K. Marx on Science as a Form of Social Wealth
Abstract Generated abstract
This article examines Marx’s characterization of science as a fundamental form of social wealth, distinguishing between general methodological and historically specific meanings of wealth, productive forces, and science. It argues that science is both ideal wealth, as accumulated social knowledge, and practical wealth, as a productive force embodied in machinery and technology. The discussion emphasizes Marx’s analysis of capitalism, where science is incorporated into fixed capital and can confront labor as an alien power, while also creating the material conditions for reduced labor time and broader human development. The article concludes that scientific labor increasingly transforms the source and measure of wealth, pointing toward free time and the development of the social individual as central categories beyond capitalist production.
Full Text
Proceedings
of the Tomsk Order of the October Revolution
and Order of the Red Banner of Labor
Polytechnic Institute
named after S. M. Kirov
Vol. 292 1974
K. MARX ON SCIENCE AS A FORM OF SOCIAL WEALTH
V. S. FESHCHENKO
In connection with the growing role of science in social production, the study of the theoretical legacy of the classics of Marxism-Leninism on questions of science is of undoubted scholarly interest.
As the subject of investigation, the author of the article singles out only one aspect—Marx’s definition of science as “the most solid form of social wealth.”
The difficulty in studying the categories “wealth” and “science” in the works of K. Marx consists in the fact that they are considered, on the one hand, as common to different levels of the development of production; on the other, in the concrete-historical determinacy of those forms which they assume in different formations. It is all the more difficult, therefore, to reveal their interrelation and mutual conditioning. The prerequisite of the investigation is thus the singling out of general-methodological and concrete-historical aspects.
The most general definition of wealth, taken without reference to its concrete-historical forms, characterizes it from the material side. “Material wealth, whether subjective, as labor, or objective, as objects serving to satisfy natural or historical needs, appears at first to be common to all epochs of production.”¹
Material wealth appears as the sum of use-values. “Whether some product is produced as a commodity or not as a commodity, it is always the material form of wealth, a use-value intended for individual and productive consumption.”² The development of science changes nothing in this definition of wealth. However, such an approach proves insufficient for clarifying the essence of wealth in each social formation, in particular in bourgeois society, where, in the words of K. Marx, “exchange-value predominates.”
K. Marx defines political economy as a science which “deals with the specific social forms of wealth, or, more precisely, of the production of wealth.”³
The forms of production and appropriation of material wealth under the conditions of capitalism are, first, only “transitory” and, se-
¹ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, Vol. 46, Part II, p. 366.
² K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, Vol. 24, p. 151.
³ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, Vol. 46, Part II, p. 366.
second, “forms full of contradictions.” Wealth appears as its own opposite. “This is such wealth as always has poverty as its precondition and develops only by developing poverty.”⁴
The productive forces being perfected within capitalist society contribute to the growth of wealth. At the stage of machine production this process is intensified by the development of science and by its final separation into an “independent factor of the production process.”
The volume of wealth and its material composition are an indicator of the development of society’s productive forces. The higher the level of production, the more diverse are needs. “Wealth, if considered materially, consists only in the manifoldness of needs.”⁵
Developing science, although it creates the material conditions for the growth of wealth, does not eliminate the contradictions of the capitalist forms of its appropriation, since it has no direct influence on the social forms of wealth. Moreover, science itself becomes an element of bourgeois wealth. To clarify this last point, let us first consider the general connection among the concepts “wealth”—“productive forces”—“science,” and then its specifically capitalist form.
The category “productive forces,” in connection with the category “wealth,” is used by K. Marx in a twofold sense. In one case, they are univocal concepts.⁶ The productive forces appear as an element of wealth, as its active, creative part. The presence of developed productive forces testifies to the wealth of a nation. In other words, the relation between productive forces and wealth appears as the relation of part and whole.
In the other case,⁷ these two categories are relatively opposed to one another. The productive forces as the source and condition of the production of wealth are opposed to wealth as the final result of productive activity. Since, with the development of machine production, science is singled out as a specific element of the productive forces, it thereby stands in a twofold relation to the category of wealth: science appears as a component part of social wealth and at the same time as a condition of its production.
The nature of science is dual. It is an element of spiritual wealth and, at the same time, of practical wealth. As a “product of mental labor,” science is an element of the spiritual or ideal wealth of society. At the same time, it is “practical wealth” in the sense that “the entire process of production ... appears as the technological application of science.”⁸ As spiritual wealth, as knowledge, science, according to K. Marx, is a “product of wealth,” a “product of universal historical development, abstractly expressing its quintessence.”⁹ And at the same time science is a “producer of wealth” insofar as it is practical wealth, i.e., an element of the productive forces.¹⁰
⁴ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 26, part III, p. 52.
