Appendix: On the 'Ideal Average' and the Forms of Transition

Just a few words on two important theoretical problems which are directly related to Marx's discovery and to the forms in which he expressed it: the problem of the definition of the object of Capital as 'the ideal average' of real capitalism -- and the problem of the forms of transition from one mode of production to another.

In a general analysis of this kind [writes Marx], it is usually always assumed that the real relations correspond to their concept, or, what is the same, that the real relations are represented only to the extent that they express their peculiar general type (allgemeinem Typus ) (Capital, Vol. III, p. 141 -- modified).


Marx defines this general type several times as the 'ideal average' (idealer Durchschnitt ) of capitalist production. This name, in which average and ideality are combined on the concept's side while being referred to a certain existing real, poses anew the question of the philosophical problematic which underlies this terminology: is it not tainted with empiricism? This is certainly the impression given by a passage from the Preface to the first German edition of Capital :

The physicist, when accounting for the processes of nature, either observes the phenomena where they occur in their most marked form, and most free from disturbing influences, or he makes experiments under conditions that assure as far as possible the regularity of their occurrence. In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of production, and the relations of production and exchange corresponding to that mode. Their classical ground is England. That is the reason why I have taken the chief facts and examples which illustrate the development of my theories from England (T.I, p. 18; Vol. I, p. 8).


Marx therefore chooses the English example. However, he subjects even this example to a remarkable 'purification', since, on his own admission, he analyses it on the assumption that there are only ever two classes present in his object (a situation which has never existed anywhere), and that the world market is entirely subject to the capitalist mode of production, which is just as far from reality. Marx therefore does not even study the English example, however classical and pure it may be, but a non-existent example,


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precisely what he calls the 'ideal average' of the capitalist mode of production. Lenin restated this apparent difficulty in 1899 in his 'Once more on the theory of realization', Collected Works, Moscow 1960, Vol. IV, pp. 86-7).

Let us dwell for a while on the problem that has 'long interested' Struve: what is the real scientific value of the theory of realization?
It has exactly the same value as have all the other postulates of Marx's abstract theory. If Struve is bothered by the circumstances that 'perfect realization is the ideal of capitalist production, but by no means its reality', we must remind him that all the other laws of capitalism, re- vealed by Marx, also depict only the ideal of capitalism and not its reality. 'We need present,' wrote Marx, 'only the inner organization of the capitalist mode of production, in its ideal average (in ihrem idealen Durchschnitt ), as it were' (Capital, Vol. III, p. 810). The theory of capital assumes that the worker receives the full value of his labour-power. This is the ideal of capitalism, but by no means its reality. The theory of rent presupposes that the entire agrarian population has been completely divided into landowners, capitalists and hired labourers. This is the ideal of capitalism, but by no means its reality. The theory of realization presupposes the proportional distribution of production. This is the ideal of capitalism, but by no means its reality.


Lenin is merely repeating Marx's own words, opposing the ideality of Marx's object to actual historical reality on the basis of the term 'ideal ' in the expression 'ideal average'. It would not be necessary to take this opposition very far to fall back into the traps of empiricism, particularly if we remember that Lenin described Marx's theory as an 'abstract ' theory, a theory which seems to be naturally opposed to the concrete-historical character of the reality of the actual forms of capitalism. But here again we can grasp Marx's true intention if we conceive this 'ideality ' as an 'idea-ness ', i.e., as the mere conceptuality of his object, and the 'average' as the content of the concept of his object -- and not as the result of an empirical abstraction. Marx's object is not an ideal object opposed to a real object and distinct from it through this opposition, as 'ought' is from 'is', the norm from the fact - the object of his theory is an idea, i.e., it is defined in terms of knowledge, in the abstraction of the concept. Marx says so himself, when he writes that, 'its [the capitalist system's ] specific difference . . . is revealed (sich darstellt ) in an its core form (in ihrer ganzen Kerngestalt )' (Capital, Vol. III, p. 239 -- modified). It is this 'Kerngestalt ' and its determinations that constitute the object of Marx's analysis, insofar as this specific difference defines the capitalist mode of production as the capitalist mode of production. What to vulgar economists like Struve seems to contradict reality for Marx constitutes reality itself, the reality of his theoretical object. In order to understand this we need only remember what I have said about the object of the theory of history and therefore of the theory of political economy: they study the


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basic forms of unity of historical existence, the modes of production. Besides, Marx tells us this himself if we are prepared to take his expressions seriously, in the Preface to the first German edition, where he is discussing England:

In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of production, and the relations of production and exchange corresponding to that mode (T.I, p. 18; Vol. I, p. 8).


As for England, a close reading of Marx's text shows that it only appears as a source of illustrations and examples, not as the theoretical object studied:

Their classical ground in England. That is the reason why I have taken the chief facts and examples which illustrate the development of my theories from England (ibid.).


