2. James Mill [Futile Attempts to Resolve the Contradictions of the Ricardian System]
Referring to James Mill's (not to be confused with his son John Stuart Mill) Elements of Political Economy, London, 1821 (second ed., London, 1824), Marx says,
“Mill was the first to present Ricardo’s theory in systematic form, even though he did it only in rather abstract outlines. What he tries to achieve is formal, logical consistency. The disintegration of the Ricardian school “therefore” begins with him.” (p 84)
Marx's discussion of the development of theory here is reminiscent of Kuhn. Kuhn discusses the way a theory is seen as being the best explanation of actual phenomena. There are always elements of reality that the theory does not explain. As attempts to incorporate an explanation of these exceptions are made, so these begin to accumulate contradictions within the overall theory itself. Eventually, the accumulation of these contradictions within the theory make its replacement by some new theory inevitable. And then the process begins again.
Marx, here, makes a similar point. Ricardo's theory was vibrant and revolutionary, because it arose as an explanation of a new social reality, with all the contradictions that existed within that reality.
“With the master what is new and significant develops vigorously amid the “manure” of contradictions out of the contradictory phenomena. The underlying contradictions themselves testify to the richness of the living foundation from which the theory itself developed.” (p 84)
But, although Ricardo's theory was a great leap forward, in explaining this new social reality, it could not explain it all. As has been seen, the critics of this theory, such as Malthus, Chalmers and Cazenove, pick upon the contradictions in the theory, and the fact that it does not explain all of the new reality, such as the fact that commodities clearly do not exchange in proportion to their values, not in order to resolve them, but in order to overthrow it. The supporters of Ricardo, in order to combat his critics then find themselves basing themselves not on reality, its actual contradictions, and an attempt to explain that reality, but upon the theory itself, and an attempt to reconcile its own contradictions.
“His raw material is no longer reality, but the new theoretical form in which the master had sublimated it. It is in part the theoretical disagreement of opponents of the new theory and in part the often paradoxical relationship of this theory to reality which drive him to seek to refute his opponents and explain away reality. In doing so, he entangles himself in contradictions and with his attempt to solve these he demonstrates the beginning disintegration of the theory which he dogmatically espouses. On the one hand, Mill wants to present bourgeois production as the absolute form of production and seeks therefore to prove that its real contradictions are only apparent ones. On the other hand, [he seeks] to present the Ricardian theory as the absolute theoretical form of this mode of production and to disprove the theoretical contradictions, both the ones pointed out by others and the ones he himself cannot help seeing.” (p 84-5)
But, Mill does represent the same interests of industrial capital as Ricardo, and at the time, the industrial bourgeoisie still represented a revolutionary class, as against the landed aristocracy. He does take the theory beyond the limits to it reached by Ricardo.
“... and he draws the practical conclusions from the theory—that of rent for example—more ruthlessly, against the institution of landed property which he would like to see more or less directly transformed into State property.” (p 85)
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