The Young and the Mature Marx: The Transition from ‘Market’ to ‘Production’

Abstract

It has been one of the major preoccupations of recent Marx scholarship to establish the precise relationship between the early and later writings, though it is unlikely that consensus will ever prevail, partly because competing interpretations of Marx always carry — wittingly or unwittingly — conflicting political and ideological ramifications which extend well beyond the world of textual exegesis and scholarship, and partly because his texts contain enough ambiguity to sustain a variety of readings. It is not my intention, however, to provide an overall review of the debate surrounding the relationship between the young and the mature Marx.57 The major contentious issue in this context has concerned the relevance of the concept of alienation to the later works, a matter on which I have commented earlier. Interestingly enough though, one of the most perceptive contributions to the whole subject, and one which has considerable bearing on my own discussion, has remained relatively uninfluential: I refer to Martin Nicolaus’s essay, ‘The Unknown Marx’, which first alerted English readers to the importance of the Grundrisse and clearly set out some of the theoretical elements which separate the mature from the earlier writings.58 Two qualifications concerning Nicolaus’s piece are, however, immediately in order.