Critique of political economy#Karl Marx

Critique of political economy or simply the first critique of economy is a form of social critique that rejects the conventional ways of distributing resources. The critique also rejects what its advocates believe are unrealistic axioms, flawed historical assumptions, and taking conventional economic mechanisms as a given{{Cite book |last1=Louis |first1=Althusser |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1968/reading-capital/ch02.htm|title=Reading Capital |last2=Balibar |first2=Etienne |publisher=Verso Editions |year=1979 |pages=158 |oclc=216233458 |quote='To criticize Political Economy' means to confront it with a new problematic and a new object: i.e., to question the very object of Political Economy}}

or as transhistorical (true for all human societies for all time).{{Citation |last1=Fareld |first1=Victoria |title=From Marx to Hegel and Back |date=2020 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350082700.ch-001 |page=142,182 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |doi=10.5040/9781350082700.ch-001 |isbn=978-1-3500-8267-0 |access-date=17 September 2021 |last2=Kuch |first2=Hannes |s2cid=213805975}}{{sfn|Postone|1993|pages=44, 192–216}} The critique asserts the conventional economy is merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources, which emerged along with modernity (post-Renaissance Western society).{{Cite journal |last=Mortensen |title=Ekonomi |journal=Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=9}}{{Cite book |first=Moishe |last=Postone |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/910250140 |title=Time, labor, and social domination : a reinterpretation of Marx's critical theory |year=1995 |isbn=0-521-56540-5 |pages=5, 130|publisher=Cambridge University Press |oclc=910250140}}{{Cite web|last=Jönsson|first=Dan|title=John Ruskin: En brittisk 1800-talsaristokrat för vår tid – OBS|url=https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1244376|url-status=live|access-date=24 September 2021|website=sverigesradio.se|date=7 February 2019 |publisher=Sveriges Radio|language=sv|quote=Den klassiska nationalekonomin, som den utarbetats av John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith och David Ricardo, betraktade han som en sorts kollektivt hjärnsläpp ... [Transl. Ruskin viewed the classical political economy as it was developed by Mill, Smith, and Ricardo, as a kind of 'collective mental lapse'.]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200305082621/https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1244376 |archive-date=5 March 2020 }}

Critics of political economy do not necessarily aim to create their own theories regarding how to administer economies.{{Cite web|last=Ramsay|first=Anders|date=21 December 2009|title=Marx? Which Marx? Marx's work and its history of reception|url=https://www.eurozine.com/marx-which-marx/|url-status=live|access-date=16 September 2021|website=www.eurozine.com|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180212144158/http://www.eurozine.com/marx-which-marx/ |archive-date=12 February 2018 }}{{Cite web |last=Ruccio |first=David |date=10 December 2020 |title=Toward a critique of political economy {{!}} MR Online |url=https://mronline.org/2020/12/10/toward-a-critique-of-political-economy/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201215173028/https://mronline.org/2020/12/10/toward-a-critique-of-political-economy/ |archive-date=15 December 2020 |access-date=20 September 2021 |website=mronline.org |quote=Marx arrives at conclusions and formulates new terms that run directly counter to those of Smith, Ricardo, and the other classical political economists.}} Critics of economy commonly view "the economy" as a bundle of concepts and societal and normative practices, rather than being the result of any self-evident economic laws. Hence, they also tend to consider the views which are commonplace within the field of economics as faulty, or simply as pseudoscience.{{Cite journal|last=Murray|first=Patrick|date=March 2020|title=The Illusion of the Economic: Social Theory without Social Forms|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/708005|journal=Critical Historical Studies|volume=7|issue=1|pages=19–27|doi=10.1086/708005|issn=2326-4462|s2cid=219746578}}{{Cite web|last1=Patterson|first1=Orlando|last2=Fosse|first2=Ethan|title=Overreliance on the Pseudo-Science of Economics|url=https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated/overreliance-on-the-pseudo-science-of-economics|url-status=live|website=The New York Times|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150209225723/http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated/overreliance-on-the-pseudo-science-of-economics |archive-date=2015-02-09 }} (OpEd)

