A Contribution to the Critique of Political EconomyMarx, Karl
Philosophy
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Marx, Karl
Economics; Marxian economics
Production creates the material as the outward object of consumption;
consumption creates the want as the inward object, the purpose of
production. Without production, no consumption; without consumption, no
production; this maxim figures (?) in political economy in many forms.
Third. Production is not only directly consumption and consumption
directly production; nor is production merely a means of consumption
and consumption the purpose of production. In other words, not only
does each furnish the other with its object; production, the material
object of consumption; consumption, the ideal object of production. On
the contrary, either one is not only directly the other, not (?) only
a means of furthering the other, but while it is taking place, creates
the other as such for itself (?). Consumption completes the act of
production by giving the finishing touch to the product as such, by
destroying the latter, by breaking up its independent material form; by
bringing to a state of readiness, through the necessity of repetition,
the disposition to produce developed in the first act of production;
that is to say, it is not only the concluding act through which the
product becomes a product, but also [the one] through which the
producer becomes a producer. On the other hand, production produces
consumption, by determining the manner of consumption, and further, by
creating the incentive for consumption, the very ability to consume, in
the form of want. This latter identity mentioned under point 3, is much
discussed in political economy in connection with the treatment of the
relations of demand and supply, of objects and wants, of natural wants
and those created by society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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