THE 'ECONOMICS'^267and Rousseau, who began with isolated individuals outside society: 'pro-
duction by isolated individuals outside society... is as great an absurdity
as the idea of the development of language without individuals living
together and talking to one another'.^5 Marx then pointed out that it was
important to try to isolate the general factors common to all production
in order not to ignore the essential differences between epochs. Modern
economists - like J. S. Mill - were guilty of such ignorance when they
tried to depict modern bourgeois relations of production as immutable
laws of society. Marx cited two examples: thinkers such as Mill tended to
jump from the tautology that there was no such thing as production
without property to the presupposition that a particular form of property
- private property - was basic; whereas history showed that it was common
property that was basic. Secondly, there was a tendency to suppose that
the legal system under which contemporary production took place was
based on eternal principles without realising that 'every form of pro-
duction creates its own legal relations'.^6 Marx summed up his first section
with the words: 'All the stages of production have certain characteristics
in common which we generalise in thought; but the so-called general
conditions of production are nothing but abstract conceptions which do
not go to make up any real stage in the history of production.'^7
The second section bore the title 'The General Relation of Production
to Distribution, Exchange and Consumption'. Here Marx was anxious to
refute the view that the four economic activities - production, distribution,
exchange and consumption - could be treated in isolation from each
other. He began by claiming that production was, in a sense, identical to
consumption, in that one talked of productive consumption and consump-
tive production; that each was in fact a means of bringing the other about;
and that each moulded the forms of existence of its counterpart. Marx
similarly denied that distribution formed an independent sphere standing
alongside, and outside, production. This view could not be maintained
since 'distribution, as far as the individual is concerned, naturally appears
as a law established by society determining his position in the sphere of
production within which he produces, and thus antedating production'.^8
External aggression or internal revolution also seemed, by their distri-
bution of property, to antedate and determine production. Similarly with
exchange, which seemed to Marx to be a constituent part of production.
'The result we arrive at', Marx concluded, 'is not that production, distri-
bution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they are all
members of one entity, different aspects of one unit.'^9
The third section, entitled 'The Method of Political Economy', is even
more abstract, yet very important for understanding Marx's approach. He
wished to establish that the correct method of discussing economics was