Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy (rough draft)

by Karl Marx

English, German (translation)

Genres: Philosophy, Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, Theory, History, Sociology

904 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1857

About the author

With the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.

German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.

Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).

The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.

Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.

Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.

Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.

Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .

People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.

Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

Reviews

[Myka · Rating 5 out of 5]

sort of like a mixture of an economics textbook, a rollicking leninist speech to the commintern and james joyce's "finnean's wake."

[Crispy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best thing Marx wrote, or in my view at least, the most readable of his works on political economy. Poetic and passionate at times, as well as truly scholarly. This is basically the detailed outline and research notes for his later more well known work, Das Kapital. There is a useful introduction and it is well indexed. The Grundrisse rewards patient study.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

phew

The Grundrisse, being fragmentary, non-linear, unedited and never finished, is a whole lot more demanding than Capital, which in itself isn't a walk in the park either. It is filled to the brim with raw and not wholly assimilated information in the fields economic history and the discourse of political economy of Marx's contemporaries, oftentimes necessitating the reader to choose: am I actually interested in this? Am I in any way an audience for this, capable of understanding whatever's written? Much more than his other works, the Grundrisse is a place where Marx jotted down his developing thoughts, not an explanation of them. I personally found the first 300-or-so pages, roughly corresponding to "Part 1: On Money", altogether too abstract to permit understanding. The later half of the book (in "Part 2: On Capital") on agriculture, transportation, circulation and machinery, however, is hugely powerful and goes beyond what Marx would eventually write on the topics in Capital. As an added bonus, you get treated to prose as ominous and prophetic such as this:

Hence the highest development of productive power together with the greatest
expansion of existing wealth will coincide with depreciation of capital, degradation of the labourer, and a most straitened exhaustion of his vital powers. These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which by momentaneous suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of capital the latter is violently reduced to the point where it can go on. These contradictions, of course, lead to explosions, crises, in which momentary suspension of all labour and annihilation of a great part of the capital violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide. [21] Yet, these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overthrow. There are moments in the developed movement of capital which delay this movement other than by crises; such as e.g. the constant devaluation of a part of the existing capital: the transformation of a great part of capital into fixed capital which does not serve as agency of direct production; unproductive waste of a great portion of capital etc.

Marx didn't edit this, so the reader will have to. If Capital leaves you with questions on the production and consequences of surplus value, turn to the Grundrisse. Selective recommendation.

[Victoria Durden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously a thorough critique of political economy... Reviewing this seems pointless. Marx's notebooks reveal a highly useful analysis. You won't be able to un-know this book's concepts once you read it; illuminating, verbose, and sassy--as usual.

[Pepe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Instant classic, and also the most difficult text written by Marx that I've ever read so far. Grundrisse is the foundation of Capital, so reading this notebook is actually an archeological tracing of Marx's constructioning his thought. I'm the most surprised that there's a lot that has been omitted from Grundrisse in order to write Capital. For example, Marx dedicates quite pages to talk about the disruption in capitalism transition, which means he self-criticizes his archaic draconian view on peasants ("who were nothing but a mere sack of potato") and acknowledges the "negative transition" where there is an impossibility to achieve the true capitalistic transition in formerly agrarian societies. In practical level, Grundrisse also encourages me to have a notebook dedicated to write down commentaries on many things that I really care about, particularly on my research. Through his critiques against Say, Proudhon, (and so many names I can't keep up), we can trace his methodological approach in understanding history & materialism. There's a lot to read in this book; valorization, production, distribution, & even automation. If you read this book closely and critically, Grundrisse should be a major blow for vulgar interpretation of Marxist historical materialism and dull analysis on linear approach in understanding imperialism

[Paco · Rating 5 out of 5]

you slog through abstract fights with french socialists, catty takedowns of economists you've never heard of, one million excerpts from 18th and 19th century economy and history works you'll never read, boring equations about thalers, lots of hegelian buzzwords, half-researched historical developments, and then you reach some of the greatest and most prescient passages about capitalism and the world we still inhabit and some of the most politically motivating calls to action and for a brief moment everything makes sense, the contradictions are clear, the whole project comes into focus, it all makes sense -- and then back to the equations, the fights, the hegel, the excerpts.

anyway, good book

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Grundrisse was a forerunner for Marx's more famous texts. It still contains rough edges, but it begins the intricate process of treating money as a social relation, exposing the contradictions between these social relationships, and setting the results of this treatment into a historical perspective.

Marx can speak for himself on this one:

“Only with capital is exchange value posited as exchange value in such a way that it preserves itself in circulation: it neither becomes substance less, nor constantly realizes itself in other substances or a totality of them, nor loses its specific form, but rather preserves its identity with itself in each of the different substances. It therefore always remains money and always commodity.”

