Re: [OPE-L] theoretical tasks

From: Pen-L Fred Moseley (fmoseley@MTHOLYOKE.EDU)
Date: Sun Apr 29 2007 - 10:10:03 EDT 

Quoting Michael Schauerte <mikeschauerte@GMAIL.COM>:

> Fred,
>
> I think I understand your explanation, thanks. And I do not think it differs
> too much from the views of Kuruma, except perhaps for what points are
> emphasized.
>
> Kuruma was quite interested in a sentence by Marx in Chapter two (also
> invariably mistranslated--except for Hans Ehrbar), where Marx writes about
> how "The difficulty lies not in comprehending that money is a commodity, but
> in discovering how, why and through what a commodity is money." He viewed
> this as a key phrase indicating the theoretical tasks that Marx sets himself
> in Sec. 3, Sec. 4 and Ch. 2. That is, in Section 3, the task is looking at
> "how a commodity is money," or more specifically the how of
> value-expression; Section 4 examines "why" value has to be expressed in a
> mediated manner in the first place, which is connected to the nature of
> commodity production; and then Ch. 2 on the exchange process discusses
> "through what" money emerges, with the answer being the "social act" of the
> other commodities. In this sense, as I alluded to in another email, Kuruma
> tries to identify the particular theoretical issues Marx is addressing
> without concerning himself too much with fitting them into a theoretical or
> historical *development, *or seeking out some underlying "motive force."

With respect to your last sentence, I think this approach (looking at
each section or chapter and trying to identify the particular issues
that Marx is addressing) may run the risk of missing the logical
connections between different parts of Marx's theory, including the
strict logical connection between Sections 1 and 2 of Chapter 1, and
Sections 3 and 4, Chapter 2, etc., as I discussed in my last message.

Comradely,
Fred


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