Marx was quite willing to allow that some capitalists, taken as
individuals, might be very decent people. But that didn't in Marx's
opinion didn't change the fact that capitalists still had to act in the
ways that he described in Capital on pain of extinction.  In other
words the ruthlessness of capitalism is enforced upon them by the very
laws of survival in the marketplace.

Jim F.

-- Michael Perelman <michael@ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
Marx wanted to base everything on science.  He saw his method as 
scientific.

What this approach did was very positive in one respect -- for much of 
his work, he did not denouce capitalists personally, but saw them as 
the character maxks of capital.

On Sun, Jul 22, 2007 at 10:13:33PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> On Jul 22, 2007, at 9:54 PM, Michael Perelman wrote:
> 
> > Marx was trying to downplay the reformers who based their program on
> > morality.  Marx was saying that the problem was not individual
> > employers unjustly ripping off their workers.  The problem was the
> > rules of the system.  In short, he was denying justice as a basis for
> > political organizing, calling for what he considered to be a  
> > scientific
> > basis.
> 
> Yeah that's the standard line, but do you really believe it? Sure he  
> was annoyed by the screeching moralists of his day, as am I by their  
> counterparts today, but why object to capitalism if it didn't offend  
> you in some moral/ethical sense? What other basis is there for  
> revolutionary politics?
> 
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
michaelperelman.wordpress.com
___________________________________
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk