From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 09:32:40 EDT
Paul B wrote on April 28: > If I remember well enough Marx made a comment during this later > time that he had 'finished with all that *** ' when refering to the > studies of Capital, meaning that he had solved the basic problems. Which letter are you referring to? In any event, that doesn't mean that he viewed _Capital_ (I mean the 3 volumes) as "complete". As far as I know, he believed that _only_ Volume One was complete (indeed, given his comments about how he viewed his writings as an "artistic whole", it should be evident that he viewed the drafts for what became Volumes 2 and Volume 3 as _not_ ready for publication and therefore _not_ complete). And, it certainly doesn't mean that he believed that he had finished with the subjects of competition, landed property, wage-labor, the state, foreign trade, and world market and crisis. Indeed, one might claim that his research on peasant communes in Russia served not only a political purpose in terms of furthering connections with Russian revolutionaries but could also have constituted part of his research for Book 2 on "Landed Property". Of course, we will never know for sure. All we can ask is: have "the basic problems" have _really_ been solved? > His studies of the Turkish material on Rent, his learning of Turkish eg, > doesn't indicate a search for an easier task to me! Remember the 'cubic > metres' of material on the topic found by Engels after Marx's death...marx > wanted to trace back the historical origin of rent as a 'turkish' form. Marx had a tendency to get carried away with his studies -- a fate common for many intellectuals. As a consequence, many of his projects expanded both in terms of the time required for research and writing and in terms of the length of the final product (or draft). It should not be surprising that near the end of his life he attempted to learn more about 'new' subjects for him. This is, after all, one of the marks of a creative and active mind -- and there is every reason to believe that his mind was both creative and active until the end. He understood that learning, after all, is a life-long process and is never complete. In solidarity, Jerry
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