“Posited as a side of the relation, exchange value, which stands opposite use value itself, confronts it as money, but the money which confronts it in this way is no longer money in character as such, but money as capital. The use value or commodity which confronts capital or the posited exchange value is no longer the commodity such as it appeared in opposition to money, where its specific form was as irrelevant as its content, and which appeared only as a completely undefined substance. First, as use value for capital, i.e., therefore as an object in exchange with which capital does not lose its value-quality, as for example does money when it is exchanged for a particular commodity. The only utility whatsoever which an object can have for capital can be to preserve or increase it. … the goal-determining activity of capital can only be that of growing wealthier…” (151)

“The individual carries his social power, as well as his bond with society, in his pocket.” (157)

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

seems kind of dumb for me to try and “review” this since it is a collection of notebooks, but i am nothing if not a little bit dumb. this is a great record of Marx’s methodology, i don’t really have much else to say about it. lots of chapters that read like little previews for some of the coolest stuff from volume 1 (commodity fetishism is especially fleshed out by vol 1 but nice to see some of its humble beginnings). probably not worthwhile to read casually, just direct people to Capital

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comment:

The early Marx was always more interesting to me then the later Marx. This is the Marx that was still a radical philosophical anthropologist -and not an exponent of a System- in search of the animal Man. If there are only two interesting lines of descent (a large exaggeration, I know) in modern political philosophy –1: Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Postmodernism; 2: Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, Kojeve, Western Marxism – then it behooves us to be conversant in both lineages. Here the materialist dialectic is understood as activity, i.e., class struggle. Later, as Marx surrendered to the 'scientistic' strains of nineteenth century thought, the fascination became base/superstructure and systems. This last leads to the mind-numbing grotesqueries of diamat.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marx's Moby Dick

[Mark Crouch · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Labour is the living, form-giving fire; it is the transitoriness of things, their temporality, as their formation by living time." - Marx

"Capitalism is a process, not a thing." - David Harvey

Infinity folding in on itself.

[Buck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fire!

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grundrisse es la base conceptual de toda la obra de Marx.
De momentos lo vemos ir de un tema a otro manteniendo la originalidad y espíritu crítico que lo caracteriza. Incluso hay partes de genialidad donde la filosofía florece más o donde uno se pierde por completo en los distintos momentos del circuito del capital.

¿Mejor qué El Capital? Sin duda alguna.

He aquí las bases que todo marxista debe leer.
Los Grundrisse son como los textos apócrifos de la Biblia (mucho más interesantes que las sagradas escrituras).

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marx (1973) initiates Grundrisse with a strong critique of Richardo and Smith, and through this critique he is able to counter the claim that capitalism is an inevitable function of human nature. Marx argues that Smith and Richardo are under an illusion that the “Natural Individual [does not arise] historically, but [is] posited by nature”. He suggests this misconception is the product of the dissolution of feudal forms of society, and the new forces of production developed in the 16th century, which appear to be “history’s point of departure”. What is significant about this passage is that Marx argues the theory of ahistorical capitalist development has been a translated narrative worked onto the individual. He comments that “the individual appears detached from natural bonds which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate”. Smith and Richardo argued that the only way 16th century production could be possible is through the emergence of the individual as “naturally independent, autonomous subjects”. What Marx is trying to uncover is that it is unnecessary to depart from history in order to justify such a radical change in the economic landscape, but it is history itself which produces the individual, and history changes how they individuate themselves within society.

Therefore, Marx extends his analysis of the individual to state that a human can only individuate within society. He suggests that an individual without society is “as much as an absurdity as the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other”. For Marx, this is an impassionate divergence from Hegelian thought, as Marx states “there is no point dwelling on this any longer” (Marx 1973). Hegel argued for a teleological understanding, whereby the end of history means we will be fully rational and with God. Hegel uses dialectics to understand this, arguing that a thesis and an antithesis create a synthesis of ideas, which change through time, and this dialectic produces history. Marx discounts the idea of a dialectical production of history, and instead frames history as the definitive force of dialectical change. For Marx, history produces a society at conflict, and this conflict produces a new synthesis, leading to the progression of history.

