Category:
Research Papers
Date Published:
May 28, 2020
Abstract:
In the present paper the logical method of representation used by Karl Marx in the critique of political economy to ascend from the abstract to the concrete is criticized and replaced by the historical-empirical research method to descend from the concrete to the abstract. According to this new research method, the laws and regularities valid in the historical-empirical field are recognized by a double abstraction task (= by tempo- rally vertical and spatially horizontal abstraction). The temporally vertical abstraction in the historical-empirical material of political economy gives the following three stages of development of human production and consumption activity (= of human society):
1.The working process in the society of hunters and gatherers, 2. the exchange process in the society of artisans, dealers, service providers and slave owners, 3. the accumula- tion process in the society of workers and capitalists. The research program of political economy therefore consists, among other things, of analyzing these three stages of the development of the human society through spatially horizontal abstraction specifically in the historical epoch in which they arised.
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