The Grundrisse (The 1857-58 Manuscript) on Ed George's New Reading Marx Blog

The Chapter on Capital Part 1: The World of Equality and Freedom of Pure Exchange Value (pp. 239-250)

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Marx now pivots from his discussion of money and towards a discussion of capital.

The difficulty in grasping money in its modern development (“a difficulty which political economy attempts to evade”) lies in the fact that a social relation—“a definite relation between individuals”, takes the form of a physical object. Marx summarises the conundrum like this.

Nature does not produce money, any more than it produces a rate of exchange or a banker. In Peru and Mexico gold and silver did not serve as money, although it does appear here as jewellery, and there is a developed system of production. To be money is not a natural attribute of gold and silver, and is therefore quite unknown to the physicist, chemist etc. as such. But money is directly gold and silver.

The Chapter on Money Part 7: Money as the Material Representative of Wealth (pp. 203-225)

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Marx has discussed two functions of money: (1) as measure of exchange value, i.e. as unit of price, and (2) as medium of circulation. He now comes to a third, inserting the heading: “(c) Money as material representative of wealth (accumulation of money; before that, money as the general material of contracts, etc.)”.

“It is in the nature of circulation that every point appears simultaneously as a starting-point and as a conclusion, and, more precisely, that it appears to be the one in so far as it appears to be the other.” Seen from this point of view, the movement C-M-M-C appears “just as correct” as M-C-C-M. In the process C-M-M-C, under the assumption that one quantity of labour-time is exchanged for another of the same magnitude, the actual quantity of money involved is irrelevant.

The Chapter on Money Part 8: The Contradictions of Money (pp. 225-238)

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Marx shifts tack. He is coming to the end of his discussion of money and is beginning to lay the groundwork for his discussion of capital.

It is the elementary precondition of bourgeois society that labour should directly produce exchange value, i.e. money; and, similarly, that money should directly purchase labour, and therefore the labourer, but only in so far as he alienates his activity in the exchange.

Wage labour and capital are therefore only different forms of exchange value, of money, and since all production becomes exchange value, the individual in society becomes objectified in production. Exchange value becomes the form the social totality takes and the individual in bourgeois society becomes objectified not in her individual quality, but socially.

The Chapter on Money Part 6: Money and its Circulation (pp. 186-203)

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Marx returns to his main thread: money and its circulation.

Circulation (in other words, “the turnover of money”) corresponds to “an opposite circulation, or turnover, of commodities. Money goes one way, commodities the other: “[a] commodity possessed by A passes into the hands of B, while B’s money passes into the hands of A, etc.”

More (pdf, 269 KB): The Chapter on Money Part 6: Money and its Circulation (pp. 186-203)

The Chapter on Money Part 5: Money as Commodity (pp. 165-186)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ostensibly, we are discussing money. Marx summarises where we are in that discussion.

The product becomes a commodity. The commodity becomes exchange value. The exchange value of the commodity acquires an existence of its own alongside the commodity; i.e. the commodity in the form in which (1) it is exchangeable with all other commodities, (2) it has hence become a commodity in general, and its natural specificity is extinguished, and (3) the measure of its exchangeability (i.e. the given relation within which it is equivalent to other commodities) has been determined—this commodity is the commodity as money, and, to be precise, not as money in general, but as a certain definite sum of money, for, in order to represent exchange value in all its variety, money has to be countable, quantitatively divisible.

The Chapter on Money Part 4: The Objectification of the Relations between People as Relations of Exchange (pp. 156-165)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Over time, to the extent that production becomes production for exchange (as, in other words the capitalist mode of production develops, and extends its reach), the exchange relation increasingly establishes itself, as Marx put it earlier in the text, “as a power external to and independent of the producers.” Over the course of this development, the exchange relation in general assumes a social position of ever-greater weight and autonomy, sucking all aspects of human life within its mode of existence.

