Here's what I imagine Marx might answer: "if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to *ruthless criticism *of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.
I am not in favour of raising any dogmatic banner. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their propositions for themselves." ( http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm)
DT
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 12:52 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> We take the global financial crisis as an opportunity to question
> every concept and every category. To this end, we consider the work of
> Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, particularly Capital as Power
> (2009), to be exemplary but not definitive. Now is the time for those
> who share dissatisfaction with both mainstream and critical
> conceptions of political economy to come together. Now is the time to
> re-think and re-search our understanding of capital accumulation and
> globalization.
>
> ^^^^^^^^
>
> CB: Fine to have a big brainstorm on crisis. However, Marx's basic
> concepts and categories predict periodic crises on capitalism. Why
> would an economic crisis be a reason to question every concept and
> category ? Should be an occasion to affirm Marx's basic ideas on
> capitalism.
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
> "The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society
> impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the
> changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and
> whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once
> again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and
> by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it
> will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of
> the new, holy Prusso-German empire. "
>
> Karl Marx
> London
> January 24, 1873
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