[lbo-talk] profits

[Mike Ballard]

I had forgotten this passage from Lenin. It fits in with my sense of
Lenin as someone who was _essentially_ an activist, not a theorist,
driven constantly to theory because he _needed_ it and the damn fools
around him wouldn't or couldn't provide it! This is why to appreciate
what a greate figure he was one should read his letters, his short
articles responding to other revolutionariesd, etc. They exempligy what
he meant by "concrete analysis of concrete conditions." At that he was a
master. As a theorist he deserves at most about a B+. And those who
_made_ a theorist out of him (primarily Stalin and Trotsky) royally
fucked up in doing so.

Carrol

This is the passage which Carrol refers to:

Aphorism: It is impossible completely
to understand Marx's Capital, and especially
its first chapter, without having
thoroughly studied and understood the
whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently,
half a century later none of the Marxists
understood Marx!!

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm#LCW38_176

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My take on what Lenin is bemoaning here is the lack of comprehension of the dialectical method amongst orthodox Marxists.  On this list, it seems to me that Ted is trying to convey a similar critique in his many, very cogent analyses of what Marx was actually attempting to convey in terms of a critique of political-economy and the sublation of Capital as a social relation. In the LOGIC, Hegel's focus is on the dialectic. I think Marx wanted to write more explaining how his use of the dialectical method worked; but he never got around to it. 

For the works!
Mike B) 

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