[lbo-talk] Chomsky vs Marx/Lukacs

[joanna]

To add to this: Thirty years ago, I read Capital I and thought Marx was 
making it all up. Then I got my first technical writing job, documenting 
every accounting position in a multi-national commodity-based 
corporation. In other words, I wrote thousands of pages describing what 
every accounting employee did in this company--- for which I had to give 
myself a crash course in modern accounting and, of course, to learn 
about the structure and proccesses of a modern corporation. That's when 
I finally understood that every single thing Marx was writing in Capital 
was true and real. Then I was really, really impressed.

I also liked his (very dry) sense of humor.

Joanna

Doug Henwood wrote:


>
> On Oct 25, 2006, at 11:37 AM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
>> We all have our superstitions and for some reason one of yours is that
>> Marx's Capital provides knowledge of something in the real world.
>> Capital is worth reading for its way of thinking, but the model
>> matches nothing that we can point to today and didn't match much of
>> 19th century English Capitalism, either.  There were a few insights,
>> but nothing that is worth calling a "theory", except in a very loose
>> everyday sense.
>
>
> I must rise to Marx's defense! I have to confess to never being able  
> to get through Capital Vol. 2, but Vols. 1 and 3 are splendid. The  
> structure of his analysis is thoroughly compelling, and revealing:  
> starting from the simple commodity and expanding cumulatively into  
> the social system that both produces it and grows up around it - the  
> factory, imperialism, finance. The antagonistic nature of capitalist  
> production, the structure of classes, the control of labor, the role  
> of the state, the division of surplus value into profit/interest/rent  
> - that's all applicable to the world of 2006. More relevant, in some  
> ways, because capitalism has pervaded almost every nook and cranny of  
> the earth, and even our consciousness, far more than in the mid-19C.
>
> Doug
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