Reason and science in Marx’s Capital: a critique of classical political economy since Hegel

Abstract

Faced with the growing crisis of Western rationality and current scientists leading to the economic, political, social, moral and ecological crisis, it becomes indipensible to rethink and rethink Marx’s scientific criticism of classical political economy. First, we will see Newton’s influence and the epistemological budgets from which his theoretical proposal begins. Second, we will show Hegel’s criticism of the epistemological budgets of Newton’s experimental method and how science should proceed. Thirdly, we will show three aspects of Marx’s scientific proposal with which he criticizes the capitalist mode of production in two of his most outstanding exponents: Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The first aspect revolves around rationality and the types of rationality that scientific dissupposees. In this sense, for Marx (as for Hegel) science (Wissentshaft) is completely a priori. A second aspect of the scientific nature of Marx’s proposal is the mode of research and exposure of science in which the scientific categories are articulated, that is, its way of proceeding with regard to how the Political Economy does, i.e., the dialectical method. A third aspect is the criticism of the supposed ‘valuation neutrality’ which, in my view, is the hard core of Marx’s entire proposal that all science, and in particular political economy, is constitutively normative.