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

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Sat Apr 16 2005 - 10:55:33 EDT 

At 3:42 AM +0200 4/15/05, Michael Heinrich wrote:
>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)

I am a bit confused here, Michael. Does Kant save metaphysical
conceptions of substance, cause against Humean skepticism?



>  Marx
>asked for the conditions of the possibility of categories of Political
>Economy

and those conditions of possibility are? The double freedom of the proletariat?


>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).


I don't think she is strong on this point. On fetishism as attribute
of reality, Godelier has best argued this point as far as I know.

Yours, Rakesh






>
>Michael

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