Te de fabula narratur!

Before I write my full-length contribution to "Chapter One: the Commodity" I'd like to offer comment on a set of considerations on method offered by Marx himself, in the introduction attached to Kapital's 1867 publication, and in his preface to "Critique of Political Economy" [1859]. I find Ben's question on "literature" gets right at the heart of something we need to deal with as we descend into Kapital's vortex; while we may not end up playing by those interpretative rules toward the end which we'd drafted in the beginning, it's definitely of the essence to at least initiate an internal conversation as to what, precisely, Marx is doing -- and what, precisely, we're going to have to do in order to read it.

Without further ado, then, I quote from the 1867 introduction:

Der Physiker beobachtet Naturprozesse entweder dort, wo sie in der prägnantesten Form und von störenden Einflüssen mindest getrübt erscheinen, oder, wo möglich, macht er Experimente unter Bedingungen, welche den reinen Vorgang des Prozesses sichern. Was ich in diesem Werk zu erforschen habe, ist die kapitalistische Produktionsweise und die ihr entsprechenden Produktions- und Verkehrsverhältnisse. Ihre klassische Stätte ist bis jetzt England. Dies der Grund, warum es zur Hauptillustration meiner theoretischen Entwicklung dient. [35]

The physicist observes natural processes either there, where they appear in the most incisive form and least diluted by disruptive influences, or, where possible, he conducts experiments under conditions which secure the purity of the procedure. What I have set before me to investigate in this work, is the capitalist mode of production and its concomitant productive and intercursive-circulatory-communicative relations. [This mode's] classical case is, to this point, England. This is the reason why it will serve as the primary illustration of my theoretical argumentation.

While what follows may be a bit Hegel-dented, please bear with me. The first word is the best. It is Marx, of course, whom we presume to be the physicist on "our" side of the analogy: the physicist as the investigative personality, the one who conducts the experiments. Beyond this, though, in his next sentence, he establishes two options for the physical sciences: either observation under apparently uncontaminated conditions [erscheinen, to appear, is operative] -or- the establishment of a controlled environment where imposed "conditions" guarantee processional "purity" [the adjective rein]. When Marx pulls the Physiker's card, then, what's seemed at first to look like a bid for ensconcement among the positive sciences [Smith, Newton?] has turned into a subtle troubling of these science's models for inquiry: the questionable appearance of an ideal condition, and the false imposition of ideal conditions. He knows it himself, though he returns to the rather prosaic epistemological dualism [theoretical approach vindicated by "illustration" that emerges from its application to the already-there test case] one might well know and love from [among other things] Hegel's style in the History of Philosophy, by which the "cunning of reason" is vindicated and embodied by Alexander the Great. But in Marx the dialectical turn, the laying-bare under analysis of an irresolvable agonism, comes with the next sentence [with an acknowledgement of the theory-application model's impossibility]:

Sollte jedoch der deutsche Leser pharisäisch die Achseln zucken über die Zustände der englischen Industrie- und Ackerbauarbeiter, oder sich optimistisch dabei beruhigen, daß in Deutschland die Sachen noch lange nicht so schlimm stehn, so muß ich ihm zurufen: de te fabula narratur! [35]

Should, however, the German reader shrug his shoulders Pharaisically regarding the affairs of the English industrial and agricultural workers, or comfort himself optimistically that things aren't nearly so bad in Germany, I must assure him: the story is being told about you!

Regardless of the English example's "classical" status, Marx is arguing, a critique of political economy -- and the new theories of knowledge, of history, and of politics that accompany it -- can be no more limited to the national stage [in 1867, a peculiar stage in Germany, but surely one comfort available to the particularist he's singling out here] than its object: the historical development, the locus on the time-axis of stagist history, that England [far from exhibiting uniquely] merely shows best. The national perspective would allow an external analytic position, which [on the European stage, at least] has to remain unthinkable. I think this is a particularly strategic/tactical intervention, on Marx' part: while I don't think we'll ever be satisfied with any resolution of the [non-]literariness question Ben's opened, I think there's one thing with regard to which I'll be looking to satisfy myself: the development of a radically immanent science that Marx is hinting at here. The story is told not only about dir, the German PolyAnna: it's told about everybody -- and the old sciences, the ancien régime méthodologique-épistémologique, cannot be fit to investigate its narration [which takes the form of systems evolution in the sphere of Produktions- and Verkehrsverhältnisse] unless they seriously acknowledge their position within it, that is, acknowledge the impossibility of [themselves as] classical investigatory models. Being free to do science, it seems, involves an initial acknowledgment of the impossibility of any freedom from the processes one looks to subject to science.

I now quote from the foreword to the 1859 "Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie":

Bei dem Eingang in die Wissenschaft aber, wie beim Eingang in die Hölle, muß die Forderung gestellt werden:
Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto
Ogni viltá convien che qui sia morta
{Hier ziemt es, jeden Argwohn fahren lassen
Und jede Niedrigkeit muß hier ersterben} [722]

Entering into Science, like entering into Hell, requires the challenge:
Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto
Ogni viltá convien che qui sia morta
{It is appropriate here, to dismiss all suspicion
And all lowliness must die here}

Irony? Maybe. I wonder.