capitalist mode of production rules,” respectively (1970:27; 1976:125). In the
face of science’s claim to eternity, Marx has simply pointed off the other direc-
tion. He does not pretend to examine something timeless; contrarily, he con-
tinuously directs us towards the limited scope of his investigation.^11 Just as
at the gate of Hell, at the gate of science we must confront the moment of
decision: either we abandon all hope, or we turn aside from science’s claim
to portray things as they always have been and ever will be.
Marx can redirect us from this apparent eternity because he sees political
economy’s limit, and is thus able to lead us to that limit. According to Marx,
Ricardo is the “finisher of political economy” (1970:61).^12 Political economy
is defined as a science by “the determination of exchange-value by labor-
time,” and Ricardo works up this determination into its “purest” formula-
tion (1970:61). Thus, Marx writes that “with [Ricardo’s] contribution the
bourgeois science of political economy had reached the limits beyond which
it could not pass” (1976:96). Marx himself, in his presentation of the com-
modity, begins with Ricardo’s formulation, as virtually all commentators note.
What follows from this beginning, however, is rarely grasped. Harry Cleaver
has rightly criticized the tendency to read Marx’s critiqueof political econ-
omy as essentially a correctionof political economy, “either as fulfilling its
promise or as having corrected its errors” (2000:32).^13 The truth is there is
nothing to fulfill or to correct. Political economy is done, finished, closed;
Marx says this explicitly. Therefore, when he begins with the commodity, the
exchange-value of which is determined by socially abstract labor-time, he
begins with the boundary marker of political economy before his eyes. He
has this limit in view because the whole task of his critique is to guide us to
The Origin of Political Economy and the Descent of Marx • 43(^11) This plain statement has been continuously misunderstood, ever since Engels’
unfortunately concluded that, in the first two sections of Capital, Marx is investigat-
ing some heretofore unknown form of society called “simple commodity production,”
lying somewhere in the past. Even more confusing are the claims made by Philip J.
Kain, that “the ‘commodity’, with which Capitalbegins, is in fact a transhistorical cat-
egory” (1986:63). It is unclear what Kain means by “transhistorical,” since it can hardly
be maintained that commodities have always existed. Perhaps, instead, he means only
that no matter when commodities exist, they will be as Marx describes them. But this
is a trivial claim, since the same can be said of anything whatsoever; it is what it is
as long as it remains what it is. 12
Jon Elster agrees with Paul Samuelson that Marx is “basically ‘a minor post-
Ricardian’” (1985:513). Since this judgment is confined to Marx as an economist, Marx
would certainly agree; alleconomists after Ricardo are necessarilyminor post-Ricardians,
in Marx’s estimation. 13
Compare Althusser ’s discussion (Althusser and Balibar 1970:18–30).