Large-Scale Production and the Duality of the Capitalist Production Process

Abstract

The theorisation of production in general in Capital, documented above, is systematically related to Marx’s frequent attempts in the text to abstract the organisational necessities inherent in large-scale production from the specific social forms created by the capitalist organisation of large-scale industry. As a type of abstraction the latter has the same discursive structure as the theorisation of production in general and may be seen as an extension of this form of analysis to a more concrete and historically specific level. Its emergence in Capital, like that of the discussion of production in general, is inexplicable except as the outcome of the general reflections contained in the 1857 Introduction on forms of production and their interrelationship. And both may thus be said to derive from the discursive transformation from ‘exchange’ to ‘production’ signalled by the Grundrisse.