Wu Ting: A Review of Research on Marx’s "London Notebooks" in German Academia
The research of German Marxist scholars on the London Notebooks was primarily concentrated between the 1970s and 1990s, a period when the trend of "Marxology" [1] was prevalent in the West. This meant that their study of the London Notebooks required a certain degree of theoretical targeting from the outset: criticizing the interpretive methods of bourgeois Marxology, which fragmented and isolated the integrity of Marx’s thought. Consequently, viewed as a whole, the German academic community of that period—whether in the editing and publication of the London Notebooks or in their theoretical analysis—emphasized that the 1850–1853 London Notebooks constituted an inherent link in the developmental trajectory of Marx’s thought, specifically forming an important theoretical foundation for Capital and its manuscripts.
I. The Halle Research Group and the London Notebooks as the Prehistory of Marx’s "Six-Book Plan"
In 1969, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (also known as the University of Halle-Wittenberg) accepted a cooperation agreement from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The content included: first, responsibility for editing Volumes 3.3 and 3.4 of the second section of MEGA2 (portions of the 1861–1863 Economic Manuscripts); second, training fifteen academic successors and potential collaborators for the editorial board and the GDR Institute of Marxism-Leninism; and third, focusing research on Marx's political economy from 1850 to 1863. This contract inaugurated a "golden age" of systematic research on the London Notebooks for the Marx-Engels Research Group at Halle (hereafter referred to as the "Halle Research Group"). Over the following twenty years, under the leadership of Wolfgang Jahn and others, the group completed the editing of Volumes 7–9 of the fourth section of MEGA2, namely Notebooks I–XIV of the London Notebooks. Alongside these gratifying editorial achievements, the Halle Research Group also reaped significant theoretical fruits regarding textual research on the London Notebooks, most of which were collected in the group’s internal academic journal, Hallesche Arbeitsblätter zur Marx-Engels-Forschung (Halle Working Papers on Marx-Engels Research).
The entirety of the Halle Research Group’s work, including the editing and study of the London Notebooks, was conducted under a theoretical keynote established by Jahn. This keynote consisted of the theoretical principles and research program he drafted in his article "Problems in the Development of Marx's Political Economy During the Period 1850–1863" to present the "Six-Book Plan" for Marx’s works on political economy. Naturally, this first had to account for the complex academic environment of the time. Jahn pointed out that following the 1968 publication of Roman Rosdolsky’s The Making of Marx's 'Capital' (Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen „Kapital“), the notebooks and manuscripts written by Marx between 1850 and 1863 were continually subjected to revision and distortion by bourgeois Marxologists. They dissected the historical process of Marx’s complex political economy research into isolated questions of scientific methodology detached from class struggle, which had become an academic fashion. Faced with a theoretical predicament engulfed by bourgeois Marxology, the urgent task for the Halle Research Group was to reaffirm the integrity and continuity of Marx’s thought, particularly his political economy research. However, this academic background was only one reason for the Halle Research Group's orientation; another, more critical factor was the famous "Six-Book Plan" [2] Marx proposed for his political economy research in 1858. Jahn and the Halle Research Group maintained that there was no sign or evidence that Marx had ever abandoned this plan. Marx’s objective analysis of the economy of bourgeois society was the inevitable result of his application of the methodology of dialectical materialism to research capitalism and its economic laws, moving from the abstract to the concrete. Consequently, reconstructing Marx's "Six-Book Plan" naturally became the core of the Halle Research Group’s study of Marx’s thought. Yet Jahn also realized that if this extremely difficult theoretical work were to be undertaken, it first required comprehensive and complex textual criticism and research into Marx's historical legacy. This meant the London Notebooks were of vital importance, as these documents constituted the prehistory of Marx's "Six-Book Plan"; organizing and studying the London Notebooks would serve as the essential theoretical basis for re-establishing this "Plan." This was manifested primarily in two points.
First, Jahn believed that Marx’s investigation of issues such as money, banking and finance, crises, technology, and world history in the London Notebooks provided many new insights for the construction of his theoretical framework. Even if the research during this period was incomplete and some content was not reflected in Capital, traces of these theoretical influences can still be glimpsed within Capital.
