From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Tue Mar 27 2007 - 08:19:00 EDT
It has been suggested that it is easier to study the 'body, the organic whole' rather than the cells of that body. Shouldn't the study of the cell-form come _before_ the study of the body as a whole? How can a theory, which has been described as beginning with macrcoeconomic aggregates, begin with an analysis of the cell-form? In solidarity, Jerry Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - 1867 Preface <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm>1867 Preface to the First German Edition <snip> Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. [1] The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour - or value-form of the commodity - is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy. <snip>
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