The Chapter on Money Part 3: Money and Exchange Value (pp. 144-156)

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We have seen that conceiving the commodity as exchange value means positing the expression of its exchangeability in relation to all commodities. This exchange relation, between one commodity and all, requires mediation, and this mediation is achieved through “the symbol of the commodity as commodity”. This “symbol” is money, and is itself the result of the social process of exchange. In turn, the commodity that serves as money, itself a symbol of the commodity’s general exchangeability, can itself be replaced by a symbol—a symbol of a symbol, as it were: “the commodity which is required as medium of exchange […][,] [which] becomes transformed into money, […] can in turn be replaced by a symbol of itself. It then becomes the conscious sign of exchange value.”

The Chapter on Money Part 2: Value and Price (pp. 136-144)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One difficulty (as we have seen) with metallic (gold and silver) money, or paper money convertible to gold, is that its denomination (one sovereign, one pound, one franc) is equated with a given (statutorily determined) amount of metal; this amount of metal is equivalent to a given amount of labour-time, which means that the value of the money—equal to what it can be exchanged for—is sensitive the labour-time necessary to produce that metal. Over time, we would expect, and actually observe, a secular rise in the general productivity of labour, the amount of labour-time a given amount of metal will represent will fall correspondingly. If money (whether metal money or token money) is denominated in units (weights) of gold, whether directly or indirectly (symbolically), then, given a secular rise in the general productivity of labour, such money will be devalued over time.

The Chapter on Money Part 1: Alfred Darimon and Monetary Crises (pp. 115-136)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Marx begins the 1857-58 manuscript proper (writing in October 1857) by jumping straight in to a critique of the politician and journalist, and follower of Proudhon, Alfred Darimon (1819-1902). Darimon had argued that in monetary crises the drain of bullion from the banking system reduced the supply of available money (and hence credit), making the crisis worse. To counter this, Darimon had proposed a reformed monetary system based on joint-stock banking backed by system of credit-insurance, rather than having bank money backed by gold and silver.

The "Introduction"

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The “Introduction” (“Enleitung”) was written at the end of August 1857, a month or so before Marx started to write the actual 1857-58 Manuscript itself. Although it is an important text, it is not easy to say what it is the “introduction” to, exactly. The 1857-58 Manuscript was never intended for publication, but seems to have been an exercise whereby Marx could set out his ideas in written form. The “Introduction” is clearly not an introduction to this manuscript. When Marx did publish a version of his economic theories, at least in part, in the form of the 1857 Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, he wrote a “Preface” to it, in which he remarked that a “general introduction [to my work], which I had drafted, is omitted, since on further consideration it seems to me confusing to anticipate results which still have to be substantiated, and the reader who really wishes to follow me will have to decide to advance from the particular to the general.” It is generally agreed that the “general introduction” that Marx refers to in the 1859 Preface is the August 1857 “Introduction”, although it is not entirely clear to which specific “results” Marx’s comment makes reference.

Bastiat and Carey

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This short text, which Marx apparently wrote in July 1857, is titled (by Marx): “Bastiat. Harmonies Économiques. 2 édit. Paris. 1851.” The reference is to the work (Harmonies Économiques) of the French liberal economist and ardent supporter of free trade and laissez-faire Fédéric Bastiat (1850-1851).

More (pdf, 78 KB): Bastiat and Carey

The Grundrisse: An introductory note

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 1857-58 Manuscript—known as the Grundrisse (literally “floor plans”, i.e. “outlines”, but this title was not Marx’s)—consists of those texts Marx wrote from the summer of 1857 to the summer or 1858, namely the text “Bastiat and Carey”; the “Enleitung” (“Introduction”); the two longer “chapters”, “Chapter on Money” and “Chapter on Capital”; and the fragment “Value” (even though the first two of these texts—“Bastiat and Carey” and the “Introduction”—do not really form an integral whole with the other three). The Manuscript, not intended by Marx for publication, and unknown at the time of his death, represents his first attempt to put his mature economic theories (developed in London over the course of the 1850s) into written form.