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The LTV is an extremely important and fascinating topic. True, the first chapters of Marx's Capital vol. 1 are a very difficult read, as Marx himself acknowledged, but they are well worth the effort of getting to grips with. The distinction between use value and exchange value, the nature of the commodity, the two-fold character of labour, the existence of surplus value and why it is hidden, money, the importance of the relationships of production in determining the form a given society will take, are all essential reading. Those chapters are supposed to be "Hegelian", which is partly true, but I can assure you that they are far clearer and more enjoyable (and much more useful for understanding the world we live in) than Hegel's writings. I've tried (twice) to actually read and understand Hegel's lesser logic, but gave up each time. I think I sort of understood (at the time) what he was getting at, especially the idea that changes in quantity automatically bring about changes in quality, or that each concept contains "two more fundamental polar opposite concepts between which the concept under consideration is perpetually in motion, never static", and other such notions. But honestly, I lack the sheer, brute, powers of mental abstraction that would enable me to really understand Hegel. When he gets into the dialectic between nothingness and existence, and that existence is produced by the interactions within nothingness, I confess that he looses me. And furthermore, I find his writings unspeakably tedious, mind-numbingly boring, and systematically lacking in concrete illustrations that would clarify what he means. I came out of each determined effort to understand Hegelianism defeated and angry with myself for not succeeding. It's probably due to the way my brain is wired : I can't "conceptualize" anything without a mental map. There's no point in reading anything else by Hegel, as he himself points out that his "lesser logic" is a short condensation and "vulgarisation" of his thought. However, Hegel is really important in European philosophy, and he exerted a profound influence on such diverse thinkers as Marx, Bauer (for whom I have great respect, and whose ground-breaking insights into the plural, late 1st to 2nd century origins of the judeo-christian bible and how each source attempts to put forward it's peculiar sectarian point of view led to the hodge-podge we now refer to as "scripture", would deserve an entire posting on this list), Sartre, Lacan (who saw dialectics as what was missing in Freud in order to perfect psychoanalysis and explain the dynamics of the unconscious)... So I think I shall renew the attempt some time in the coming ten years, when I have nothing more pressing to do. Only this time, I will proceed slowly, a page a week, re-reading each passage until it seeps into my thick skull. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
