needs, wants, definitions

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 12/02/00 12:28PM >>>
>Marx rarely defines his times except contextually.

In retrospect, that was one of his mistakes (or rather, he should have
explained his method more clearly). It makes sense (in context, of course),
but it confuses later readers, just as it probably confused people at the
time. People like Bertell Ollman or Paul Sweezy have to come along to
explain Marx's use of language.

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CB: I think Marx does some defining of his terms. On  one pertinent here , he says:

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities," [1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.


A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. [2] Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.

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CB: This passage does a pretty good job of defining "wants", and is the beginning of defining "commodities". Just after this "use-value" and then "exchange-value" are defined (and defining)

On brief definitions ( as opposed to definition by use extensively as Marx does in _Capital_, etc.) , Lenin said all definitions in general are of conditional and relative value:

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.

But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features: ( from _Imperialism_)