1. [The Pamphlet] “The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties”
[a) Profit, Rent and Interest Regarded as Surplus Labour of the Workers. The Interrelation Between the Accumulation of Capital and the so-called “Labour Fund”]
Marx begins his analysis of these theories with the pamphlet “The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, [deduced from Principles of Political Economy, in] a Letter to Lord John Russell”, London, 1821. (anonymous).
“This scarcely known pamphlet (about 40 pages) [which appeared] at a time when McCulloch, “this incredible cobbler”, began to make a stir, contains an important advance on Ricardo. It bluntly describes surplus-value—or “profit”, as Ricardo calls it (often also “surplus produce”), or “interest”, as the author of the pamphlet terms it—as “surplus labour”, the labour which the worker performs gratis, the labour he performs over and above the quantity of labour by which the value of his labour-power is replaced, i.e., by which he produces an equivalent for his wages. Important as it was to reduce value to labour, it was equally important [to present] surplus-value, which manifests itself in surplus product, as surplus labour. This was in fact already stated by Adam Smith and constitutes one of the main elements in Ricardo’s argumentation. But nowhere did he clearly express it and record it in an absolute form.” (p 238-9)
Classical economists, such as Smith, Ferguson, Ricardo and James Mill, had analysed capitalist production honestly and scientifically, as a new social phenomenon they sought to understand. They did so, however, as champions of this new social phenomenon, and thereby of the industrial bourgeoisie, which was its personification. There is in this, itself, a contradiction, because inherent in their view of this new social phenomenon is the concept that it is, itself, absolute and universal. In being the champions of the industrial bourgeoisie, as against the old landed aristocracy, and associated parasitic layers of society, the classical economists thereby acknowledge the existence of these previous ruling classes, and the modes of production on which they rest. The contradiction is essentially resolved for them intellectually, by simply applying the categories of capitalist production, retrospectively, to these very different, former modes of production. So, for example, all means of production are classified as capital, all labour, be it slave labour, artisan labour, corvee labour, or wage labour is simply classified as labour, and all activity it is engaged in, thereby, becomes an undifferentiated labour process. In the same way as seen, in Chapter 17, in order to deny the potential of overproduction, the specific characteristics of capitalist production, and exchange-value, are denied, as though it is the same as direct production, and exchange of commodities, in a system of barter.
But, in the process of their scientific analysis of the actual functioning of the capitalist system, the classical economists inevitably uncover realities that are of benefit to the rapidly developing industrial proletariat, in its own understanding and critique of that system, and their position within it. The classical economists development of the science of political economy is purely in order to understand the workings of the system, and, thereby, to find ways of maximising its efficiency and development. For those theorists who arise as representatives of the industrial proletariat, however, the interest is rather to examine the means by which the workers are exploited, and how, thereby, to respond to that exploitation, to examine the historically transitory nature of the system, and how it can be most effectively transcended. In doing so, it sets itself up as not only the basis for the transition from capitalism to socialism/communism, but also for the negation of political economy itself.
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