From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Mon Oct 09 2006 - 10:30:41 EDT
won't be replying to this 'reply'. Thanks for the 'dialogue' rb >I think Marx completed, at least in manuscript form, the analysis of capital >in general which he projected, because - as I quoted - he considered that it >was most important to get clear about the social meaning of capital, that >was the priority, and from that all else followed. His book is indeed called >"Das Kapital". > >The theory of foreign trade would presumably discuss the principles of that >trade, which followed from the analysis of the capitalist mode of production >and the theory of value. Initially, from the 16th century up to the 19th >century - foreign trade had fueled original accumulation, but the >development of capitalist production created new principles of foreign >trade. Presumably Marx would have wanted to criticize the theories of >foreign trade and colonialism by the political economists, in terms of how >that trade actually occurred and who benefited from it, distinguishing >between trade in money and capital and trade in commodities. > >For a useful study of the theories of the political economists, see e.g. >Donald Winch, Classical political economy and colonies (1965) and by the >same author, Riches and poverty : an intellectual history of political >economy in Britain, 1750-1834 (1996). > >The theory of the world market would presumably empirically analyse the >world economy in its real totality, i.e. the relations between nations who >are increasingly integrated into a world market, and what the dynamics >behind their trade were. (In 1900 Franz Mehring partly attempted to sketch >such an analysis, in an article in Vorwärts, titled "Weltkrach und >Weltmarkt. Eine weltpolitische Skizze"["World crash and world market. A >worldpolitical sketch"). There were also various debates in the journal Die >Neue Zeit. > >However, when Marx lived, the available data he could use for this were >sparse. Many West European as well as US official institutions provided some >estimates of exports and imports of goods, national income estimates as well >as data on currency exchange, but there were no integrated accounts of >national and international capital and currency flows. Consequently the >world market project was in a sense beyond Marx at that time, even if he had >had the time for it - he got as far as journalistic analyses (about 24 >articles or so) and letters on the topic. > >In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a spate of Marxian analyses of the world >market by Prokla authors like Busch, Neususs, Kohlmey, Schoeller, Seelow, >Tiegel, Altvater and so on, but their work was never translated into >English. > >Jurriaan
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