An unrepentant Marxist could have added: "On the other side, much more important for us is that our method indicates the points where historical investigation must enter in, or where bourgeois economy as a merely historical form of the production process points beyond itself to earlier historical modes of production.
In order to develop the laws of bourgeois economy, therefore, it is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of production, but the correct observation and deduction of these laws, as having themselves become in history, always leads to primary equations - like the empirical numbers e.g. in natural science - which point towards a past lying behind this system. These indications, together with a correct grasp of the present, then also offer the key to the understanding of the past - a work in its own right which, it is to be hoped, we shall be able to undertake as well. This correct view likewise leads at the same time to the points at which the suspension of the present form of production relations gives signs of its becoming - foreshadowings of the future. Just as, on one side the pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical, i.e. suspended presuppositions, so do the contemporary conditions of production likewise appear as engaged in suspending themselves and hence in positing the historic presuppositions for a new state of society." (Marx, Grundrisse, Penguin 1973 edition, p. 461-2) Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> forwarded: > > > Chronicle of Higher Education December 1, 2014 > The Fall and Rise of Economic History > > By Jeremy Adelman and Jonathan Levy > > [...] > > The history of capitalism performs heroic service, but bereft of a > broader grasp of the history of economic life, it can’t provide deep > insights into the makings of systems of production, circulation, and > distribution. Capitalism is a latecomer in that story, and, like all > latecomers, more reliant on its precursors and alternatives than its > apostles and critics like to admit. There can be no history of > capitalism without an economic history near its explanatory core. > > Like democracy or modernity, capitalism is a historical problem, > specific to time and place. If only because it eludes easy definition, > it must be studied from different perspectives, with different > historical methodologies. There are social histories of democracy, > intellectual histories of democracy, and, of course, political histories > of democracy. The economy could be the subject of similar multiple > approaches. But it is not. It has been treated as a realm apart. > > [...] > > Moreover, seen globally, the economy is the product of more than just > the attributes of one particular place (the West) or time (the modern > age). Recent and pipeline works will push historians of American > capitalism to think in more global, transnational, and comparative > terms, and to be mindful that what appear today to have been outdated, > precapitalist formations—slavery, household economies, ennobled > magnates—had essential places in the story and have not faded away so > easily or tidily. In some cases, as anyone attentive to current social > inequality can attest, they acquired a new lease on life. > > The study of capitalism requires scope and imagination. It needs an > economic history reconnected to the broad trunk of history and the > humanities. Then, who knows—rather than historians imitating economists, > perhaps we’ll see the reverse. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