Marx develops his dialectical analysis further than Hegel to incorporate historical understanding of a changing human nature. In Grundrisse (1973), Marx contrasts the social relationships formed in fuedal society as personal, with the material relationships formed in the bourgeois epochs. In McLellan's reading of Grundrisse, he draws on Marx’s understanding of the ‘fetishisation’ of relationships within the bourgeois economy. He considers how monetized relationships appear to be personal, whereas in reality those relationships occur purely as a result of production and exchange (McLellan 1971: 73). It can therefore be justifiable that Richardo and Smith mistook the individual to be free from the ties of dependence, as the societal transformation to monetize economic relationships alters the notion that rational individuals are freely able to exchange. Money fetishizes this relationship, and the ruling class are able to nourish these dependency relationships under the disguise of money. Therefore, Marx’s historical, materialist approach to understand the changing human nature, suggests the material qualities of money and exchange facilitate the domination of the ruling class through changing relations of production.

[mohab samir · Rating 5 out of 5]

هذا الفصل فى النقود وهو خلاصة ما جاء عنها من حيث الوظائف وتطورها التاريخى عبر الجدل الخاص بها نجده مشابها لما جاء فى كتاب رأس المال ولكن للمدقق ان يرى فوارق جوهرية بين المقالين ففى رأس المال نجد الموضوع يتم تناوله بدرجة عالية من المنهجية ولا عجب فى ذلك حيث ان رأس المال هو مضمون الفكر الأكثر نضجاً عند ماركس وهو متأخر زمنيا عن الغروند ريسة وحيث كانت مخطوطته منقحة اكثر من مرة، وإن لم يعد ماركس منها للنشر سوى المجلد الأول الا ان مخطوطة الغروند ريسة تشمل الفكر الاقتصادى الماركسى فى طور بلورته وتعلقه بالقاعدة الفلسفية اكثر من التعلق بالبرهنة الواقعية على صحة الافكار الفلسفية كما الحال فى رأس المال حيث الاستناد الى التقارير الاقتصادية والاحصائيات وتحليل الأزمات وضرب الأمثلة وصياغة القوانين انطلاقا من التجربة ما يضفى على رأس المال صبغة اكثر واقعية وصياغة الفكرة بشكل اكثر بروزا فى حين تصاغ الافكار فى الجروند ريسة بشكل فلسفى مما يتطلب الربط المستمر بين الواقع والمنطق والخروج بوحدة عامة من هذا الجدل تنحل فيها جميع تناقضات الاقتصاد السياسى ونظام الاقتصاد الرأسمالى .
الا ان اروع ما وجدته فى هذا الكتاب هى مقدمة الناشر الالمانى حيث يعرض تطور الفكر الماركسى فى سياق حياة ماركس الخاصة بشكل واف وهو موضوع نادر فى الترجمات العربية وقد ساعدتنى هذه المقدمة كثيرا فى صياغة مفهومى عن الفكر الماركسى بشكل افضل مما لو بدونها حيث تفيد احيانا بعض الاحجار الصغيرة فى اكمال البناء او دعم قوته .
ويبدو ان مخطوطة الجروند ريسة الضخمة تضم ذات الاجزاء الموجودة فى رأس المال الا ان ما ترجم منها هو هذا المجلد الاول فقط والخاص بدراسة النقود ولكن يبدو عموما ان ماركس اراد ان يتعمق فى صياغة افكاره وتأسيسها فلسفيا وهى لا تزال فى مرحلة الانضاج فى مخطوطة الجروند ريسة والتى وجدت كملاحظات شخص انهمك فى تامل فلسفى واخذ يدون فقط اعمق ومضات فكره المجرد وقد حاول الناشرون توحيد هذه الومضات المختصرة والغامضة والمتفرقة وكذلك ربطها بالشكل الناضج والمنهجى والواقعى فى رأس المال وقد نجحوا فى ذلك ولم تحجب الترجمه هذا النجاح فكانت هى الاخرى ناجحةً بذلك .

[Mesut Bostancı · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read the introduction. It's fantastic. Every page is quotable.