There are multiple critiques of political economy today, but what they have in common is critique of what critics of political economy tend to view as dogma, i.e. claims of the economy as a necessary and transhistorical societal category.{{Cite journal |last1=Ruda |first1=Frank |last2=Hamza |first2=Agon |date=2016 |title=Introduction: Critique of Political Economy |url=https://www.crisiscritique.org/storage/app/media/2016-11-16/introduction-2.pdf |journal=Crisis and Critique |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=5–7}}

John Ruskin

File:John Ruskin in his thirties.jpg

In the 1860s, John Ruskin published his essay Unto This Last which he came to view as his central work.{{Cite book|last=Ruskin|first=John|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36541|title=Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy|date=1877|publisher=George Allen|location=Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent|via=Project Gutenberg}}{{Cite web|last=Jönsson|first=Dan|title=John Ruskin: En brittisk 1800 – talsaristokrat för vår tid? – OBS|url=https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1244376|access-date=16 September 2021|website=sverigesradio.se|date=7 February 2019 |publisher=Sveriges Radio|language=sv}}{{Cite journal|last=Swann|first=G M Peter|date=2001|title="No Wealth But Life": When Does Mercantile Wealth Create Ruskinian Wealth?|url=https://www.ersj.eu/repec/ers/papers/01_34_p2.pdf|journal=European Research Studies Journal|volume=IV (3–4)|pages=5–18}} The essay was originally written as a series of publications in a magazine, which ended up having to suspend the publications, due to the severe controversy the articles caused. While Ruskin is generally known as an important art critic, his study of the history of art was a component that gave him some insight into the pre-modern societies of the Middle Ages, and their social organisation which he was able to contrast to his contemporary condition.{{Cite web|date=30 August 2018|title=Ruskin the radical: why the Victorian critic is back with a vengeance|url=http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/30/john-ruskin-artists-victorian-social-critic|url-status=live|access-date=12 November 2021|website=The Guardian|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180830095752/https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/30/john-ruskin-artists-victorian-social-critic |archive-date=30 August 2018 }} Ruskin attempted to mobilize a methodological/scientific critique of new political economy, as it was envisaged by the classical economists.{{Cite book|last=Henderson|first=Willie|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48139638|title=John Ruskin's political economy|date=2000|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-203-15946-2|location=London|oclc=48139638|quote=... Ruskin attempted a methodological/scientific critique of political economy. He fixed on ideas of 'natural laws', 'economic man' and the prevailing notion of 'value' to point out gaps and inconsistencies in the system of classical economics.}}{{Cite book|last=Ruskin|first=John|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36541/pg36541-images.html|title=Unto this Last|pages=128–129}}

Ruskin viewed the concept of "the economy" as a kind of "collective mental lapse or collective concussion", and he viewed the emphasis on precision in industry as a kind of slavery.{{Cite web|title=From Labor to Value: Marx, Ruskin, and the Critique of Capitalism|url=https://victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/bullock.html|access-date=12 November 2021|website=victorianweb.org}} Due to the fact that Ruskin regarded the political economy of his time as "mad", he said that it interested him as much as "a science of gymnastics which had as its axiom that human beings in fact didn't have skeletons." Ruskin declared that economics rests on positions that are exactly the same. According to Ruskin, these axioms resemble thinking, not that human beings do not have skeletons but rather that they consist entirely of skeletons. Ruskin wrote that he did not oppose the truth value of this theory, he merely wrote that he denied that it could be successfully implemented in the world in the state it was in. He took issue with the ideas of "natural laws", "economic man", and the prevailing notion of value and aimed to point out the inconsistencies in the thinking of the economists. He critiqued John Stuart Mill for thinking that "the opinions of the public" was reflected adequately by market prices.{{Cite book|last=Henderson|first=Willie|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48139638|title=John Ruskin's political economy|date=2000|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-203-15946-2|location=London|page=100|oclc=48139638|quote=Ruskin's criticism of Mill is that he based the science of political economy on 'the opinions of the public' as expressed by market prices, i.e. on 'fuddled' thought induced by contemplating the shadow of value rather than thinking upon, by implication, a true (Platonic) object of cognition.}}

Ruskin coined illth to refer to unproductive wealth. Ruskin is not well known as a political thinker today but when in 1906 a journalist asked the first generation of Labour Party members of Parliament in the United Kingdom which book had most inspired them, Unto This Last emerged as an undisputed chart-topper.

