From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2007 - 23:47:17 EDT
>A request for help. > >I think someone on this list (Rakesh, perhaps?) made a comment once about >Althusser advising people to start reading Capital from ch.7. Is this right? >Does anyone have a reference, or even a quote? > >Many thanks if you can help me on this. > >John http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpalthusser11.htm If I said that I was mistaken. Althusser recommends beginning with Part II, chapter 4. Korsch said to begin with Chapter 7, though it would not serve as a good description of a wafer production facility or an automated assembly line! http://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/19xx/introduction-capital.htm >That is why I want to recommend to the beginner an approach that >diverges somewhat from Marx's advice on a suitable start for the >ladies (wherein we may sense a certain deference to the prejudices >of his own time!). I hope that the approach I recommend will enable >the reader to attain a full understanding of Capital just as >readily, or even more readily than if he were to begin with the >difficult opening chapters. >It is best, I think, to begin with a thorough perusal of Chapter 7 >on 'The Labour Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-value'. >There are, it is true, a number of preliminary difficulties to be >overcome, but these are all internal to the matter in hand, and not >due, as are many difficulties in the preceding chapters, to a really >rather unnecessary artificiality in the presentation. What is said >here refers directly and immediately to palpable realities, and in >the first instance to the palpable reality of the human work >process. We encounter straightaway a clear and stark presentation of >an insight essential for the proper understanding of Capital - the >insight that this real-life work process represents, under the >present regime of the capitalist mode of production, not only the >production of use-values for human eventually through the difficult >parts as well as the simpler passages of the book should save this >part up until he really does come to the end of Part 7, for Part 8 >was intended by Marx as a final crowning touch to his work. Now that all this is all on line I can see that I spent way too much of my limited resources buying copies of all these books! In the course of our discussions Fred Moseley said I think that chapter 7 is the most important chapter. Obviously an intriguing position but he did not elaborate. Yours, Rakesh
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