Leon Kuunders wrote: > > I wonder if there is any difference between 'capitalism' then and now? > Did capitalism get it's current form immediately when it was invented or is > there a difference?
This condenses several of the issues over which the international socialist movement (or movements) have most profoundly disagreed over the last two centuries. 1. Was capitalism invented? Or was it always there in some form but could only emerge under specific historical conditions. (I myself believe that Max Weber and Jim Blaut _both_ assumed a positive answer to this question, and that Jim's work can be understood as an effort to reject Weber's conclusions after accepting his premises.) Or was the emergence of capitalism a contingency rooted in a particular set historical conditions, and those who "originated" had not the remotest conception of what would be the the historical consequences of their actions? My own position is the third possibility, and I hold that capitalism was _neither_ an "invention" _nor_ the inevitable outcome of the movement of history. 2. Does capitalism change? Of course it changes constantly, BUT I would argue that its fundamental dynamic remains fundamentally the same. It will eventually turn out that there are major errors in Marx's account of capitalism -- but the discovery of what those errors are will be made only by future historians looking back on capitalism from a post-capitalist future. Every attempt to argue that, because capitalism has changed, we must go back and 'redo' Marx's analysis has eventually been shown to be politically disastrous. (I don't believe that "Marxism" is a science as physics is, so what follows is a metaphor, not an identity.) Just as physicists had to work for several centuries within the framework of Newtonian principles, so until the overthrow of capitalism socialists have to work within the framework of the _Capital_ (all four volumes) and the Grundrisse for their basic understanding of the capitalist system. Carrol
