My knowledge in political economy is relatively weak, and I could even say it is a blank slate, so I wrote a reading notes on Xu He’s “Introduction to Political Economy”.
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Political Economy (1.0)
Since this book has no preface, I asked GPT the following question:
“Why is political economy not called Marxist economics or simply economics? What is the purpose of the word ‘political’?”
This is GPT’s answer:
- Historical origins: Why is it called “Political Economy”?
“Political Economy” is a term that first appeared in 17th-century Europe to describe how states manage their wealth and economic affairs. It emphasizes that economic activities are inseparably linked with state power, legal systems, and social structures. At that time, economics was not seen as a set of “natural laws” governing spontaneous market behavior but as closely related to political power and state intervention.
Notable figures include:
William Petty
Adam Smith (whose subtitle of “The Wealth of Nations” is “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”)
David Ricardo
They all belong to the classical tradition of political economy.
- Why does Marxism insist on using “Political Economy”?
Marx explicitly inherited the tradition of “Political Economy” but made a critical transformation. He opposed the later bourgeois economics that viewed the economy as a pure “market mechanism” detached from social relations, political power, and class struggle.
In Marx’s view:
Economic issues are never purely “economic” problems but political ones, manifestations of class relations. Therefore, he retained the name “Political Economy” and emphasized:
Behind the economic system are state machinery and the support of the ruling class;
Economic relations are essentially class relations;
The so-called “neutral” economic laws are actually political products operating within specific social structures.
- Why not call it “Economics”?
“Economics” as a term was proposed in the late 19th century by marginalist schools (such as Walras and Marshall) with the aim of “scientificizing” economics, depoliticizing it, and pretending that market mechanisms are natural, neutral, and ideologically independent.
This is fundamentally opposed to Marx’s stance. Therefore, in the Marxist tradition, insisting on “Political Economy” rather than “Economics” is to:
Reveal the class nature and political basis of economic activities;
Oppose the false neutrality of depoliticized and declassed economics;
Reflect its role as a critical discipline rather than a tool of rationality.
- Why not call it “Marxist Economics”?
“Marxist Economics” certainly exists; it is a branch or direction of “Political Economy.” But often, the broader concept of “Political Economy” is used to:
Indicate that it is not a fixed dogma but a critical method;
Allow it to continually absorb new realities and theories, maintaining openness;
Make people realize that it is a traditional theory of the intertwined relationship between economy and politics, not merely a “school” or “ideology.”
In summary:
“Political Economy” is called so because it always insists that economic issues are never purely technical but political, social, and class-based.
Chapter 1, Section 1 (1.1)
This section is relatively simple, mainly explaining that the analysis of capitalist economy must start from “commodities.” Because commodities are “the most common and widespread phenomenon in capitalist society, the simplest and most fundamental factor of capitalist economy, and its economic cell.”
The book makes the following statement:
Although humans are the main subjects of all social production activities, the analysis of capitalist economy should not start from the population because humans are divided into classes; analyzing without class distinction can only yield general results.
But analyzing by class is also not feasible because the status and relationships of each class are determined by certain economic relations. Capitalists exploit workers using capital; workers, who lack means of production, have to endure exploitation and sell their labor power to capitalists to survive. Concepts such as “capital” and “wage labor” are prerequisites for class analysis.
However, neither capital nor wage labor are the most basic or simplest categories of this society. Whether it is the capital of the capitalist or the labor power sold by the worker, both are regulated by value and price; the relationship between capital and wage labor also relies on the buying and selling of commodities to establish. “In short, understanding commodities is a prerequisite.”
Logically speaking, commodity relations are the simplest and most fundamental relations in capitalism. Starting from the simplest and most abstract category of commodities, one can “reveal the essence, contradictions, and all the complex content of this economic system of capitalism from simple to complex, from abstract to concrete.”
Historically, commodities and commodity exchange appeared much earlier than capitalism. The development of commodity production led to the emergence of money, which under certain conditions transformed into capital. “The mode of production of capitalism grew up after feudal society, under the conditions of relatively developed commodity production and circulation.”
In summary, starting from commodities to study the capitalist economic system is completely correct, both logically and historically.
Your GPT’s answer is pure garbage.
