Ian Angus wrote: Saito versus Huber and Phillips: Opposing views both promote the myth of > Marxist Prometheanism
It's always pleasure to comment on an essay I almost entirely agree with! I posted similar criticisms to the EconoSpeak blog back in November, Growth below zero and the development of the productive forces <https://econospeak.blogspot.com/2023/11/growth-below-zero-and-development-of.html>, and March, Matt Huber's and Leigh Phillips's "classical Marxist critique" of Kohei Saito <https://econospeak.blogspot.com/2024/03/matt-hubers-and-leigh-phillipss.html> . One minor point of contention. Marx styled himself a "Promethean" but with an entirely different connotation than 19th century "conquest of nature" platitude. For Marx, Prometheus symbolized defiance of the gods and development of a free consciousness. The technological determinist interpretation of forces of production goes back much further than G.A. Cohen, who himself called it "old fashioned historical materialism." G. V. Plekhanov's interpretation of Marx's vague discussion of forces and relations of production in the 1859 preface to *A contribution to the critique of political economy* was canonical for second and third international "Marxism," along with an anachronistic elevation of the *Communist Manifesto* as the Rosetta stone for understanding Marx's subsequent critique of political economy. Kohei Saito's "epistemological break" hypothesis is even more poorly supported by evidence than Louis Althusser's. That doesn't mean Marx held the same views throughout his life. As Royden Harrison wrote over a half-century ago, "The Inaugural Address of 1864 differed from the *Communist Manifesto *in more respects than style and scope." What had changed between 1848 and 1864 was the historical situation and the depth of Marx's understanding of political economy. The old canards of Marx's alleged productivism and epistemological breaks are not going away without a better alternative. That is, not just a theory but a theory that underlines a strategy and a program. Paul Burkett outlined such an alternative in *Marx and Nature. *I first became aware of it from a chapter, "Natural, social, and political limits to work time: the contemporary relevance of Marx's analysis," Burkett contributed to an anthology in which I also had a chapter. Curiously, Burkett's analysis of the parallels between the "definite (albeit elastic) natural limits" of human labour power and the limits to the exploitation of the environment has not found a place in John Bellamy Foster's discussion of the metabolic rift even though it is a prime example of such a rift. There is abundant confirmation for Burkett's interpretation in notebook IV of the *Grundrisse,* which has been scandalously underappreciated, even though it forms the conceptual foundation for the widely heralded "fragment on machines." In Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading <https://econospeak.blogspot.com/2024/06/book-proposal-marxs-fetters-and-realm.html>, I am trying to call attention to the significance of these passages in the *Grundrisse* and their relationship to the rest of Marx's critique of political economy. Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30768): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30768 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106656768/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