[Alice Nilsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Marx

[Martin Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim." - Ovid.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wednesday, March 27, 2024: In today's New York Times an editorial opinion columnist says that for many of today's college students, the study of the humanities is probably a direct ticket to the unemployment line, in this way suggesting that an empirico-critical perspective unrelated to the quantitative sciences is no longer considered acceptable to most employers. If that is the case, then it appears that the premise of Bill Ackman's undergraduate thesis, that Harvard University is the training ground for the rulers of society and the masters of the American people and, thereby, the de facto overseers of the business of the world, appears to be ever-increasingly sedimented in place. To begin with general concepts which, in the case of Karl Marx, stands for the notion of material production, and to move to specific examples of where these forces are in action, such as a commodity business in operation or the economic budgetary position of a nation-state, seems to be a faded concept that has become somewhat weathered and is now withering in pedagogical circles, at least as a viable concept in early educational training. Personally, I can even think back to my own instruction in Literature classes at Bard College in the mid-1990s where we were instructed to focus on the description of an incident in the text and to explicate our thesis in essay form from there, instead of just 'blindly' writing about the text in general, which I felt was more in conformity with my previous exposure to the analysis of literary art-objects. Such as it was, I suppose that in this way we were being trained for the work-world, which demands a specificity of attention in the sense that capital demands a more direct correspondence to detail in order to facilitate the creation of exchange values, which is the key concept and the entire raison d'etre behind capitalism, namely the accumulation of profit. As Marx makes clear in this text, human relations since the beginning of bourgeois society have assumed a stern character equivalent to the capital-relations behind and, essentially, is equivalent to the money-relations emanating from the equation of economic psychology inherent in those collective business performances which have come to assume a major motivating force structuring society. While visiting the many malls I went to with my mother in New York and New Jersey, in our carefree but not overly extravagant spending of the money that she earned as Head Nurse Manager of Pediatrics at Nyack Hospital buying peanut chews, sunflower seeds and various other sweets, I was exposed to a relationship to capital where production had the appearance of being identical to consumption. Today this philosophy is being promulgated in the daily newspaper of record where, it was claimed recently, the age of artificial intelligence will lead to the creation of an America where machines will do the work for us and leave us with vast amounts of additional free time. In my opinion, I feel this is mere hype and hyperbole and, moreover, is vanity masquerading as progressiveness, for it is my belief that the real rulers of society will seek to replace the idea of production by individuals with a pure concept of capital that is divested of the individual's productive capacity for labor as an inherently social benefit. What is to be our collective future? In my opinion, Marx might agree that the most significant moment of human becoming would be the tearing down of the barrier between capital and human production; however, the artificially intelligent machines that are on the horizon of the future appear only to supply the groundwork for a more absolute vision of human alienation.

[Riley Roche · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Political economy has to do with the specific social forms of wealth or rather of the production of wealth” (p. 852)

As usual with Marx, his precision and insight is inescapably enthralling at many points in the work. The famous 1857 Introduction, the sections on pre-capitalist social forms, on Bastiat and Carey, the formulations of alienation and socialist transition, and the general concept work that strings you along are all so excellent and clarifying that I am tempted to shout from the rooftops: read the Grundrisse!

But I cannot because this book is at times incredibly unruly, replete with pages and pages of commentary-less transcribed quotes, and repetitious to sometimes a nauseating degree.

So who is the book for?

Should someone just starting with Marx read the book? No, because it’s far too daunting and incomplete.

How about someone who just finished the first volume of Capital? No, because volume two directly picks up where volume one ended so, if they were interested in reading more, it should be continuous.

How about someone interested in Marx’s historical thinking? Nope! Read the books on France.

Interested in Marx’s vision of socialism? Maybe… certainly doesn’t require all 900 pages of reading.

Perhaps someone interested in dialectic more broadly? Alright, maybe you. Or you could just read the first volume of Capital very closely. Or read Hegel.

In short, the only reason to read this book is if you’ve finished all three volumes of Capital and want more insight into the guiding conceptual structure and method of exposition of the critique of political economy. This is an incredibly niche and, if I’m being harsh, almost useless endeavor for most people.

The book is incredible and demonstrates the work of production behind the masterful critique of political economy. But practically—and much to my chagrin—I would very rarely recommend the read.

[Billie Pritchett]

Before Marx penned Capital, he worked out his ideas in various notebooks. This book, the Grundrisse, are those notes. And given that it's a book of notes, the content doesn't cohere. There's no definite shape. You'd do better, I think, to read the first volume of Capital , because that's where the insights are, and only read the subsequent volumes or the Grundrisse for historical or scholarly interests.

[Peyton]

TFW "the antithesis to political economy—namely socialism and communism—finds its theoretical supposition in the works of classical political economy itself" :0
If I were a marx scholar I would probably find this a very fascinating and illuminating work but I do not have econ brain

[Tim Lacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading 460.pages felt like enough. :)

[Chandru'sGR]

great read..i love it

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Grundrisse is what happens when Karl Marx sits down to write a foundational work on economics but forgets he’s not actually writing for an audience—he’s writing for the inner circle of Karl Marx.

It is the literary equivalent of an open-mic rant where the performer refuses to get off stage and starts connecting the plight of 19th-century textile workers to the metaphysics of Greek gods, the Roman slave economy, and whatever was floating in his coffee at the time.

If Capital is an overly long opera with a bad libretto, Grundrisse is the six-hour drunken rehearsal in which the chorus keeps falling asleep, the lead is making up their own lines, and the orchestra is playing three different symphonies at once.

