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Lecture 1. The subject and the method of Political Economy

1. The economic activity as a condition of existence and society development.

2. The productive forces and productive relations: their unity and interdependency.

3. Economic laws and their objective character.

4. The subject and functions of Political Economy.

5. The method of Political Economy.

1. The economic activity as a condition of existence and society development. The labour-process and its elementary factors.

The first premise of all human existence is to live in order to be able to "make history". But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life.

So, the production of material commodities – the material production is the first precondition of all human being. It is the basis of human society development.

The material production carried out through the labour process.

Labour is a process in which both man and Nature participate and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature.

We suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. For example, a spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already exists in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.

The elementary factors of the labour-process are

1) The personal activity of man, i.e., labour itself;

2) Subjects of labour;

3) Means of labour.

So, the labour-process is human action with a view to the production of use-values, appropriation of natural substances to human requirements. It is the necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature. It is the everlasting Nature-imposed condition of human existence.

Subjects of labour.

The soil in the virgin state in which it supplies man with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connection with their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for washing. All raw materials are the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour is raw material: it can only become so, after it has undergone some alteration by means of labour.