Re: Picking up the thread....

[dmschanoes <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nothing worries me more than finding myself agreeing with others, save the prospect of others actually agreeing with me.  Nevertheless, I find JD's exploration and explication of this issue very enlightening-- and indeed Marx never completed, even internally, this part of his work, expressing "ambivalence" as to the make-up and meaning of overproduction i.e.  "under-consumption," "disproportionality," "over-accumulation."

 

And capital certainly "deviates" or "manifests" the abstract in "imperfect," attenuated, distorted, real forms.

 

Still, the centrality of this conflict between the abstract "means and relations" gives the clearest method and insight into actual analyses of the grim and grimey real forms, i.e the struggle of revolution and counterrevolution; property and labor.

 

dms

----- Original Message -----

From: Devine, James

To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 2:44 PM

Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Picking up the thread....

I agree with David S. that the idea of the clash of the relations of production and the forces of production is central to Marx's theory, even if Marx didn't use that phraseology very often. In his preface to A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, he made it clear that he was presenting only the "guiding principle of my studies" (a heuristic) rather than a finished theory. A lot of the rest of his theory is a development of that idea.