Marx’s early historical-specificity claims are general where Capital specifies them

Evidence

Each “mode of production,” each “mode of cooperation” is “determinate”: historically specific. The latter “results from” or “is bound up with” the former. The premise of historical specificity in this relation between the two relations—the “double relationship”—is insisted on throughout: but always in a very general, epochal, way. One way of measuring the distance—and the difference—between the Marx of this period and the Marx of Capital is precisely by comparing these general formulations with the chapters on “Co-operation” and “The Division of Labour and Manufacture” in Capital , Volume I (chs. 13 and 14) to see how far the concept of historical specificity could itself be further specified. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 480

Categorization

• XREF: The development from epochal generalization to concretely specified analysis tracks a pattern recognizable in other thinkers’ mature work refining early frameworks. — connects to: Marx’s early speculations about India are best judged from the standpoint of Capital. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1084
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: exactly how do Capital’s Cooperation and Division of Labour chapters specify what German Ideology left epochal?
• SEED: Possible essay angle: the intellectual maturation pattern of moving a concept from ‘historically specific’ faith to concrete differential analysis, using Marx’s development as a case study.