karl korsch Karl Marx

<introduction>
"It is the purpose of this book to restate the most important principles and contents of Marx’s social science in the light of recent historical events and of the new theoretical needs which have arisen under the impact of those events. In so doing we shall deal throughout with the original ideas of Marx himself rather than with their subsequent developments brought about by the various “orthodox” and “revisionist,” dogmatic and critical, radical and moderate schools of the Marxists on the one hand, and their more or less violent critics and opponents on the other hand." (From the introduction of his book)

korsch want to produce the core thought of Marx and he want to shake off almost of all "Marxist" thought that had been prevailed in 1930's

“To increase the utility of this presentation of the Marxian theory…”

Not Marxist theory but Marxian theory!

yes this is one of the significant point.

"It is, therefore, a deplorable fact that hitherto not only the bourgeois critics of the so-called “Marxian contradictions” but even the most faithful adherents of Marx’s materialistic science should have quoted his divers theoretical statements without reference to time, addressees, and other historical indices necessary for their materialistic interpretation. This “orthodox” procedure of quoting Marx’s (or even Marx’s and Engels’s) statements quite in the abstract, just as the schoolmen quoted the words of Aristotle or the Bible, is quite inadequate for a theoretical study of a given social theory from an historical and materialistic standpoint. "

yes I totally agree with korsch's argument.

so-called Marxists didn't depended on dialectical Marxism. They had just quoted some letter from Marx and didn't realize why Marx said like that at that time.

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<Chapter 1. Marxism and Sociology>

"....detailed “critical revision” of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, on which he concentrated for the next five months, led him to the conclusion that

legal relations as well as forms of State cannot be understood out of themselves nor out of the so-called general development of the human mind but, on the contrary, are rooted in the material conditions of life, the aggregate of which Hegel, following the precedent of the English and French of the 18th century, grouped together under the name of “civil society,” and that the anatomy of civil society is to be sought for in Political Economy."
 I think maybe the source of the dictatorship of proletariat made by Marx was came from Hegel's theory in philosophy of law.

“He is not interested only in the static laws of its existence. He treats bourgeois society in all its aspects as a transitory historical phenomenon. He explores the whole process of its genesis, and the tendencies contained therein which, in their further development, will lead to its revolutionary overthrow.” He=Marx, its existence =the existence of capitalism 

I agree with his argument.

marx is dialectical materialist.

this sentence explains that reason.

〈Chapter 2. The Principle of Historical Specification〉

「Again, all capitalistic production is conditioned by a given amount of disposable money. Thus the very way in which “capital” first arose and gained control of production through the money supplied by wealthy individuals, merchants, usurers, etc., constantly repeats itself under the present conditions of a fully developed industrial production. “Every new aggregate of capital,” says Marx, “comes on the stage, that is, on the market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even in our days, in the form of money that by a definite process has to be transformed into capital.”」

Yes same as Althusser wrote, capitalism works on the form of money and people were attracted by it