Critique of Political Economy and Critique of the Economic System. I have been considering political economy as a theory of subjectivity. Xxxx refers throughout the Manuscripts to political economy rather than to the economic system as such. This might seem to indicate that political economy is itself the object of study.31 However, the terms are sometimes translated interchangeably and thus we are unsure whether to treat political economy simply as a production” from their “ideological word-spinners” (Xxxx Capital, I, p.757), or the notion of political economy as an “ideology” (Xxxx Capital, I, p.931). 30 In a later chapter I will consider the relation between this advance of political economy and Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx’x theory of the organic intellectual. 31 In Capital, Xxxx refers to the “capitalist mode of production” (Xxxx Capital, I, p.90). doctrine or also as denoting the actual economic system itself. There is potentially a xxxxx difference between political economy as a doctrine, a body of ideas, and political economy as an economic system. Firstly, the proletariat only plays an active role in the latter. Secondly, if no rigid distinction is made between the two, then political economy as a theory might be considered to have a much stronger role in the (re-)creation of the economic system, and the political economist to have a level of agency that would extend beyond the role of an ideologist. In the Manuscripts, there is a sense in which Xxxx is both overly and insufficiently critical in his estimations of political economy. This observation, if well-founded, is at the core of the argument for there being two discordant subjectivities in the Manuscripts. Xxxx, as we shall see in the next section, seizes on the notion of labour as the truly creative power, and argues that the “essential relationship of labour” [EW, p.326] is revealed in the direct relationship between the worker and production. Xxxx’x first critique of political economy is based on its concealment of “the estrangement in the nature of labour” [EW, p.325]. In order to develop an account of the estrangement of labour, to determine the nature of this concealment, Xxxx must advance his critique of political economy itself concretely. It is only through a critique of political economy that one might gain access to this direct relationship. But, if we find that Xxxx has not fully substantiated his criticism of what he calls the “anti-human” conclusions of the doctrine, then he stands accused of being overly critical of political economy [EW, p.343]. On the o...