Second, Marx’s grasp of the research method in its narrow sense was also formed through the London Notebooks. Jahn noted: "The excerpt notebooks clearly show that for Marx, as a materialist, only objective reality and social practice could become the starting point when researching an object. Undoubtedly, the question of the starting point of research and the question of the movement from the abstract to the concrete are among the most important issues regarding the relationship between the mode of research and the mode of representation. But to restrict this relationship to this single point, as some bourgeois 'Marxologists' do, is one-sided and becomes profoundly erroneous." Therefore, Jahn emphasized that Marx did not begin his research from a "zero point" in isolation or without presuppositions; rather, he used "historical-collectivist and practical empirical concepts" to elaborate his theory—which consists of all the excerpt notebooks and notes Marx made since the 1850s. These surviving notebooks and documents published in MEGA2 will "bear witness to the 'Mont Blanc' of facts, materials, statistics, and literary excerpts that Marx had to master during the research process," while also showing how Marx, through the accumulation of his own theory, realized step-by-step the uncovering of the laws governing the movement of the capitalist economy.
Based on these reflections, Jahn proposed his own research program: collecting and editing excerpts, manuscripts, letters, and documents not yet utilized in Capital (especially the London Notebooks, for which he had been striving for editorial rights since 1970). "This includes not only the collection and evaluation of these materials (such as the excerpt notebooks) but also involves their reconstruction and elaboration according to the original structural plan." For many years thereafter, this program guided the direction of the Halle Research Group. In 1989, Ehrenfried Galander, the new head of the group, proposed a more specific "monograph" concept for Marx's "Six-Book Plan" and formed a theoretical consensus within the group. Regrettably, two years later in 1991, the Halle Research Group was forced to disband, and the editing and publication of the London Notebooks stalled. Overall, however, the Halle Research Group made significant theoretical contributions to the study of the London Notebooks. This was evidenced not only by the members' extensive collection and organization of the literature but, more importantly, by their reflection on the historical threads of Marx’s economic research based on certain excerpts—particularly the unpublished notebooks. This provided valuable research insights for examining the internal logic of the development of Marx’s thought.
II. A Totality Analysis of the London Notebooks and Marx’s Political Economy Research
In Germany, Wolfgang Jahn was the scholar who studied the London Notebooks most systematically and deeply. As mentioned above, Jahn led and participated in the editing of the London Notebooks; thus, his research occupies a pivotal position in German academia. His representative works include: "The Heuristic Value of Karl Marx’s 1850–1853 London Notebooks," "On Marx’s 'Reflections' of 1851," Marx's 1850–1853 London Notebooks (co-authored with Klaus Fricke), as well as "On Certain Developments of Marx's Political Economy Research Method in the London Notebooks (1850–1853)" and "On the Question of the Development of Karl Marx’s Mode of Research in the 1850–1853 London Notebooks" (both co-authored with Dieter Noske). Here, I primarily analyze "On the Question of the Development of Karl Marx’s Mode of Research in the 1850–1853 London Notebooks." In this work, published as a complete independent volume in the 7th issue of Hallesche Arbeitsblätter zur Marx-Engels-Forschung in 1979, Jahn and Noske performed a textual survey of the twenty-four notebooks of Marx’s London Notebooks from the perspective of the history of ideas. Using Marx's methodology of dialectical materialism as a thread, they analyzed the historical logic of his political economy research during his time in London, thereby severely criticizing bourgeois Marxology.
The book consists of eight parts. In the first two parts, Jahn and Noske criticized the erroneous interpretations of Marx’s thought by Marxology. They argued that Marxology distorts Marx’s thought primarily in two aspects. First, regarding Marx’s mention in the Postface to the second edition of Volume 1 of Capital that there were certain differences between his research method and his mode of representation, Marxology asserts that the distinction between the two is absolute—i.e., the research method is materialistic, while the mode of representation is Hegelian idealism. Jahn and Noske insisted that Marx’s research method and mode of representation are merely differences within the primary unity of materialist-dialectics, not absolutely heterogeneous. Second, the Marxological division between the "Young" Marx and the "Late" Marx separates political economy from scientific communism and dialectical materialism, treating it as a relatively independent component within a unified Marxist theory. To this, Jahn and Noske countered that the three basic components of Marx's theory are both unified and interconnected; they are the prerequisites for Marx's political economy research.
