ABSTRACT
In the Grundrisse manuscripts, in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and in many places in the ‘Theories of Surplus Value’ manuscripts, Marx referred briefly to the work of the earliest group of writers on matters of political economy to whom he could give some classification. He identified this group with a perception of the economy that he called ‘The Monetary System’ (G, 103, 327–8). Although the particular writers that comprised the group were never listed by Marx, he did specify the relevant period of their work as the ‘sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ (CCPE, 157—8). Then, at some unspecified time during the latter century, he identified the emergence of the ‘commercial, or manufacture, system’ (G, 103–4) which he saw as a ‘variant’ of the ‘Monetary System’. He finally called this the ‘Mercantile System’ (CCPE, 158; cf. G, 327–8). Again, no writers were specifically identified as Mercantilist, but those who wrote in the period from about the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth would seem to comprise an appropriate coverage (G, 103, ed. n. 19).
