The Poverty of Philosophy

The full title is The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon. A work by Marx criticizing Proudhon and elucidating his new conception of history and of economy. Written between January and early April 1847, the work went into print after its completion. Translated into Chinese by Li Tiesheng in 1928 and published in the Shanghai monthly, Thought, No. 2–No. 3.

In May 1846, Marx and Engels wrote to Proudhon inviting him to join the Communist Correspondence Committee. In the same month, Proudhon wrote back, opposed to the socialists' use of revolutionary means to establish a new social system, advocated the use of slow-fire reforms to cure capitalism under the premise of recognizing the actual society, and explicitly expressed his willingness to engage in a discussion with Marx on different points of view. At that time, Proudhon’s book The Philosophy of Poverty was about to be released, and he thought that he achieved balance and transcendence between “conservative” bourgeois political economy and “radical” socialism and saved political economy with philosophy. In order to comprehensively criticize Proudhon and “to prepare the way for the critical and materialist socialism which alone can render the real, historical development of social production intelligible”, Marx set out to complete the writing of The Poverty of Philosophy.

With the brand-new historical materialism as its theoretical weapon, The Poverty of Philosophy criticized Proudhon’s idealist economics from the two aspects of economics and philosophy, and exposed the non-scientific and petty-bourgeois counter-revolutionary nature of its critique of capitalism. The full text is divided into two chapters. Chapter I: “A Scientific Discovery” criticizes Proudhon’s idealist economics, especially his theory of value, and lays a preliminary foundation for Marxist economic theory; Chapter II: “The Metaphysics of Political Economy” criticizes Proudhon’s social reformist views and expounds the principles of historical materialism. The main contents of The Poverty of Philosophy are as follows: First, it upheld historical materialism and criticized Proudhon’s ahistorical viewpoint that inverts the relationship between economic categories and the real movement. Marx clearly pointed out that any economic category is only a historical and temporary product. Starting from idealism, Proudhon regarded categories as the driving force of history, completely inverted the relationship between economic categories and the real movement, and completely failed to understand the transitory and historical nature of economic forms in the development of human history. Proudhon regarded the bourgeois relations of production as “fixed, immutable, eternal categories”, an ahistorical viewpoint, which goes against the development of human society and inevitably leads to an erroneous idealist conception of history. Second, it criticized Proudhon’s theory of constituted value and elaborated on value and surplus-value in a preliminary analysis. Marx refuted Proudhon’s confusion of necessary labor-time for the production of commodities with the value of labor and of the cost of production with wages, pointing out that Proudhon’s constituted value was nothing more thana poor copy, distorted account and “utopian interpretation” of the labor theory of value of the classical English bourgeois economist Ricardo; Proudhon's attempt to eliminate all the problems of capitalist society and to re-establish “equality” through the so-called “true realization” of value was only an idealistic fantasy. Assimilating and drawing on Ricardo’s concepts of “labor as a commodity” and “value of labor”, Marx put forth that value was born in the production and exchange of a certain historical stage, which embodied the social connection between commodity producers; he pointed out that in capitalist society, labor as a commodity was a particular commodity capable of yielding surplus-value, and that the confrontation between capital and labor arose in the process of surplus-value production. Third, it criticized Proudhon for the petty-bourgeois attribute of simultaneously opposing political economy and socialism. Rejecting all simple affirmations and all radical negations, Proudhon considered himself beyond the bourgeois economists and socialists, opposing both capitalist private property and communism, and finding scientific formulas for resolving contradictions. He wanted to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and proletarians; but the “system of economic contradictions” made it abundantly clear that he was in reality only a petty-bourgeois socialist, continually tossed back and forth between capital and labor, political economy and communism. Fourth, it criticized Proudhon’s claims against increased wages for workers and the organization of trade unions to cater to the needs of the bourgeoisie. Marx criticized Proudhon’s erroneous understanding of capitalist economic phenomena such as the utilization of machinery, bourgeois monopoly, tax on consumption, property in land and ground-rent, and pointed out that the arguments against higher wages for workers were totally untenable because higher wages would never cause a more or less general rise in the value of commodities. The emergence of workers' organizations, initially for the maintenance of wages, has gradually taken on a political character, with workers gradually becoming a class for itself in their struggle against capitalism and the need to form combinations in that struggle. Fifth, it analyzed the dialectical movement of productive forces and relations of production and emphasized the decisive role of productive forces. Marx analyzed the historical development process of the whole human society and drew the scientific conclusion that the mode of production is the unity of productive forces and relations of production, and that the development of productive forces inevitably leads to the replacement of the mode of production. He pointed out that social relations are closely bound up with productive forces, and in acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. Marx gave the example that the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist. Sixth, it affirmed the historical mission and position of the working class. Marx held that of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself, and that the working class is the revolutionary class that will fundamentally change capitalist society. The class struggle of the proletariat against the exploitation and oppression of the bourgeoisie will surely eliminate capitalist society and establish a communist society in which all are equal. Marx further pointed out that until an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism is established, the abolition of all classes is a precondition for the complete emancipation of the working class, and that total revolution remains the highest expression of the proletariat's struggle against the bourgeoisie. The proletariat must ally itself with the broad working masses and wage a resolute political struggle against the reactionary ruling class in order to achieve its own emancipation and that of the working class.

The Poverty of Philosophy is an important work of Marx on the study of political economy. It established the object of inquiry of scientific political economy, marked the preliminary formation of Marx’s economic theory, and is an introduction to the study of Capital and the theory of scientific socialism. At the same time, it further developed the materialist conception of history expressed in The German Ideology which is an important and mature work in the history of Marxism. Marx pointed out in 1859 that the book “made a scientific, albeit controversial, overview for the first time” of some “decisive arguments”, and Engels also held that its publication showed that “Marx had cleared up for himself the basic features of his new historical and economic outlook.”