The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 7 From the series Principles of Marxism The method of exposition in Marx’s economic analysis, which he summarised on various occasions, adopts the progression from the simplest to the most complex concepts. It is a method that, at first glance, appears to correspond to common sense — from easy to difficult — but which Marx explains by contradicting common sense. Common sense distorts knowledge, starting right from the elementary building blocks of the representation of reality, which requires scientific abstraction to understand. Opportunism will always set the prejudices of common sense against the science-party . Marx writes, introducing Volume I of Capital : “The value-form , whose fully developed shape is the money-form , is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of ...

Internationalism No. 50, April 2023 Page 10 From the series Giats of Asia : the dillemas of Chinese single-party pluralism Only the materialist analysis of the intraction between structure and superstructure can explain the variety of the political forms. Why did the entrenchment of the capitalist mode of production in China occur in populist and Maoist forms? Why does Chinese imperialism express itself in CP single-party pluralism and not, for example, in the classical multi-party system of imperialist democracy? This specific political analysis does not regard the study of the economic causes which determine China’s political struggles, a scientific investigation which is its premise, “but the way” in which these struggles present themselves in the superstructure. “By analysing basic economic facts, Marxism can identify at first the interests which find expression in the political struggle. The form in which these interests appear politically, however, is a qu...