Method of Political Economy

Method for analyzing the socio-economic relations and economic interests by using the fundamental principles of historical materialism.

Historical materialism, the discovery of which Marx devoted his life to, is the guiding thought for all scientific work to study the development of human society, as well as the guiding thought for the study of economic problems. The discovery of historical materialism is of epoch-making significance in the study of social sciences. It is the materialistic conception of history that makes it possible to find intrinsic and essential connections among numerous and complex social phenomena, to discover the laws of development of human society, and to provide us with a scientific weapon for knowing and reshaping society. Lenin pointed out: “Marx’s historical materialism was a great achievement in scientific thinking. The chaos and arbitrariness that had previously reigned in views on history and politics were replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious scientific theory.”

Historical materialism has revealed the general laws of the development of human society, and pointed out that the productive forces determine the relations of production, and the economic foundation determines the superstructure. This provided the most scientific method for the study of political economy, i.e., the study of the relations of production in the contradictory movement of the productive forces and the relations of production and the economic foundation and the superstructure, and the study of the essence and the laws of development of the socio-economic phenomena.

Mao Zedong pointed out: “In economics the main object of inquiry is the relations of production.” However, “to study clearly the relations of production it is necessary to study concomitantly the productive forces and also the positive and negative effects of the superstructure on the production relations. Of course, in the process of studying political economy, the study of the productive forces and the superstructure should not become overdeveloped. If the study of the productive forces goes too far it becomes technology and natural science. If the study of the superstructure goes too far it becomes nation-state theory, class struggle theory.” He claimed: “We need to use balance and imbalance among the productive forces, the relations of production, and the superstructure as a guideline for researching the economic problems of socialism.”

Mao Zedong also pointed out that the study of political economy should begin its analysis with contradictions. He said: “As a branch of science, political economy should begin its analysis with contradictions.” “As Lenin pointed out, Marx in his Capital gave a model analysis of this movement”.

In his preface to the second edition of Capital, Vol. 1, Marx incisively dealt with the general methods formed under the guidance of dialectical and historical materialism, i.e., the method of inquiry and the method of presentation. Marx pointed out: “Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyze its different forms of development, to track down their inner connection. Only after this work has been done, can the real movement be appropriately presented. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is now reflected back in the ideas, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.” Here, the interconnection and difference between the method of inquiry and the method of presentation are made clear. The so-called method of inquiry belongs to the method used to rise from the stage of perceptual knowledge to the stage of rational knowledge, from the concrete to the abstract, to fully appropriate the materials (factual and literary materials), to find out the intrinsic law-governed connections of things, to draw scientific conclusions, to form concepts, categories and other abstract determinations, to provide intellectual material for the logical processing in the stage of method of presentation, so that in the end the object of inquiry can be reproduced as a totality of thoughts or concrete in thought comprising “a synthesis of many definitions”. But this totality of thoughts or concrete in thought, as Marx pointed out in his critique of the Hegelian idealist conception of the totality of the “absolute spirit”: “the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above observation and conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of observation and conception into concepts.” According to Mao Zedong’s formulation, “The analysis of capitalist economy in Capital commences with appearances, searches out essences, and only then uses the essence to explain the appearance”. The so-called method of presentation, which Marx also called “the whole method of dialectical exposition”, i.e., “the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete”. The concrete here is the concrete in thought, the method in which thought takes the concepts and categories at the level of essence as its object of inquiry, makes synthetic use of a variety of logical forms and logical methods, conducts re-investigation and re-processing of the concepts, categories, and other series of abstract determinations formed at the stage of the method of inquiry and arranges the concepts and categories in terms of their internal essential connections, i.e., the method in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind, which is the gradual reduction of essences into a totality of thoughts comprising many determinations and relations.

The method of inquiry and the method of presentation are a unity of opposites, complementary to each other and neither is dispensable, and together they form a system of rigorous logical methods for expressing the truth. Marx attached great importance to the part played by the method of presentation as a tool in the creation and development of science, and held that it would “disarm even the vulgar”.

The study of political economy also includes important methods such as the coincidence of history and logic. History is agreement with logic, on the one hand, the course of development of logic that rises from the individual to the general, from simple to complex, the course of abstract thinking that rises from the simple to the complex conforms to the actual course of history; on the other hand, it would be inexpedient to present the economic categories successively in the order in which they have played the dominant role in history, and the accidental factors and disturbing conditions of history should be discarded.

In the study of political economy, in finding out the essence and discovering the laws through phenomena, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. It is necessary to use the force of abstraction.