It is—at least in theory—the Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. In practice? The only foundation here is a cracked basement filled with loose notes, self-interruptions, and intellectual furniture that never gets assembled. “Grundrisse” in German means “outline”, but this outline is so sprawling and formless that you could use it as a cautionary tale in project management seminars.

The experience of reading Grundrisse is less like following a structured argument and more like accidentally intercepting someone’s private brain dump during a manic phase.

One moment, Marx is on about the labour theory of value. The next, he’s knee-deep in an anthropological detour about Roman law.

Before you can finish processing that, he’s suddenly dissecting ancient Greek society with the seriousness of a man who forgot he was supposed to be talking about money. This is stream-of-consciousness economics with the dial turned up to 11, with Marx writing as though the faster he produces words, the more correct they become.

And my god, the tangents. The man starts with commodities and ends up on metaphysical conceptions of time like he’s auditioning for a philosophy department that no one asked to open. It’s as if Hegel, Feuerbach, and an encyclopaedia of world history all fell into a blender, and instead of hitting “purée”, Marx just left it on “chunky”.

Every page is so overloaded with conceptual debris that reading it feels like carrying furniture up a spiral staircase—heavy, awkward, and involving far too many unnecessary turns.

Marx, to his credit—or perhaps detriment—never intended this for public consumption. Grundrisse is essentially his private scratchpad, and that’s exactly how it reads: pages upon pages of mental scaffolding without any of the final polish that might make it digestible.

But even allowing for that, the sheer density of jargon, obscure historical references, and abrupt topic changes suggest a man either completely unconcerned with clarity or actively hostile to it. Engels, Marx’s lifelong PR manager and co-author of his legacy, later tried to frame Grundrisse as “essential” to understanding Capital.

That’s a bit like calling your friend’s 4 a.m. voicemails “a crucial prelude to their TED Talk.”

Historically, this book had zero immediate impact—partly because no one outside Marx’s study saw it until the 20th century, but also because even the faithful wouldn’t have made it past page 50 without collapsing. And when it finally did emerge in the 1930s and beyond, the reaction among serious economists ranged from “What is this?” to “Why would you do this to yourself?”

Marxists hailed it as “the hidden treasure”, which is accurate if you define treasure as “a chest full of unlabelled keys, none of which open anything in particular.”

The core ideas that do emerge—if you’re willing to dig through the rubble—are familiar: the labour theory of value, the alienation of the worker, and the inevitability of capitalist collapse. But in Grundrisse, these are not presented as coherent, linear arguments. Instead, they are embedded in the swampy marshland of Marx’s digressions. One section might give you a sharp, compelling critique of capital’s tendency to subsume all aspects of human life under its logic.

The next will swerve into a hundred-page meditation on pre-capitalist modes of production, complete with speculative anthropology that modern scholars wouldn’t touch with a hazmat suit.

And here’s the kicker: most of Grundrisse is, from the standpoint of modern economics, completely irrelevant. Marx treats economic value as something objective and rooted solely in labour, ignoring the subjective valuation that underpins much of today’s price theory.

He has no grasp of marginal utility, no patience for innovation as a driver of value, and no framework for understanding market dynamics beyond the class struggle. Reading Grundrisse in 2025 for practical economic insight is like consulting a mediaeval physician on how to perform keyhole surgery.

But it’s not just economic obsolescence at play—it’s the style, or lack thereof. Marx’s writing in Grundrisse is a combination of 19th-century German academic sludge and a compulsive need to cover every tangent that crosses his mind.

Sentences run on for entire paragraphs, qualifying themselves into oblivion. You can almost hear the mental gears grinding as he tries to out-Hegel Hegel. The effect is exhausting, as though Marx is challenging you to keep up, daring you to prove your revolutionary credentials by sheer endurance.

And yet, there is an undeniable fascination in seeing Marx unfiltered. If Capital is the curated museum exhibit of his thought, Grundrisse is the chaotic backroom storage where the unfinished, broken, and mislabeled pieces are piled high.

You get to witness his process—the leaps, the contradictions, the sudden illuminations followed by philosophical cul-de-sacs. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a raw rehearsal tape: unwatchable for casual audiences, but catnip for those who want to study the artist’s unedited moves.

The tragedy—and the comedy—is that Engels, ever the loyal executor, tried to retrofit coherence onto this mess. He talked about it like it was the Rosetta Stone of Marxist economics when in reality it’s more like the scribbles in the margins of a student’s textbook. Engels’ PR spin on Grundrisse is one of history’s great acts of ideological salvage, the kind of brand management usually reserved for pop stars after a disastrous live performance.

