Re: [PEN-L:839] Query on Marx

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

However,  the "earliest forms of appearance of a thing" are not the same as 
"origins".
Origins are specifically the "substance" and causes , and not mere form of 
appearance
of a thing.

CB

>>> ehrbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 08/25/00 01:50PM >>>

Perhaps Carrol means the following footnote in Chapter 15,
the machinery chapter, of Capital I.  Here Marx writes:

 The English, who have a tendency to look upon the earliest
 form of appearance of a thing as the cause of its existence, are in the
 habit of attributing the long hours of work in factories to the
 extensive kidnapping of children, practised by capitalists in the
 infancy of the factory system, on workhouses and orphanages, by means
 of which robbery, unresisting material for exploitation was procured.

I think it is on p. 406 in the MECW edition of Capital.

Hans Ehrbar.

>>>>> On Fri, 25 Aug 2000 12:31:27 -0500, Carrol Cox
>>>>> <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx> said:

> Someplace in Marx's works  there is a passage in which he specifically
> mocks the capitalist tendency to explain a phenomenon by explaining its
> origins. Can anyone identify that passage for me? It may even be in Vol.
> 1 of *Capital*.

> Carrol