Re Postone. His thought is part of a whole cluster of the last 30 years (mostly non-Anglo-American) the tendency of which is to narrow the focus of our understanding of Marx's _core_ contributions. It seems I was not really so far off (given these trends) when I said somewhat flippantly in a post sometime last year that the heart of Marx boiled down to commodity fetishism and the historicity of capitalism. As a friend suggested off list, in the physical sciences as well a theory tends to be the more powerful the more focused (narrow in scope) it is. Marx as a toatl world view rather than Marx as first of all author of a critique of political economy (as contrasted with a critical politica economy) 'divides' the world for us into (a) a reallys trong focus on the necessary features of capitalism as a unique system and (b) all the other things we have to think about.
I'm pretty far into Postone and the other shoe hasn't dropped yet: the other shoe is where I exzpect to disagree with him; I have a feeling thatas he moves from a core analysis of Marx to 'positive' political suggestions he will slip.
One thing about this whole tendency (all its strands) that Postone is part of (at least from mypoint of view) -- it allows a less moralistic perspective on the century long struggles within 2d/3d/4th Internationales and related politics. We can see that these parties, trends, even those that we might see as criminal, deserve all praise and endless glory, but we can close the fucking books onthem and start thinging what the PRESENT demands. And I think it demands something more than assuming there is a direct link between and infallible theory and the building of a struggle to close the books on capitalism.
Carrol