Furthermore, in the third part of the book, they pointed out that the critique of bourgeois political economy is a vital aspect of Marx’s research and is clearly manifested in the excerpts of the London Notebooks. In Jahn and Noske’s view, Marx did not begin his political economy research process unconditionally as Marxologists claim; his starting point was determined by the practical requirements of the working-class struggle. They believed that the failure of the 1848–1849 revolutions likely made Marx realize that an upsurge in revolution "is only possible where these two factors, the modern productive forces and the capitalist forms of production, come into conflict." Because Marx foresaw that the outbreak of an economic crisis would bring a new revolutionary tide, his initial research focused entirely on crisis theory. Notebooks I–VII of the London Notebooks, written between September 1850 and February 1851, mainly focused on the link between monetary theory and economic crises. Moreover, at all stages of his research and exposition, Marx emphasized the "critique of political economy," listing the word "critique" as the title of his planned six books of Capital and its later subtitle.
In the fourth part of the book, Jahn and Noske conducted a textual survey of Notebooks I–VII of the London Notebooks. They argued that Marx’s excerpts from economic historians such as James Gilbart and Thomas Tooke in these seven notebooks provided a rich documentary source for his later theoretical research on money, credit, value, and commodities. For instance, it was from these that Marx recognized the flaws in David Ricardo’s quantity theory of money.
In the fifth part of their work, Jahn and Noske provide a specialized analysis of Marx’s "Reflections" (Reflexionen) and "Bullion. The Complete Money System," arguing that these texts not only reveal the essence of circulation hidden behind surface appearances but also reflect a momentary theoretical equilibrium achieved by Marx in his 1851 economic studies—a dialectical unity of experience and theory, particularly in the "Reflections." Jahn and Noske contend that in "Reflections," Marx fully recognized that: "It is insufficient to remain at the level of quantitative research and objective social analysis. Instead, the primary task of research is to penetrate deep into the fundamental social relations hidden behind social-objective relations."
As their investigation deepened, Jahn and Noske asserted in the sixth part of the book that Marx’s study of political economy in Notebooks VII–VIII (the "Ricardo Notebooks") entered a new stage of integration. Marx not only simultaneously studied the perspectives of the three terminal bourgeois economists—James Steuart, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo—but the problems he investigated also grew increasingly complex. His research into each new category resulted from resolving the contradictions of preceding categories, just as his encounter with the contradiction between the use-value and value of a commodity led him inevitably to the contradiction between the labor that forms use-value and the labor that forms value. Jahn and Noske point out that Notebooks VII–VIII of the London Notebooks represent Marx's theoretical process of ascending from the abstract to the concrete [3], which is also the focal point of their analysis in the seventh part of the book.
In the eighth part, Jahn and Noske introduce Marx’s research into other specialized fields. These include the study of the condition of the working class in Notebook XI; the development of theories on agriculture and ground rent in Notebooks XII–XIII; population theory in Notebook XIII; history and technology [4] in Notebook XV; the history of women and, subsequently, colonies in Notebook XVI; and the Asiatic mode of production in Notebooks XX–XXIV. Overall, Jahn and Noske evaluate the London Notebooks very highly, even according them a special place within Marx’s "Six-Book Plan" [5]. They argue that it served not only as Marx’s "intellectual storehouse" but also created the conditions for his theoretical leaps (such as the discovery of the theory of surplus value) in 1857–1858 and 1861–1863.
Beyond the holistic grasp of Marx’s political economy research provided by scholars like Jahn and Noske, German Marxist scholars have also attempted deep theoretical cultivation of this theme, elucidating insights into Marx’s 1850–1853 economic studies based on varying theoretical points of departure and interests. Given that these analyses involve texts largely familiar to us from Volumes 7–9 of the Fourth Section of MEGA2 [6], and due to space constraints, I will provide only a brief overview here.
First is the analysis by German scholars concerning the theory of money, credit issues, principles of circulation, and banking theory in the first seven notebooks. For instance, Lyudmila Vasina, in her article "Karl Marx's Elaboration of the Theory of Money in the London Notebooks (1850–1851)," points out that "Marxology" [7] has not only falsified Marx's views on money but also reduced his theory to the level of Ricardo’s. Therefore, clarifying Marx’s theory of money is a necessary theoretical task. Vasina argues that in the London Notebooks, Marx scientifically grasped for the first time the origin, nature, functions, and laws of circulation of money—research that is inseparable from his theories of value and circulation. Furthermore, the excerpts on money in the first seven notebooks demonstrate the role played by the sources of Marx's economic doctrine during its formation, while also illustrating the differences between Marx’s views and those of his predecessors, particularly his departure from Ricardo on the theory of money. This has made it possible for the first time to understand Marx’s monetary questions from the perspective of the history of theory. Wolfgang Müller focused on the credit issue in the London Notebooks. He argues that Marx comprehensively examined numerous phenomena arising within the capitalist credit system, their status within the capitalist mode of production, and their interaction with economic crises. He further notes that this research formed the essential foundation for the credit theory Marx established in Volume 3 of Capital. Frank Schellhardt similarly noted the money and credit issues raised by Marx between 1850 and 1851, remarking that through the economic history research in the first six notebooks, Marx formed a comprehensive understanding of the actual movement of money. Additionally, Brigitte Arnhold discussed the principles of circulation and banking theory within the notebooks.
