From: rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU
Date: Sun May 11 2003 - 13:04:15 EDT
I had written (though now corrected) > Yet not quite sure at all what to make of > the attempts to introduce virtuality into traditional ontology; not > sure whether the concept of virtuality helps in any way to clarify > Marx's sense of the... reality of his laws of tendency. > __________ Howard replied: As I understand it, Rakesh, the rest of your post answers the question posed -- without speaking to the way in which the philosophers you mention use the precise term "virtuality," if you start with a "things with powers" ontology, then you need the actual/latent distinction because powers may exist unexercised. My friend has the power to see, but just now her eyes are closed. _______________ Yet as Hans suggested the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not unexercised even when it it is not actual. It has more effective reality than a potential or possibility for actualization. It is not a dormant power. Neither the possible/real nor the potential/actual couplet will allow us--it seems to me--to capture Marx's meaning which Hans captures well. What, then, is the mode of reality of the effective and dynamic law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall? It seems to me more than a possibility because its non actuality may well be the result of the very forces which it has effectively called forth (a devaluation of constant capital by way of crisis or the export of capital into new branches of low organic composition or higher rates of surplus value)? What does the virtual modality meant by Bergson entail? Can it be made helpful in any way in capturing Marx's meaning? Probably not as for Bergson the virtual mode is postulated mainly (as I understand it) to make sense of psychological, not social, dynamics. Yet the question remains of how to characterize the mode of reality implied by Han's description of the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall? If does not have a virtual reality, then what kind of reality does it have? The need for an answer is urgent as the inability to appreciate fully the contradictions of capitalist production and the consequent formulation of revisionist programmes begin after all with a denial of any mode of reality for the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall! It will be noted that in Sweezy's and Robinson's evaluation of Marx's crisis theory no reality of any kind is accorded (it seems to me) to the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Yours, Rakesh
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