by Ted Winslow The ontological idea of "internal relations," the idea that makes Marx's analysis of capitalism "dialectical," leads to the treatment of "law" as immanent. The nature of individuals, in the case of human individuals the degree of their rational self-consciousness as expressed in their motives and, based on these, their characteristic forms of behaviour, is the product of their relations.
^^^^ CB: Ted, here you seem to say that Marx's analysis has the virtue of "using" internal relations. But at the end of this post you seem to imply that despite his use of internal relations , his absolute general law of capitalist accumulation is mistaken, when you say: These claims about how a subjectivity willing and able to transform productive relations into rational relations are mistaken. Individuals immiserized in this way would ( not) be subjects of this kind. there is no necessity, however, for capitalism to produce immiserization. The organic composition of capital doesn't have to change in the way marx assumes. For this and other reasons, the creation of an industrial reserve army isn't a "necessity" i.e. a necessary feature of these relations. Nor is it necessary that: "they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital." One way of actually creating the kind of subjectivity required is to modify the working of capitalist relations so as to make them more and more consistent with the development of such a subjectivity. This requires that their existing form be consistent with a subjectivity sufficiently well developed to desire and create improvements such as reduction of the working day, increased wages, less alienated labour, improved developmental conditions for children, etc. In Canada, for instance, the political context has just been transformed by an election which has made it more likely that the existing medicare system will be significantly improved, that a national child care system attuned to some signfifcant degree to the developmental needs of children will be created, and that cities will be made better places to work and live. ^^^^^ CB: Nothing wrong with saying Marx is wrong, but what good is his internal relations approach if he makes a "mistake" , and especially on the fundamental issue of whether immiseration is a necessary result of capitalist relations of production ? I mean aside from internal relations, it seems more significant that you are the first one I recall on this thread who has said the "law" is invalid. You say both that the proletariat is not prepared by immiseration to be the subjectivity that ends capitalism , and that capitalism does not necessarily have to immiserate. You seem to be advocating a reform of capitalism, rather than a revolution to socialism. Do I read you correctly ?
