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This article seeks to dispel a number of misunderstandings concerning Marx’s categories of labour, value and state.
Readers are reminded that while labour is the source of value, i.e., exchange value, for Marx, it is by no means the sole source of value in the broader sense of usefulness for human beings, since Nature also participates in the production of “wealth.” Further, the oppressive character of labour - “work” - results from wage labour and the relations of exchange, which is something quite distinct from a division of labour.
Paresh goes on to show how foreign to Marx’s thinking is any idea of a “workers state” involved in some kind of “planned economy,” and rejects the idea of the working class having its own state machine governing a transition period between capitalism and communism.
Critiques & Rejoinders for
"A Manifesto of Emancipation"
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a rejoinder
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Source: An earlier version of the paper was presented at “Marxism 2000,” University of Massachusetts at Amherst, September 21-24, 2000. Amended by the author for inclusion in “Marx Myths and Legends.”.
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Biographical information
Paresh Chattopadhyay
teaches political economy at the
Department of Sociology at University
of Quebec at Montreal. He mainly
offers courses on Marx, but also
on the political economy of development
and on quantitative methods in social
sciences. His interest is in Marx’s
critique of political economy and
is explicitly based on the Marxist
categories as they appear in Marx’s
original works. He has also extensively
written on the question of the development
of the third world, the agrarian
question in India, and on the (ex)soviet
economy in the light of Marx’s Capital,
and the theory of accumulation of
capital. He is involved in the project
of multi-volume Marx-Engels
Historisch Kritisches Woerterbuch
published under the sponsorship
of the Philosophy Department of
the Free University of Berlin and
is connected with the Berlin-Brandenburg
Academy of Sciences in Berlin. His
most recent publication is The
Marxian Category of Capital and
the Soviet Experience, Praeger,
1994. His work has been published
in English, French, Spanish, Italian,
German and Japanese.
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