Re: [OPE-L] re the 6 book plan

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2006 - 21:48:13 EDT


--- Jerry Levy <Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM> wrote:
>
>> > The point that something
>> > fundamental might have changed in Marx's mind
>> after
>> > reading Quesnay should be looked at seriously.
>>
>> Ajit:
>>
>> There is nothing that flows from a critique of
>> Quesnay
>> which contradicts the logic embodied in the
>> 6-book-plan.
>> Quite the contrary: the analysis of the reproduction
>> process
>> of social capital demands  for  its further
>> development
>> a theory which integrates that topic with the
>> subjects of the
>> three major classes (as subjects), the state,
>> foreign trade (and
>> hence, states) and the world market.  Rather than
>> leading to the
>> abandonment of the 6-book-plan, that critique should
>> point
>> the way forward to those subjects.

Yes but Marx understood the six books as independent empirical studies;
when devising the six book plan he did not yet have the theoretical basis
to integrate the studies of wage labour, landed property and the various
forms of capital (industrial, merchant and banking).
Grossman's argument is that the late reckoning with Quesnay allowed him to
find the theoretical basis for such integration. It could even be that
Quesnay proved more helpful than the chance rereading of Hegel's Logic.

Grossman may well be wrong, but I think Tribe was quite correct back in
1974 that his argument has been grossly misrepresented by his critics.
And I do think it is very helpful to look at the whole of Marx's Capital
in comparison with the Physiocratic model of reproduction. Marx understood
this I believe. Which is why he was so interested in its being represented
correctly in Anti Duhring.
Haven't read Meek's introduction to the English translation to Quesnay's
Tableaux, but I am very interested in how he sees relation between
Physiocrats and Marx.


Rakesh

>>
>> In solidarity, Jerry
> ___________________________
> Jerry, how can you understand capitalism without
> analyzing the role of education in creating the
> ideological conditions for capitalist reproduction and
> further the role of media, and then again the
> historicity of a culture, the sociology of a culture,
> the geography of a culture, the whole of natural
> environment and its relation with the mode of
> production on the one hand and the solar system on the
> other, and the relationship of the solar system with
> the universe and its relationship with the multiverse,
> etc., etc. to understand the totality of it all. How
> many more books did I prescribe for Marx or you
> already? Do you get my point? 'Totality' is just a
> mere slogan! Cheers, ajit sinha
>>
>
>
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