Grundrisse: Footnotes

45. A reference back to the brief discussion of Ricardo on pp. 326–7.

46. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 120–25.

47. pp. 326–7.

48. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, pp. 131–7, especially p. 132: ‘Something’s own boundary posited by it as a negative which is at the same time essential, is not merely boundary as such but barrier.’ Also, p. 135: ‘The sentient creature, in the limitation of hunger, thirst, etc., is the drive to go beyond its limiting barrier, and it does overcome it.’

49. Leonard Horner (1785–1864) was originally a geologist, and from 1833 to 1860 Chief Factory Inspector in Lancashire. His many reports on factory conditions there were an important source for Marx in the writing of Capital; the reference here would be to one of Horner’s reports on the breaches of the Ten Hours’ Act committed by manufacturers during the 1850s.

50. This is a slip of the pen on Marx’s part. The ‘previous relation’ was 6/8 = 12/16, not 5/8 = 10/16. Therefore the total surplus value was higher by 3/16 not 5/16.

51. This should read 999/1,000,000 = 1/(1,001 + 1/999).

52. In English in the original.

53. This seems to refer back to the value of the capital rather than the material production (the latter would still be 26s.).

54. Babbage, Traité sur l’économie des machines et des manufactures, pp. 218–19.

55. The ‘perceptive’ publisher was the editor of Eugène Daire (1798–1847), who issued the works of the Physiocrats during the 1840s. The comments on Boisguillebert are in Économistes financiers du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1843, p. 419, notes 1 and 2.

56. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 88–92.

57. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 327–8.

58. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 29–35

59. This refers to Marx’s notebooks of excerpts from the works of Ricardo, with Marx’s critical commentary. A section of one of the excerpt-books in this series is published in Grundrisse (MELI), pp. 787–839. Marx wrote these notebooks, which contain, additionally, excerpts from ten works by other authors, as well as from various volumes of The Economist, in early 1851. See Grundrisse (MELI), p. 782 n.

60. The following sentence appears in the upper margin of this page of the manuscript, without indication of the place in the text where it might be inserted: ‘(Money for itself has to be termed neither use value nor exchange value, but value.)’

61. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 327–8.

62. A reference to Marx’s own excerpt-book VIII. Ricardo’s doctrine of foreign trade (On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 131–8) is covered in Grundrisse (MELI), pp. 808–11.

63. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 416–17.

64. See above, n. 41.

65. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, pp. 450–56, e.g. p. 451: ‘Matter is that which is indifferent to form.’

66. This should be 32, not 16, since 2/5 of 40 is itself already 16.

67. This should be 40%. In these passages, the use of the term ‘interest’ (Zins) is, strictly speaking, incorrect; it should read ‘surplus value’. Similarly, in some passages further on, the terminology does not correspond in every case with Marx’s later usage.

NOTEBOOK IV: The Chapter on Capital (continuation)

1. Carey, Principles of Political Economy, pp. 15–16, 27–48.

2. Dr Richard Price (1723–91; Nonconformist minister and writer on political and financial subjects), An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt, London, 1772, p. 19. See below, pp. 842–3.

3. In 1786 William Pitt the Younger established a sinking fund of £1,000,000 in accordance with Dr Price’s proposals.

4. 50: material of labour; 10: instrument of labour; 40: wages of labour.

5. The numerical examples above and below contained occasional, always trivial, errors of arithmetic. The corrections, as indicated by MELI, have been implicitly substituted here, unless noted.

6. In the following table the quantity of value is always expressed in thalers.

7. C. Babbage, Traité sur l’économie des machines et des manufactures, p. 29.

8. Bastiat et Proudhon,  Gratuité du crédit,  pp. 127–32, 135–7, 288.

9. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, pp. 117–19.

10. This is a continuation of the critique of Ricardo, broken off on p. 353.

11. See below, pp. 765–71.

12. Lauderdale, Recherches sur la nature et l’origine de la richesse publique, p. 137.

13. See above, pp. 373–8.

14. Quotations taken from pp. 4–6 of an anonymous pamphlet published in London in 1821 and entitled The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, deduced from principles of political economy in a letter to Lord John Russell.

15. Ravenstone, Thoughts on the Funding System and its Effects, pp. 11, 13, 45–6.

16. The original text has ‘more productive’ here.

17. See below, pp. 459–515.

18. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, pp. 546–7.