⁵ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 18.
⁶ Ibid., p. 33.
⁷ Ibid., p. 206.
⁸ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 33.
⁹ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 26, part I, p. 399.
¹⁰ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 33. “The development of science, this ideal and at the same time practical wealth, is only one of the aspects, one of the forms in which the development of the productive forces of man, i.e., the development of wealth, appears.”
Various interrelations and connections arise among the individual elements of the productive forces, characterizing the level of development of the productive forces as a whole. The interconnection among the elements has changed historically, and they themselves have also undergone changes.
The process by which science was transformed into a direct productive force began with its separation into a specific factor at the stage of machine production. “The development of capitalist production is connected with the separation of science from labor”^11 and, at the same time, with “the application of science, as such, to material production.”^12 The machine, in K. Marx’s expression, is “realized science.”
From this time on, the development of production itself is already an indicator of the development of science and of its practical application.
Among the elements of the productive forces, science has a special role. Its development is the basis for qualitative shifts in the instruments and technology of production. Science contributes to the development of the personal elements of production. Through it, and through its material embodiment in technology, the direct connection of society with nature is realized.^13 Society transforms nature to the extent, with the depth, and in the manner permitted by the achieved level of science and technology, as well as by the degree of development of the human being as the chief productive force of society.
In K. Marx’s works, the specifically capitalist forms of the inclusion of science in production—and, through it, in social wealth—are investigated.
In Theories of Surplus Value, K. Marx shows how the separation of science into a special factor of production was accompanied by its inclusion, along with the other elements of the productive forces, in the composition of capital. “Science and its application are indeed separated from the skill of the individual worker and his knowledge of the matter; and although they—if traced back to their very source—are again products of labor, nevertheless, wherever they enter into the labor process, they appear as incorporated into capital.”^14
As a result of social progress and as an element of the productive forces, science exists in capital in an objective form—“capital can appropriate this power of science only by employing machinery.”^15
The machine as a means of production takes the form of fixed capital and, already in this transformed form, appears as an indicator of the development of science. “The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge... has become a direct productive force.”^16 In other words, the productive power of society assumes the form of the productive forces of capital. This process is traced by K. Marx in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1859, in the “Chapter on Capital.”
“Since the system of machinery develops together with the accumulation of social knowledge and of productive force in general, therefore not
^11 K. Marx, Works, vol. 26, part III, p. 449. What is meant is separation from physical labor: “Whatever this labor may be—physical or nonphysical (scientific).”
^12 Ibid., p. 462.
^13 K. Marx, Works, vol. 19, p. 13. Nature, along with labor, is a source of wealth: “Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use-values (and material wealth, after all, consists of these!).”
^14 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 26, part I, p. 399.
^15 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 280.
^16 Ibid., p. 215.
worker, while capital appears as the representative of universal social labor. The productive power of society is measured by fixed capital, exists in it in objectified form, and, conversely, together with this universal progress, which capital appropriates for itself without payment, the productive power of capital develops.”1
Science—social knowledge, a social productive force—is appropriated by the capitalist without payment, like the forces of nature. In enumerating the elements of the productive forces that capital subordinates to itself, K. Marx specifically points to this circumstance: “Another productive force that costs capital nothing is the power of science.”2
Under modern conditions, science in the capitalist countries requires substantial expenditures, but it still appears as social knowledge and, as such, is financed to a considerable degree by the state. This new state form of science is the product of the actual movement of developed capitalist production. There are a number of functions whose realization can be carried out only at the state (nationwide) level: determining the amounts of national allocations for fundamental scientific research, planning the development of science, planning capital investments in science—current and prospective—and others.
Science, having taken the form of fixed capital, confronts the worker as a force alien and hostile to him, as a means of exploitation. “Knowledge appears in the system of machinery as something alien to the worker, existing outside him, while living labor appears as subordinated to objectified labor, which acts independently.”3
K. Marx speaks of this even more definitely in Theories of Surplus Value.
“But in the machine, science realized as such confronts the workers as capital. And indeed, all these applications of science, of the forces of nature, and of great masses of products of labor, which are based on social labor, appear only as means for the exploitation of labor, as means for appropriating surplus labor, and consequently as forces belonging to capital and standing opposed to labor.”4
K. Marx reveals the contradictory character of the use of science under capitalism, the antagonism between labor and science as one of the manifestations of the general antagonism between labor and capital.
Already in capitalist society, as K. Marx notes, science, when applied in production, “acts as an instrument for creating the conditions for social free time, for reducing labor time to an ever-decreasing minimum.” However, the contradictory form of capitalist production is an obstacle to the transformation of free time into the measure of wealth. This is manifested in the fact that, on the other hand, the tendency of capital consists in “transforming this free time into surplus labor,”5 which, moreover, capital is unable to realize, finding its expression in overproduction.
