dialectics, etc.

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had written: >>The basis for Marx's critique is expressed pretty clearly
in the 1844
MANUSCRIPTS, which Marx never repudiated.<<

Ajit comments:>But Jim, Marx never needed to repudiate it because he never
even tried to publish it.<

right; as usual Ajit is erudite in his knowledge of Marx's writings. I
didn't make it as clear as I should have that I meant that he never
repudiated its _content_, specifically the analysis of what capitalism does
to workers in production. His analysis did change in a lot of ways, but in
CAPITAL, he still says a lot about alienation without using that word. As
with most things in Marx, he built on his youthful writings and became more
and more empirically-oriented and engaged with political economy (to
Ricardo's dismay).

I think the MANUSCRIPTS are very important. He has some interesting things
to say about communism. In that book, communism can be a bad thing, though
it need not be so.

Of course, just as with his love poetry, there's no a priori reason to
assume that Marx was accurate in his theory, even that of CAPITAL.

In pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine