Abstract

We know that when Marx made his study of capitalist economy, he used a method which combined going from the concrete to the abstract with going from the abstract to the concrete. Shall we first look at how he moved from the concrete to the abstract? In the draft of his work on the study of political economy and in his correspondence with others, Marx talked frequently about the plan of his work. Furthermore, this plan underwent sometimes many and sometimes few alterations as time passed. According to the Preface to his great work A Critique of Political Economy, Marx abstracted from the various international economic relations the economic relations of one country. Since the economic relations of a country are influenced by its superstructure, from these relations influenced by the superstructure he abstracted only the economic relations. Further, then, from the economic relations he abstracted the basic aspect, the relations of production. By going through these several abstractions he had abstracted for study the basic relations of capitalist economy. To put it simply, this was his method of moving from the concrete to the abstract.