And, as I have described above, and Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, to produce on even this scale requires a large enough market for what is produced, so as to make it worthwhile employing those workers. That is why it is only with the growth of the towns, in the fifteenth century, and after, that those markets grow, so as to make this large-scale industrial production viable, and means that the failed independent producers become wage-labourers rather than, as before, debt slaves, servants or paupers.
“It is only after this, and in the course of further explanations elucidating and substantiating the fact that not every petty sum of values is enough to be transformable at pleasure into capital, but that in this respect each period of development and each branch of industry have their definite minimum sum, that Marx observes: “Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel (in his Logic), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes.”.” (p 158-9)
As Engels notes, therefore, Marx does not say that, because of the Hegelian law, when money reaches a certain size it becomes capital. He says that, only when a sum of value reaches a certain size can it be transformed into capital, and that this is a proof of the Hegelian law. Exactly what this size is will vary according to a range of other factors. In some conditions, a relatively small amount of value may be required, if, for example, production in general occurs only on a small scale, and where the value of the necessary means of production is low, and they can be turned over quickly. In other conditions, only a huge amount of value can be converted into capital, where, to produce on an efficient scale requires large factories, filled with expensive machinery and so on.
“Not to mention the fact that Herr Dühring makes Marx speak of any kind of “advance”, whereas Marx refers only to an advance made in the form of raw materials, instruments of labour, and wages; and that Herr Dühring thus succeeds in making Marx talk pure nonsense. He then has the cheek to describe as comic the nonsense which he himself has fabricated.” (p 159)
This method of quoting incorrectly, used by Duhring, is also one I have noted in relation to, for example, the AWL, who, as adherents of the petty-bourgeois Third Camp, are also advocates of the “practical politics” of one of its initiators, Max Shachtman. Engels notes, in similar vein,
“It becomes more and more evident that this habit is an internal necessity of the philosophy of reality, and it is certainly a very “summary procedure”.” (p 159)
Duhring had, himself, lapsed into the Hegelian law, in his previous discussion of the quantitative changes in the temperature of water, resulting in the qualitative change into steam or ice. Engels notes that hundreds of other examples could be cited as proof of the law. For example, Marx, in Capital, sets out the way cooperation, division of labour and so on results in a qualitative change, beyond a certain point.
“As for example the fact that the co-operation of a number of people, the fusion of many forces into one single force, creates, to use Marx's phrase, a “new power”, which is essentially different from the sum of its separate forces.” (p 160)
In the passage from Capital, cited by Duhring, Marx had, also, added a footnote, in which he wrote,
“The molecular theory of modern chemistry first scientifically worked out by Laurent and Gerhardt rests on no other law.” (p 161)
Yet, Duhring disparaged Marx's scientific knowledge, much as he disparaged the knowledge of everyone else.
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