SAMUEL BAILEY AND DAVID RICARDO IN KARL MARX’S DIALECTIC OF THE FORM OF VALUE
SAMUEL BAILEY AND DAVID RICARDO IN KARL MARX’S DIALECTIC OF THE FORM OF VALUE

Summary/Abstract: While Marx’s critique of David Ricardo is frequently debated, Marx’s critique of Samuel Bailey has, for far too long, remained in the shade. I try to show that Ricardo and Bailey represent two fundamental “moments” of Marx’s Darstellung. The word “moment” is here used in a non-generic sense: Ricardo’s and Bailey’s theories of value represent two opposite and contradictory sides of value’s category as presented in Marx’s critique of political economy. Building on the work of Hans Georg Backhaus, who claims that the first chapter of Volume one of the Capital can be understood only as a metacritique of Bailey’s critique of Ricardo, this topic is developed in order to further clarify the connection of critique and presentation in Marx’s theory.

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