[OPE-L:4312] Books 4-6 Revisited

Michael William (mwilliam@compuserve.com)
Fri, 7 Mar 1997 16:24:42 -0800 (PST)

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Gerry wrote
> meaning of why it was viewed as the "finishing point." I.e. we
know
> that Marx gave careful consideration to the starting point of his
> investigation, but it seems to me that the "end point" also has
> great significance (at least within a Hegelian-Marxist reading).
> What is the rationale for ending with that subject?
>
I think this misrepresents the 'end-points' of a systematic dialectical
presentation. Whilst the starting point may be a single (putatively the
most fundamental and abstract) category (Commodity, or Value or
Surplus-value, or ? according to perspective), the 'end-point' is not some
particular theme ('the world market ...') but is, in principle, the
reconstruction of the empirical as the concrete - the articulation of many
abstract determinants.
And this is the point that Marx makes in the quote you cite a bit later in
the same post under (5)
Michael
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Dr Michael Williams
"Books are Weapons"

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