[OPE-L:7750] Re: "Hic Rhodus, hic salta!"

From: Riccardo Bellofiore (bellofio@cisi.unito.it)
Date: Sat Oct 05 2002 - 05:37:46 EDT


At 22:36 -0400 4-10-2002, Fred B. Moseley wrote:
>
>I always thought that this quote meant something like "put up or shut
>up".  But I reread the translator's (Fowkes) footnote tonight, and he
>says that this quote is a reference to Hegel, and specifically to the
>Preface to Hegel's Philosophy of Right.  According to Fowkes, Hegel
>"uses the quote to illustrate his view that the task of philosophy is to
>apprehend and comprehend WHAT IS, rather that what ought to be." 
>(emphasis added)


of course, "a hypothetical total
surplus-value proportional to the labor-time embodied in surplus 
goods" has nothing to do with "what ought to be". this 
characterization would apply to a Ricardian socialist, not to a 
Marxian (or to most of Marxians).

in the specific instance, the idea you criticize is (or may be seen) 
as essential to understand what is. this is true: both if we accept 
or if we deny that this notion is actually the Marxian one, relevant 
to read Capital vol I.

(and, as you know, I think that that definition in a very defined 
sense captures something invariant whatever the price rule, and 
something which represents the state of ACTUAL class).

so, Fred, I think you are creating a straw man (or woman).

rb

riccardo

-- 

Riccardo Bellofiore
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche
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I-24127 Bergamo, Italy
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