re Jerry's 6503 > >Remember Marx's comments about the 'eventual continuation' (separate >book) on 'Competition'? From a methodological perspective, I think >Marx wanted to present capital as simple unity before going on to >present capital as difference and then unity-in-difference. The >question of the segmentation and fragmentation of the capitalist >class >and the other two major social classes arises after 'the question to >be answered next' which is 'What makes a class?'. Jerry, I agree that Marx leaves undertheorized the realm of competition especially as it operates in and through the world market. But in another sense I think Marx has in fact complete his project of demonstrating the limits of the totality (I can't shug Grossman off my shoulder, you know). For Marx, only once one has discoverd the average rate of profit for capital-as-a-whole can one discover the limits to the profit that any one capitalist can make. No matter whether an individual capitalist beats off the fall in the average rate of profit at the expense of other capitals, the fall in the average rate for the capitalist class can plunge the system into the crisis. As GA Cohen may put it: that only a few can fit through the escape door (micro) before it shuts can only be clarified by understanding the situation of the capitalist class itself (macro). Despite the strictures of methodological individualism, it seems to me quite precisely accurate to speak of the fate of the supra-individual entity of capital, which again is itself a concrete individual unlike say a generalized concreted abstraction such as boats-as-a-whole (row boats, aircraft carriers, tugboats). Rakesh
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