Re: Capital is wrong (fwd)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Wayne Austin" <aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
To: "Carl Dassbach" <dassbach@mtu.edu>
Cc: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2000 10:53 PM
Subject: Re: Capital is wrong (fwd)


>
> I would tend to agree with this except that George's point was a
> methodological one.
>

Andy

I did not want to get overly involved in this question but I now feel that I
must respond to your claim that this is a methodological issue.
Unfortunately, my answer is "yes" but "no"   - yes, because beginning with
the commodity is rooted in Marx's methodology of exposition and  "no"
because it has nothing to do with his methodology of investigation.  The key
to understanding my claims (which I present below in a schematic form) is
reading and locating  the Grundrisse and Capital in relationship to Marx's
discussion in the section in the Introduction to the Grundrisse called "The
Method on Political Economy." I also think that Karel Kosik's Dialectics of
the Concrete offers some important insights into this issue.

Marx is clear (I don't recall where) that the order of exposition is not the
same as the order of investigation or, to put it somewhat differently,
investigation and exposition most follow different methods..

The Grundrisse must be seen as "investigation" as such it follows, to a
certain extent, what Marx called the "method of classical political
economist" - the movement from (chaotic) concrete to ever thinner
abstractions
(I don't have the text with me at the moment, I'm at home and its in my
office so I am quoting from memory).  Marx begins with the chaotic concrete
and refines it to ever thinner abstractions until he arrives at the
commodity (and  "arrives' is the right word because the section on the
commodity is at the end of the Grundrisse). But for Marx, this is movement
to ever thinner abstractions which is, so to speak, the "whole voyage" for
the classical political economist, is only half the trip.   In effect, he
says that what  classical  political economy takes as it end, "ever thinner
abstractions"  I take as the starting point OF MY EXPOSITION( as is well
known the section on the commodity in the Grundrisse has a notation by Marx
that "this section is to be brought forward.")

In Capital, his exposition, Marx's begins from the thinnest possible
abstraction - the commodity - and adds more abstractions and increases
complexity in order to recreate the concrete totality - remember the
original plan of Capital was to begin with the commodity and end at the
world market.    But this totality that Marx is trying to recreate is not
the same totality that one begun the investigation from.  This first
totality was immediate and chaotic, it had to be refined into ever thinner
concepts, the second totality is structured and ordered because it
constructed from these abstraction.  Second, this totality is concrete, like
the real world, it is not the result of simple determinations  but it is
"the unity of many determinations".  Third, this totality only exists in the
mind because this is the only way that the "thinking head can appropriate
the world" - by reconstructing it in thought.  (Hence, our need for praxis)

Marx begins with the commodity not because it is the most prevalent form but
because it is the cell form of capitalist society - the thinnest abstraction
that contains within it all the contradictions of capitalism.  From the
commodity he strives to recreate the totality as a structured totality.
Sadly, he never completed the project but, in a certain sense, it is
probably better that he didn't because in being completed it would have
immediately been outdated.

Carl Dassbach