Thus, if, when considered at the general methodological level, the concepts “science”—“productive forces”—“wealth” coincided, then in capitalist production, since science
takes the form of capital; the concepts “capital” and “wealth” merge. “The development of fixed capital is an indicator of the degree of development of wealth in general, or of the degree of development of capital.”^22
The real connection “science”—“productive forces”—“wealth,” reflecting the movement from a particular category to a general one and from source to result, assumes the transformed form “capital”—“wealth.”
The further development of science leads to the point where “direct labor, as such, ceases to be the basis of production, because, on the one hand, it is transformed chiefly into activity of supervision and regulation, and then also because the product ceases to be the product of isolated direct labor, and what appears as the producer is, rather, a combination of social activity.”^23
Adam Smith had already proclaimed labor in its social totality—as the division of labor, as a combination of activity—to be the source of material wealth. Yet not every combination turns labor into activity of supervision and regulation. In Marx the point is a qualitatively new characteristic of labor, which it acquires at such a level of development of the productive forces when, “as large-scale industry develops, the creation of real wealth becomes less dependent on labor time and on the quantity of labor expended than on the power of those agencies which are set in motion during labor time and whose ‘powerful effectiveness’ is itself in no way related to the direct labor time required for their production, but depends rather on the general level of science and on the progress of technology, or on the application of this science to production.”^24
The transformation of the content of labor reaches such a level that it leads to a radical change in the role of the worker himself in the production process. “Instead of being the chief agent of the production process, the worker comes to stand alongside it.”
Under these conditions, “the main foundation of production and wealth is not the direct labor performed by the human being himself, nor the time during which he works, but the appropriation of his own universal productive power, his understanding of nature and mastery over it as a result of his existence as a social organism—in a word, the development of the social individual.”^25
The historical tendency in the movement of capitalist production is such that the developing productive forces and relations of production “both are different aspects of the development of the social individual” and “represent material conditions for blowing up” the capitalist foundation of production.
In other words, capitalism is the final stage in “the development of the value relation and of production based on value.” In the new society “the working masses must themselves appropriate their surplus labor.” Under these conditions the productive forces, in particular science, receive further development.
The transformation of science into a direct productive force is completed only with the full transfer of all production functions to technical means. This means the emergence of the human being from direct—
^22 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 205.
^23 Ibid., p. 218.
^24 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 213.
^25 Ibid., p. 214.
…of social production processes, but not from production in general. The sphere of the application of labor changes; labor increasingly assumes the features of scientific activity, having separated itself from direct production. The principal agent of production in the broad sense remains, as before, the human being.
Science, therefore, does not abolish labor as the source of material wealth; it transforms it, makes it so productive that “although production will be calculated for the wealth of all, the free time of all will increase.”26 Not physical, but rather mental—more precisely, scientific—labor becomes the source of wealth.
Together with the change in the functions of labor, the measure of social wealth is also transformed. “As soon as labor in its direct form ceases to be the great source of wealth, labor time ceases, and must cease, to be the measure of wealth.”27
The transformation of the measure of social wealth presupposes that free time, and not working time, acquires enormous significance in the development of the individual. The latter creates only the material prerequisites of development, whereas free time is “space for the development of abilities.” “Then the measure of wealth,” wrote K. Marx, “will by no means be labor time, but free time.”28
In these statements by K. Marx, the connection between labor, science transforming it, and wealth is clearly traceable, with labor still appearing as the fundamental moment. K. Marx could trace the change in the content of labor only hypothetically, as an assumed prospect of development. Under the conditions of the contemporary scientific and technological revolution, this prospect becomes much closer.
Science, according to K. Marx’s definition, is “the most fundamental form of wealth.” This is manifested, first of all, in the multiplicity of the forms of science as wealth. “Social knowledge,” “general intellect,” appears as the quintessence of historical progress, i.e., as ideal wealth, and as such does not lose its use-value in the process of consumption (practical use). Knowledge may become morally obsolete, but it is not subject to physical destruction.
Knowledge, as ideal wealth, is opposed by the commodity world as “materially durable wealth.” But the durability of material wealth is only apparent; it is a fleeting and vanishing durability. Already in Ricardo’s studies, K. Marx emphasizes in Theories of Surplus Value, “all materially durable wealth is only a transient materialization… of social labor.”29
There is no impassable boundary between science as ideal wealth and practical wealth. Science is objectified in machine production and, in this form, appears, in K. Marx’s expression, as “practical wealth.”
26 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 217.
27 Ibid., p. 213.
28 Ibid., p. 217.
29 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 26, part III, p. 446.