On Nov 27, 2007, at 3:14 AM, Tahir Wood wrote:
> Yeah. Doug wants something from Marx that he would never ask of
> Derrida
> or Foucault.
Not sure what I'd ever ask of Derrida - I'm not much of a fan. I do like Foucault, and one of the things he offers is a theoretically informed and materialist interpretation of history. He had a lot in common with Marx, his protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Theory illuminating observation, and vice versa. Marx is full of empiricism. Capital includes lots of observations of factory life, quotes from capitalists, analysis of technology, etc. The 18th Brumaire is full of sociological detail.
> Yes Doug, you are an empiricist, and I've told you that before (your
> fondness for all kinds of polls etc.).
I do try to figure out what people think and why. One of the things I've noticed about autonomists, anarchists, and the like is that they claim to be more democratic than everyone else, but have almost no popular support at all, and don't seem to care much about that.
> 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.
Of course I think capitalism is exploitative. I think SV originates in the exploitation of labor, and is divided into the familiar phenomenal forms of profit, interest, rent. This is the major reason I have no patience for populist/producerist distinctions between finance and industry, or interest (bad) and profit (good, as long as it's "reasonable"). When I talk about the value crowd I mean this sort of thing:
Doug