On the first point, Marx in the Grundrisse (Carrol's favorite passage):
Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out
^^^^^ CB: How is it that this sentence that you quote doesn't contradict your claims and support the opposing arguments ? With due respect, you are not talking very logically. The rest of what you quote similarly contradicts your argument on this thread that Marx differs from Engels on this question.
Sometimes I get the feeling that you are a prankster or negative dialectician or something (smile). Maybe a kid having fun.
^^^^
of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc. Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known. The bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient, etc. But not at all in the manner of those economists who smudge over all historical differences and see bourgeois relations in all forms of society. One can understand tribute, tithe, etc., if one is