That anyone today still pretends Grundrisse is essential reading for understanding capitalism is a testament not to its content, but to the stubbornness of Marxist canon-building.

From a modern perspective, Grundrisse is an artefact, not a manual. Its pre-industrial obsessions, deterministic view of history, and labor-centric economics have been overtaken by globalised trade, automation, and the reality that capitalism has proven far more adaptable than Marx could imagine.

Yes, inequality is real, and yes, capitalism has deep structural flaws—but you won’t find a viable 21st-century fix hidden in Marx’s 19th-century metaphors about ancient societies. If anything, Grundrisse reminds us that even brilliant minds can produce work that is, in large part, a dead end.

That doesn’t mean it’s worthless. For historians of thought, it’s a goldmine of raw material showing how Marx wrestled with the problems of his time. For literary masochists, it’s an endurance test. For everyone else, it’s an unwieldy monument to overthinking—a book that confuses density with depth, tangents with insight, and verbosity with authority.

In the end, Grundrisse is both a warning and a wonder: a warning about the perils of releasing your unedited drafts to the world and a wonder that anyone—let alone generations of political theorists—could maintain the patience to sift through it.

It is at once a testament to Marx’s restless intellect and a monument to his inability to self-edit. It’s the economic theory equivalent of a director’s cut so indulgent that the studio had to lock the reels in a vault for a century.

Final verdict? Grundrisse is the prequel that should have stayed in the drawer. It’s a philosophical fever dream masquerading as foundational economics, an intellectual Rube Goldberg machine that turns simple concepts into elaborate contraptions only to deliver the same conclusion Marx always starts with: capitalism bad, communism good, history inevitable.

If Capital is a bad opera, Grundrisse is the all-night rehearsal where everyone is drunk, the costumes are still in the laundry, and the orchestra is playing in a different key. It is, in short, the unfiltered, uncooked, and unhinged mind of Marx—and that’s both its curse and its peculiar charm.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Grundrisse to be far more readable than I expected it to be - based on the fact that it is drawn from Marx's unpublished notebooks and was never intended for publication. It is absolutely filled with fascinating insight across the whole range of political economy. It also very noticeably more "Hegelian" in tone than Capital (although some of that may be the influence of what I've read in between reading Capital and Grundrisse). As you might expect bearing in mind how it came to be published, it is not written in an organised way or to make well ordered specific points. It is a set of notes written while working through his reading on political economy. This makes it more disorganised and harder reading than other works, but in lots of ways more interesting. Definitely worth the effort.

I'm slowly adding the rough notes I made while reading Grundrisse to this page on my blog: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...

April 2023: second reading, this time accompanied by David Harvey's newly published "Companion to Marx's Grundrisse". It remains a fascinating but challenging read. It is possible to see Marx developing what will become the structure and analysis of all three volumes of Capital, arriving finally (on page 881) with what will become - reworded - the opening words of volume 1. In Grundrisse this is "the first category in which bourgeois wealth presents itself is that of the commodity". In Capital that becomes "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities'".

There is a strong emphasis on Capital as a whole, as a 'totality' where each individual part in analysis is influenced by the construction of the complete flow. I'll write about Harvey's book separately, but among other things he emphasises this element with his position that Marx presents Capital as 'value in motion'.

It remains a rewarding book that is worth the effort, with access made easier by Harvey's Companion.

I added some thoughts on the circulation of capital after reading Grundrisse for the second time on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

MARX’S REDISCOVERED NOTEBOOKS FROM 1857-8

The Foreword explains, “This is a series of notebooks rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857-8. The manuscript became lost in circumstances still unknown and was first effectively published, in the German original, in 1953… Marx considered these workbooks to contain the first scientific elaboration of the theoretical foundations of communism… they add much mew material, and stand as the only outline of Marx’s full political-economic project. The manuscripts display the key elements in Marx’s development and overthrown of the Hegelian philosophy. They… are a sourcebook of inestimable value for the study of Marx’s method of inquiry.” (Pg. 7; NOTE: page numbers refer to a 904-page paperback edition.)