The reason it’s called “Political Economy” is because political economy is a science that studies production relations. The basic activity of human society is production. Without production activities, there would be no other activities. Production activities are the foundation of human society and the basis of social and historical development. Social production always occurs within a certain historical stage and under certain social relations. It is not only a process of transforming nature, not only a process of producing material wealth, but also a process that occurs within certain production relations. The mode of production is the unity of productive forces and production relations in opposition. Productive forces refer to the technological aspects of production, while production relations are the social aspects of production. Different sciences study different types of contradictory movements; to study the social aspect of production, one must study the development and changes of production relations. In class society, the center of production relations is class relations, which can be summarized as politics (the struggle between classes). Therefore, the science that studies the social nature of social production should be called “Political Economy.” If it only studies production, it should be called product science or commodity science, not political economy.
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Chapter 1, Section 2 (1.2)
This section explains the two factors of commodities: use value and value.
Use value is easy to understand, that is, the usefulness of an item. But the connotation of value is not directly explained at the beginning of this section; instead, it is introduced through the exchange value of commodities.
“A commodity not only has use value but also has exchange value. A commodity is such an item: on one hand, it can satisfy certain needs of people; on the other hand, it can be used to exchange for other kinds of goods.”
Let’s first look at “use value.” For an item to become a commodity, it must first be useful, that is, have use value. But not everything with use value is a commodity. The use value of a “commodity” must be for others, for social consumption, and it must enter the realm of consumption through buying and selling exchange. Items used by the producer themselves, firstly, are only for their own consumption, and secondly, they are not exchanged, so such “products” cannot be called “commodities.” It can be seen that the use value of a commodity is for the consumption of others. The book illustrates that in a society with private ownership, commodity producers do not care about the use value of commodities, which leads to poor quality commodities, and even produces goods that are completely harmful to society and humanity in pursuit of greater profits.
Furthermore, in a commodity economy, the use value of a commodity also bears the material of the exchange value of the commodity. (I am not sure if this understanding is correct; I hope comrades can clarify if wrong) Because whether it is feudal serfs or wage laborers, wheat produced can satisfy human needs, and the use value is the same. Therefore, the use value of the commodity we discuss is based on the commodity economy and exchange, focusing less on the natural attributes of the commodity and more on its social aspects. In this sense, the use value of a commodity exists as the material shell of the exchange value.
Next, let’s look at “exchange value.” “The exchange value of a commodity is primarily expressed as the relation or ratio of the amount of one use value exchanged for another.” The book gives an example of Jia exchanging 20 jin of rice for Yi’s 10 feet of cloth. It also states that the exchange ratio of different commodities varies with time and place. But this does not mean that the exchange value of commodities is accidental; on the contrary, this randomness is a manifestation of necessity. The book explains:
In the exchange between Jia and Yi, why are 20 jin of rice and 10 feet of cloth equal?
Some bourgeois economists explain it as because both have the same utility, that is, use value, so they can be exchanged. But this argument is untenable. Because "only homogeneous or same-name things can be compared"¹, food for satiation and warm clothing, like length and weight, are completely incomparable.
So what exactly makes rice and cloth equal? What do they have in common?
Setting aside their natural attributes (use value), we can see that both are products of human labor, “when they are produced, a certain amount of human labor has been spent on them.” This point is not only common to rice and cloth but also to all commodities.
Therefore, the reason why 20 jin of rice can be exchanged for 10 feet of cloth is that they embody an equal amount of human labor. The condensation of human labor is the value of the commodity. So, all commodities, in terms of natural attributes and use value, are different, but as values, they can be compared and exchanged.
The previous mention of the two factors of commodities—use value and exchange value—is actually inaccurate. The two attributes (factors) of a commodity are use value and value. A commodity is a unity of use value and value.
The reason for not using exchange value is because “exchange value is merely the expression of value, and commodities are exchanged based on their inherent value, forming a certain ratio during exchange.”
The section concludes with the dialectical unity of use value and value.
They depend on each other, condition each other, and are inseparable, so they are dialectically unified. An item without use value is useless, even if it embodies a lot of human labor; that labor is wasted. Conversely, an item that is useful (use value) but lacks the condensation of human labor (value) is just an ordinary useful object, not a commodity. For an item to become a commodity, both use value and value are indispensable.
