The Logic of Marx's Capital

Abstract

Abstract So lamented Lenin in 1914, as world war began to quicken the ground for socialist unpheaval. He had turned to Hegel, annotated the Science of Logic and given this private exclamation to its revelation of Capital. Unfortunately, the nature of the new understanding was never made clear, and the only time Lenin tried to show how the Logic could make Marx's work more intelligible, he merely compared the commodity with Hegel's “Being.” Nonetheless, Lenin's aphorism is still valid today, because neither Marx nor his commentators provide a systematic clarification of Capital's methodology. Marxist discussion has accepted the authority of its classics without even being able to ground the discourse of Capital.