A genealogia da mais-valia: filosofia, economia e crítica da economia política

Abstract

This thesis intends to demonstrate the singularity of Marx's critique of political economy as the transcendence of the philosophical critique in which he was educated, through the affirmation of the centrality of material determination of social life. Marx's reconfiguration of the Hegelian dialectic was central in this process; it is synthesized in the discovery of the surplus value category. The thesis seeks to reconstruct the genealogy of surplus value by examining Marx's theoretical itinerary, from his time as a journalist in the Rhenish Gazette to the moment of the discovery of surplus value in Grundrisse and its subsequent exposition in Capital. The keynote of Marx's investigations, since the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in 1843, was the quest to unveil the internal laws of motion of the capitalist society - its genesis, development, crisis and collapse - while searching for a suitable method to submit the object of political economy to a specific critique, according to Hegel. Therefore, surplus value is understood as the cornerstone of a long process of investigation driven both by a dissatisfaction with the philosophy of his time, and by the political and ideological motivation for the socialist transformation of the world. It represents the categorical synthesis, the fundamental core of the critique of political economy, from which the essence of the capitalist society can be revealed.