily a market economy, and a market economy is necessarily capitalist!" there is no room for compromise whatsoever—any "village worthyism" is impossible here!