{{Blockquote|text=... the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour'.|author=John Ruskin|title=Unto This Last}}

= Criticism =

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels regarded much of Ruskin's critique as reactionary. His idealisation of the Middle Ages made them reject him as a "feudal utopian".

Karl Marx

File:Karl Marx.png

Marx is probably the most famous critic of political economy, with his three-volume magnum opus, {{lang|de|Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie}} (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy), as one of his most famous books (Capital volume 1 appeared in 1867; the later volumes were published posthumously, by Friedrich Engels.){{Cite journal|last1=Conttren |first1=V.|date=2022|last2=Conttren |first2=V.|title=István Mészáros: The Critique of Political Economy|url=https://osf.io/65mxd/|doi=10.17605/OSF.IO/65MXD}} Marx's companion Engels engaged in critique of political economy in his 1844 Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, which helped lay down some of the foundation for what Marx was to take further.{{Cite web|title=Deutsch- Französische Jahrbucher|trans-title=German-French Yearbooks|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm|access-date=16 September 2021|website=www.marxists.org}}{{Cite journal|last=Liedman|first=Sven-Eric|title=Engelsismen|trans-title=Engelsism

|url=https://fronesis.nu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/FR02808.pdf|journal=Fronesis|language=sv|page=134|quote=Engels var också först med att kritiskt bearbeta den nya nationalekonomin; hans 'Utkast till en kritik av nationalekonomin' kom ut 1844 och blev en utgångspunkt för Marx egen kritik av den politiska ekonomin|number=28|trans-quote=Engels was the first to critically engage the new political economy his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy came out in 1844 and became a starting point for Marx's own critique of the political economy}}{{Cite journal|last=Murray|first=Patrick|date=March 2020|title=The Illusion of the Economic: Social Theory without Social Forms|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/708005|journal=Critical Historical Studies|volume=7|issue=1|pages=19–27|doi=10.1086/708005|issn=2326-4462|quote='There are no counterparts to Marx's economic concepts in either classical or utility theory.' I take this to mean that Marx breaks with economics, where economics is understood to be a generally applicable social science.|s2cid=219746578}}

Marx's critique of political economy encompasses the study and exposition of the mode of production and ideology of bourgeois society, and its critique of {{lang|de|Realabstraktionen}} (real abstraction), that is, the fundamental economic, i.e. social categories present within what for Marx is the capitalist mode of production,{{Cite journal|title=Marx Ekonomikritik|url=https://fronesis.nu/nummer/marxekonomikritik/|journal=Fronesis|language=sv|access-date=1 September 2021|number=28}}{{Cite journal |last=Bellofiore |first=Riccardo |date=2016 |title=Marx after Hegel: Capital as Totality and the Centrality of Production |url=https://www.crisiscritique.org/storage/app/media/2016-11-16/riccardo-bellofiore.pdf |journal=Crisis & Critique |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=31}} for example abstract labour.{{clarify|reason=Not clear what this is intended to exemplify|date=September 2021}}{{Cite journal|last=Jung|first=Henrik|date=1 January 2019|title=Slagen av abstraktioner: Förnuftiga och reala abstraktioner i Marx ekonomikritik|trans-title=Battle of abstractions: Sensible and real abstractions in March's critique of economy |url=https://tidskriftenlychnos.se/article/view/21307|journal=Lychnos: Årsbok för idé- och lärdomshistoria|language=sv-SE|issn=0076-1648|quote=Marx consistently reveals the social abstraction of the substance of value and capital, i.e. abstract labour, as a Realabstraktion dominating individuals in bourgeois society through money and capital.}}{{verify inline|reason=This book seems to be in Swedish. The quotation should therefore also be in Swedish, with an English translation|date=November 2024}}{{Cite book|last1=Fareld|first1=Victoria|title=From Marx to Hegel and back capitalism, critique, and utopia|last2=Kuch|first2=Hannes|date=9 January 2020|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|isbn=978-1-350-08268-7|location=Ann Arbor, Michigan|pages=150, 143|oclc=1141198381}} In contrast to the classics of political economy, Marx was concerned with lifting the ideological veil of surface phenomena and exposing the norms, axioms, social relations, institutions, and so on, that reproduced capital.{{Cite web|last=Freeman|first=Alan|title=The psychopathology of Walrasian Marxism|url=https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/1539/1/MPRA_paper_1539.pdf|url-status=live|website=Munich Personal RePEc Archive|quote='Economic' categories, appearing as inhuman things with a mind of their own – prices, money, interest rates – are for Marx the disguised form of relations between people.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180410185945/https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/1539/1/MPRA_paper_1539.pdf |archive-date=10 April 2018 }}

