The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Special Issue, Page IV From the series Principles of Marxism Marx investigates the very complex relationship between abstractions and social development and concludes that the most general abstractions arise on the whole only with the most profuse concrete development, when one phenomenon is seen to be common to many, common to all . The abstraction of labour , as labour in general , is very ancient, but is just as modern a category as the relations which give rise to this simple abstraction . When the main activity is commerce, labour overlaps with the idea of making money. The physiocratic system, which sees land as the central source of wealth, instead points to agriculture as the form of labour par excellence (productive labour). Only with Adam Smith was there an immense advance , because he discarded any definiteness of the wealth-producing activity — for him it was labour as such...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Special Issue, Page III From the series Principles of Marxism Marx asserts that production plays a determinant role within a unity that includes the processes of circulation. In the fully developed form of Capital , the relationship between the relations of production and the relations of distribution is defined unequivocally. The so-called distribution relations, then, correspond to and arise from historically determined specific social forms of the process of production [...]. The historical character of these distribution relations is the historical character of production relations, of which they express merely one aspect. Capitalist distribution differs from those forms of distribution which arise from other modes of production, and every form of distribution disappears with the specific form of production from which it is descended and to which it corresponds. Historically determined relations ...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Special Issue, Page II From the series Principles of Marxism The Grundrisse require a sustained effort of attention from the reader. Marx uses scientific abstractions and conceptual connections as analytical tools. In the Grundrisse , we shall follow the guiding thread of Marx’s method. Some critics, including those within the Marxist camp, see traces of Hegelian thought in Marx’s procedures in this work. Marx and Engels responded to these jibes, clarifying their relationship with Hegel. In the Afterword to the second edition of Capital , Marx wrote: My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the [...] process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea’, he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world [...]. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and transl...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Special Issue, Page I From the series Principles of Marxism In his Anti-Dühring , Engels dwells on the art of working with concepts , explaining that concepts are the results in which experiences are summarised . This art does not arise from innate gifts, intuition, or common sense, but rather depends on a general vision and a method of investigating reality, which Engels describes as real thought, [which] similarly has a long empirical history, not more and not less than empirical natural science . Commenting on this passage, Arrigo Cervetto wrote in February 1990: The thesis can be summarised in the formula of the necessity of theory. The results of experience are summarised in concepts, but without the art of working with concepts , of connecting them, selecting them, and comparing them, there is no theory . The Grundrisse notebooks represent Marx’s broad and system...