> I'd like to discuss his "Reading “Capital” " under our "Bedlamite
> economics" and the EMH thread
>
> Andy Blunden. June 2009
>
> Reading “Capital”
> There are a number of ways in which people have read Capital.
>
> (1a) According to one reading, Marx was (amongst other things) an
> economist and Capital is a book about economics. Marx recognised that
> the political economists of the period of the rise of capitalism (Adam
> Smith, Ricardo) wanted to develop a genuinely scientific theory of the
> workings of capitalism while later economists (J S Mill, Malthus) were
> merely apologists, whose theories deliberately obscured the truth
> about capitalism so as to cover up the fact of exploitation and disarm
> the workers. So Marx developed the work of the early political
> economists, and produced a sound body of scientific knowledge, in
> contrast to modern economic science which is both unscientific and
> ideological. The cornerstone of Marx’s theory in this reading is
> “Marx’s labour theory of value,” and any attack on the LTV is an
> attack on the working class and an attack on Marx. In this reading,
> “critique” means exposing the ideological character of all economics
> beyond the early period of Smith and Ricardo, and cleansing these
> early works of their weaknesses and illusions.
>
> (continued)
> http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/reading-capital.htm
As I've once again been pointing out, "capital" as a "critique of political economy" implements Hegel's elaboration of "the business of science" in terms of the "higher dialectic of the conception", a fact implicit in Marx's 1843 claims that:
“Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true reality as its obligation and its final goal." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm
I recently elaborated this as a critique of Postone:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20091026/015173.html
I pointed there to texts drawn from Marx's early as well as his mature writing (including texts from Capital) confirming this reading, texts to which many others can be added.
The 1881 draft letter to Vera Zasulich, for instance, examines the consistency of Russian peasant commune relations with those required for the degree of individual "integral development" required to enable individuals to "appropriate" the degree of "universality" embodied in productive forces developed within capitalism outside Russia (productive forces themselves understood as objectifications of "ideas", i.e. as objectifications of the development of mind) and use them to build the penultimate social form which would then facilitate the further "integral development" of individuals and eventually constitute them as "true human beings" with the fully developed "powers" required to actualize "true reality". Thus in 1881 as in 1843 "the whole socialist principle in its turn is only one aspect that concerns the reality of the true human being." http://www.marxfaq.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm
In 1886, in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Engels explicitly endorses the Hegelian ideas involved in this way of reading Capital.
Thus, "reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form" so that "from the forms peculiar to existing reality" the critic can "develop the true reality as its obligation and final goal".
"No philosophical proposition has earned more gratitude from narrow- minded governments and wrath from equally narrow-minded liberals than Hegel’s famous statement: 'All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real.” That was tangibly a sanctification of things that be, a philosophical benediction bestowed upon despotism, police government, Star Chamber proceedings and censorship. That is how Frederick William III and how his subjects understood it. But according to Hegel certainly not everything that exists is also real, without further qualification. For Hegel the attribute of reality belongs only to that which at the same time is necessary: “In the course of its development reality proves to be necessity.' A particular governmental measure — Hegel himself cites the example of “a certain tax regulation” — is therefore for him by no means real without qualification. That which is necessary, however, proves itself in the last resort to be also rational; and, applied to the Prussian state of that time, the Hegelian proposition, therefore, merely means: this state is rational, corresponds to reason, insofar as it is necessary; and if it nevertheless appears to us to be evil, but still, in spite of its evil character, continues to exist, then the evil character of the government is justified and explained by the corresponding evil character of its subjects. The Prussians of that day had the government that they deserved.
"Now, according to Hegel, reality is, however, in no way an attribute predictable of any given state of affairs, social or political, in all circumstances and at all times. On the contrary. The Roman Republic was real, but so was the Roman Empire, which superseded it. In 1789, the French monarchy had become so unreal, that is to say, so robbed of all necessity, so irrational, that it had to be destroyed by the Great Revolution, of which Hegel always speaks with the greatest enthusiasm. In this case, therefore, the monarchy was the unreal and the revolution the real. And so, in the course of development, all that was previously real becomes unreal, loses it necessity, its right of existence, its rationality. And in the place of moribund reality comes a new, viable reality — peacefully if the old has enough intelligence to go to its death without a struggle; forcibly if it resists this necessity. Thus the Hegelian proposition turns into its opposite through Hegelian dialectics itself: All that is real in the sphere of human history, becomes irrational in the process of time, is therefore irrational by its very destination, is tainted beforehand with irrationality, and everything which is rational in the minds of men is destined to become real, however much it may contradict existing apparent reality. In accordance with all the rules of the Hegelian method of thought, the proposition of the rationality of everything which is real resolves itself into the other proposition: All that exists deserves to perish." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htm
In the same text, Engels also explicitly endorses Hegel's idea of the "passions" as a particular aspect of "the higher dialectic of the conception", i.e. as a particular aspect of a "science" that "produces out of this negative a positive content and result". The "passions" are irrational motives that without conscious intention on the part of those motivated by them "supply the impelling and actuating force for accomplishing deeds shared in by the community at large." http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/history3.htm
"He [Feuerbach] appears just as shallow, in comparison with Hegel, in his treatment of the antithesis of good and evil.
"'One believes one is saying something great,' Hegel remarks, 'if one says that "man is naturally good".' But one forgets that one says something far greater when one says "man is naturally evil".'
"With Hegel, evil is the form in which the motive force of historical development presents itself. This contains the twofold meaning that, on the one hand, each new advance necessarily appears as a sacrilege against things hallowed, as a rebellion against condition, though old and moribund, yet sanctified by custom; and that, on the other hand, it is precisely the wicked passions of man — greed and lust for power — which, since the emergence of class antagonisms, serve as levers of historical development — a fact of which the history of feudalism and of the bourgeoisie, for example, constitutes a single continual proof. But it does not occur to Feuerbach to investigate the historical role of moral evil. To him, history is altogether an uncanny domain in which he feels ill at ease. Even his dictum: 'Man as he sprang originally from nature was only a mere creature of nature, not a man. Man is a product of man, of culture, of history' — with him, even this dictum remains absolutely sterile." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch03.htm
"Passions" in this sense are given a key role in "capital" providing another confirmation that it's a "critique of political economy" in the Hegelian sense specified in the 1843 letter to Ruge.
"The higher dialectic of the conception" isn't the idea that any conditions of marginalization and oppression, e.g. conditions in the world's slums, develos the "knowledge" required for succcessful "revolutionary practice".
To begin with, the "integral development" involved is a capacity for knowing, not knowledge itself; it's "enlightenment" in Kant's sense of a developed capacity to think reasonably for yourself.
According to Marx, many marginalized and oppressive conditions are inconsistent with this. He claimed, for instance, that the conditions of mid-19th century Indian and French peasants were inconsistent with those required for "enlightenment" in this sense. Instead of "enlightenment", they led to "superstition" and "prejudice" and, in consequence, to "despotism", as Engels, repeating what Marx had claimed 1843, claims above of Prussian despotism in 1886:
"applied to the Prussian state of that time, the Hegelian proposition, therefore, merely means: this state is rational, corresponds to reason, insofar as it is necessary; and if it nevertheless appears to us to be evil, but still, in spite of its evil character, continues to exist, then the evil character of the government is justified and explained by the corresponding evil character of its subjects. The Prussians of that day had the government that they deserved."
According to Marx, therefore, what's essential about the "self- estrangement" that defines "wage-labour" and develops in those who do it the capability of initiating the required "revolutionary practice" is that it gives "the greatest impulse ... the integral development of every individual producer", an idea inadequately grasped by most Marxist ideas of "class consciousness".
Ted