Yeah. Doug wants something from Marx that he would never ask of Derrida or Foucault.
Yes Doug, you are an empiricist, and I've told you that before (your fondness for all kinds of polls etc.). Marx has been refuted by the empirical failure of the revolution or of capitalist collapse etc. to happen 'on time', whatever time that may be - 1848? 1948?. But let me ask a simple question here: is capitalism expoitative, and if it is how do YOU explain that? I presume that, not being a member of the 'value crowd', you would have no recourse to any notion of surplus value. I think it is quite right to say that without a notion of surplus value the whole of Marx's oeuvre becomes suspect, except perhaps for some of his early philosophical works (not to denigrate those of course). If you reject value, then tell me which parts of Capital, for example, still stand up. Please don't say only the empirical bits because we could surely get those from elsewhere. Which parts of the critique of political economy would survive the complete discrediting of the notion of value?
If you want my opinion, I think you are only culturally attached to Marx, but you don't have what it takes to make the break (that might also be a bit 'lonely' in a way, wouldn't it?). I've never seen you prepared to answer the kinds of questions that I'm posing here, although I admit to having posed them in somewhat aggressive terms in the past. So why don't you now just give a cool answer.
Tahir
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