Generally, we agree, now that I see that you're not emphasizing Marx's
psychology as much as it appeared.
At 10:10 AM 5/23/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Jim Devine wrote:
>
> >do you have any evidence that Marx followed Rousseau in this way?
>
>Maybe this seems like a cop-out but I don't want to argue this point by
>point, right now. Most of us have read enough of both men to have some
>notion of what Rousseau's influences on Marx were, and you've just been
>debating it here. ... I don't want to discuss Rousseau now.
I think the link between Marx and Rousseau would best be found through
Hegel (though Marx was of course familiar with Rousseau).
<snip>
> >Marx was great because he developed a great theoretical framework, one that
> >swallows the valid components of neoclassical economics the way Einsteinian
> >physics swallowed Newton's physics.
>
>Oh, well, I'm bound to say that this is to misread both Einstein's
>intentions and his results.
Sorry about the word "swallowed." Einsteinian physics does not _negate_
Newtonian physics but includes it as a special case, a special case which
applies in almost all relevant cases of our lives.
Similarly, the valid parts of neoclassical economics (e.g., supply &
demand) work fine if one is dealing only with the "surface of society, ...
the action of different capitals on one another, i.e. ... competition, and
... the everyday consciousness of the agents of production themselves," the
subject that volume III of CAPITAL develops. What the neoclassicals miss is
that the realm of appearances that they study is structured and shaped by
capital as a whole, the subject of the vol. I, and by structurally-based
class antagonisms. (An example can be seen in ch. 25 of volume I, where
the workings of supply and demand are determined by the capitalists' class
monopoly, their control over accumulation.) That structuring doesn't mean
that supply & demand aren't wrong, but that more theory is needed.
I'm following critical-realist methodology, in which paradigm X can only
beat paradigm Y by incorporating its valid components (and explaining its
short-comings).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
