From: ajit sinha (sinha_a99@YAHOO.COM)
Date: Mon Sep 11 2006 - 07:01:32 EDT
--- Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU> wrote: > Again did Marx abandon the 6 book plan? If so, why? > If not how much > of it did he finish? Only a section of the first > book? Three or of > the six books? I wished this debate could have > continued; Oakley > provides a great service in laying out the possible > positions. > > The assimilation of the Physiocratic theory may > well have made him > overturn everything and abandon for theoretical > reasons the six book > plan. __________________ Mike L and I had a long debate on this question on pen-l way back in 1991-92 (if my memory serves me right). I think Lapides' book on Marx's Wage Theory--a book I was quite critical of in my review in RRPE--makes some good points against the 6 book plan thesis. Now I'm not interested in Marxological debate on this question. But I think a more interesting question from theoretical perspective would be to to ask: what is surplus? From a purely objective scientific point of view, there cannot be any surplus as every effect must have a sufficient cause. 'surplus' is essentially a concept that can come into being only from some subject's point of view. From a purely technical point of view, the output over and above the minimum requirements of production must be declared surplus (Sraffa's position) but for Marx whatever happens to be over and above the physical (C+V) is surplus--this is a point of view of all the propertied class taken together. If we call the propertied class as the capitalist class, then Marx's surplus is defined from the capitalist point of view and since the surplus is the central concept of CAPITAL, one could, to some extent, agree with Mike that CAPITAL is written from the 'capitalist point of view' (I have not seen the 2nd edition and don't know if there has been any substantial changes). However, I don't think CAPITAL could be written from any other point of view. Now, to write a book of the same nature as CAPITAL from the wage-labor point of view, one will first of all need to ask: what will be the 'surplus' from the wage-labor's point of view? Note: Marx follows Quesnay closely in defining 'productive labor' as productive of 'surplus', this is not the case with Smith. The point that something fundamental might have changed in Marx's mind after reading Quesnay should be looked at seriously. Cheers, ajit sinha __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Sep 30 2006 - 00:00:06 EDT