But use value and value are also in contradiction. As mentioned earlier, use value is for the consumption of others and society, and by nature, it is for society and others. The producer of commodities produces not to obtain use value but to obtain value (shoemakers make many shoes but only wear a few), and they only produce use value to obtain value. Moreover, after the commodity is produced, only by transferring the use value to others can they obtain the value.²
¹Seeing this, I thought of water. We all know that the density of water is 1g/cm³, meaning one liter of water weighs one kilogram. This seems to allow a comparison between “two liters of water” and “one kilogram of weight”—a difference in physical properties. But in essence, such a comparison is also a conversion of volume to weight or weight to volume through the concept of density, making it a comparison of homogeneous quantities.
²After reading this section, I had an idea: Is the concept or item of “commodity” also something that appeared in a specific historical period? In primitive society, due to low productivity, there were no products available for exchange; under the supply system, the produced goods also had no place for exchange.
Of course, commodities are products of a certain historical stage; they are not objects, but relationships between people. Commodities only exist in societies where private ownership exists; they have not always existed and will disappear along with the abolition of private ownership.
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Chapter 1, Section 3 (1.3)
The previous section learned that commodities have a dual nature: use value and value, where value is the crystallization (materialization) of human labor. Correspondingly, the reason why commodities have a dual nature is because labor also has a dual nature, namely concrete labor and abstract labor.
By the way, the content of this section is very精彩, strongly recommend everyone to read the original text. My discussion and understanding are far from as comprehensive and profound as the original, so the copying and pasting of notes in this section is quite serious, and there may be misunderstandings. I hope everyone can point them out.
Every specific form of labor can produce a specific variety of product. Each specific variety of product can satisfy a specific need of people, and thus is a specific use value. Therefore, specific form of labor, or specific labor, can produce use value.
At first glance, I felt very confused about the above. Didn’t the previous section say that use value is a natural attribute? How does it become something produced by human concrete labor? The note in the text answers:
Strictly speaking, use value is the result of the combination of labor and natural material, and in political economy, whenever it is said that concrete labor creates use value, it is taken as known.
That is to say, use value is the result of the combination of concrete labor and natural material, not abstract labor. In this sense, concrete labor determines and creates specific use values.
Since it is “concrete,” it means it is distinguishable from other “concrete”. The different use values created by concrete labor are what make commodities distinguishable from each other, and it is precisely because commodities are different that exchange occurs.
However, we already know that, besides their use value, various commodities also share a common, homogeneous thing—value.
Since it is “common,” it means it is distinguishable from “concrete.” This homogeneous value, logically, cannot be created by different kinds of labor, i.e., concrete labor. What kind of labor produces this value? We can see that although the concrete forms of labor for producing various commodities differ, such as carpenter labor, blacksmith labor, tailor labor, etc.,
They are all human labor, all human labor power (including mental and physical) consumed or expended in production.
Therefore, the value of a commodity is precisely formed by general human labor, i.e., abstract labor, which has shed its concrete form.
Abstract labor and concrete labor are two aspects of human labor. If concrete labor exists, then abstract labor will exist. But they manifest differently in different historical periods or social forms:
Concrete labor always creates use value. This is because, regardless of the society, humans always need to labor to meet various needs for survival and development.
Abstract labor does not always form value. Value is based on exchange. The book gives examples of the labor of primitive clan members and small commodity producers:
In primitive society, producers work collectively and enjoy the collective labor results. The products of labor are not exchanged as commodities, and the producers’ labor does not manifest as value. Therefore, there are no value relations in their economic relationships.¹
But small commodity producers, because they are under private ownership, have their labor products and those of others as private property. To meet each other’s needs, they need to exchange. And because they are private owners, their labor is not like clan members’ labor, which considers gains and losses; they seek equivalent exchange. Also, as previously mentioned, different commodities with different use values cannot be directly compared, so they have to express labor in the form of value.
From the above, we gain a deeper understanding of the value of commodities: “value is the condensation of human labor,” where “labor” refers to abstract labor.
The above analysis indicates:
A commodity is not a thing, but a certain social relation between producers under the cover of things.
