Re John H's [6765]: > The interesting question is then how one sees the relation between > "love" (or dignity or mutual recognition or whatever one wants to call it) > and value. Is value the negation of love? What then is the relation > between love and crisis? Value is an expression of the dynamic of capital. Expressing it differently, the value relation represents an organizing principle of capitalism and the particular form that class exploitation takes within the cmp. To the extent that the value relation transforms human-beings into (only) wage-laborers, then I think it does represent the negation of love for we can only _truly_ love -- i.e. realize our potential, to the extent that it is possible under the cmp, as real (fully) human beings -- when we break beyond the prisons and shackles of what value and capital (and patriarchy) have reduced us to. Thus wage-labor (itself an expression of exploitation) stands in opposition to human being and love. Love and crisis? Well, I guess it depends on what kind of "crisis" we're talking about. Love and solidarity by workers are part of the dynamic of struggle by workers to ensure that the crisis is not resolved on terms dictated by capital (here I am thinking of the crisis that accompanies a periodic downturn in profitability and accumulation.) The more interesting question is how love plays an increasing role in a *revolutionary* dynamic by workers and in their awareness of their potential to be "gravediggers" and thereby to be (pardon the expression) "born again". Far too many Marxists, though, seem to me to have a very mechanistic idea of how a revolutionary dynamic can arise, grow, and succeed and what connection that has to "crisis theory". In this connection, I am reminded of the cartoon on listmember Anwar Shaikh's homepage: http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/ I think that you're asking the right question -- "How to change the world?" -- but there is no simple answer and answers will arise through praxis rather than mere academic discourse. Well, John H (and others): what do you think of the above musings? In solidarity, Jerry
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