Study of Party History 丨Li Ji: Introduction to Marx's Theory of Popular Capital

Shanghai University (1922-1927)

Selected Poems and Letters of Teachers and Students

Hu Shensheng ed

Shanghai University Publishing Company

In recent years, Shanghai University has deeply excavated the resources of school history, actively promoted the implementation of the school history project, closely integrated the inheritance of red genes with Lide Shuren, actively integrated the school history education into the "four histories" learning and education, integrated into the characteristics of running the school, and made good use of the "four histories" fresh teaching materials to promote the study of the "four histories" into the mind.

Li Ji's "Preface to Marx's Popular Capital" was originally published in the first issue of Xiangfeng (published in December 1925). It is now selected from Shanghai University in the 1920s (Volume II), Shanghai University Press, 2014, pp. 737-742.

Author of this article

Li Ji (1892-1967), a native of Pingjiang, Hunan. In 1920, he participated in the preparation of the Shanghai Communist Group. In 1925, he became a professor at Shanghai University. Translations include Popular Capital. After the founding of New China, he served as a special translator of the State Publishing Administration, translating "Marx and Engels Newsletters", "Modern Capitalism", etc., and authored "Marx's Biography".

Preface to Marx's Popular Capital

Excerpt from "Selected Poems and Letters of Teachers and Students of Shanghai University (1922-1927)"

Text/Li Ji

When studying in Europe, I often heard friends say that in the past three or four years, there have been more and more works criticizing Marx's theory in China. Although I wanted to introduce such works at that time, I was so full of eyes that I could not achieve my goal. It was not until after returning to China in September this year that the wish could be fulfilled. But after I read these big books, I was a little disappointed. For most of the general critics are laymen in Marx's doctrine; they themselves have not studied it, preferring to publish their half-understanding. Their arguments, which were meant to be open-minded, were of no value at all. However, because they occupy a considerable position in the world of writing, and the appreciation ability of the Chinese people is extremely weak, their words can actually sensationalize the public and deceive the people!

For example, isn't Mr. Hu Shizhi a well-known scholar in China? He did not often exhort people to study a doctrine in depth, and then introduce or criticize it, "to avoid the present many ... Half-baked, raw and peeled... The ills of "Don't call the half-informed people to pick it up... Do you want to do the mantra"? (See Hu Shi Wencun, vol. 1, pp. 153 and 197, etc.) However, he himself made this mistake when talking about Marx's materialist view of history. He refuted Mr. Duxiu: "In fact, Duxiu only admits that 'the concept of economic history can only solve most of the problems at best'. If he does not believe that thought, knowledge, speech, and education can also 'change society, explain history, and dominate the outlook on life,' then he can sit idly by and wait for the change of economic organization to be finished, so why should he work hard to propagate the cause and innovate his thinking? (See pages 32-33 of the preface to the first volume of "Science and the Outlook on Life") According to the above paragraph of Mr. Shizhi, he believes that the materialist view of history only recognizes the economy as the only factor that plays a positive role in social development, and that ideas, knowledge, speech, education, etc. are all negative, and they are all waiting for the economy to promote their progress without playing a role. Mr. Shizhi explained the materialist view of history in such a way that "half-baked, swallowed alive and peeled off", and was not afraid of "people who know half of it pick up ... Do you want to do the mantra"?

Secondly, is Mr. Ma Yinchu not a well-known economics professor in China? Didn't he advise people to talk about Marx's doctrine and avoid being "anointed"? Didn't he specifically exhort economists to think deeply and avoid the ills of "carelessness"? (See page 222 of the first episode of "Ma Yinchu's Speech Collection") But unfortunately, he only knows how to persuade others, but he forgot to persuade himself! Let's see how he describes Marx's doctrine of socialism: "Ma had a capitalist policy of suicide. Who is the capitalist suicide policymaker? That is to say, now that industry is developed, all industries are concentrated in companies, and the company is exchanged for stocks, which is the tangible industry of the past, which has suddenly changed into a piece of paper, and all rights can be transferred by excessive methods. For this reason, those who advocate communism mean that if they want to practice communism, they can only transfer it to the company's account. The procedures are extremely simple, such as Zhang's household can be assigned to the communist household. There is no material industry as in the past, and it is difficult to transfer. As soon as this was said, it was also implemented in post-European Russia, and the world situation changed greatly, and the theory of Marsian socialism also flourished. Mr. Ma Yinchu thought that Marx recognized that "all industries are concentrated in the company" and that it was easy to transfer shares in exchange for "a piece of paper"; this is the "capitalist suicide policy", and "the practice of communism" only requires these industries to be "transferred from the "company account" to the communist household"; and the "implementation of post-European Russia" is only to use thousands of secretaries to do this kind of work of transferring the industry from the "company account" to the communist household! This kind of statement is not only "the theory of skin paste", it is simply "careless", it is simply a big mistake!