The central works in Marx's critique of political economy are {{lang|de|Grundrisse}}, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and {{lang|de|Das Kapital}}. Marx's works are often explicitly named{{snd}} for example: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, or Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.{{Cite book|last=Balibar|first=Étienne|title=The philosophy of Marx|date=2007|publisher=Verso|isbn=978-1-84467-187-8|location=London|page=18|oclc=154707531|quote=The expression 'critique of political economy' figures repeatedly in the title or programme of Marx's main works ... To these we may add a great many unpublished pieces, articles and sections in polemical works.}} Marx cited Engels' article Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy several times in {{lang|de|Das Kapital}}. Trotskyists and other Leninists tend to implicitly or explicitly argue that these works constitute and or contain "economical theories", which can be studied independently.{{Cite book|last=Volkov|first=Genrikh Nikolaevich|url=http://archive.org/details/basics_of_marxist__leninist_theory|title=The Basics of Marxist-Leninist Theory|date=1982|publisher=Progress|series=Progress guides to the social sciences|location=Moscow|pages=51, 188, 313|language=en|oclc=695564556}}{{Cite book|last=Ernest|first=Mandel|title=An introduction to Marxist economic theory|date=1973|publisher=Pathfinder|isbn=0-87348-315-4|oclc=609440295}}{{Cite web|last=Brooks|first=Mick|title=An introduction to Marx's Labour Theory of Value|url=https://www.marxist.com/marx-marxist-labour-theory-value.htm|access-date=16 September 2021|website=In Defence of Marxism|date=12 July 2005 |language=en-gb}} This was also the common understanding of Marx's work on economy that was put forward by Soviet orthodoxy.{{Cite web|last=Ramsay|first=Anders|title=Marx? Which Marx? Marx's work and its history of reception|url=https://www.eurozine.com/marx-which-marx/|url-status=live|access-date=16 September 2021|website=www.eurozine.com|date=21 December 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180212144158/http://www.eurozine.com/marx-which-marx/ |archive-date=12 February 2018 }} Since this is the case, it remains a matter of controversy whether Marx's critique of political economy is to be understood as a critique of the political economy or, according to the orthodox interpretation another theory of economics.{{Cite web|title=Excerpt from discussion on SPSM listserv on whether Capital can be understood as a "critique" of political economy or as "Marxist" political economy, highlighting the view of Juan Inigo|url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/inigo2.htm|website=www.marxists.org}}{{Cite book|last1=Wolff|first1=Jonathan|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/marx/|title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|last2=Leopold|first2=David|chapter=Karl Marx |date=2 September 2021|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|via=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}} The critique of political economy is considered the most important and most central project within Marxism, which has led (and continues to lead) to numerous approaches advanced within and outside academic circles.{{Cite web|title=Programme of the French Worker's Party|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm|access-date=27 October 2021|website=Marxists Internet Archive}}{{sfn|Postone|1993}}