Marx wrote in the Introduction, “The object before us, to begin with, MATERIAL PRODUCTION. Individuals producing in society---hence socially determined individual production---is, of course, the point of departure.” (Pg. 82) Later, he adds, “Thus production, distribution, exchange and consumption form a regular syllogism; production is the generality, distribution and exchange the particularity, and consumption the singularity in which the whole is joined together. This is admittedly a coherence, but a shallow one.” (Pg. 89)

He notes, “We have here reached the fundamental question, which is no longer related to the point of departure. The general question would be this: Can the existing relations of production and the relations of distribution which correspond to them be revolutionized by a change in the instrument of circulation, in the organization of circulation? Further question: Can such a transformation of circulation be undertaken without touching the existing relations of production and the social relations which rest on them?” (Pg. 122)

He states, “The VALUE … of all commodities (labor included) is determined by their cost of production, in other words by the labor time required to produce them. Their PRICE is the exchange value of theirs, expressed in money… Labor money denominated in labor time would therefore equate the REAL VALUE (exchange value) of commodities with their nominal value, price, money value… The value of commodities as determined by labor time is only their average value.” (Pg. 136-137)

He argues, “Negro slavery---a purely industrial slavery---which is, besides, incompatible with the development of bourgeois society and disappears with it, PRESUPPOSES wage labor, and if other, free states with wage labor did not exist alongside it, if, instead, the Negro states were isolated, then all social conditions there would immediately turn into pre-civilized forms.” (Pg. 224)

He says, “Capital is not a simple relation, but a PROCVESS, in whose various moments it is always capital. This process therefore to be developed. Already in ACCUMULATED labor, something has sneaked in, because, in its essential characteristic, it should be merely OBJECTIFIED labor, in which, however, a certain amount of labor is accumulated. But accumulated labor already comprises a quantity of objects in which labor is realized.” (Pg. 258)

He explains, “Within the production process, the separation of labor from its objective moments of existence---instruments and material---is suspended. The existence of capital and of wage labor rests on this separation. Capital does not pay for the suspension of this separation which proceeds in the real production process---for otherwise work could not go on at all… We see therefore that the capitalist, by means of the exchange process with the worker---by indeed paying the worker an equivalent for the costs of production contained in this labor capacity, but appropriating living labor for himself---obtains two things free of charge, first the surplus labor which increases the value of his capital; but at the same time, secondly, the quality of living labor which maintains the previous labor materialized in the component parts of capital and thus preserves the previously existing value of capital.” (Pg. 364-365)

He states, “there is a limit, not inherent to production generally, but to production founded on capital. This limit is double, or rather the same regarded from two directions. It is enough here to demonstrate that capital contains a PARTICULAR restriction of production---which contradicts its general tendency to drive beyond every barrier to production---in order to have uncovered the foundation of OVERPRODUJCTION, the fundamental contradiction of developed capital…” (Pg. 415)

He observes, “It is posited within the concept of capital that the objective conditions of labo0r---and these are its own product---take on a PERSONALITY towards it, or, what is the same, that they are posited as the property of a personality alien to the worker.” (Pg. 512)

He says, “Surplus value thus measured by the value of the presupposed capital, capital thus posited as self-realizing value---is PROFIT… the surplus value is profit; and capital as capital, the producing and reproducing value, distinguishes itself within itself from Itself as profit, the newly produced value. The product of capital is PROFIT.” (Pg. 746)

He argues, “Profit as we still regard it here, i.e. as the profit of capital AS SUCH, not of an individual capital at the expense of another, but rather as the profits of the capitalist class, concretely expressed, can never be greater then the sum of the surplus value. As a sum, it is the sum of the surplus value, but it is this same sum of values as a proportion relative to the total value of the capital, instead of to that part of it whose value really grows; i.e., is exchanged for living labor. In its immediate form, profit is nothing but the sum of the surplus value expressed as a proportion of the total value of the capital.” (Pg. 767)

He explains, “In regard to INTEREST, two things are to be examined: Firstly, the division of PROFIT into interest and profit… The difference becomes perceptible, tangible as soon as a class of monied capitalists comes to confront a class of industrial capitalists. Secondly, Capital itself becomes a commodity, or the commodity (money) is sold as capital. This it is said, e.g., that capital, like any other commodity, varies in price according to demand and supply. These then determine the rate of interest. Thus here capital as such enters into circulation.” (Pg. 851)

This book will mostly interest those studying the development of Marx’s thought.

[Cain S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Marx uses of the term 'contradiction' are equivocal. Sometimes he bestows the status of 'contradiction' to conjunctions of propositions reflecting states of affairs which have materially incompatible constitutive properties. For instance he'll correctly identify the truth of *'x is copper' as being in contradiction with the truth of 'x is an electrical insulator'* Yet, when the occasion suits him he is also apt to insist that it is simultaneously true that 'x is copper' and that 'x is an electrical insulator' The cost of this two-pronged discursive strategy is that the distinction between materially compatible and incompatible states of affairs, and so between truth and falsity simpliciter is collapsed. Valid inferences lead to true or false consequences arbitrarily in relation to antecedent commitments rendering all subsequent inferential judgments as such unreliable. But leave aside questions of formal validity which Marx dismisses as merely formal considerations with which he isn't concerned.