Second is the research into specific texts such as "Reflections," "Bullion. The Complete Money System," and the "Ricardo Notebooks." German scholars hold a nearly unanimous view of these three texts, regarding them as the theoretical peak of Marx’s 1850–1853 economic research phase. Wolfgang Jahn conducted a detailed textual reading of the 1851 "Reflections." He pointed out that although the original manuscript was published separately in 1977, this does not mean it is independent in nature; on the contrary, it is closely linked to Notebooks I–VII. Jahn argues: "'Reflections' is the first attempt at a theoretical expression of the knowledge acquired during the debates between monetary principles and banking theory, and is also a short monograph on self-clarification (zur Selbstverständigung)." It reflects fundamental progress in Marx’s theory of crisis, making it necessary to restudy it within the theoretical context of the London Notebooks and to edit a new version for MEGA2. It is well known that the development of Marx’s political economy is inseparable from his critical appropriation of classical bourgeois economics and his confrontation with vulgar economics. Hella Christ and Marion Zimmermann analyzed Marx’s research and evaluation of Smith and Ricardo in the aforementioned three texts, starting from the quantity theory of money and the theory of ground rent. Additionally, Gisela Winkler and Klaus Stude (both members of the MEGA2 editorial board for the London Notebooks) conducted in-depth explorations integrating the theories of wages, population, and ground rent found in the London Notebooks with the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858.
III. The London Notebooks and Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production and the Question of Asiatic Ownership
Beyond the holistic and specific analyses of Marx’s political economy, German academia has also paid significant attention to questions in the London Notebooks involving pre-capitalist modes of production, ancient history, and Asiatic land ownership. This research is less familiar to Chinese scholars because it involves the contents of Notebooks XV–XXIV, which have not yet been fully published. In fact, Marx’s research into pre-capitalist modes of production and Asiatic land ownership was critical for his final formation of a scientific understanding of capitalist social formations and their laws of development.
Schellhardt investigated Marx’s research on pre-capitalist modes of production in the London Notebooks. He argues that for Marx, political economy was not merely an economic discipline in the narrow sense, but a historical science. Thus, in the notebooks, Marx analyzed not only the mature forms of capitalist relations of production but also paid close attention to the history of pre-capitalist modes of production—particularly medieval economic history—continuing his research on the subject from the Gülich Notebooks [8]. Schellhardt focused especially on Marx’s excerpts from the works of Karl Hüllmann in Notebook XVII, discovering that Marx read and excerpted four works by this historian and economic historian regarding the history of medieval cities: The Medieval City, The History of the Origin of German Cities, The History of the Origin of German Princes, and The History of Medieval German Finance. Among these, excerpts from Hüllmann’s famous work The Medieval City occupy a large portion of Notebook XVII, with a short continuation in Notebook XVIII. Schellhardt notes that Marx focused on the contents regarding medieval state law and the division of property in the works on the origin of cities and princes. In the subsequent notes on medieval finance, Marx expanded his field of investigation to the medieval financial system, studying financial history up to the end of the 13th century. He studied Hüllmann's discussion of the "public obligations" of the laboring people in great detail, classifying them into obligations in kind such as tributes, military provisions, war service, and interest, as well as other forms related to exile and courts of peace. Simultaneously, Marx discovered that all monetary payments in the Middle Ages were based on the requirements of land ownership; therefore, all medieval monetary payments were land taxes, essentially indistinguishable from "public obligations." Schellhardt also pointed out that through The Medieval City, Marx gained a comprehensive understanding of the developed period of feudalism—for example, the social division of labor under the progress of handicrafts, the development of commerce and trade (the latter constituting the impetus for the development of new economic relations), the political struggles with the old feudalism that gradually emerged alongside new economic conditions, the impact of handicraft development on agriculture, and research into the guilds. Notably, Schellhardt emphasized Marx’s excerpts regarding "money" in this book, regarding it as the theoretical focus of Notebooks III–V. He noted that in addition to studying the reasons for the emergence of medieval monetary exchange, Marx realized that the transformation of gold and silver into coinage had become a universal phenomenon and that "bills of exchange" had already appeared in the Middle Ages. In Schellhardt’s view, these notes provided theoretical inspiration for Marx’s money theory, wherein Marx "learned the historical facts and events he later summarized with the term 'primitive accumulation.' The Middle Ages were characterized by the material and spiritual rule of feudal lords. While for the laboring people this meant centuries of darkness, it was also characterized by the development of free cities. Marx later described this in Capital as 'the splendor of the Middle Ages.' In my view, this evaluation stems from his study of Hüllmann’s aforementioned works."
