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This will be for today my last post on the topic, since I am trying to stick to
the five-post-per-day limit. So I will try to bundle a few responses here, and
any other responses must wait until tomorrow.
S. Artesian understands my point perfectly. And he also writes;
> not even I'm perfect when it comes to making all the connections between
> Marx's analysis and the concrete tasks ahead of us.
And that is exactly why I thought Carrol's post was excellent. Because Carrol
posits that there is a necessary disconnect between the critique of political
economy, Marx's actual theory, on the one hand, and revolutionary praxis on the
other hand. Marx's theory is not a theory of revolution, since there can be no
theory of revolution. What Marx offers is a theory of the operation of
capitalism, of the mediation forms of social life in bourgeois society. At
best, the critique of political economy can explain why revolutions are so rare
and difficult. It is not a user's manual for one.
Louis Proyect:
> But Angelus is not interested in the transition period
There can be no "theory of the transition period", because whatever transition
periods emerge will be the result of historical contingency under widely
varying circumstances. In that sense, trying to take some
historically-situated comments Marx made in the 19th century and apply them to
the Post-Fordist era strikes me as a waste of time. Marx's political writings
are _interventions_; they engage with the figures and events of his time. They
are quite a different kettle of fish from his theoretical writings, which apply
to capitalism as such.
Lukewarm wrote:
> I want to read in YOUR words what YOU intend to do in order "to abolish
> the working class
But Marx speaks for me on this question. I can't say it any better than he
does. No point in trying to improve upon Marx's prose, he says it better than
anyone could.
But really Lukewarm, you're just one of those sad old Icepick-head Trotskyites
who never bothered to read Marx. Instead you probably got spoonfed George
Novack popularizations of Engels' Dialectic of Nature or some other turgid
crap. If so I can understand why you're resentful against people whose point
of reference is _Capital_ or the _Grundrisse_ rather than the collected works
of James Cannon.
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