But then, he maintains labourers only get a % of value added by their work as wages rather than 100% of the sale value of the product for which their factory is responsible. "Therefore contradictions."
p. 330-331

How does a labourer become entitled to earnings representing the cost of plant, property, and equipment they work with? The process by which gas station attendants contingently become entitled to all earnings from the oil wells which supply their product to the gas station and a lion's share in the sales revenue generated at the gas station due to hurrdurr 'objectified labour' is an unexplained miracle. The economics that Marx gets right is found elsewhere with less circumlocution and verbosity. But, the many errors of the psychologistic stand point economics he props up in his obese prose are singular and unique gems the likes of which are not to be found anywhere else.

Assuming a generous interpretation of contradiction, where the term turns out to be one intelligible discriminant property of states of affairs or propositions, there are many ways to resolve a contradiction. One needn't overthrow the capitalist class and sieze the means of production because the separation of labour and exchange value means workers earn less than they supposedly deserve. Another way, one that's easier, to assuredly increase worker earnings would be to adopt a theoretical and practical commitment to Marxist anti-natalism. Clearly, low-skill worker parents are the biggest demographic contributing to the increase of future low-skill worker supply. The larger the number of low-skill workers in the future the lower the wage each can command, as they're easily replaceable. The smaller the number of low-skill workers in the future the higher the wage each can command, as they're not easily replaceable. Low-skill worker parents who have fewer children add fewer low-skill workers to the market and so push up the future wage each can command, and conversely those who have more children add more low-skill workers and push down the future wage each can command. The smaller the number of children low-skill worker parents have, ceteris paribus, the higher the wage each can command in the future; so, if low-skill worker parents as a class want future wages to rise they must have fewer [or no] children. It follows as corollaries that i. Low-skill worker parents who have fewer children, add fewer low-skill workers to the market and so push up the future wage each can command, are allies of the working class because they benefit the working class at a cost to capitalists; and, ii. Low-skill worker parents who have more children, add more low-skill workers and push down the future wage each can command, are enemies of the working class because they benefit capitalists at a cost to the working class.

Marx places an odd emphasis on the speculative historical origin of property ownership in primitive artisan guilds where workers only learned to use instruments of their trade but the community to which the guild belonged retained ownership of the instruments. As he sees it, only by workers first becoming masters in the use of the guild's, i.e. the community's, instruments, and then coming into inheritance of these instruments and capacities were the constitutive conditions of private property ownership as such realized. It's as if truck drivers retrospectively created the conditions for the existence of the first truck manufacturer.

By his own reasoning, without truck drivers to consume trucks in the performance of their trade, i.e trucking, there would be no demand for and so no viable truck-like product a truck manufacturer could supply. But that's nonsense. First comes the private ownership of raw materials and labour required to manufacture the truck, and only much later come truck drivers, mechanics, and other downstream worker 'guilds'. This sort of post-hoc speculative historical interlude fails to license the claim that workers are de facto owners of the raw materials, process, and product of their work as Marx is at strenuous efforts to impress upon the reader all through 'The Chapter on Capital'. Imagine becoming a real estate magnate by laying bricks. Who would deny the constitutive implausibility of such asinine presumption? The answer is Marx, and anyone who believes with him that the lowest rung worker in any firm in any industry always was and always is in principle capable of performing the duties of the founder or proprietor; and so always was and always is entitled to any share of the revenue generated by the firm as they need. But, it's surprising they don't infer the obvious consequence that the working class oppresses itself in not positing itself--to use a Marxian locution--as the capitalist class instead.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

ulysses for marxists, if the text was essentially just journal notes for the sake of self-clarification

there are some particularly rewarding portions of this text, such as the infamous sections on machinery/automation, and, personally, I enjoyed his tracing the development of money throughout history, particularly gold and silver.

he has the classic leftist sass when discussing classical economists, truly the prototype for insane theory nerds. assuming his high level of “i’m fed up with this bullshit” is because these are posthumously published writings, that were mainly for himself. (then again, i seem to remember the same prose in capitol)

shouldn’t be your first marx book, although it impacted 20th century marxists in many respects, so it’s worth your time going through eventually

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a challenging work (I read it in conjunction with Antonio Negri's Marx Beyond Marx, which added a lot) because it is literally where Marx worked out his ideas. It can be read without resorting to ideology, and should be if you want to explore this extraordinary mind at work. He's wrong a lot when it comes to solutions, but his critique of political economy is often powerful and useful.