[OPE-L:2704] Re: Re: Re: Critique

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@Princeton.EDU)
Date: Tue Apr 04 2000 - 10:27:27 EDT


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>Did or did not Marx argue that "the social relation between ... private
>labours APPEAR AS WHAT THEY ARE, ... MATERIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN PERSONS
>AND SOCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THINGS"?

Yes, Andrew, and this is why Mattick Jr himself emphasizes in that piece
that the fetishistic categories of political economy have a limited
validity within the domain of political economy. On the basis of a couple
lines from one paragraph, you charge charge Mattick Jr with the reduction
of Marx's theory of fetishism to subjective illusion. This charge cannot be
sustained in the context of the larger argument. For goodness' sake, look
at the bottom of p. 130 where MattickJr. himself underlines that the
social relations of production have no other form of representation than
those of commodity value and money. He is quite clearly pointing to the
objective nature of fetishistic social relations which then give the
categories of poltical economy a limited validity. If not for the
objectivity of those relations, how could those categories have a limited
validity?
Yours, Rakesh



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