Jim D.'s Micro Marx

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 09/18/00 11:05AM >>>
At 10:25 AM 9/18/00 -0400, you wrote:

> >>> jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 09/15/00 05:38PM >>>
> >I guess I should throw in, for Marx , the basic contradiction of
> >capitalism is the private (micro) nature of appropropriation and the
> >social (macro) nature of production.
>
>right. As far as I know, Marx never said that. Engels did, though.
>
>
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>CB: Don't you think Engels said it "for Marx" ?

this sounds like you think that Marx was the fount of truth, while Engels
was only a popularizer.

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CB: Actually, I think they substantially agreed on all basics and fundamentals of Marxism, including that the private nature of appropriation and the social nature of production is capitalism's central contradiction. So, when Engels says it, we can be very sure that Marx agrees with it. But, if there is no direct quote of Marx on it, usages such as " for Marx" are appropriate, since the whole thing is named after Marx. It is another way of saying, for Marxism .

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But they were two separate men, often having different emphases.

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CB: Yes, they were into the division of labor ( social nature of production) even in their intellectual production. So, there was some dividing up the work, but, of course, most of it is overlapping. I don't see the different emphases including that they disagreed on the point on the social nature of production and the private nature of appropriation as a key contradiction in captialism.

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 Engels,
for example, went further in emphasizing the "scientific" side of
scientific socialism (though Draper argues that Marx found an early version
of E's essay on scientific socialism to be excessively pro-Utopian
socialist).

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CB: I am not sure whether Draper is saying that Engels emphasizes the "scientific" or if Marx emphasizes the "scientific. Based on my reading of Marx and Engels, they both emphasize the "scientific" and material (which is the scientific) compared to most of the philosophical and intellectuals of their day.  As between, Marx and Engels , they have pretty much agreement on the degree of emphasis on science. They are especially unique in applying science to history and what today is called "social science". They are main founders of social science. Marx basically claims to have discovered the scientific and material basis for history.

Historical materialism is scientific history, though Marx didn't use the term "historical materialism" and Engels did ( or did he ? he did use the term "materialist dialectics").  Engels did use the phrase materialist conception of history.

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 Engels seems to have been a better economist (as we define the
term these days, i.e., understanding superficial market phenomena). There's
a whole school of conservative economists who give Engels credit for Marx's
economics. Engels was more interested in military matters and wrote a large
number of articles on them.

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CB: Of course, Engels had more practical experience with economics than Marx, since , Engels was a capitalist in a firm.  This is an important check on the unity of theory and practice in Marxist economics, this something of a division of labor or areas of emphasized "responsibility". For this reason, I don't mind that Engels assembled Vols II and III of _Capital_, and notebooks _Theories of Surplus Value_

Engels was a major in artillery , and fought in war in Germany for the revolutionary sections. He wrote encyclopedia articles in military science and the history of force.

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The two guys worked together a lot and influenced each other. (Like Sweezy
& Magdoff?)

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CB: Yea, Holmes and Watson, Venus and Sarena Williams, Ruth and Gehrig, Batman and Robin. Marxism was ,appropriately enough, a collective effort.