Market and Its Outside World ––Nature and Peasant Powers––

Abstract

  In this paper, the author consider the capitalist market from the Marxian idea on the market as an economic system capable to gratuitously take advantage of natural and cultural potentialities existing outside the market for the sake of profit maximization. According to Marx, profit maximization not only derives from the exploitation of surplus-labor from workers but also from the gratuitous use of nature. What characterizes “productive powers of capital” consists in its power to transform natural resources and laws existing outside the market into productive factors that make continuous technological revolution possible. Such natural power is called “gratis natural power of capital” by Marx. By this concept, Marx tries to explain that the market is not a closed self-regulating economic system but an open one that depends upon various possibilities to make gratuitous use of external economic potentialities.

  The idea on “gratis natural power of capital” is applicable not only to natural environment but also to cultural and historical conditions that coexist with the market. In this context, the author considers Marx’s idea on peasants and their mode of production in terms of their historical contribution to capitalist formation and development. The author tries to demonstrate that Marx well understood the indispensable role of peasants in the historical formation of capitalist system.

  Finally, the author tries to explain the incredibly rapid economic development of Chinese Republics in the recent forty years by applying Marx’s ideas on peasants and their inexhaustible potentialities.