Re: Re: reform and rev

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Paris Commune caused a flurry of interest in Marx -- especially by
mainstream economists.

On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 10:13:37AM -0800, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> >
> >
> >CB: The difference between Marx and others is the Russian, Chinese
> >and other  socialist revolutions.  We are studying Marx because of
> >the Bolsheviks and the Russian Rev.
>
> Please Charles speak for yourself.
>
> For one thing, I do not think Marx developed a theory of the transfer
> of value in and through the world market that gives expression to
> revolutionary aspirations of national revolts in which peasants,
> petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat have been engaged. The Cuban
> revolution was not waged against a pure advanced capitalism by a pure
> proletariat of the sorts imagined by Marx in his theoretical work.
> This has erroneously led some Marxists to dismiss outright such
> revolutions (say the Cuban and Sandinista revolutions) as nationalist
> reaction and to ridicule first world supporters of them as "third
> worldists", but to combat this view one has to in fact go beyond
> Marx's theory of a pure capitalism (no trade, only two classes, etc)
> to show that without protection in the real world market weaker
> national capitals are as a result of the tranfer of value in
> circulation subject to devaluation and endemic crisis, which in turn
> lead to financial/debt crises. Some orthodox Marxists would dismiss
> this kind of theory of dependency because it is "circulationist", but
> it is in fact a development of Marx's theory of production price in
> the third volume of Capital.
>
> The reason why so many Marxists have difficulty in understanding the
> progressive thrust of many third world revolutions has been that they
> only study Marx, and do not beyond him. Two people who have tried to
> go beyond Marx here are Guglielmo Carchedi and  Enrique Dussel from
> whose latest book (edited by the way by Fred Moseley) I draw in the
> above.
>
> Second, it is patently absurd to say that Marx was not studied before
> the revolutions that you mention and imply that people would have
> ceased studying Marx if not for those revolutions.
>
> Rakesh
>
> Towards An Unknown Marx: A Commentary on the Manuscripts of 1861-63
> (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics, Volume 34) by Fred
> Moseley, Yolanda Angulo (Translator), Enrique D. Dussel
>

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx