Re: AUT: Remarks on Midnight Notes

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Montyneill@xxxxxxx wrote:

>In a later post, Jerry added, in reply to Doug:
>
>
>The same "guy" who wrote the "Theses on Fuerbach" wrote (in July, 1867 in
>the "Preface to the First Edition" to _Capital_, Volume 1):
>
>"... it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the economic law of
>modern society" (Penguin ed., p. 92).
>
>Thus, I would suggest that I have the same "take" on this question as that
>"guy".
>
>Yes, the role of book; but the book should be understood in a wider context --
>as Doug and I have suggested.

Even the page Jerry's quote comes from is pretty clear on why Marx wanted
to "reveal the economic law of modern society." The immediate context it
comes from is: "Even when a society has begun to track down the natural
laws of its movement - and it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal
the economic law of motion of modern society - it can neither leap over the
natural phases of its development or remove them by decree. But it can
shorten and lessen the birth-pangs." Sounds like more than a theoretical
exercise to me. At the bottom of the page we read the phrase "a radical
change in the existing relations between capital and labour is...evident
and inevitable," a phrase repeated almost exactly in the next sentence -  a
paragraph concluding, "[W]ithin the ruling classes themselves, the
foreboding is emerging that the present society is no solid crystal, but an
organism capable of change, and constantly engaged in the process of
change."

No, Marx wasn't writing a handbook for revolutionaries, nor was he writing
recipes for the cook-shops of the future, but it's pretty clear that he
wanted to reveal the laws of motion of the modern economy with the intent
of transforming it. No doubt Jerry knows this, and it's only his hatred of
me that makes him argue otherwise.

Doug





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