Re: [Marxism] Eight Theses on the Economic Crisis

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

"S. Artesian" wrote:
> 
> There is nothing  "least thought through" in Marx's discussion of this
> facet.

Socialists waste an awful lot of time worrying the FROP, and I'm not
going to try to decide it here. But I will add a couple points about the
context in which it appears.

C3 is the "least thought through" because the mss. was the oldest (first
written) of the three volumes of Capital, and never revised and
rethought as was the case with Vols. 1 & 2. Moreover, as Engels himself
mentions those mss. were a mess. Finally, it's not wholly clear how much
is Marx and how much is Engels trying to make something coherent out of
a seriously unfinished set of documents. See

http://www.oekonomiekritik.de/303Engels%20Edition%20Engl.htm

Here is the abstract:

Abstract: Since Engels published the third volume of Capital out of
Marx's bequest, it was asked how strongly he had intervened into Marx's
text. Marx's original manuscript, firstly published in 1993, shows that
Engels made nearly on each page textual modifications, which he did not
indicate. A considerable number of these modifications concerns not only
stylistical aspects. Especially, the meaning of crisis theory and the
theoretical status of credit theory were shifted. The text published by
Engels is not a mere edition of Marx's manuscript, but a far-reaching
adaptation, which can no longer be considered as volume III of Marx's
Capital. Any future discussion will have to refer to Marx's original
text.

"Engels' Edition of the Third Volume of Capital and Marx's Original
Manuscript," by Michael Heinrich 
[Science and Society vol. 60, no.4, Winter 1996/97, pp. 452-466]

Aside from the shaky theoretical basis of FROP, I'm a bit disturbed by
what seems to be this list's obsessive concern with proving over and
over again that the world economy is in deep shit at the present time.
What is gained by all that? One interpretation of all these fwds from
NYT & FT 7 other sources is that no one on the list has the least
fucking idea of how to go out and organize against capitalism so they
content themselves with proving to each other that bad thikngs are
happening.

Carrolk


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