The Purpose of this paper is to explore internal relation between social theory of Karl Marx and General system theory. Some researchers including Piaget, Wallerstein, Okishio have indicated affinity of them, but no one really argued joining of Marx and system theory. But as Althusser pointed out, Marx made a 'immeasurable theory revolution' by discovering 'structural causality' and 'epistemological criticism'. These features are in parallel with general system theory. Generally speaking, 'system' is defined as 'constructional whole of relations between elements'. Marx wrote 'society was not composed of individuals, but it was summation of relations of individuals'. And today it is generally accepted argument that Marx's theory was relationism. However, we have to investigate the concept of 'relation' of Marx. In 'Preface of the Critique of Political Economy', he argued that the production-consumption relation was internal self-vanishing process. He virtually showed the world view as incessantly changing energy flow. Marx in 'Grundrisse' believed that society (and capital) is reproductive process of social individuals which produces society (and capital) itself. Social system theory of Marx is very similar to autopoiesis theory of Maturana and Varela. They thought autonomic life as a autopoietic system, which means a system whose components reproduce network of productive relation which produces components. This view of life is consonant of that of Marx, who thought individual as a self-reproductive life. And we can closely parallelize 'autopoiesis' of Maturana and 'society' of Marx. Firstly, productive relations of autopoietic system are transient chemical processes. Social relations in Marx's theory are productive self-vanishing processes. The affinity of them is tangible. Secondly, the definition of society (and capital) by Marx exactly fits into the definition of autopoietic system. A poor worker of a capitalist society reproduces the network of productive relationship which produces the worker and his poverty. Finally, we compare the Marx's theory as an autopoietic system and social system theory of Niklas Luhmann. Components of our social system theory are persons, while that of Luhmann's one are communications. Luhmann claims that components of a system must be of the same kind, and he just negates an existence of man-machine system and that of ecosystem. They are essencial aspect of the social system theory of Karl Marx, that implies openness of his theory to other scientific fields.
