On Mon, 30 Sep 1996, Alan Freeman wrote:
> And let Marx speak for Marx.
I think Jerry's response on Alan's posting was quite good. Let me simply
add that one of the things Althusser established is that reading Marx is
actually quite difficult and that one has to read Marx (including in the
original German) keeping in mind that there are "silences" in Marx which
must be addressed and that there are Marx's own developing theoretical
conceptions (e.g. the introduction of the concept of "labor power" was
actually rather late).
To go even further, I would say that Marx really wasn't absolutely clear
of the relative role of social relations of production and productive
forces even late in life, and certainly the relative importance varied in
Marx's lifetime. Althusser is in some way contributing to Marxist theory
when he develops the argument that social relations of production dominate
productive forces. In an important sense the whole point of this list
group, is to ADVANCE Marxist thinking and we should not fear the
consequences.
Paul Zarembka