<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1458" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Doug:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>'As Antonio
Callari said <BR>years ago at a meeting of the International Working Group on
Value <BR>Theory, they use it as a substitute for politics. No one on the room
<BR>ever responded to Callari's critique. Instead, they obsessed over yet
<BR>another iteration of VT by Ted McGlone.'</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>There's a good
essay by Lucio Colletti on crisis theory (somewhere in the Telos back catalogue)
where he argues that there are two sides to Marx which are not entirely
compatible. The first is the *critique* of Smith and Ricardo's 'labour embodied
theory of value', and the second is his modified value theoretic reconstruction
of the relationships of capitalist production. I wouldn't draw Colletti's
conclusions, but his approach is definitely right. Marx was indeed taken with
the scientific task of plotting out the inner relationships of capitalism, a
task whose sheer elegance of construction might lend itself to an
interpretation at odds with its intent. I mean that the intellectual investment
readers make into mastering these categories and their ordering tends to make
those initiates in value theory cling to them, treating htem as if they were set
in stone. That's a problem because Marx always meant to show their relativity,
i.e. their transience.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>There is an
irony in the dogmatic assertion of Marx's crisis theory, namely that the very
point of the crisis theory (which is of course just a component part of the
whole critique of value theory) is to show that the economic categories are not
permanent, but transient. Today, ironically, the very theory that seeks to show
that all economic categories are transient has itself become ossified, made
permanent, to last for all time. Anyone who dares to suggest that economic
crisis might not be occuring (influenced perhaps by the good times their fellow
citizens seem to be enjoying) is reprimanded with the awful accusation -
you have betrayed Marx. But Marx never said that things would always be the same
for ever and ever - he said the opposite, that things tended to change. What
weirdness from the crisis mongerers! They think that you have to assert that
crisis will always be with us, when that's the whole point about crisis, that it
is a moment, that must pass (one way or another).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>