Paresh chattopadhyay biography of mahatma

Marx Myths & Legends

Paresh Chattopadhyay

A Manifesto of Emancipation: Marx’s “Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Workers’ Party” after One hundred and twenty-five years

This article seeks to dispel a number of misunderstandings concerning Marx’s categories of labour, value and state.

Readers are reminded that while labour is the source of value, i.e., exchange value, for Marx, it is by no means the sole source of value in the broader sense of usefulness for human beings, since Nature also participates in the production of “wealth.” Further, the oppressive character of labour - “work” - results from wage labour and the relations of exchange, which is something quite distinct from a division of labour.

Paresh goes on to show how foreign to Marx’s thinking is any idea of a “workers state” involved in some kind of “planned economy,” and rejects the idea of the working class having its own state machine governing a transition period between capi