Mr. Ma Yinchu refuted Marx's and other labor values, listed five questions, and criticized them, completely exposing that he did not understand what Marx's labor value theory was. The funniest thing is the following question: "For example, the big cypress tree in the park, sawing away is small in value, not sawing is valuable, although it takes labor and the value is small, why is it?" (See "Ma Yinchu's Collected Speeches", vol. 2, p. 57) The big cypress tree "saws off and has little value", which refers to the exchange value in terms of selling to others. "If you don't saw it, it's worth a lot", which is in terms of being enjoyed by tourists, that is, the use value. Isn't it too wrong for Mr. Ma Yinchu to talk about exchange value and use value in a vague way, and is it not too wrong to be paranoid about this and criticize Marx's value?

In addition, for example, Tao Menghe's preface to Marx's book "Value, Price and Profit" and Xie Yingzhou's "Criticism of Marx's Doctrine" published in the Quarterly Journal of the Academy of Law Sciences of Guangdong University are so wrong about the introduction and criticism of Ma's theory that it is almost impossible to blame! These well-known "scholars" are so wrong in their discussion of Marx's doctrine that as for other "scholars" whose academic ability is inferior to that of these "scholars" and the propagandists who deliberately oppose Mars' theory, their discussions are getting worse and worse, let alone needless to say. Fortunately, this is not a statistical table, so I don't need to waste any more pen and ink to name their honorific names.

If we refute the arguments of this group of "scholars" one by one, we will not be able to refute them, and if we listen to their popularity, many people who have direct or indirect contact with their arguments will be deceived by them. This is a great misfortune for academia. However, the reason why they dare to openly publish their half-understanding is that the appreciation ability of the Chinese people is weak and they are easily fooled by them; and the weak appreciation ability of the Chinese people is because there are very few Popular Works of Marx in China, and everyone cannot get a comparison, so it is impossible to distinguish their authenticity and falsity. Therefore, we have to deal with this group of "scholars" without being tired and bothering to refute them in every detail; as long as we faithfully introduce Marx's teachings as much as possible, they naturally do not dare to open their mouths any longer.

We should introduce Marx's doctrine as much as possible, and we should translate all his works, especially das Kapital (Das Kapital) first. For Capital was the result of his devoted most of his life to what he considered to be a "major work" (cf. Epistles of Ungers and Marx, vol. 3, p. 332, published in 1921, der Brief Wechsel zwischen F. Engels and K. Marx.) is also known on the European continent as the "Bible of the Working Class" (see Das Kapital, vol. 1, p. 30, published in Chicago, 1921), but Das Kapital has three volumes. A total of more than 2,200 pages, translated into Chinese should be more than 1.2 million words. Such a huge work can not only be translated in a short period of time, but it is not urgent, and even if it is translated, few people must have the requirement to read this work. This is not our assumption, germany really has precedents for us. Capital was written in German, which in turn is the most academically developed and the most educated of the working class. But neither the German academics nor the working class have read the whole of Capital. At most, they read only the first volume of Capital. O. Spann, a well-known professor of economics of the propertied class, instructed the methods of studying economics, listing Marx's Capital, which lasted only to the first volume (cf. Schwarz's Main Theories of National Economics, p. 176, published in Leipzig in 1922). Die Haupttheorien der Volkswirtschaf tslehre) is the German Social Democrat who ordered Kautsky to annotate Capital in 1914, and only to the first volume. Kausch said: "The ordinary reader has already made a great achievement in the first volume of Capital, which is of the utmost importance to the workers, for the laws discussed in it govern the relation of capital and labour in production. (See Kautsky's commentary on the german capital, volume I, preface to page 34, seventh edition, 1923) In the country where Capital appeared, few people have yet read it in its entirety, can it be translated Chinese and escape the exception?

