1. Isaak Rubin’s Research Project: A Reconstruction
Eshet Annual Conference, may 26 – 28, 2016
Denis melnik
National research university higher school of economics (Moscow)

2. Main questions
Did Rubin’s contribution go beyond a mere interpretation of Marx?
Was his interpretation original?
Was Rubin an economist?

3. Rubin’s scholarly activity as a single research project
Condensed in time
c – 1930
Imprisonments and exile within the period: 1921; 1923 – 1926
Lines of activity (according to Takenaga):
editor and translator (at the MEI)
Marxian scholar
historian of economic thought
Overlapping nature of the works
Overlap of scholarly and political activity (initiated in 1904)

4. Rubin’s formative years

6. Marxian studies in Russia
The challenges to Marx’s theory
transformation problem and value theory
sociological foundations and political implications
The problem of contradictions in Marx’s theory
The strive to synthesis

7. ‘Methodenstreit’
Methodological basis for understanding Marxism is provided by Hegelian philosophy and Hegelian logic in particular (Rubin)
“Methodology of Das Kapital is the methodology of The Poverty of Philosophy” ; “Anti-Dühring is the result of Marx’s and Engels’ 40-years methodological work (Skvortsov- Stepanov)

8. The interpretations of value theory
The notion of value
Bogdanov and Skvortsov-Stepanov : value as a magnitude (a positivistic approach)
Rubin : value as a social form
Implications:
‘Expanded version’: “The task of Marxian political economy is to study the economy of modern society” (Skvortsov-Stepanov)
‘Restrictive version’ (Rubin)

9. The interpretation of the history of political economy
The history according to Rubin
Skvortsov-Stepanov (1925): “Classical Political Economy cannot be revived” ; “the return in Political Economy to Ricardo is an unconscious Trotskyism in the field of theory”

10. Rubin’s contribution
Rigorous ‘Talmudic’ (Ryazanov) or ‘Scholastic’ interpretation
One of the first Marxian scholars who commented not only on Capital (mainly restricted in Rubin’s case to the first volume, though) but on manuscripts and early writings
Reconstruction of the history of classical approach (basing on Marx)
Labour as ‘immanent measure’ (impact of Hegel)
The notion of abstract labour; role of circulation, and of money: right track or distortion?

11. The scope of political economy
Rubin : the capitalist society ; the ‘restrictive version’
Stepanov : the historical process ; the ‘broad version’

12. Political results of the debates by the 1930s
Rubin’s approach condemned as ‘Menshevist idealism’
Bogdanov’s and Stepanov’s approach condemned as ‘mechanicism’
The existence of the ‘truly dialectical approach’ was postulated, but the theory of socialist economy was still missing