[OPE-L:1411] Re: Levels of abstraction


Jurriaan Bendien (djjb99@worldonline.nl)
Mon, 04 Oct 1999 06:21:21 +0100


Hi Alejandro:

>Do you know who is (are) the first author(s) who started to interpret
>systematically Marx's presentation as a sequence of "levels of abstraction"?

To my knowledge the first author was the Japanese scholar Kozo Uno (see
e.g. his brilliant primer in English, Principles of Political Economy,
which has notes by Thomas Sekine), but it depends on what you mean by
"interpret systematically". Many Marxian authors grappling with Capital
Vol. 3 have at a certain point commented on "levels of abstraction".

 In Western Europe and Australasia, discussion about levels of abstraction
were (at least in my time) raised mainly under the influence of Louis
Althusser's work. In Eastern Europe, the Polish author Leszek Nowak should
be mentioned (see his book about the logical structure of Marx's work, "The
structure of Idealisation"), and the Czechoslovak Marxian philosopher
Jindrich Zeleny also considered it. I met an Australian Marxian social
geographer once by name of Horvat who also wrote on it.

Hope this is of help.

In solidarity

Jurriaan



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