From: Michael Heinrich (m.heinrich@PROKLA.DE)
Date: Thu Apr 14 2005 - 21:42:21 EDT
Rakesh Bhandari schrieb: > What do we mean by critique? If by we critique we mean something > like the Kantian transcendental analytic, then Marx is interested to > determine the conditions of possibility of political economy as such > (see Michel Henry). What are the conditions that make possible the > impossible equation of xcommodityA=ycommodityB? Or perhaps critique > should be understood as the delimitation of the domain under which > concepts have some, perhaps practical validity (see Mattick jr,Gideon > Freudenthal)? If such questions can be sensibly formulated and shown > to have animated Marx's scientific work, then it does seem that it > would be misleading to say that Marx is simply advancing a kind of > political economy. > Rakesh > The meaning of critique is indeed essential. I think we find different meanings in "Capital" but the most fundamental meaning is in some sense close to Kant (I suppose it was not by accident, that the subtitle of "Capital" reminds at Kant's Critique of Pure Reason). Like Kant determines the conditions of possibility of metaphysical constructions (and by this determination he destructs classical metaphysics) Marx asked for the conditions of the possibility of categories of Political Economy and by this he destroyed Political Economy - unfortunately only intellecutally. The real existence of the mystifications expressed by political economy will only vanish, when captialism has vanished (in this point, I agree with Michael L.), fetishism is not an attribute of mind or of false perception, it is an attribute of reality, of practical behaviour in a capitalist society (I am not sure, whether Seyla Benhabib, who you mentioned in another mail, would accentuate this, too). Michael
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