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Re: the Communist Manifesto: critique by Louis Proyect 24 March 2002 14:36 UTC |
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On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 21:59:18 -0500, Trich Ganesh wrote: >Two comments: (1) Marx himself almost never uses >the term "capitalism": in volume 1 - the only >one of the three (or four) volumes to be >published in his lifetime - the term appears >almost accidentally, in two (or three) >different places; (2) to reject the existence >or otherwise of the concept "capitalism" is not >to reject as non-existent the effects >of processes of capital accumulation >that are worldwide and continue to shape and re- >shape world history. My only caveat is that we don't confuse "capital accumulation" with the process of savings and investment that occurs with publicly owned firms in postcapitalist societies. That was the bone of contention between me and Harry Cleaver a couple of weeks ago when discussing Cuba. If a privately owned sugar plantation during Batista's reign plowed profits back into machinery, etc. (and shopping trips to Miami), that's capital accumulation. If the same plantation becomes people's property and plows the profits into machinery, medical clinics and schools, that is not capital accumulation. Capital accumulation is a term that does not make sense abstracted from the total ensemble of class relations. In Cuba, the decisive fact after 1959 is that the masses imposed their political will on the economy by dint of their armed power. This aspect of Marx's thought that goes by the controversial (in some circles) term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is often given short shrift in academic Marxist circles. This is equivalent to removing the revolutionary core of his thought. -- Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 03/24/2002 Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
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