The Scientific Standing of Marx's Capital

Abstract

E. P. Thompson argues that Marx's ambition of providing a scientific theory of capitalism is inherently defective, and that this goal contributes to the implicit idealism which Thompson identifies in Althusser's Marxism. This article provides a defense of the scientific standing of Capital against Thompson's chief criticisms: that Capital attempts to reduce all of capitalist society to a set of economic categories; that Capital attempts to isolate the "economic" to the exclusion of the political or cultural aspects of society; and that Capital is a "conceptualist" work which attempts to discover truths about society on the basis of purely logical analysis of economic concepts. Thompson's criticisms of Capital are if anything more important than his criticisms of Althusserian Marxism. I argue that Capital is a rigorous work of empirical social science: it provides, an extensive and empirically d=faile description of the social relations-which define the economic structure of capitalism, and it offers a wealth of analytical efforts intended to work out the tendencies o1 development which these social relations impse on the economy as a whole. At t e same time f argue t at Capital is not a reductionist wor, because it is not intended to supi a theoretical reconstruction of the whole of capitalist society. In particular, Marx does not pretend to provide theories of politics, ideology, or culture in Capital, but rightly leaves these areas for future research. Finally, it will be argued that Marx's analysis rests upon a rigorous use of empirical data from contemporary British capitalism.