Because value is a manifestation of human abstract labor in a specific historical period, it can reflect the social relations between people in that period. As a social factor of commodities, value naturally also manifests as a specific relationship between people. (Fenghuo’s comment yesterday also mentioned this)
The above is a qualitative definition of commodity value. Next, the book examines its quantitative aspect.
In the example of exchanging 20 jin of rice for 10 chi of cloth, we already know they have the same quality—value. But why does the quantity ratio appear as 20:10? In other words, what determines the value quantity of a commodity?
Since value is determined by the labor involved in producing the commodity, the amount of value is also determined by the amount of labor expended in producing the commodity. The natural measure of labor is labor time, so the value amount is determined by labor time… not by the individual labor time of each producer… but by social necessary labor time.
What is social necessary labor time?
Marx said: “Social necessary labor time is the amount of labor time necessary to produce any use value² under the existing social production conditions, with the average skill and intensity of social labor.”
I understand it as: multiplying the average productivity by the average efficiency gives the output of a certain commodity in a certain period. Less output means longer labor time per unit, making the commodity more expensive; conversely, more output means shorter labor time per unit, making it cheaper.
For comparing different complexities of labor, such as clockmakers and blacksmiths, the text points out that simple labor can be used as a scale unit, converting different complex labor into different proportions of simple labor for measurement and comparison.
In the process of commodity exchange, complex labor is regarded as intensified or multiplied simple labor, so small amounts of complex labor can be equivalent to large amounts of simple labor; products of any complex labor can be exchanged with products of simple labor at certain ratios.
From a qualitative perspective, value is formed by human general labor, i.e., abstract labor, which is the condensation or materialization of general human labor. From a quantitative perspective, it is determined by social necessary labor time, and the value quantities of different commodities are determined by reducing various different types of labor into certain amounts of simple labor. From the unity of quality and quantity³, any value is a certain amount of condensed social necessary simple abstract labor. From the social essence perspective, value is a social relationship among producers under certain social conditions.
¹ What form does human abstract labor take at that time or under future public ownership?
² Why use “use value” here instead of “commodity”?
³ When I read here, I wondered if the mutual transformation of qualities has any application here. Would gradually increasing necessary labor time, i.e., value, change the qualitative nature of the condensation of human abstract labor? I think: as labor time gradually increases beyond a certain point, exchange becomes impossible—either because there are no other commodities of equivalent value, or because almost everyone participates in production, which is no longer aimed at exchange. Without exchange, value loses its meaning, and the qualitative aspect changes. I am not sure if my thinking is correct.
Se manifiesta directamente como trabajo
Porque la mercancía es una unidad de la unidad opuesta de valor de uso y valor, la esencia de la mercancía es la relación de intercambio entre las personas, por eso llamar “valor de uso” es más científico.
Eso no es posible, esto es pura especulación. Porque en la mercancía existe la contradicción entre trabajo personal y trabajo social, una vez producido, pertenece a la propiedad privada individual. Para que sea reconocido socialmente, debe ser intercambiado, obteniendo valor y cediendo valor de uso. La producción de mercancías es una producción social, destinada a obtener valor, no puede producir cosas que estén fuera de la sociedad.
Además:
- Aumentar el tiempo de trabajo necesario significa que la productividad laboral ha disminuido. La sociedad humana avanza constantemente, y no retrocede salvo en guerras masivas y desastres.
- El intercambio de mercancías sigue el principio de equivalencia, no significa que el valor unitario de cada mercancía sea igual. ¿No se puede cambiar una oveja por dos hachas?
- Es imposible que no exista intercambio; el intercambio es un resultado inevitable de la división del trabajo y del desarrollo de la fuerza productiva social. ¿Qué significa que toda la gente participe en la producción sin intercambio? Esa producción no existe. Aunque todos participen en la producción, todavía existen la división del trabajo en agricultura, industria y en diferentes departamentos.
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Will there be a qualitative interchangeability between the quality and quantity of the regulation? If so, what form does the changed quality take?
I don’t know what your understanding of the mutual transformation of quality is. For example, if the value quantity in a commodity is too little, to the point of being nonexistent, then it is worthless and no longer a commodity. If the value quantity is too large, to the extent that it is a commodity requiring a lot of labor but with limited use value, no one will produce it, and it cannot exist as a commodity.
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