The Internationalism

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...

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 ...