Rob Schaap asks,

>1998 gets 10/10 on that report card.  What else should I be looking for?

A theory that explains the report card data in relation to historical
changes in the labour process. 

The rudiments of that theory can be found in an appendix -- "Results of the
Immediate Process of Production" -- that appears in the 1976 New Left Review
edition of Capital, Volume One. Two keys terms in that appendix are the
"formal subsumption of labour under capital" and the "real subsumption of
labour under capital". Those two terms condense precisely one-third of the
conceptual apparatus needed to analyze the course of development of the
capitalist mode of production from beginning to end. Or should I say, from
beginning to END?

The other two-thirds of that theory are not "contained" in Marx's Capital,
although there are tantalizing hints. So it is undecidable whether or not
Capital theorizes "the end". Those who would contend that Capital doesn't
theorize the end are whistling in the dark. So are those who would maintain
that it does.

A rough measure of how intensely "the resultate" has pre-occupied academic
marxism over the past 22 years can be had by doing an Alta Vista search on
the terms "resultate" and "subsumption". Or, not much. This would be roughly
comparable to Einstein writing to FDR telling him about the practical
possibility of building an atomic bomb and FDR writing back to say he was
too busy fighting a war to bother with such things.

It's only a theory.


Regards, 

Tom Walker
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