Charles Brown wrote:
> Marx has
> the category "surplus product"in
> Capital to encompass both
> the surplus-value of capitalism
> and the exploited wealth in
> feudalism and slavery. All CLASS
> societies have exploitation in
> common. This is a transhistorical
> category ( though not pan human
> because of the pre-class societies).
well, we're gonna disagree here. my reading of marx is that he begins a critique of political economy precisely by refusing the ways in which ricardo (for instance) insists on distinguishing between the form and essence of labour, that is, makes it into a transhistorical category. he commends ricardo for formulating the labour theory of value (i.e.., as the decisive premise of capitalism), but rejects the ways in which this is regarded only as a particular manifestation of labour as a transhistorical category. for marx, it is the content of labour in capitalism which is also specifically capitalist.
by distinguishing forma and content, essence from appearance, ricardo is able to generate putative solutions to capitalism which still preserve the capitalist form and content of labour: i.e.., redistributive solutions which allow the (ostensible) essence of labour to be revealed (through redistribution and/or a transfer of ownership to a social register) and abolishes only the appearance of this labour conceived as a transhistorical. where marx finds fault in this is exactly by insisting that you cannot distinguish between essence and appearance, that is between the particular form of labour as it exists under capitalism and its 'essence'. time and again, marx insists there is no such thing (he calls it a phantom) of labour as such.
> Charles: The category that corresponds
> best to "racism" or national chauvinism
> is the state. The conquest of other
> peoples by armies arises within the
> complex patriarchal family-private property-
> state.
i'm not sure what you mean here. are you saying that racism is inseparable from the processes of colonisation and the emergence of the nation-state? if so, i agree. but colonisation and the nation-state as we experience it is qualitatively different from forms such as the roman empire and the city-states of ancient greece - there is not a difference in degrees of this or that quality, they are incommensurable.
i am not interested in buttressing a notion of progress and its antithesis (tradition). maybe i'd go further. i think that once you claim that sexism and racism and homophobia (maybe we should call it homofascination also?) are things from the past, then they become beacons for those who want to protect themselves against the ravages (real ones, it aint that smooth is it?) of so-called progress, and we give succour to those (like rorty) who claim that capitalism is good because ti's the most rational. it occurs to me to ask the question in this context of why the major struggles of today are pitched as struggles between rational, modern capitalism and traditional identity, including various fundamentalisms. now, we can try and revive the progressivist joy of capitalism, which i reckon just makes us the allies of the neo-liberals, or we can begin to explain to ourselves the existence of sexism and racism and nationalism.... without splitting their essence from their appearance (as if they are either epiphenomental or functional to capitalism but not creatures of it).
i have to admit that it is tempting at various times to do both, as evidenced by (alternately.) claims to a lost past that was taken away (finding comfort in tradition) or claims about the eventual necessity of overcoming these things because they are, anyways, things from the past. both are idealizations made in the present, dreams of the past or future depicted in the here and now, and so carry the burden of this, as marx went to great lengths to insist. there is a dialectic here, for sure. progressivism and traditionalism do a regular two-step. but dialectics isn't about designating one side of this, the thesis or antithesis, as history or future, essence or appearance, as marx's critique of hegel shows. you don't get to celebrate the good side against the bad side, applaud the revelation of essence against appearance, unless you want to tell (implicitly or otherwise) idealist stories about the present, in which essence and appearance are necessarily (not contingently) linked.
angela