From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Thu Oct 20 2005 - 10:03:51 EDT
In assuming that S = D in _Capital, Marx was not accepting Say's Law. That is a red herring. The issue here is one of the logical ordering of Marx's presentation. In Volume 2, Say's Law is _denied_ in order to demonstrate the abstract, formal possibility of crisis. In Volume 3, in the section on the law of the tendency for the general rate of profit to decline (LTGRPD), S is assumed to equal D in order to demonstrate how capitalist crisis can occur because of the inner nature of capital itself _even with this assumption_. A complete theory of crisis can not be systematically developed at the level of abstraction of _Capital_. A complete theory requires an analysis "in which production is posited as a totality together with all its moments, but within which, at the same time, all contradictions come into play" (_Grundrisse_, Penguin ed., p. 227). Marx stated repeatedly and at no point ever denied that an analysis of crisis was linked to the subject of the world market: indeed, he often refers to Book VI in the 6-book-plan was "World Market and Crisis." This is not a subject which can be pieced together by collecting the asides of Marx on the world market; it is a subject which is essential to the subject matter (capitalism) and requires _systematic_ analysis. To do that, one has to keep the _subject itself_ in focus rather than what Marx wrote. Reading Marx's tea leaves or Grossmann can not substitute for this analysis. Furthermore, if we are to seriously consider the world market we can not consider this question only abstractly: we have to consider the world market as it exists in late capitalism and that requires some empirical/statistical analysis if we are to reconstruct in thought a real subject (a point I think Jurriaan would agree with). Additionally, an analysis of classes, the state, and foreign trade is _required_ for us to more fully and concretely comprehend the nature of capitalist crisis. In solidarity, Jerry
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