The Hegelian dialectic and Marx's <italic>Capital</italic>

Abstract

In Marx's political economy capital, like spirit in Hegel, is the subject and is in the unfolding process, a series of unity-contradiction-unity, from the most abstract-simple categories of commodity, value, and labor as capital implicit to the most concrete-complex category of a pure capitalist economy as capit al explicit. All categories in Capital together constitute an organic whole in which the starting-point, the commodity and value, and the finishing point, the pure capitalist economy, presuppose each other, and form a self-determined system of political economy. Capital mus t then be approached as an organic whole which cannot be broken down i nto a series of unrelated analytical propositions. Copyright 1992 by Oxford University Press.