= Foundational concepts =

Labour and capital are historically specific forms of social relations, and labour is not the source of all wealth.{{sfn|Postone|1993}}{{Cite book|last1=Marx|first1=Karl|title=Grundrisse: foundations of the critique of political economy (rough draft)|last2=Nicolaus|first2=Martin|date=1993|publisher=Penguin Books in association with New Left Review|isbn=0-14-044575-7|location=London|pages=296, 239, 264|oclc=31358710}}{{Cite web|title=Marx's Critique of Classical Economics|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/geoff4.htm#Pill10|url-status=live|access-date=2 October 2021|website=www.marxists.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010309231926/http://marxists.org:80/archive/pilling/works/capital/geoff4.htm |archive-date=9 March 2001 }}
Labour is the other side of the same coin as capital, labour presupposes capital, and capital presupposes labour.{{Cite book|last=Pradella|first=Lucia|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/897376910|title=Globalisation and the critique of political economy: new insights from Marx's writings|date=2015|isbn=978-1-317-80072-9|location=Abingdon, Oxfordshire|pages=147|oclc=897376910}}
Money is not in any way something transhistorical or natural, which goes for the whole economy as well as the other categories specific to the mode of production, and its gains in value are constituted due to social relations rather than any inherent qualities.{{Cite book|last=Saitō|first=Kōhei|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1003193200|title=Karl Marx's ecosocialism: capitalism, nature, and the unfinished critique of political economy|date=2017|isbn=978-1-58367-643-1|location=New York|oclc=1003193200|quote=Marx's critique of classical political economy as a critique of the fetishistic (that is, ahistorical) understanding of economic categories, which identifies the appearance of capitalist society with the universal and transhistorical economic laws of nature. Marx, in contrast, comprehends those economic categories as 'specific social forms' and reveals the underlying social relations that bestow an objective validity of this inverted world where economic things dominate human beings.}}{{Cite book|last=Behrens|first=Diethard|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30457885|title=Gesellschaft und Erkenntnis|date=1993|publisher=Ça ira|isbn=3-924627-34-7|location=Freiburg im Breisgau|pages=71–72|oclc=30457885}}
The individual does not exist in some form of vacuum but is rather enmeshed in social relations.{{Cite web|last=Marx|first=Karl|title=Economic Manuscripts: Appendix I: Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm#production|url-status=live|access-date=4 October 2021|website=www.marxists.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020208230946/http://www.marxists.org:80/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm |archive-date=8 February 2002 }}{{Cite web|last=Marx|first=Karl|title=Critique of the Gotha Programme—I|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm|url-status=live|access-date=12 October 2021|website=www.marxists.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020823044912/http://www.marxists.org:80/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm |archive-date=23 August 2002 }}

= Marx's critique of the quasi-religious and ahistorical methodology of economists =

Marx described the view of contemporaneous economists and theologians on social phenomena as similarly unscientific.{{Cite journal|last=Peperell|date=2018|title=Beyond reification: Reclaiming Marx's Concept of the Fetish Character of the Commodity|url=https://kontradikce.flu.cas.cz/upload/__issues/kontradikce-2-49.pdf|journal=Kontradikce: A Journal for Critical Thought|volume=2|page=35}}

{{Blockquote|text=Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. When the economists say that present-day relations – the relations of bourgeois production – are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations, therefore, are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws that must always govern society. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society, which the economists try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal.|source=Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy{{Cite book|title=The Poverty of Philosophy |chapter= 2.1 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm#s7|access-date=16 September 2021|website=Marxists Internet Archive}}}}

Marx continued to emphasize the ahistorical thought of the modern economists in the {{lang|de|Grundrisse}}, where he among other endeavors, critiqued the liberal economist Mill.{{Cite web|last=Marx|title=Grundrisse|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm|url-status=live|quote=The aim is, rather, to present production – see e.g. Mill – as distinct from distribution, etc., as encased in eternal natural laws independent of history, at which opportunity bourgeois relations are then quietly smuggled in as the inviolable natural laws on which society in the abstract is founded. This is the more or less conscious purpose of the whole proceeding. In distribution, by contrast, humanity has allegedly permitted itself to be considerably more arbitrary. Quite apart from this crude tearing-apart of production and distribution and of their real relationship, it must be apparent from the outset that, no matter how different distribution may have been arranged in different stages of social development, it must be possible here also, just as with production, to single out common characteristics, and just as possible to confound or to extinguish all historic differences under general human laws.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020202110805/http://www.marxists.org:80/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm |archive-date=2 February 2002 }} Marx also viewed the viewpoints which implicitly regarded the institutions of modernity as transhistorical as fundamentally deprived of historical understanding.{{Cite web|last=Ruccio|first=David|date=10 December 2020|title=Toward a critique of political economy |website=MR Online|url=https://mronline.org/2020/12/10/toward-a-critique-of-political-economy/|url-status=live|access-date=20 September 2021|quote=Second, Marx's concern is always with social and historical specificity, as against looking for or finding what others would consider being given and universal.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201215173028/https://mronline.org/2020/12/10/toward-a-critique-of-political-economy/ |archive-date=15 December 2020 }}{{Cite web|last=Duarte|first=Filipe|date=2019-02-04|title=Marx's method of political economy|url=https://www.ppesydney.net/marxs-method-of-political-economy/|access-date=2022-02-14|website=Progress in Political Economy (PPE)|language=en-GB|quote=Social phenomena exist, and can be understood, only in their historical context.}}

