[OPE-L:1562] Re: Lapides and Marx's wage theory


zarembka@acsu.buffalo.edu
Sat, 23 Oct 1999 16:55:46


On 10/23/99 at 12:41 PM, Gerald Levy <glevy@PRATT.EDU> said:

>... we have to examine what Marx wrote in
>_Capital_ to determine what was *not* written about yet is required for
>the further logical development of the theory. Thus, as I said before,
>the analysis of the state-form is required precisely because it wasn't
>examined in _Capital_ yet is a form that arises necessarily out of a
>further development of the commodity-form (thus the category of money
>implies the state. But where is the analysis of the state?).

I used to work intimately with a Marxist addressing precisely this
question: Juan Pablo Perez Sainz, "Capital, State and Fetishization",
RiPE, Vol 4, 1981, pp. 129-145. He never argued in public nor privately
for a "missing book". He just went about theoretizing the state in
capitalist society. Whether he succeeded with his attempt is separate
story.

>More to the
>point, how is "need" established for workers in _Capital_? The very
>one-sided way in which this subject is assumed to exist at that level of
>abstraction cries out for a further development at a more concrete level
>of analysis. It is important, thus, when examining what Marx wrote to not
>only look what he wrote but what he *didn't* write.

Of course. But silences do not "missing books" make. Suppose that you
just dropped the idea that Marx himself intended to write FIVE more
"books" after Capital. What difference would it make? You could still
write exactly the same book you would otherwise have written. We don't
NEED Marx's implicit permission to go forward.

> 3) you do not seem aware that the Soviet Stalinist
>> interpretation of Marx leans heavily on Hegel (yes, this is a new thread
>> but I never thought of you as any type of Stalinist, so now I wonder why
>> this connection doesn't seem to have occured to you).

>A curious interpretation, I might say. Especially so since those Marxists
>who highlighted the influence of Hegel on Marx, like I.I. Rubin, were
>summarily executed by Stalinists.

>I doubt if you could find a Hegelian anywhere, or a Hegelian-Marxist, who
>would support the interpretation of Hegel and/or Marx in Soviet Stalinist
>theory. In fact, I don't even know of a Hegelian anywhere who has
>anything good to say about Soviet philosophy under Stalin (and after).
>Can you provide a counter example?

I don't understand your last paragraph above. In any case, I am not
interested in "Hegelians" interpreting the Soviet philosophy but Marxism
in the Soviet Union using a Hegelian approach. Do you doubt that the
following has Stalinist roots: 1) M. Cornforth (altho I don't have it to
review before sending this email), or 2) I. Fetscher on "Hegel" in *A
Dictionary of Marxist Thought*; "[Marx] took over Hegel's dialectical
method in its most comprehensive form, that of the *Logic*, and used it to
lay bare the dynamic structure of the capitalist mode of production",
p.237, but I don't know Fetscher's politics. See also presumably his
book *Karl Marx and Marxism*, or 3) "The Marxist dialectic is free from
being one-sided, is the fullest and deepest science about development...It
arms the proletarian party with the knowledge of objective laws of
development"--translated from the 1955 Polish translation of the 4th
Russian edition of *Short Dictionary of Philosophy*, M. Rozental and P.
Judin, 1954.

Final note: Jerry, you read "Classes" in Vol. 3 one way, while I consider
it a "fragment" open to many interpretations, perhaps interpretations
which neither of us has even thought of. By the way, I did respond to
your interpretation--by offering another. But I cannot go further without
knowing certain basics--like, did Engels put that fragment where it
belonged. Engels' editing has been subject to controversy.

Paul



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