Re: [OPE-L] on the political economy of the working class

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Tue Apr 12 2005 - 13:36:03 EDT


Michael,
It's been a very long time since I sat in her seminar but Seyla
Benhabib does provide an inventory of the different meanings of
critique in her Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations
of Critical Theory. She begins with the Schmittian Reinhard
Koselleck's, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis
of Modern Society (1956), and  she discusses the three levels of
critique in Marx's Capital--immanent, defetishizing, and crisis
oriented.  She is a brilliantly lucid writer, though I don't think
many here would agree with her development of Habermas' critique of
Marx.

Yours, Rakesh



At 11:37 AM -0400 4/12/05, michael a. lebowitz wrote:
>On the question of critique and political economy, for what it's
>worth, here's a passage from p. 202 of Beyond Capital:
>
>>The critique of the political economy of capital is completed only
>>by the realisation of the political economy of the working class---
>>a communist society. As long as producers are not their own
>>mediator, the mystification of everyday life and the alienation of
>>human beings from their own powers continue:
>>
>>      The veil is not removed from the countenance of the social
>>life-process, i.e. the process of material production, until it
>>      becomes production by freely associated men, and stands under
>>their conscious and planned control (Marx, 1977: 173).
>>
>
>Michael A. Lebowitz
>Professor Emeritus
>Economics Department
>Simon Fraser University
>Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
>
>Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at
>Residencias Anauco Suites
>Departamento 601
>Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1
>Caracas, Venezuela
>(58-212) 573-4111
>fax: (58-212) 573-7724


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