This unambiguous statement puts into correct perspective the earlier sentence in which the example of physics was evoked in a way that might suggest that Marx was investigating a 'pure' object 'free from disturbing influences '. In this respect, England, too, is an impure disturbed object, but these 'impurities' and 'disturbances' cause no theoretical trouble since Marx's theoretical object is not England but the capitalist mode of production in its 'Kerngestalt' and the determinations of that 'Kerngestalt'. When Marx tells us that he is studying an 'ideal average', we must therefore understand that this ideality connotes not the unreal or the ideal norm, but the concept of the real; and that this 'average' is not an empiricist average, i.e., it does not connote the non-unique, but on the contrary, it connotes the concept of the specific difference of the mode of production concerned.

Let us go further. For, if we return to the English example, if we compare it with Marx's apparently purified and simplified object, the two-class capitalist mode of production, we have to admit that we must confront a real residue : precisely, restricting ourselves to this one pertinent point, the real existence of other classes (landowners, artisans, small-scale agriculturalists). We cannot in honesty suppress this real residue merely by invoking the fact that Marx proposed as his whole object only the concept of the specific difference of the capitalist mode of production, and by invoking the difference between the real and the knowledge of it!

But it is in this apparently urgent difficulty, which is also the major argu- ment of the empiricist interpretation of the theory of Capital, that what has been said of the theory of history acquires all its meaning. For Marx could only study the specific difference of the capitalist mode of production on condition that at the same time he studied the other modes of production, not only the other modes of production as types of specific Verbindung unity between the factors of production, but also the relations between different modes of production in the process of the constitution of modes of production. The impurity of English capitalism is a real, definite object which Marx did not propose to study in Capital, but which is relevant to Marxist theory


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nevertheless: this impurity is, in its immediate form, what we can for the time being call the 'survivals ' of forms within the dominant capitalist mode of production in Britain from modes of production subordinate to but not yet eliminated by the capitalist mode of production. This supposed 'impurity' constitutes an object relevant to the theory of modes of production: in particular to the theory of the transition from one mode of production to another, which is the same thing as the theory of the process of constitution of a determinate mode of production, since every mode of production is constituted solely out of the existing forms of an earlier mode of production. This object is in principle part of Marxist theory, and the fact that we can recognize the status of this object in principle does not mean that we can criticize Marx for not providing us with the theory of it. All Marx's texts on the primitive accumulation of capital constitute the material if not already the outline of this theory, where the constitution process of the capitalist mode of production is concerned -- i.e., the transition from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist mode of production. We must recognize what Marx actually gave us and what he enabled us to obtain for ourselves, although he could not give it to us. Just as we can say that we possess only the outline of a Marxist theory of the modes of production before the capitalist mode of production -- we can say, and even, since the existence of this problem and above all the necessity of posing it in its peculiar theoretical form are not generally recognized, we must say that Marx did not give us any theory of the transition from one mode of production to another, i.e., of the constitution of a mode of production. We know that this theory is indispensable: without it we shall be unable to complete what is called the construction of socialism, in which the transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production is at stake, or even to solve the problems posed by the so-called 'under-developed ' countries of the Third World. I cannot go into any detail concerning the theoretical problems posed by this new object, but we can regard it as certain that posing and solving these burning contemporary problems is a first priority of Marxist investigation. Not only the problem of the period of the 'cult of personality', but also the current problems expressed in the form of 'national roads to socialism', 'peaceful roads', etc., relate directly to these theoretical investigations.

Here, too -- even if certain of his formulations take us to the brink of ambiguity -- Marx did not leave us without suggestions or resources. If we can pose the question of the transition from one mode of production to another as a theoretical problem, and therefore account not only for past transitions, but also anticipate the future and 'run ahead of our time' (which Hegelian historicism could not do), it is not because of any claim to the 'experimental structure' of history, but because of the Marxist theory of history as a theory of modes of production, of the definition of the constitutive elements of the different modes of production, and of the fact that the theoretical problems posed by the process of the constitution of a


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mode of production (in other words, the problems of the transformation of one mode of production into another) are directly a function of the theory of the modes of production concerned.[47] That is why we can say that Marx did give us enough to think this theoretically and practically decisive problem: knowledge of the modes of production considered provides the basis for posing and solving the problems of transition. That is why we can anticipate the future and theorize not only that future, but also and above all the roads and means that will secure us its reality.

The Marxist theory of history understood as I have just defined it secures us this right, given that we are able to define its conditions and limits very accurately. But at the same time, it gives us a measure of what remains to be done -- and it is immense -- in order to define with all desirable rigour these roads and means. If it is true that mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve, given that this formula is not understood in any historicist way, it remains essential that mankind has an exact consciousness of the relationship between these tasks and its capacities, that it is prepared to proceed via a knowledge of these terms and their relationships, and therefore via an examination of these tasks and capacities, in order to define the right means to produce and dominate its future. If not, even in the 'transparency' of its new economic relations it will risk, as it has already discovered in the silences of the terror -- and may do so again in the velleities of humanism -- it will risk entering a future still charged with dangers and shades, with a virgin conscience.
47 Cf. Balibar's paper.