>d. Doug misses Paul's argument that the inspectors' reports of
>factory conditions served as
>confirmation of tendencies Marx was able to theorize due to the power of
>abstraction he employed. The way Doug puts it, one would think Capital was
>simply a description of early industrial capitalism, not a theory of its
>laws of motion.
>
>e. Paul's argument--as I understood it--was that while by itself Marx's
>theory provides little assistance in understanding why the crisis broke
>out in Thailand in a certain market on a certain date, it does illuminate
>the general limits and crisis tendency of the world capitalist system as a
>whole, though it cannot explain well the relative fortunes of single
>capitalists or even nations over the rest.
We've been over this territory lots of times before. My reaction to d) is that Capital is both things, the empiricism and the theorizing, in fruitful interrelation. My reaction to e) is that it's so vague as to be useless. So capitalism has crisis tendencies at some time and some place. Well, yes it does, but why do they break out where they do and when?
I think that kind of theorizing is often found with an abstract, maximalist politics - unless you do the revolution whole hog and worldwide, there's nothing you can do at all.
Abstracting from nations and states is madness. Capital would be nowhere without its states, and capitalism plays itself out across space. That's why I brought up David Harvey in our earlier exchange, Rakesh - capitalism plays itself out globally but in countless local manifestations. How can you theorize capitalism without theorizing space and place?
Doug