{{Blockquote|text=Individuals producing in society, and hence the socially determined production of individuals, is, of course, the point of departure. The solitary and isolated hunter or fisherman, who serves Adam Smith and Ricardo as a starting point, is one of the unimaginative fantasies of eighteenth-century romances a la Robinson Crusoe; and despite the assertions of social historians, these by no means signify simply a reaction against over-refinement and reversion to a misconceived natural life. No more is Rousseau's contract social, which by means of a contract establishes a relationship and connection between subjects that are by nature independent, based on this kind of naturalism. ... The individual in this society of free competition seems to be rid of natural ties, etc., which made him an appurtenance of a particular, limited aggregation of human beings in previous historical epochs. The prophets of the eighteenth century, on whose shoulders Adam Smith and Ricardo were still wholly standing, envisaged this 18th-century individual – a product of the dissolution of feudal society on the one hand and of the new productive forces evolved since the sixteenth century on the other – as an ideal whose existence belonged to the past. They saw this individual not as a historical result, but as the starting point of history; not as something evolving in the course of history, but posited by nature, because for them this individual was in conformity with nature, in keeping with their idea of human nature. This delusion has been characteristic of every new epoch hitherto.|author=Karl Marx|title=A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Introduction)}}

File:Zentralbibliothek Zürich Das Kapital Marx 1867.jpg

According to the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, what Marx understood, and what the economists failed to recognise was that the value-form is not something essential, but merely a part of the capitalist mode of production.{{Cite journal|last=Rancière|first=Jacques|date=August 1976|title=The concept of 'critique' and the 'critique of political economy' (from the 1844 Manuscript to Capital)|url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085147600000016|journal=Economy and Society|language=en|volume=5|issue=3|pages=352–376|doi=10.1080/03085147600000016|issn=0308-5147}}

= On scientifically adequate research =

Marx offered a critique regarding the idea of people being able to conduct scientific research in this domain.{{Cite book|last=Marx|first=Karl|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf|title=Capital: A Critique of Political Economy|date=1887|volume=I: The Process of Production of Capital|orig-date=1867|via=www.marxists.org|authorlink=Karl Marx}} He wrote:

{{Blockquote|text=In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean, and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of

private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Nowadays atheism is culpa levis [a relatively slight sin, c.f. mortal sin], as compared with criticism of existing property relations.|source=Karl Marx, {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} (Preface to the First German Edition)}}

= On vulgar economists =

Marx criticized what he regarded as the false critique of political economy of his contemporaries, sometimes even more forcefully than when he critiqued the classical economists he described as vulgar economists. In Marx's view, the errors of some socialist authors led the workers' movement astray. He rejected Ferdinand Lassalle's iron law of wages, which he regarded as mere phraseology.{{Cite book|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203878392|title=Rosa Luxemburg and the Critique of Political Economy|date=27 May 2009|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-13507-3|editor-last=Bellofiore|editor-first=Riccardo|page=161|doi=10.4324/9780203878392}} He also rejected Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's attempts to do what Hegel did for religion, law, and so on for political economy, as well as regarding what is social as subjective, and what was societal as merely subjective abstractions.{{Cite web|title=The Poverty of Philosophy – Chapter 2.1|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm#s1|access-date=25 September 2021|website=Marxists Internet Archive}}

= Interpretations of Marx's critique of political economy =

Some scholars view Marx's critique as being a critique of commodity fetishism and the manner in which this concept expresses a criticism of modernity and its modes of socialisation.{{Cite journal|last=Pimenta|first=Tomás Lima|date=August 2020|title=Alienation and fetishism in Karl Marx's critique of political economy|journal=Nova Economia|volume=30|issue=2|pages=605–628|doi=10.1590/0103-6351/4958|issn=1980-5381|doi-access=free}} Other scholars who engage with Marx's critique of political economy affirm the critique might assume a more Kantian sense, which transforms "Marx's work into a foray concerning the imminent antinomies that lie at the heart of capitalism, where politics and economy intertwine in impossible ways."