However, as has been said above, the first volume of Capital is the most important to the workers and the world usually reads only this one, and if we translate this volume into Chinese, do not we introduce the main points of Capital? However, "the first volume showed the biggest difficulty. It is not necessary for the author, in order to create a masterpiece, to make great efforts to bring the doctrine of value and surplus value to a high level of philosophy, a Hegelian logic. The author deals with his object with a spiritual wrestler" (see Bale, Biography of Marx and His Doctrine, p. 106, published in Berlin in 1922. —M.Beer：Karl Marx sein Leben und seine Lehrc）。 Marx himself admitted that the first few chapters of the first volume were the most difficult, so he opened a reading party to his friend's wife, who asked the latter to read first in the middle and back (see page 31 of the preface to the first volume of Kautsky's commentary on Capital). But we do not introduce the first volume of Capital separately, not only because he himself is more difficult to read than the other two, but also because he and the other two volumes are in one go, running through each other, explaining each other, and if the latter two volumes are abandoned and made partial and incomplete, the meaning of the first volume will become more misunderstood, or at least less obvious. So Kautsky said, "To fully understand some of them, you have to know the whole." Without Volumes II and III, the first volume is not fully understood, and there are many (parts) in the first volume, that is, the largest part of the first volume on commodities and money, which constitute the preparation (material) of the second and third volumes, more than the play that constitutes the latter part of the first volume (ZhangBen), and is more important for understanding the process of circulation than for understanding the process of production. (See pp. 34, preface to the same book)

The whole of Capital cannot be translated in a hurry, and not many people may have asked about it after the book is published, and it is not appropriate for one of Capital to be published alone. Wouldn't we use books like Kautsky's Karl marx's Oekonomische Lehre," Edwards' Student's Marx, and Uutermann's Marxian Econouics as stand-ins? Nor is it. What kind of book is it? Karl marx: Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, gemeinverstandliche ausgabe, compiled by Iulian Barchardt.

Bochard, a well-known scholar of Marxist doctrine in Germany, devoted himself to the study of Capital for thirty years, and twenty years ago, at the request of the Academy of Social Sciences in the capital of Belgium, he and a comrade in Belgium translated the two and three volumes of Capital into French. After the outbreak of the European War, he had free time to compile Marx's Popular Capital, which he had imagined for many years, and was out of print in the second half of 1919. Within fifteen months of the publication of the book, 10,000 copies were sold, and they were translated into English, Russian, French, Japanese and other languages for several times, which was really popular all over the world. The above-mentioned works of Kautsky, Averling, and Huangtmann are either limited to the doctrines of the first volume of Capital, or they are vaguely expounded on the doctrines of the three volumes, all expressed in their own grammar. Bosch's compilation of Capital contains the most important doctrines of the three volumes, more than ninety percent of its Chinese words are written by Marx himself, and Bosch's task is only to combine Mars's works with a few undertaken words, or to popularize Mars's difficult sentences. Therefore, as soon as we read this book, we really read a concise version of Marx's Capital, which is where it is of greater value than any other similar work.

