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This very peculiar Essence-Logicis not overcome when Marx moves to the more concrete level of investigation. The same fundamental contradictions and antagonisms remain after Marx establishes that generalised commodity­ production is capitalist production. In stark contrast to Hegel's aj7’irmative systematic dialectic, in which later levels overcome the fundamental contra­ dictions and shortcomings examined earlier, in Marx’scritical systematic dia­ 33 Marx 1986 [1857—8],p. 94. 34 Marx 1986 [1857—8],p.

Arthur uses up all of the former, so to speak, by the time he gets to Marx's relatively early notion of ‘the general formula of capital’ (the determinations that follow then are mapped to the categories from Hegel’sPhilosophyof Nature). For Meaney the mapping with the Logicextends much further, covering all the levels of abstraction traversed in the Grundrisse. I believe there are numerous cases in which the correspondence between a specific determination in Marx’s ordering and a specific Hegelian category defended by one is no less illuminating than the different correspondence proposed by the other.

Comprehension thus entails beginning the systematic exposition with the most simple or abstract determinations of the whole identified in the work of cognition. The development of the systematic exposition starts from these abstract determinations and, through the development of progressively more concrete determinations, finally arrives at the knowledge of ‘real capital’ as an organic unity. In this way, scientific exposition is for Marx what it is for Hegel, namely, circular in nature. ‘Real capital’ is latent or immanent even in the simplest form of simple circulation.