= Contemporary Marxian =

Regarding contemporary Marxian critiques of political economy, these are generally accompanied by a rejection of the more naturalistically influenced readings of Marx, as well as other readings later deemed {{lang|de|weltanschaaungsmarxismus}} (worldview Marxism),{{Cite journal|title=Läs kapitalet – igen|trans-title=Read Capital – again|url=https://fronesis.nu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/FR02801.pdf|journal=Fronesis|volume=28|page=12 (p.5 in the pdf)|trans-quote=His striving to develop a materialist ontology and a unitary theory, which could speak on all parts of reality, made a wider use for the schools and parties in the east which far into the sixties and seventies stood for different forms of worldview Marxism.}}{{Cite journal|title=Läs kapitalet – igen|trans-title=Read Capital – again|url=https://fronesis.nu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/FR02801.pdf|journal=Fronesis|volume=28|page=10 (p.3 in the pdf)}} that was popularised as late as toward the end of the 20th century.

According to some scholars in this field, contemporary critiques of political economy and contemporary German {{lang|de|Ökonomiekritik}} have been at least partly neglected in the anglophone world.{{Cite journal|last=O'Kane|first=Chris|date=29 January 2018|title=On the Development of the Critique of Political Economy as a Critical Social Theory of Economic Objectivity: A Review of Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy by Werner Bonefeld|url=https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/26/1/article-p175_8.xml|journal=Historical Materialism|volume=26|issue=1|pages=175–193|doi=10.1163/1569206X-12341552|issn=1465-4466|quote=... a number of important critical- theoretical approaches to the critique of political economy ... have been largely neglected in the anglophone world.}}

Differences between critics of economy and critics of economical issues

One may differentiate between those who engage in critique of political economy, which takes on a more ontological character, where authors criticise the fundamental concepts and social categories which reproduce the economy as an entity.{{Cite book|last=Henderson|first=Willie|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48139638|title=John Ruskin's political economy|date=2000|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-203-15946-2|location=London|oclc=48139638|quote=It could be argued that Ruskin, like Plato, is addressing the problems of society as a whole rather than addressing economic issues. Nonetheless, he approaches such concerns through a critique of political economy.}}{{Cite book|last=Arthur|first=Christopher|title=The new dialectic and Marx capital|publisher=Brill|year=2004|location=Leiden, The Netherlands|pages=8, 232–233}} While other authors, which the critics of political economy would consider only to deal with the surface phenomena of the economy, have a naturalized understanding of these social processes. Hence the epistemological differences between critics of economy and economists can also at times be very large.

In the eyes of the critics of political economy, the critics of economic issues merely critique certain practices in attempts to implicitly or explicitly rescue the political economy; these authors might for example propose universal basic income or to implement a planned economy.{{Cite web|last=Ayres|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Ayres (scientist)|date=12 August 2020|title=How Universal Basic Income Could Save Capitalism|url=https://knowledge.insead.edu/economics-finance/how-universal-basic-income-could-save-capitalism-14941|access-date=17 September 2021|website=INSEAD Knowledge}}

Others

= Contemporary =

== Economists ==

Richard D. Wolff
Steve Keen
John Komlos
Edward S. HermanHerman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York, Pantheon Books, 2002.
Yanis Varoufakis{{Cite news |last=Cadwalladr |first=Carole |date=2023-09-24 |title='Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse': Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-capitalism-ukraine-interview |access-date=2024-10-24 |work=The Observer |language=en-GB |issn=0029-7712}}

== Sociologists ==

Orlando Patterson, John Cowles professor of sociology at Harvard University, argues that economics is a pseudoscience.{{Cite web|last1=Patterson|first1=Orlando|last2=Fosse|first2=Ethan|date=9 February 2015|title=Overreliance on the Pseudo-Science of Economics|url=https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated/overreliance-on-the-pseudo-science-of-economics|website=www.nytimes.com}} (OpEd)

