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Concept
Grundrisse
Summary
The Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy) is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857–8. Left aside by Marx in 1858, it remained unpublished until 1939.
The Grundrisse is very wide-ranging in subject matter and covers all six sections of Marx's critique of political economy (of which only one, the first volume of Das Kapital, ever reached a final form). Because of the rough nature of the work, Marxist anthropologist David Harvey has described challenges in "determining whether Marx is advancing his own conceptual framework and interpretations or simply reporting for others" and stated that "Marx is, in short, just talking to himself". It is often described as the rough draft of Das Kapital, although there is considerable disagreement about the exact relationship between the two texts, particularly around the issue of methodology.
Due to its breadth and its incorporation of themes from Marx's earlier writings, the Grundrisse is central to Marx's body of work. Its subject matter includes the prices of production, relations of production, distribution, exchange, alienation, value, labor, capitalism, the rise of technology and automation, pre-capitalist forms of social organization, and the preconditions for a communist revolution. Scholars have noted major differences between Marx's earlier writings, such as The German Ideology and The Communist Manifesto, and the later ones, Das Kapital and Grundrisse, suggesting that Marx's views evolved, though the main themes remained the same.
As Martin Nicolaus and others have argued, the Grundrisse is crucial for understanding Marx's mature analysis of capitalism, even though, historically, it has been far less influential in the development of the various strands of Marxist theory than earlier texts such as the Communist Manifesto, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and The German Ideology.
Official source
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