According to conventional wisdom, Antonio Gramsci is a political philosopher lacking in, and who avoids, a serious interest in political economy. That is a serious misrepresentation of Gramsci’s works and thought. Equally wrong is the widespread view that anything Gramsci had to say about political economy is to be found in his scattered notes on ‘Americanism and Fordism’. On the contrary, a careful rereading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks shows that Marx’s great and unfinished project of the critique of political economy (...) plays a crucial rôle for Gramsci’s efforts to come to grips with the basics of a critical social science that could live up to the aspirations of a ‘scientific socialism’. As Gramsci was fully aware of the everyday battles of ideas in capitalist societies to be fought about the notions and tenets of popular or vulgar political economy, he did the best he could in order to understand and clarify the bases of a ‘critical’ and ‘scientific’ political economy. A political economy that was and still is urgently needed in order to fight the strongest of the strongholds of bourgeois hegemony - the ideas of vulgar economics in everybody’s heads. (shrink)

Thanks to the work on the second MEGA, we have now a clearer idea of what Marx actually did between 1867 and his death in 1883. He studied and wrote a lot, not only notes and extracts but also n a series of new manuscripts for what should become volume II and III of Capital. These manuscripts show us Marx becoming aware of the still unsettled problems of his critique of political economy – like the problems involved in his theory (...) of money and in his theory of agricultural rent. They also show us the very modern combination of a sophisticated theoretical mind and an empirical and historical researcher that Marx actually was. (shrink)

Journalism and Science: the Importance of Marx’s Practice of Journalism for his Critique of Political Economy. Already in his lifetime, Marx earned himself a reputation, even fame, as a leading financial and economic journalist. From 1850 to 1868, he wrote nearly a hundred newspaper articles dealing with all sorts of economic and financial topics. His work as an economic journalist is closely related to his ongoing work on the “critique of political economy”: A lot of the material he collected and (...) studied for his articles was used for his economic manuscripts as well. Many of the topics mentioned but not systematically treated in his many (unfinished) manuscripts pertaining to CAPITAL have been analyzed in his newspaper articles. Some of them are brilliant little essays on crises, on financial markets, on the capitalist world economy. The close links between Marx’ journalism and his work on the critique of political economy are exemplified with respect to several topics: the impact of factory legislation, world market, world trade and colonialism (imperialism), monetary theory and monetary politics (bank legislation), the theory and history of crises and cycles and – last but not least – public finance (and its critique). (shrink)

Marx, if we look beyond the standard misrepresentations of his work, remains a highly intriguing author, together with Engels the main figure of a major revolution in the social sciences which challenges all the established practices and conventional wisdoms of the academia. His work has hardly ever been of more relevance than in the present period of world capitalism and its unfolding worldwide crises. First and foremost we need Marx as the author of a critique of modern capitalism, the economics, (...) the politics, the ideology and social structures of bourgeois society, which is still unsurpassed in its depth and scope. Regarding the present crisis, his analysis of the making of the world market and his analysis of the follies and fictions of capitalist high finance is more necessary than ever before for anyone eager to comprehend the turmoil we are in. Second, we still need Marx as a paragon of the indispensable critique of utopias, false hopes and political illusions, both left and right, both reformist and revolutionist. Last but not least, we need him as the masterthinker of the possible, of capitalism’s futures and its aftermaths. (shrink)

Rosa Luxemburg était économiste de formation. Sa plus grande ambition était d’être à la pointe de la recherche en économie politique marxiste. Dans cet article, nous montrons comment Rosa Luxemburg a lu le chef d’œuvre de Marx, Le Capital inachevé, comment elle a critiqué Marx et comment elle a essayé de mettre à jour sa théorie afin de mieux comprendre les changements récents dans l’économie mondiale capitaliste. Pour elle, les marxistes contemporains étaient beaucoup trop timides, hésitant à critiquer et dépasser (...) Marx – comme elle essayait de le faire dans son livre sur l’accumulation du capital. Sa façon d’aborder la question de l’accumulation du capital a ouvert de nouvelles perspectives. Elle n’a pas réussi à présenter une explication consistante de l’économie capitaliste à l’âge de l’impérialisme, mais elle a clairement perçu les difficultés inhérentes de tous les projets coloniaux et impérialistes des grandes puissances de son temps. Car pour coloniser des pays et peuples non-capitalistes, et pour les rendre exploitables pour le capital, il leur fallait d’abord transformer ces économies et sociétés non-capitalistes. (shrink)