Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>[ clip]
> > -Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3
>
> Don't forget what follows that passage:
>
> "This only goes to show how the valorization of capital founded on
> the antithetical character of capitalist production permits actual
> free development only up to a certain point, which is constantly
> broken through by the credit system. The credit system hence
> accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the
> creation of the world market, which it is the historical task of the
> cpitalist mode of production to bring to a certain level of
> development, as material foundations for new forms of production." [clip]
Here we have, a think, one of those points at which Marx the scientist (critique of political economy) and Marx the philosopher of history touch. There is _nothing_ in his core analysis of capitalism which _necessitates_ the claim that capitalism has an "historical task." I tend to agree with Marx's historical or philosophical claim here, but that is all it is, a historical claim, not anything which flows _necessarily_ from the nature of capitalism (as, for example, the necessity of endless growth within capitalism does, but that of course can lead to unviersal destruction as well as to a new form of production).
Carrol