From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Fri Nov 24 2006 - 11:44:03 EST
Dogan, Marxists talk about the "logic of capital". This implies straightaway that there is such a thing as capitalist (commercial) rationality, embodied/personified in at least the best bourgeois behaviour. But really Marx is saying that capitalism contains numerous conflicting social logics which are nevertheless mutually dependent on each other. They all have their basis in the contradictions of the commodity form (the basic principle of commercial trade), about which much has been said already, I won't go into that here. But the point is really this - even if we note such things as masses of people starving while there is enough to eat for all, this does not necessarily make capitalism irrational. We can say at this point at most that the pursuit of commercial rationality has undesirable results. A social system becomes irrational only when its functioning becomes dysfunctional to itself, i.e. it is in reality unable to reproduce itself anymore. Obviously if people starve, this may in the given case make the system dysfunctional to itself, insofar as it can no longer reproduce itself. But it may also be the case, that the system continues to function quite well, even although masses of people starve. Jurriaan
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