[Marxism] Volume 3

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Philip Ferguson:

Vol 3 is particularly vital, because it's where Marx's crisis theory is laid
out.  In fact there is about 50 pages spent on elaborating the law of the
tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the counteracting tendencies and so
on.

If revolutionary practice is informed by revolutionary theory, then
there would, at least, be positions you do and don't argue based on the
crisis theory outlined in vol 3.  For instance, making progressive taxation
a major demand to improve things in the context of capitalist crisis
wouldn't make sense.

One of the things that has struck me in recent years is how a lot of
economic demands put forward by left groups might be logically
consistent with vol 1 - where Marx is working at the most abstract level-
but not with vol 3, where everything is brought together (production and
circulation).

Phil

^^^^
CB: (I ask these questions in a comradely tone)

Isn't Marx's position that crises _for the working class_ of overproduction
cannot be overcome with reforms ? If so, wouldn't this mean that even
Vol.3's logic cannot give us proposals for economic demands that will avoid
crisis for great masses of workers ? In other words, whatever economic
demands Vol. 3 implies concerning crises of overproducion, they are still
reforms. We must make reform demands, but Marx's emphasis is on
revolutionary action.

Also, if Vol.3's content is critical for guiding any practice by working
class partisans, wouldn't Marx have taken the time to make sure he completed
and published the parts pertinent to that ? He finished Vol. 1 in 1867, or
so.  He dies in 1883. I know he was ill a lot, but I would think he would
work to finish all of the most important aspects of his thesis. This is an
indirect inference on my part, but with Marx's emphasis on practice, it
seems to me that he would not have left to the executor of his estate the
completion of theory he considered critical to working class practice. Or
put another way, if Vol. 3 is the best theoretical basis for reformist
practice, perhaps Marx left it undone on purpose so that we wouldn't get
bogged down in being experts at reform. Marx didn't discourage actions for
reform, but not as the primary activity of Marxists.

In all volumes of _Capital_  Marx discusses contradictions that are
insolubale without ending capitalism. Vol. 1's  proof of exploitation as the
source of the wealth of the bourgeoisie provides certainty (confidence) and
_motivation_ for workers to take revolutionary action to more evenly divide
that wealth. I'm thinking that is its connection to practice.









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