Re: [Marxism] Imperialism

[Mehmet Cagatay <mehmetcagatayaydin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Angelus Novus wrote:

"What I mean is that Lenin, who never made a complete
break with Kautskyism, never left behind the classic
perspective of the German Social Democracy which was
his model and inspiration, that Marx's Capital is
intended as a work of history, an account of the
historical trajectory of English capitalism, rather
than an abstract logical account of the laws of
capitalism at its "ideal average".

The idea is that Marx's Capital was viewed as an
account of a "competitive capitalism" which is no
longer existing in the age of "imperialism".

....

Angelus, are you sure that you have read Lenin? For instance:

"Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition
appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a ?natural law?.
Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of
Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had
proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of
production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to
monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing
mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of
monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that ?Marxism is refuted?. But
facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to
be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that
differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of
protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in
the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the
rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a
general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of
capitalism."

and Marx:

"M. Proudhon talks of nothing but modern monopoly engendered by
competition. But we all know that competition was engendered by feudal
monopoly. Thus competition was originally the opposite of monopoly and not
monopoly the opposite of competition. So that modern monopoly is not a
simple antithesis, it is on the contrary the true synthesis.

Thesis: Feudal monopoly, before competition.

Antithesis: Competition.

Synthesis: Modern monopoly, which is the negation of feudal monopoly, in
so far as it implies the system of competition, and the negation of
competition in so far as it is monopoly.

Thus modern monopoly, bourgeois monopoly, is synthetic monopoly, the
negation of the negation, the unity of opposites. It is monopoly in the
pure, normal, rational state."
 

Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/


      
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