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[ASINHA@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Heinz Kurz said:
As regards Ajit Sinha's comment I was not clear whether your interpretation of
Marx implies that the latter advocated some (crude?) determinism. In my view
such an interpretation would not be warranted.
________________________________

I'm not sure what is meant by "crude determinism". But let me explain my
position, then you can make a judgement. My reading of CAPITAL (which is highly
influenced by Althusser and Sraffa) is by no means the majority opinion, and I
do anticipate most of the people having some differences.

My besic point in the previous post was to stress that the capitalist
reproductive system is through and through "endogenous" in Marx's economic
analysis. And thus there is atheory of endogenous technical change and growth
in Marx. This is quite unique to Marx because in all other economic theories
the "goal" of production is taken to be consumption. That is, there is a
"reason" to production; and that "reason" is the satisfaction of wants and
desires. Adam Smith's Man is endowed with certain propensities, at the root of
which lies "man's desire to better his condition". Ricardo seems to be in
complete agreement with Adam Smith when he says: "...for I was, and am, deeply
impressed with the truth of the observation of Adam Smith, that 'the desire for
food is limited in every man, by the narrow capacity of the human stomach, but
the desire of the conveniences, and ornaments of building, dress, equipage and
household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary". (PRINCIPLES,
307, Cambridge). Thus, there is a LINEAR structure to the "reason" of
production-- our needs and desires give rise to production. Marx's proclamation
that for the capitalist "Accumulate, accumulate! that is Moses and the
prophets!", and "Except as capital personified, the capitalist has no
historical value, and no right to historical existence which, to use
Linchnowsky's amusing expression, 'ain't got no date'..."; is a radical
critique of the above position. Marx contends that there is no "reason" for
production in capitalism-- it produces to produce at a larger scale. The
subject-- the agent-- disappears from the scene. Thus the point I was making
that if the "reason" for production is rooted in "Man's" needs and desires,
then accumulation, even just out of profit, would depend on the consumption-
savings decision on the part of the capitalists. This is not the case with
Marx. He simply does not leave much for the capitalists to make a decision
about. The forces of competition compels, "as a coercive external force", the
capitalists to consume to the minimum and accumulate to the maximum: "...
Luxury enters into capital's expenses of reproduction."

Of course, the obvious question that would be raised is that, but of course,
human beings do the things and constitute any system and there is always a
"reason" to their action. My answer is: the so called "reason" to our action
is historical, i.e. constituted within a social formation and thus does not
lay "outside" where one could anchor an economic theory to. The question of
agants and agants' action is the question of the subject and its subjectivity.
It would be very difficult to maintain any proposition about "nature of Man"--
insatiability, rationality, or whatever. Baudrillard in THE MIRROR OF
PRODUCTION talks about many tribal socities whose "economies" has/had no notion
of "production". The economies function on the notion of exchange with nature.
Thus, human and animal sacrifices etc.-- as a price paid to nature. In these
economies when "surplus" arises (by accident) it is immediately decimated
through carnivals etc. rather than saved and accumulated. The subject of
Medieval Europe was the subject of God. The church played a large role in
in constituting this subjectivity that sustained and reproduced the feudal
relations. Similarly, the modern subject of capitalism is constituted largely
by the schools and mass media as the subject of a nation-- the citizen subject,
as a member of a class--honest and hard working proletariat subject etc. So the
subjectivity or the "reason" for agents' actions are themselves produced under
a domination of a particular mode of production.

I think I should stop here.

                           Cheers, ajit Sinha