Do conceito de história à totalidade provisória em O Capital de Marx: limites e possibilidades do método

Abstract

The present research takes as scope to analyze two fundamental concepts of Marx's method in the work The Capital. They are the concepts of History and Provisional Totality; defending the thesis that the development of the first concept or conception of History is configured, in part, in the second concept of Provisional Totality, which we consider to be a fundamental analytical key for understanding the work Capital and, therefore, its method. To this end, the paper is divided into two parts: the first part deals with the formation of the concept of History in Marx, demonstrating the processual and non-linear character of this concept in the work of the German thinker, from the works of youth, where we argue that there is not yet a concept of history in the author, but notions of history , based on a realistic posture and a keen notion of historicity, passing through the German Ideology, a turning point in Marx's work, and which marks the beginning of his conception of history, but not its completion, until the development of the critique of the lack of historicity of political economy. In the second part, which focuses on Capital, we will investigate the concept of Provisional Totality, implicit in the work. In fact, it is the very method of The Capital, which is nothing more than Marx's attempt, perhaps partly unconscious, to combine a dialectical presentation of the categories of the capitalist mode of production with a synthesis of the concrete historical process. In other words, a synthesis between a materialist dialectic and an open-ended conception of history, articulated in a totality that will therefore be provisional. It derives from this both the concept of law and the categories of social averages, making it possible to understand the various levels of abstraction between the three books, while expressing the limits and scope of Marx's method.