Exploring Marx's Capital

Jacques Bidet is Professor at the University of Paris-X, holding the chair of Political Philosophy and Theories of Society. His other publications include Théorie de la modernité(1990), John Rawls et la théorie de la justice (1995), Théorie générale, Théorie du droit, de l’économie et de la politique (1999) and Explication et reconstruction du 'Capital' (2004).

• Foreword to the English Translation of Jacques Bidet’s Que faire du ‘Capital’? by Alex CallinicosAuthor’s Preface to the English EditionIntroductionChapter 1. Preliminary Methodological Remarks1. Pathways: 1857 to 18752. The history of science perspective3. The perspective of reconstruction of the systemChapter 2. Value as Quantity1. Constructing a homogeneous economic space: a Marxian project that breaks with political economy2. Paralogisms of Marx the measurer3. Capital: the categories of measurement undermine the theorisation of the substance to be measured4. In what sense does more productive labour produce more value? The articulation of structure and dynamic5. Skilled labour as a zone of paralogism6. Intensity: closure and fracture of the quantitative spaceConclusionChapter 3. Value as Socio-Political Concept1. Value as expenditure2. ‘Transformation of expenditure into consumption of labour-power’3. Money and labour-value constitute one and the same point of rupture between Marx and Ricardo4. Value and capital as semi-concepts5. Value and socialisation of labour: Marx’s inconsistent socialism6. Labour-value and the stateConclusionChapter 4. Value and price of labour-power1. A non-normative problematic of the norm2. Movements of value and movements of price3. The non-functionalist character of the system: its ‘openness’4. A hierarchy of values of labour-power?ConclusionChapter 5. Relations of production and class relations1. Productive and unproductive labour2. Production and social classesConclusionChapter 6. The Start of the Exposition and its Development1. The question of the initial moment of Capital2. The ‘transition to capital’ConclusionChapter 7. The Method of Exposition and the Hegelian Heritage1. On the method of exposition of Capital2. Hegel, an epistemological support/obstacleConclusionChapter 8. The Theorisation of the Ideological in Capital1. The place of everyday consciousness: Volume 32. The uncertainties in Marx’s exposition3. The ‘raisons d’être’ of the form of appearance (in Volume One)ConclusionChapter 9. The Theory of the Value-Form1. Why the historical or logico-historical interpretation cannot be relevant2. The notion of form or expression of value, as distinct from the notion of relative value3. Epistemological history of Chapter 1, section 34. What dialectic of the form of value?5. The expression of value ‘in use-value’6. Fetishism, a structural category of the ideology of commodity productionConclusionChapter 10. The Economy in General and Historical Materialism1. The various generalities that Capital presupposes2. Labour value in pure economics and in historical materialismConclusionGeneral ConclusionsBibliographyIndex