The abbreviated version of Marx's Popular Capital is as described above, but in terms of compilation, the two are not the same. The first volume of Capital deals with the process of production of capital, and he first explores the commodities that constitute the wealth of capitalist society, then money, and then the capitalization of money, the production of absolute surplus value and relative surplus value, the labor wages, the accumulation of capital, and the primitive accumulation as the temple, so that it goes back to the history of large-scale industrial capital and deduces its future way out. The main event we see here is the production of surplus value by the labourer in the factory for the capitalist. The second volume deals with the process of the circulation of capital, in which the capitalist transports the commodities already produced from the factories to the market for sale, exchanges them for money, and then puts them into production, so that the process of production can therefore continue the abbreviated version of Marx's Popular Capital as described above, but in terms of compilation, the two are not the same. The first volume of Capital deals with the process of production of capital, and he first explores the commodities that constitute the wealth of capitalist society, then money, and then the capitalization of money, the production of absolute surplus value and relative surplus value, the labor wages, the accumulation of capital, and the primitive accumulation as the temple, so that it goes back to the history of large-scale industrial capital and deduces its future way out. The main event we see here is the production of surplus value by the labourer in the factory for the capitalist. Book II deals with the process of the circulation of capital, in which the capitalist transports the goods already produced from the factories to the market for sale, exchanges them for money, and then puts them into production, so that the process of production can continue. Book III deals with the general process of capitalist production, in which the capitalists realize surplus-value by the sale of commodities in the process of circulation, at which point they transform it into profits, interest and rent distributed to the whole bourgeoisie. In doing so, Marx created a very natural system. Thus Rosa Luxembury said: "In the totality of this great work, we may say that the first volume and the law of value, wages and surplus value at play in it are barely exposed, and the second and third books are expressed in the superstructure on which it stands." We can also describe it in a completely different pattern, namely, that the first volume shows that we are the heart of a social organism from which blood is produced, and the second and third books show that we circulate and nourish with all our blood and nutrients all the way to the outermost epidermal cells. (See Max. Marlin, p. 384, 1920, third edition.) Franz mekring karl marx ges ehichte seines Lebens）

However, as we have already said above, the first volume of Capital is the most difficult, and the first volume is the most difficult in the first few chapters, and if Bochard's "Popular Capital" is still the same as the gourd, then ordinary people will encounter difficulties at the beginning, and the so-called popular "Capital" is not worthy of the name. Therefore, he specially changed the plan, reversing the order slightly, from shallow to deep, from easy to difficult, must be fascinating, so that there is no sense of difficulty, and the whole book is self-contained, without showing any trace of separation, which is the clever point of the editor's means. The English translation calls the book "The People's Marx", which means that this is a book that the people can read.

If "Popular Capital" is a book that the people can read, the people must not read it. Why? For the ultimate aim of Capital is to "express the laws of economic movement in modern society" (to quote Marx, see page 38 of the preface to the first volume of Kautsky's Commentary on Capital), and "since there have been capitalists and labourers in the world, no book has been as important to the labourer as this book." The relationship between capital and labor is the pivot of the whole of present society, and this relationship is only in this book that it is the first time to be played out according to the doctrine, and its argument is both thorough and sharp. (Quoted in Angers, see Goranwald's Introduction to Marx's Capital, p. 18, published in 1912.) M. Grundwald: Zur Einfiihrung in Marx Kapital) People who live in the present society must know their own position, understand the pivot of the current social system, and must compile this book by hand and borrow funds to examine it.

However, if the public wants to read this book, before the book is opened, looking at the title of the book, a question will immediately arise, that is, "What is capital?" "There are many kinds of doctrines about capital, and we treat the old ones or the irrelevant ones. For example, the people of the Middle Ages and the leading scholars of mercantilism recognized a kind of loaned money as capital, Hermaun, who recognized all goods of exchange value and continued to be durable, F. List, in addition to physical capital, and the so-called spiritual capital Roscher also had intangible capital, and so on. Adam Smith, the progenitor of economics, thought that a man's "total wealth is divided into two parts." Part of it is what he wants to borrow to get an income, which is called capital. The other part is to satisfy his immediate desires. (See four pages of the German translation of Yashi's Original Rich, volume II, published in 1920.) Eine Untersuchung Ueber natur and Wesen des Volkswohlstandes) added: "A man always wants a profit from every wealth he uses for capital. He therefore uses only this wealth to sustain productive labour-power, which, when he uses it as capital, constitutes an income. But if he uses any part of this wealth to sustain any kind of unproductive labour-power, then this part is immediately withdrawn from capital and included in the wealth of direct consumption. David Ricardo, who is equally named yahweh, says: "Capital is the part of the wealth of a country used for production, which is established by the food, clothing, utensils, raw materials, machinery, etc., necessary for the maintenance of labour activity. (See Lee's Principles of Economics and Taxation, London, 1921, Second Edition.) Prineiples of political Economy and Taxatton）