== Philosophers ==

Slavoj Žižek{{Cite journal|last=Hamza|first=Agon|title=Re-reading Capital 150 years after: some Philosophical and Political Challenges|url=https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/14489/8%20Hamza%20Capital.pdf?sequence=4|journal=Continental Thought & Theory: A Journal of Intellectual Freedom|pages=158–159|quote=This is the Žižekian lesson: Marx's critique of political economy is not only a critique of the classical political economy (Smith, Ricardo...), but it is also a form of critique, a transcendental one according to Žižek, which allows us to articulate the elementary forms of social edifice under capitalism itself. And this 'transcendental' framework, cannot be other than philosophical.}}

== Linguists ==

Noam Chomsky

== Historians ==

Moishe Postone

= Historical =

== Historians ==

Thomas CarlyleAlexander Jordan, Thomas Carlyle and Political Economy: The 'Dismal Science' in Context, The English Historical Review, Vol. 132, Iss.555, April 2017, pp. 286–317, {{doi|10.1093/ehr/cex068}}
Roman RosdolskyBroady, Donald (1978) (http://www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/arkiv/dba-b-19780002-broady-aterupptackten-faksimil.pdf)

== Poets ==

Carl Jonas Love Almqvist{{Cite web|title=Litteraturens värden – Lunds universitet|url=https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/sv/projects/the-values-of-literature(e09220e9-00cc-4e05-be87-9f5f6a58407d).html|access-date=2 September 2021|language=sv}}
August Strindberg{{Cite web|title=Vad är ekonomi?-citat|url=https://citatboken.se/_20829_Vad_%C3%A4r_ekonomi|website=citatboken.se|language=sv}}

== Miscellaneous ==

Paul Lafargue{{Cite web|title=Rätten till lättja|url=https://www.marxists.org/svenska/lafargue/1883/1883.htm|access-date=2 September 2021}}

References

Bibliography

{{cite book |last=Postone |first=Moishe |title=Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory |date=1993 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521391573 |location=New York and Cambridge |oclc=231578868 |author-link=Moishe Postone}}
Johnsdotter S, Carlbom A, editors. Goda sanningar: debattklimatet och den kritiska forskningens villkor. Lund: Nordic Academic Press; 2010.
Braudel F. Kapitalismens dynamik. (La Dynamique du Capitalisme) [Ny utg.]. Gothenburg: Daidalos; 2001.
Ankarloo D, editor. Marx ekonomikritik. Stockholm: Tidskriftsföreningen Fronesis; 2008.
Eklund K. Vår ekonomi: en introduktion till världsekonomin. Upplaga 15. Lund: Studentlitteratur; 2020.
Tidskriftsföreningen Fronesis. Arbete. Stockholm: Tidskriftsfören. Fronesis; 2002.
Baudrillard J. The Mirror of Production. Telos Press; 1975.
Marx K. Till kritiken av den politiska ekonomin. [Ny utg.]. Göteborg: Proletärkultur; 1981.

= Articles =

== Scholarly articles ==

Alan Christopher Finlayson, Thomas A. Lyson, Andrew Pleasant, Kai A. Schafft and Robert J. Torres "Invisible Hand": Neoclassical Economics and the Ordering of Society" Critical Sociology 2005 31: 515 DOI: 10.1163/156916305774482183
Backhaus, H. G. (1969). Zur Dialektik der Wertform. Thesis Eleven, 1(1), 42–76. (In German)
Granberg, M. (2015). The ideal worker as real abstraction: labour conflict and subjectivity in nursing. Work, Employment and Society, 29(5), 792–807. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017014563102
Granberg, Magnus "Reactionary radicalism and the analysis of worker subjectivity in Marx's critique of political economy"
Mau, Søren (2018). Den dobbelte fordrejning: Begrebet fetichisme i kritikken af den politiske økonomi. Slagmark – Tidsskrift for idéhistorie, (77), 103–122. https://doi.org/10.7146/slagmark.vi77.124228
Paul Trawick and Alf Hornborg. (2015) Revisiting the Image of Limited Good: On Sustainability, Thermodynamics, and the Illusion of Creating Wealth, Current Anthropology, Vol. 56, No. 1 pp. 1–27, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

== Romantic critique of political economy articles ==

Mortensen, Anders – Att göra "penningens genius till sin slaf". Om Carl Jonas Love Almqvists romantiska ekonomikritik – Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund. Årsbok (in Swedish).

= Books =