Carrol Cox wrote: > The most important prediction Marxmade was in the early letter in which > he said (Monthly Review page filler paraphrase: It is not our thing to > write recipes for the cookshops of the future. That prediction has been > confirmed over and over again as the foolhardy keep trying to predict > the future and write recipes for it.
The "cookshops of the future" reference occurs in the 1873 afterword to the second German edition of Capital where writing recipes for then is contrasted with "the mere critical analysis of actual facts." "Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing receipts [4] (Comtist ones?) for the cook-shops of the future." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm The usual interpretation overlooks that, on Marx's understanding of "the actual facts," their "mere critical analysis" can "develop the true reality as its [existing reality's] obligation and its final goal." "Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true reality as its obligation and its final goal." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm Ted _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
