ABSTRACT
In Capital, the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie and the notebooks collected as the Theories of Surplus Value, Karl Marx attacks both the account of capitalism offered by the classical political economists and their ‘vulgar’ successors, together with the individualistic assumptions of this account. In the tender annals of political economy the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. The contractarian approach to the genesis of capital, as well as to the origins of the state, is opposed by Marx’s own ontology, because of his Aristotelian conception of man as naturally political. S. Bailey expresses both his individualism and his ontological commitments in his belief that the price of a commodity and its value are determined at the point of exchange and not at the point of production. What G. McCarthy gets wrong is shown by his counterposition of an ontological approach to labour, which he says is taken by Ricardo, and a historical and structural approach.
