Re: [Marxism] Zizek on Marx at "Marxism 2007",

[Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sayan Bhattacharyya writes:

> "Zizek's polite response was that, essentially, the 
> world has changedjust a little bit since Marx wrote
Das > Kapital. It had even changed bythe end of Marx's
life, 

That the world has changed since the time that Marx
wrote Capital is a banality.  As an argument for or
against the validity of the account of Capital offered
by Marx it is inadmissable.

Unfortunately, Zizek's historical reading of Capital
was a common one in the historical workers' and
socialist movements.  Thus, some viewed Marx's work as
simply an attempt to offer an account of 19th Century
English competitive capitalism, which thus needed to
be updated by Lenin to provide an account of
imperialist capital, and so on and so forth.  

What these historical readings fail to understand is
that Marx's account is an attempt to depict the logic
of capitalism at its "ideal average", not a particular
geographical capitalism or the capitalism of a
particular period.  Marx is interested in giving an
account of the dynamics and characteristics of the
capitalist relations of production, Marx is clarifying
*what make's capitalism **capitalism**.  When one
bears that in mind, it is difficult to see why anyone
would need to "update" Das Kapital, as Zizek suggest. 
Of course, there is always a need for examinations of
Capitalism in its concrete manifestations and
historical modes of regulation, but that in no way
invalidates the account of Marx.

> something he recognised in his later writings when
he > acknowledged that the labour theory of value
breaks 
> down when knowledge becomes a primary source of 
> value.

Presumably Zizek is referring to the same passage in
the Grundrisse (MEW 42, page 601) which has been
eagerly adopted by the likes of Antonio Negri and
others who misunderstand Marx's argumentation.  But if
Zizek and Negri would read closer, the reduction of
socially necessary labor time required for the
production of a commodity in no way implies a
breakdown  of the law of value.  In fact, this process
is the foundation for the production of relative
surplus value, as described by Marx in Volume 1.




      
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