Re: Capital is wrong

[Hinrich Kuhls <kls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:09 11.03.00 -0600, Carrol Cox wrote:

>
>George should probably read the first section of Volume II of
>Capital, which I tend to think of as Marx's most extraordinary
>achievement.
>

Why do you suggest the first section of Volume II?

Marx:

"In Book I we analysed the phenomena which constitute the process of
capitalist production as such, as the immediate productive process, with no
regard for any of the secondary effects of outside influences. But this
immediate process of production does not exhaust the life span of capital.
It is supplemented in the actual world by the process of circulation, which
was the object of study in Book II. In the latter, namely in Part III,
which treated the process of circulation as a medium for the process of
social reproduction, it developed that the capitalist process of production
taken as a whole represents a synthesis of the processes of production and
circulation. Considering what this third book treats, it cannot confine
itself to general reflection relative to this synthesis. On the contrary,
it must locate and describe the concrete forms which grow out of the
*movements of capital as a whole*. In their actual movement capitals
confront each other in such concrete shape, for which the form of capital
in the immediate process of production, just as its form in the process of
circulation, appear only as special instances. The various forms of
capital, as evolved in this book, thus approach step by step the form which
they assume on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals
upon one another, in competition, and in the ordinary consciousness of the
agents of production themselves."

[Marx, opening paragraph of Capital, Volume III: The Process of Capitalist
Production as a Whole]

And could you elaborate on "Marx's most extraordinary achievement"?

HK