There were gaps in Marx’s argument that indicated promising avenues for further research. These gaps were due to both objective factors (the state of science and society at the time), and subjective factors (that is, Marx’s ideology). We mean the following points:
● Reducing the complexity of labor to the ratio between simple and complex labor and the associated disregard for changes in the complexity of the labor power and society as a whole;
● Considering surplus value as the result of the labor of individual workers, considering gross surplus value as the result of the labor of the working class;
● Focusing on only one side of the capitalist process—socialization, without working out the other side—individualization—in sufficient detail;
● Disregarding limitations on population growth, etc.
The third part is devoted to the upper limit of capital, its final transition. Marx formulated the conditions for the capitalist reproduction to cease: a fall in the rate of profit and the demise of capitalist private property. However, neither Marx nor his followers were able to describe the reproduction mode that would replace the capitalist one. The non-economic exploitation and state ownership on which 20th-century socialism was based were more a return to what preceded capital, than an advance to what will follow it.
We propose to view Marx’s work not as a scientific or political activity, but as developing and implementing a strategy on the scale of human history. We, in turn, are not developing a strategy, but are trying to paint an image of the historic future. It would be pointless to rewrite Das Kapital without offering an image of the future after capitalism.
Let us consider Marx’s ideas not as a finished product, but as a work in progress. Friedrich Engels wrote in the preface to volume III of Das Kapital that the opponents of Marx “rest upon the false assumption that Marx wishes to define where he only investigates, and that in general one might expect fixed, cut-to-measure, once and for all applicable definitions in Marx’s works” (Marx and Engels 1975-2004, vol. 37, p. 16). We too do not want to give definitions that are valid “once and for all,” we do not want to form beliefs in the reader, we do not intend to speak out against the reader’s beliefs. As is well known, beliefs are what divide people, doubt unites them. This work does not offer ready-made answers or recipes. It is a research program and a set of research tools: