Demand (1847)

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This extract is in Marx's notebook which contains his manuscript "Wages" and is dated December 1847. There is no direct indication of its purpose in the extant manuscripts or letters. It might have been a preparatory outline either for the "Speech on the Question of Free Trade" which Marx delivered on January 9, 1848 at the meeting of the Brussels Democratic Association, or for lectures on political economy which he delivered in December 1847 to the German Workers' Society in Brussels (see notes 219 and 246). It may also have been intended for a non-extant economic work by Marx.

Marx made a few references in the text to one of his notebooks of excerpts dating to the summer of 1847. The notebook contains a synopsis of G. Gülich’s book, Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus der bedeutendsten handeltreibenden Staaten unserer Zeit, Bd. 1-5, Jena, 1830-45. The passages referred to are in Vol. 1. Marx usually wrote the authors name as Jülich and in the manuscript used only the initial letter “J” to denote the author.

1) Demand. Most economists treat it almost exclusively from the individual standpoint. The world historic development of demand, its first universal development, depends firstly on the products of the various countries of the world becoming known to each other. If in the further course of development demand creates intercourse, initially it is intercourse which creates demand. Demand is the material content of intercourse, the totality of the objects of exchange, of the commodities which come into exchange and trade. Wars, voyages of discovery, etc., all historical events whereby nations are brought into contact, are all so many conditions of expanding demand, of the formation of the world market. The growth of demand consists directly in the first place in the fact that already existing products of various countries <m contact, in A> are being exchanged. Demand gradually loses its local etc. character and becomes cosmopolitan. The production of all countries thus enters more and more into the consumption of the individuals of <all regions) of a country.

The Crusades, for example, by making known the products of the Orient, greatly increased the demand for such products in Western Europe. (Cf. J., Notebook III, p. 106.) Places where these products stream together for exchange constitute the world market towns; the world market appeared in this form in particular before the discovery of America. In the 14th and 15th centuries Constantinople, the Italian cities, Bruges and London.

Also still at the same time like fairs, namely the caravan-like streaming together of merchants. In the 19th century, for example, fairs are of quite subordinate significance. (Cf. J., Notebook III, p. 106.)

How much less these market places depend on their own industry than the latter and its prosperity depend simply on their being the general stores, is proved by the decay of the trade of the Italian cities after 1498, from the moment when Lisbon became the chief market for Indian fabrics and spices. Antwerp, too, still had the same limited character in the 16th century as Bruges etc. earlier.

Trade supremacy. The first dominant trading nation are the Dutch (from end of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century). Until then there were only first trading towns. The Spaniards and Portuguese form the transition from dominant trading towns to dominant trading nations. Carrying trade and fisheries nevertheless still form a decisive constituent of Dutch supremacy.

The <agricultural> European North-East in the relation of an agricultural country to the European West. In the same measure in which here industry and shipbuilding increase, the demand for the raw products of the North-East increases and with it their production.

Holland as the first trading and industrial nation, from the end of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century, is also the first nation for whom its domestic agriculture is insufficient and where the population is growing in far too great a proportion to domestic agriculture. Therefore carries on the first large-scale trade in grain. Amsterdam becomes the chief granary of Western Europe. (Cf. J., Notebook III, p. 107).