Forum for Marx Research Oldenburg

150 years ago, Das Kapital. Critique of Political Economy. By Karl Marx. First volume. Book I: The Production Process of Capital.

In this book Marx conceptualised the capitalist mode of production, and this conceptualisation was intrinsically linked to the impulse to abolish the conceptual, because it provokes a conflict in and with reason. Since then, the capitalist mode of production has developed rapidly to the state known as globalisation. Capital has accompanied this process; its divergent receptions and controversial interpretations have reflected world events. It was used by the opposition to capitalism in their struggle against it. In the revolutions after the First World War and in the construction of an economic alternative to the capitalist mode of production, both supporters and opponents agreed in ascribing a key role to this book: it was about the political consequence of capital: the overcoming of capitalism. The collapse of the Soviet Union marked a turning point: Marx's Capital seems to have lost any defining political function after and with 1989.

The academic history of Das Kapital - in particular the reception of Marx at German universities - is quickly told: Capital played a marginalised role, if at all. From the very beginning, the guardians of academic scholarship had marginalised the book as a work of struggle, as violating the code of value-free scholarship. For almost a century, only a few dared to make this book an academic subject that could also be discussed within the alma mater. These few experienced the political and social labelling of the book by the way in which the academic establishment stamped them personally with the label of the insecure cantonist. After the Second World War, the reception of Das Kapital proved to be divided into two strands - corresponding to the political world situation that had emerged - without the two strands recognising each other or even productively mediating between them. In the GDR, in continuation of developments in the Soviet Union and in the Western European Communist parties, there was a seemingly orthodox reading of capital, which combined its orthodoxy with the application and justification of Real Socialism; however, within this orthodoxy, positions were formed that turned against the prevailing reading. In the universities of the FRG, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, on the other hand, the 'humanist Marx' of the early writings was discovered, welcomed and cunningly incorporated. A milestone in the history of the reception of Capital, 100 years after the publication of the first volume, was the Frankfurt Colloquium in September 1967: "Critique of Political Economy Today - 100 Years of Capital". The period following the colloquium, from 1968 to 1989, then presented itself as a special case in the academic history of Das Kapital: Marxists came to the universities in astonishing numbers compared to the period before 1968 (and then also to that after 1989). However, the period of academic recognition of Das Kapital and a remarkable development of the debate begun at the colloquium lasted only a short time. The singular special case ended in 1989; capital disappeared from research and teaching. In the meantime, the original state of academic relegation has almost been restored.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Das Kapital, members of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Oldenburg have founded the Forum for Marx Research Oldenburg. This forum is making a new attempt to make this politically explosive book the subject of academic debate within the alma mater and in opposition to its function for bourgeois society and its state, thus revitalising the academic reception of Marx's Critique of Political Economy, which is almost non-existent in German-speaking countries. The inherently contradictory capitalist mode of production continuously generates contradictions, some of which have changed, some of which have taken on new forms. The effects of these contradictions are becoming increasingly noticeable. In Capital of 1867, Marx, visualising the manifestations of capitalism at the time, set out and explained the fundamental concepts of the capitalist mode of production. These concepts, which reveal the essence of capital, still hold true today. However, as both supporters and opponents have often overlooked, Das Kapital is neither a theoretically complete, nor a perfect, nor a timeless work. But we have no better economic theory that grasps the essence of capital. Capital discusses the central theoretical elements to explain the still dominant mode of production. The further development of capitalism that has taken place in the 150 years since the book was published sheds light on central questions that remained open in Marx's text (keywords include: Explanations of finance capital, the function of the state as the ideal total capitalist, imperialism, etc.) of the theory on the nature of capital and in particular on the overall process of capitalist production. Conversely, these open questions point to contradictions in the actual development of capitalism. This is why a simple Marx philology, the musealisation of Capital or the celebration of Marx as a brilliant 19th century thinker who foresaw great things would be wrong; this is why it has become a question de vie et de mort to expand Marx's theory on the basis of the fundamental theoretical elements in Capital and to develop it further in part, i.e. for some spheres such as finance capital and the bourgeois state.

The 1st Oldenburg Marx Conference "150 Years of Das Kapital - Das Kapital in der Kritik" (lectures and conferences documented in: Journal for Critical Social Theory and Philosophy. Volume 4 Issue 1-2. Berlin 2017) focussed on the intrinsic connection, linking concept and subject matter, between a critical reading of Das Kapital that is informed by 150 years of history on the one hand and the critique of capital as the mode of production that permeates contemporary society on the other.

The 2nd Oldenburg Marx Conference has the guiding theme: Marxian theory today, i.e.: Marxian theory in the face of the further development of capitalist relations, the intensification of the rule of the state and the processes of destruction that threaten us.

Oldenburg in October 2018