Sylvia Winkelmann is another scholar who focuses on Marx's investigation of pre-capitalist modes of production within the London Notes. She argues that Marx’s grasp of this issue played a non-negligible role in his comprehensive and scientific exposition of the inner essence and historical origins of the capitalist mode of production in the "Six-Book Plan" for Das Kapital. Winkelmann also notes Marx's excerpts in Notebook XIV from William Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of Peru, which primarily concern the history of the Spanish colonial conquest of Mexico and Peru as well as the latter’s socio-economic conditions. She believes these notes hold a special status. On one hand, the historical facts regarding the socio-economic relations of the Incas and Aztecs collected therein helped in examining the development of bourgeois trade, commodity production, and exchange value; these were fully utilized during the preparation of Das Kapital and its manuscripts. On the other hand, these excerpts made a major contribution to the development of Marx's theory of social formations (the excerpts illustrate the complexity of the transition from one social formation to another, and the long-term coexistence and alternating mutual penetration of elements of different modes of production), greatly deepening and broadening his understanding of pre-capitalist modes of production. Galland also posits that Marx's overview of European bourgeois colonial theory in Notebook XIV, along with his turn toward the socio-historical study of Asian colonies in Notebooks XXI–XXIII, moved beyond the question of colonialism in a narrow sense to delve into the study of pre-capitalist modes of production. This provided important theoretical experience for his treatment of these issues in Chapter 24 ("The So-called Primitive Accumulation") and Chapter 25 ("The Modern Theory of Colonization") of the first volume of Das Kapital.
Wolfgang Rein has excavated the issue of Asiatic landed property mentioned in Notebook XXII. He points out that the investigation of colonialism and basic economic and social structures—whether in Notebook XIV regarding Latin America or in Notebooks XXI–XXIII regarding Asian countries such as India and Iran—became an important knowledge reserve for Marx's research on India and China between 1857 and 1859. This is especially true of the study of Asiatic landed property that dominates Notebook XXII. Rein discovered that Marx excerpted works such as Thomas Stamford Raffles's The History of Java, John Chapman's The Cotton and Commerce of India, and George Campbell's Modern India in Notebook XXII, achieving the following insights. First, he formed specific views on Asiatic landed property relations. For example, Raffles emphasized that in Java, a country where "considerable rent can be obtained," the absolute owner of all land is the sovereign—a passage that served as an illustration of the characteristics of Asiatic land ownership mentioned in Marx's letter to Engels dated June 14, 1853. Second, he found clues regarding the development of the socio-economic base in Campbell's work. For instance, Campbell mentioned that the various land-ownership claims put forward by the British in India facilitated the disintegration of both the sovereign ownership representing the supreme polity and the communal land ownership (the Indian village system). Britain’s coercive appropriation of land through violence crudely manifested how pre-capitalist modes of production were forced into subordination to capital. Based on these excerpts, Rein further argues that Marx already recognized here that "the 'extreme form' (äußerste Form) of the separation of the producer from the means of production is realized through capital." Marx described the contradictory nature of this process in the London Notes: "On the one hand is the dissolution of lower forms of subsistence labor, and on the other, the dissolution of the conditions for the direct producer's well-being. On the one hand is the dissolution of slavery and serfdom, and on the other, the dissolution of the form in which the means of production exist as the property of the direct producer... finally, the dissolution of the forms of communal ownership, in which the laborer, as an organic part of this simple and natural communal ownership, is simultaneously posited as the owner or possessor of his means of production." In short, in Rein's view, the London Notes can provide new insights for our study of the formation of Marx's concept of the primitive accumulation of capital, the development of capital relations on a global scale, and the subordination of pre-capitalist structures to capital.
(Author: Wu Ting, Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University)
Network Editor: Tongxin Source: Foreign Theoretical Trends [9], Issue 4, 2023.