Dear Rakesh Your point below is made in my 'Capital, Many Capitals and Competition' in *The Culmination of Capital* eds Campbell and Reuten (Palgrave) just out. Cheers Chris A 6502> >In vol 3 Marx remains more interested in total surplus value produced >by all the individual capitals, and it is only in terms of >capital-as-a-whole that the total mass of surplus value can be >defined, and the average rate of profit determined. >Capital-as-a-whole is thus revealed to be itself a concrete unit with >its own specific attributes. > >So even as Marx comes to appreciate fully individuality, as opposed >to typical particularity, in the multiplicity of capitals, he is not >ultimately interested in the the multiplicity or aggregate of >individual capitals but with the concrete individual that is itself >capital as a whole. > >Itself a concrete individual, capital-as-a-whole is thus not like >say boats-as-a whole which is merely a *generalized concrete >abstraction* for small open craft, ocean liners, battleships and and >exchange carriers. > >In this latter case the members are of course more concrete than the >abstract class. > >But in the case of capital-as-a-whole, the class itself has been >concretized in that it alone has attributes that its members, as >individuals *abstracted* from that class, do not. > >The capitalist *class* is not a not a mere plurality of capitals; it >is itself a fairly concrete unit. > >I do not think we have here a fallacy of misplaced concreteness or >an error of hypostatizing. > >Though I do not know whether I am making sense either. > > >And it may be that the fault should be put on capitalist social >relations, not those social scientists who reject methodological >individualism which seems only to accord concreteness to members, not >classes. Such a stricture may be illsuited for the very society that >produces the standpoint of the individualist. > >rb 17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England
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