Reading Capital

589 Pages·2016·3.54 MB·Tagalog

by  Louis Althusser

Reading Capital
Reading Capital
The Complete Edition
Louis Althusser
ÉTIENNE BALIBAR, ROGER ESTABLET,
JACQUES RANCIÈRE AND PIERRE MACHEREY
Translated by
Ben Brewster and David Fernbach
This book is supported by the Institut Français (Royaume-Uni)
as part of the Burgess programme (www.frenchbooknews.com) This Complete Edition first published by
Verso 2015
Translation of Parts One, Four and Five © Ben Brewster 1970, 1997, 2009, 2015
Translation of Part Two © Ben Brewster 1976, 2015
Translation of Parts Three and Six © David Fernbach 2015
First published as Lire le Capital © François Maspero 1965
Second (abridged) edition © François Maspero 1968
Third (complete) edition © Presses Universitaires de France 1996
First published (abridged) in this English translation by New Left Books 1970
First Verso edition published 1997
Part Two first published in English in Economy and Society 1976
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
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ISBN-13: 978-1-78478141-5 (PB)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478144-6 (HB)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78478143-9 (UK)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78478142-2 (US)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Althusser, Louis, 1918–
1990. | Balibar, Etienne, 1942– | Fernbach, David.
Title: Reading capital : the complete edition / Louis Althusser ; introduction by Etienne Balibar ;
contributions by Roger Establet ; contributions by Jacques Ranciere ; contributions by Pierre Macherey ;
translated by Ben Brewster and David Fernbach.
Other titles: Lire “Le capital”. English
Description: Brooklyn : Verso, 2016. | First published in this English translation by New Left Books 1970;
First Verso edition published 1997.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015028634| ISBN 9781784781415 (paperback) | ISBN 9781784781446 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781784781439 (US) | ISBN 9781784781422 (UK) Subjects: LCSH: Marx, Karl, 1818–1883.
Kapital. | Marxian economics. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory.
Classification: LCC HB501 .A5613 2016 | DDC 335.4/12–dc23
Classification: LCC HB501 .A5613 2016 | DDC 335.4/12–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015028634
Typeset in Bembo by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall Printed in the US by Maple Press
Contents
Editorial Note
Presentation – Étienne Balibar
PART ONE
From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy – Louis Althusser
PART TWO
The Concept of Critique and the Critique of Political Economy: From the 1844
Manuscripts to Capital – Jacques Rancière
1. The Critique of Political Economy in the 1844 Manuscripts
2. Critique and Science in Capital
3. Remarks by Way of Conclusion
PART THREE
On the Process of Exposition of Capital (The Work of Concepts) – Pierre
Macherey
1. The Starting-Point and the Analysis of Wealth
2. The Analysis of the Commodity and the Appearance of Contradiction
3. The Analysis of Value
PART FOUR
The Object of Capital – Louis Althusser
1. Introduction
2. Marx and His Discoveries
3. The Merits of Classical Economics
4. The Errors of Classical Economics: Outline of a Concept of Historical
Time
5. Marxism Is Not a Historicism
6. The Epistemological Propositions of Capital (Marx, Engels)
7. The Object of Political Economy
8. Marx’s Critique
9. Marx’s Immense Theoretical Revolution
Appendix: On the ‘Ideal Average’ and the Forms of Transition
PART FIVE
On the Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism – Étienne Balibar
1. From Periodization to the Modes of Production
2. The Elements of the Structure and their History
3. On Reproduction
4. Elements for a Theory of Transition
PART SIX
Presentation of the Plan of Capital – Roger Establet
1. Marx’s Own Presentation of Capital
2. The Articulations of Capital
3. The Theoretical Field of Volumes One and Two
4. The Definition of the Object of the Second Part of Articulation II
5. The Study of the Sub-articulations of the Second Part of Articulation II
6. The Definition of Articulation II
7. Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
Index
Editorial Note
Ben Brewster’s translations of For Marx and Reading Capital introduced the
work of Althusser and his school to an English readership. They remain widely
acclaimed for their fidelity to the original, and their rendering of Althusser’s
technical vocabulary has been generally adopted – see the Glossary in this
volume. Forty-five years ago, however, many texts of Marx, including Capital
itself, were available in English only in out-dated translations, and others such as
the Grundrisse not at all. The decision has been made for this anniversary
edition to replace all quotations using the Penguin editions of Capital and the
Grundrisse, and for other writings the Marx and Engels Collected Works. This
has required some correlative changes to the translation of the main text, for
example the substitution of ‘worker’ for ‘labourer’, and a few minor adjustments
have also been made in the interest of maximum clarity. In the case of Volume
One of Capital, Althusser and his colleagues quoted throughout the French
edition of Le Capital translated by Joseph Roy and revised by Marx himself. In
the situation at that time, Ben Brewster opted to translate these quotations from
the French; they have now been replaced as per the Penguin translation, but in
cases where Marx made changes for the French edition, this has been indicated.1
Finally, in quotations from Marx, emphases in the original have been indicated
by underlining, to distinguish them from emphases in italics by Althusser and his
co-authors.
Presentation
The collective work Lire le Capital, which is given here in a new edition, has
been out of print and unobtainable for several years. Yet it continues to serve as
a marker and reference in debates and research over the interpretation of Marx’s
thought (even beyond the different currents of ‘Marxism’), whether the object
and status of epistemology (caught between ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’
models), or questions of political philosophy and theory of history raised by the
critique of the category of ‘subject’, for which the notion of structuralism at one
time served as a signal, despite uncertainties that will be mentioned below.
These three theoretical contexts were typical of the intellectual movement of
the 1960s, the effects of which are still being felt today. Lire le Capital is
particularly representative of this conjunction. It is situated in fact at the point of
encounter (and mutual tension) of various projects that will be found constantly
intertwined in the following texts, each of its authors seeking to bring to these
their own illumination and particular emphasis. The first of these is the critical
re-reading of Marx’s scientific work and the mobilization of his concepts across
the field of the human sciences. The second is the recasting of the categories and
figures of dialectics, in the light of the idea of ‘structural causality’. This in its
turn is inseparable from a reflection on the scope of the concepts of Freudian
psychoanalysis, beyond the strict boundaries of the clinic, and a philosophical
attempt to substitute for any theory of knowledge (that is, of its foundation or
criteria) a problematic of the ‘symptomatic reading’ of texts, ‘theoretical
practice’, and the material production of ‘knowledge effects’. The final project,
which at least subjectively dominated all the others, was the quest for a
Communist politics of Spinozist inspiration (or, as Althusser also formulated it