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Nicky,
I appreciate your reading of the meaning of Marx's phrase in his
'Afterword': "In answer to the reproach in re metaphysics, Professor
Sieber has it". It puzzled me on first reading.
Your answer is consistent with the requirement of a Hegelian reading of
Marx, but is not consistent, I don't think, with Sieber's reading Marx
quotes: "the method of Marx is the deductive method of the whole English
school". I'm going to try to get the 1875 French edition of *Capital* (my
library doesn't have it and I cannot find it on internet, either). Marx
himself edited that edition and included at least a portion of the
'Afterword' to the Second German edition.
QUERY: Does anyone on this list have the French edition of Capital and
could post the relevant 'Afterword' sentence, in French? also, the prior
sentence on Sieber a few lines earlier?
Nicky, Don't forget the "Marginal Notes on Wagner" as you consider the
importance of Sieber, etc.
In any case, if we can reach an agreement that one need not read Hegel to
understand Marx (see your comment below), we will have a good step
forward. If the issue concerning Sieber helps accomplish that much,
great.
But of course the issues don't end there. Thus, I don't know what you
mean by opposing "political economy as a ... set of structures" -- who has
been using that language? Also, your citations are too cryptic. For
example, on Marx's letter to Lasalle, you don't provide the date or Vol.
number to the Collected Works.
You also say, "a close analysis of the structure of *Capital* supports
claims that Marx made use of the Hegel's systematic dialectic, although he
did not do so consistently." Can you explain this is more detail? This
is certainly a contestable statement. (For reasons I could explain, this
may be true about Part I and maybe Part II, but I doubt it for the
remainder). Do you know any place where Marx explicitly mentions Hegel
AFTER the *Grundrisse*, other than that "Afterword" and a few footnotes
here and there?
I would make the claim that Marx as he ages became increasing agnostic
with regard to the importance of Hegel for his [Marx's] theory, i.e, that
it took a long time but Marx's progressively distanced himself from his
youthful conditioning in a Hegelian environment. And why not -- Marx's
theory itself was a process of production, not a descent from a Hegelian
heaven ("materialist" inversion, or otherwise).
Paul Z.
***********************************************************************
Paul Zarembka, supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
nicola taylor <nmtaylor@carmen.murdoch.edu.au> said, on 04/02/00 at 11:32
PM:
>This is not to say that one must read Hegel in order to understand Marx.
>The categories of Capital could be understood as a set of deductive
>propositions. But what is lost along the way? In my view, a materialist
>application of Hegel's systematic dialectical approach to political
>economy has great advantages in that political economy is seen as a
>process, rather than a set of structures. i.e. a given social form
>generates the tendencies that lead to the a different social form.
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