From: Michael Heinrich (m.heinrich@PROKLA.DE)
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 08:20:17 EDT
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > Many chapters, including from the fourth volume. See cites in excerpt > which I sent > >> You can find a lot of >> remarks relying to world market, > > > right. but they are more than remarks, like the world market looks > more complex today than it did yesterday. > Dear Rakesh, perhaps we have differences in understanding what means "analysis", "presentation", "development of categories" etc. Single remarks, so valuable and full of insight every of these remarks may be, is not a systematic analysis, where categories have to be developped. So for example, Marx gives in vol. I a short passage about the modification of the law on value at the world market. A systematic analysis should continue this line and ask what about average rate of profit and production prices on world market. I cannot see such an analysis in "Capital", which takes into account, what was said in vol. I about modification. Similar with the state. You find remarks, and I also estimate very high the work of Pashukanis, but it is a new work on the basis of Marx and not just a new formulation ot thoughts you can already find in "Capital" . I agree that we can build a theory of world market on the basis of "Capital" but it is necessary to construct such a theory (as a theory and not only as a collection of single observations and remarks) > and what Grossman gives are remarks of > >> Marx that world market is important for an understanding of capital. > > > The quotes say much more than that! Ways in which the world market > are important for the fate of capital in general and invidivual > capitals are explicitly analyzed and theorized > It is remarked that world market is important, but where the categories necessary for understanding the world market are developed in a systematic way? > And if Marx gave such an analysis, why his repeated remarks, that the > analysis of world market is excluded from the presentation in "Capital"? > > Yes foreign trade is certainly excluded at certain levels of the > analysis. But just as surely foreign trade, international cycles, > capital exports, the global formation of production prices are > analyzed at other points. I wonder: if foreign trade is excluded from analysis in "Capital" is it then possible, that "Capital" includes a systematic analysis of world market without foreing trade? And furthermore, Marx himself excludes from "Capital" much more than "foreign trade", as the quotation about "ideal average" at the end of vol. III clearly shows (world market, movements of market prices, industrial and commercial cycles etc. are explicitly mentioned as excluded issues, it is p.831, Progress Publishers, just at the last page of ch. 48). And I think Marx was completely right in this judgement about his own analysis. You are right, that I didn't wrote precisely to Grossmann. I have not the time to right a whole article, comparing Grossmann's quotations of Marx with the context, asking what can we really find in Marx's text, what is a construction (may be a useful construction) of Grossmann and so on. Anyway I would prefer to talk on Marx. If you think, that there is really a systematic development of basic categories expressing world market (and not only remarks, telling that world market is important), please tell me the chapter in "Capital" you have in mind. In solidarity Michael
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