Crítica da economia política como crítica do trabalho no pensamento juvenil de Marx

Abstract

This Masters thesis is a study of the critique of political economy in the thought of the young Marx. Although this critique assumed a more finished form only during Marxs London period with the publication of Capital, the author had started that project already in 1844, during his years in Paris, when he started to study modern economic thought. From a philosophical point of view, this context is marked by the influx of debates from the Hegelian left, in light of whose concerns and assumptions Marx held his first theoretical elaboration and critique of the capitalist economy. The texts, all of them manuscripts, which are examined in the following study, cover that context and are analyzed and interpreted according to their own constitution and specificity, without reference to subsequent theoretical developments. These texts are the Comments on James Mill (1844), The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), and the Draft of an Article on the Book of Friedrich List (1845). This MA thesis consists of three moments. In the first, we present the essential characteristics of the decomposition of Hegelianism in Feuerbachs thought, and the transposition of this philosophical tendency, operated by Moses Hess, toward a rudimentary development of a critical theory of capitalism. In the second moment, we consider three traditional interpretations of the thought of the young Marx Marcuse, Mészáros, and Giannotti. The focus is on the examination of how these interpreters understand the concept of labor in those manuscripts. It is shown that these interpretations defend the existence of a positive concept of labor, which would then provide a positive foundation (a general doctrine) for the critique (consequence of the doctrine). In the third (and last) moment, we move to the analysis and interpretation of Marxs texts. This chapter is divided into three parts. At first, we analyze Marxs critique of Hegel, demonstrating that his critique is not a Feuerbachian critique, but a critique that brings together Hegelian dialectics and political economy. We define the notions of form and abstraction, and how they are at the basis of both discourses. In the second part, we show that Marxs concept of labor is a negative concept, and not a positive one, according to the previous definitions of form and abstraction. The juvenile critique of political economy appears under the determination of the critique of labor. Finally, we show that the justification for the critique of labor is based on a certain Hessian philosophy of history.