Context: Postone's claim that Marx wrote a Critique OF Political Economy, NOT a critical Political Economy -- that is, Marx does NOT provide a "scientific" economic theory, that can produce the sort of technical commentary on current economic events that the mainstream economists claim to provide. Or, put more briefly and comphrehensively:
Economics is NOT a science, of any kind, and cannot be. "Marxian economics" is not a science either. In so far as those calling themselves "Marxist Economists" provide a better commentary on contemporary events it is for other reasons than possessing a "scientific economics."
What is (from this perpsective) Marx's critique if it is not the basis of an economic science.
It is a historical perspective on capitalism -- i.e., a n understanding of the "ideal avereage" from a hypothetical future perspective. The one or two paragraphs in _Capital_ that sort of talk about "socialism" (without, if I recall correctly, using the term) are all important, not because they give us a goal of struggle or even a crude blueprint/recipe of socialism, but because they state the perspective from which capitalism as a (hypothetical) totality is being viewed.
And this view of capitalism asbeing ( uniquely among social systems) a totality forms the grounds for a revolutionary perspective: Capitalism cannot be tinkered with to mkae a "better world." Even when such tinkering _does_ (as it often does) improve life for some portion of the population it alwys, sooner or later and usually snooner, snaps back to the utterly destrucive complex of social relations which constitute it. Luxemburg's "socialism or barbarism" was less a prediction than a description of the present: capitalism _is_ barvbarism. That is why the proposition Capitalism is Capitalism is a valid tautology, while the proposition Feudalism is Feudalism would be flase.
We do not know that socialism is possible or will be desirable when achieved. To claim such knowledge is to claim a quasi-mystical knowledge of the future.
We do not know, that is, whether an anti-capitalist revolution is either desirable or possible.
What we know is the NECESSITY of Revolution, in the same way that a person in a small boat in flames knows the necessity of swimming to shore (whether it is possible, or whether catastrophe awaits on the shore or not).
There is no gradual way out of the world we live in.
And note:
This post is not intended to be persuasive; I do not believe that persuasion ever persuades. If you so not in some important sense already 'see the world' this way this post will seem quite silly. If you do in some sense see the world this way, you will find this post useful as a pointer towards the way to formualte more clearly what you already in some sense know.
Carrol