The Grundrisse as Method: Surplus Value, Surplus Labor and Freedom from Work

摘要

A close reading of select passages from the Grundrisse suggests that the precise way in which Marx turns Hegel on his head is to note how the immanent unfolding of capital's logic in the world creates a set of real-world determinations that are, then, the proper sphere of human activity. The dialectical shifts in Marx's understanding of surplus - from surplus value, to surplus labor, to the leisure time that allows for the critique of capital - illustrate how an immanent law of capital's unfolding generates the real-world conditions for immiseration as well as the potential for liberation. This potential - realized in the much-discussed possibility of automation - can only emerge, however, through political struggle; it will not happen on its own.