[OPE-L:7130] Re: Re: Frederick Engels at Highgate Cemetary -- March l7, l883

From: Christopher Arthur (cjarthur@waitrose.com)
Date: Tue May 07 2002 - 18:03:25 EDT


Re Jerry's 7123
>    Re David Y's [7l2l] :   > I would like to think that he could have
>been referring  to the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall -
>'the most important  law of modern political economy and the most
>essential one for understanding the  most complicated relationships. It is
>the most important law from an historical  standpoint....' (Grundrisse
>p654 1953 German edition) <     Hi David. Thanks, as always,  for your
>comments.   As you say,  Engels _could  have_ been referring to the
>LTGRPD.  Yet,  as we know,  the drafts for  what became Volume 3 were not
>published by Engels until after his  death.  Nor do we have reason to
>believe that Engels read the  drafts prior to Marx's death -- do we?  >

This is a very important point which refutes David's suggestion and
strongly supports the GLA solution, which shows increasing wealth at one
pole and increasing misery at the other, as its result.

> Nor do we have  reason to believe that Engels, prior to Marx's
>death, read the drafts for what were later published   as the
>_Grundrisse_   -- do we?   Nor, of course, did Marx refer to   the LTGRPD
>as  the "law of motion" of bourgeois society.  However,   I will grant you
>that, _if_ you interpret "this work" to mean all of   _Capital_, then it
>is a reasonable possibility.  It would, however,   make the remainder of 
>what became  Volume 3  somewhat of an  anti-climax    (and Marx had a
>dramatic flair and  the 'climax' of his  'stories'  was generally reserved
>for the end.) <
 I do not think this is entirely true for a number of reasons.
1. the chapter on colonies in V1 is an anti-climax, almost certainly to
confuse the censor.
2. The true climax is brought forward to V1,namely the historical tendency
stuff.
3. Marx's method is not linear but involves transitions to more concrete
and detailed explorations of what had already been done abstractly. So it
is not clear in these circumstances where any 'climax' is. Lukacs said the
whole of Capital is in ch 1 sec 4.
So I think the details after the LFRP do not contain any sort of climax.

Chris

17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England



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