The above-mentioned doctrine of Capital by Adam Smith and Ricardo has until now been recognized by the economics of the propertied classes. They think that all the means of subsistence and the means of production, etc., which are used in production, are capital, and that wealth used for hedonistic consumption is not capital. According to their arguments, the food and tools used by Emperor Tang Yaodi for "drinking from sinking wells and eating from ploughing fields" in the era of Emperor Tang Yao were not only capital, but the self-cultivating peasants who dug wells and ploughed the fields were capitalists, that is, all the food and tools used for production in primitive communist society were also capital, and the people of primitive communist society became capitalists, because everyone at that time was engaged in production and did not work for no reason. Not only that, but the apes of Borneo can use wood to build houses, can use wood and stone to obtain fruits and other food, that is, monkeys can also use stones to crush hard shell fruits to absorb nuts, and the nutrients and wood stones used by apes are also capital, and apes have become capitalists. This is not the case with unicorns, that is, insects such as bees also have capital in production, and bees are also capitalists! Therefore, according to this reasoning, the doctrine of capital by the economists of the propertied class is too funny!

But what exactly is capital? Marx, the progenitor of scientific socialism, tells us: "Capital is a social relations of production. This is a bourgeois relations of production, i.e. of bourgeois society. (See Mars, Wage Labor and Capital, Berlin, 1907, Berlin published Lohnarbeitund Kapital) "A man who does not meet another kind of person, that is, a wage labourer, is voluntarily betrayed by oppression, the former, though he has money, means of subsistence and other means of production, cannot become a capitalist." ...... Capital is not an object (Eine sache) but a social relationship between people that manifests itself through goods. (See Kautsky's commentary on Capital, vol. 1, p. 693) So "a negro is only a negro." It takes a certain relationship for him to become a slave. A cotton machine is only a machine for spinning cotton, and it takes a certain relationship for him to become capital. As soon as he leaves this relationship, he is not capital, just as gold itself is not money, and sugar is not the price of sugar. (See Ma's Wage Labor and Capital, pp. 24) to put it more explicitly: "When the means of production and means of subsistence are the property of the direct producer, that is, the laborer himself, it is not capital." These means of production and means of subsistence are used simultaneously as instruments of exploitation and domination of the labourers – and only under these conditions can they become capital. (See Kautsky's commentary on Capital, vol. 1, p. 693) "Capital is dead labor, and like the vampire, he has to absorb the labor of life in order to survive, and the more he absorbs, the better he survives." (See page 182 of the same book) Marx's theory of capital is truly exquisite! According to him, not only are the means of subsistence and means of production used by bees and apes not capital, but the bees and apes themselves are not capitalists, that is, the food and tools used in primitive communist society are not capital, and the people in this society are not capitalists, that is, the food and agricultural tools used to "sink wells and drink, plough the fields and eat", nor are these self-cultivators capitalists. Only the means of production and means of subsistence that exploit and dominate the labourers are capital, and only those who rely on them for nothing are capitalists.

Since you understand the meaning of capital, you can begin to read Marx's Popular Capital, but there are still a few points to pay attention to in advance, and to introduce a passage from Bal, as follows: To understand Capital, we must remember the following points: First, Marx did not make a permanent and valid boundary theory; such as capital, wages, values, etc., are all historical categories, that is, they have a certain meaning in a certain historical epoch, but they do not have such a meaning in other epochs. For example, the concept of value may refer only to the usefulness of an object in another era; in another era value may be determined by the criterion of the efficacy or beauty of an object's performance or possession. But in present society, value is determined by the cost of production, which is transformed into labor by Marx with scientific analysis. For example, value is the explanation of theory and price is the explanation of experience; surplus value is the explanation of theory, and profit is the explanation of experience; the phenomena derived from experience (price and profit) derived from experience are of course the difference between theory and theory, but without theory, such phenomena cannot be understood. He regards the economic process of capitalism as essentially free from external hindrance and disruption, as free from serious interference by the state and the proletariat; marx's reference in Capital to the struggle of the workers and the legislation of the factories is not so much used to limit the exploitative role of independent capital as it is to complete the development of the productive forces. He always looks at the bourgeoisie in his mind, not at the individual capitalists. (See Bier's Biography of Marx and His Doctrines, pp. 106-107.)

Finally, one more point to be made is that this book was translated from the German version of the fourth edition in 1922. Everything is based on this. (Differs from the English translation) However, for books originally quoted in this book, if they are in English, the original English name is used, and the German translation is no longer used in this book.

In December 1925, he was published at Shanghai University

Source: Shanghai University Press

Editor: Zhang Jingyi