On Friday, 18 October 2013, 20:33, Michael Meeropol <[email protected]>
wrote:
I don't think it's right to say the "the economy" is illusory. I read the
idea behind Marx's Critique of Political Economy as a Critique of "the
reigning" (e.g. Ricardian, Smithian, Millsian) Political Economy (throw in
Quesnay and the Physiocrats and Bentham and Say as well).
Remember, Marx's self-proclaimed goal was to "lay bare the economic laws of
motion of society" (did I quote him right?) IF there are economic laws of
motion (if one could analyze society "scientifically" by amassing evidence such
as Marx does in Vol I with all the factory inspectors' reports) then there is
"an economy" that is a legitimate object of study.
JD – what Marx actually said was:
And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the
natural laws of its movement— and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay
bare the economic law of motion of [ N B ] MODERN society [ emphasis mine – JD
] it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor
remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases
of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.
**********
Karl Popper misquoted Marx by leaving out the word "modern", which changes the
entire meaning of the passage in a mechanistic direction. It has to be
remembered that Marx's concept of nature was Darwinian, not Newtonian. He was
talking not about "the laws of nature", but of the nature of things, including
economic systems.
**********
Marx goes on:
To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and
the landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted
glasses – MIA]. But here individuals are
*dealt with only in so far as they are* [ emphasis mine, JD. Many people
mentally elide those nine words, again leading to mechanism okay] the
personifications of economic
categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests
My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society
is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make
the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains,
however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.
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