3 Circulation
3.1 Critique of Classical Political Economy
Bo Harvey
According to the Marxian critique of the social-contractual tradition, the latter is ahistorical. Whether through recourse to a ‘state of nature’ or to an ‘original position,’ this political philosophical tradition depends upon the erasure or abstraction away from the historical conditions of possibility of what appears as, ex post facto or, by way of a thought experiment, the ‘consent of the governed.’
Marx locates the very terrain of liberal political philosophy in the ‘sphere of circulation;’ that ‘very Eden of the innate rights of Man… the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham.’
For Marx, ‘simple circulation’ functions as the ideological and methodological abstraction upon which classical political economy is constructed.
Classical political economy treats labour-power as though it can be relied upon to be available a priori, without recognising the social and historical forces that produce it.
Classical political economy ‘forgets’ the inequality subtending all bourgeois equality.