Re: [OPE-L] 'primitive' or 'original', etc.

["michael a. lebowitz" <mlebowit@xxxxxx>]

At 12:45 10/09/2006, jerry wrote:
>  One consequence of 
> Marx's inability to write the proposed
> book on The State in the 6-book-plan is that it  reinforced an
> unfortunate
> tendency among Marxists to downplay the theoretical and historical role
> of
> the state within the cmp.  This has had unfortunate political
> consequences
> as well, including an unnecessarily wide divide among (most)
> anarchists
> and (most) Marxists.  Yet another consequence of the "one-sided
> Marxism"
> which Mike L subjected to critique in his book _Beyond Capital_: we
> must
> go "beyond capital"   not only to consider the
> subject (capitalism, not
> merely  capital) from  the standpoint of wage-labor but also
> to
> systematically consider the role of the state,  trade, and the world
> market.  Maybe Mike is
> going to write the sequels?  Probably not -- he's already got a full
> plate,
> a hectic schedule, and other commitments. 

True, the plate is overflowing. Actually, I did take a bit of a shot at
this in the following: ?Situating the Capitalist State,? published in
Antonio Callari et al, Marxism in the Post-Modern Age: Confronting the
New World Order (New York: Guilford Publishers, 1995). A slightly
revised version will appear in my Following Marx: the method of
political economy (Brill, 2007). The main focus is to look at the
concept of the capitalist state once we incorporate the side of workers
struggling for themselves and attempting to use the state as their own
agency. I noted, though: 'By the same logic, the concept of the state
itself as initially developed in Book IV must be incomplete. The full and
adequate development of the concept of the capitalist state occurs only
when the state is considered in the context of the world market (the
subject matter of the concluding book) ?in which production is posited as
a totality together with all its moments? (Marx, 1973: 264, 273). I.e.,
the aspect that the state takes on in the context of competing national
capitals and nation-states is essential to understanding the capitalist
state.'

        

un abrazo
revolucionario,

        

michael

Michael A. Lebowitz

Professor Emeritus

Economics Department

Simon Fraser University

Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6

Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at

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