> Date sent: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 10:37:42 -0500
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> From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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> Subject: Re: The World Economic Crisis and American Capitalism
Doug Henwood wrote:
Rakesh said that Marxism isn't a theory of upswings, but one of
> crisis. I can't agree. For one, Marx was a theorist of the expansiveness of
> capital, of its ability to break beyond apparent barriers to its expansion,
> as much as he was a theorist of contradiction and disaster. And for two,
> since capitalism spends most of its time in expansion, you're condeming
> Marxism to marginality. And for three, if you believe in crisis, you'll see
> one everywhere all the time. So you end up looking really silly when the
> crisis passes. So for all these reasons, I think we have to take seriously
> the possibility that Shaikh is right, and the long crisis is over in the
> U.S. at least.
>
> Doug
This may be true only in light of our historical understanding of
capitalism. That is why is so difficult to speak about the "original"
meaning of Capital, because there is always a mediation between the
past of the text and the present of the reader. You can't deny there
was a time Marx was seeing crises everywhere. But history has proven
capitalism to be a lot more resilient and versatile than even he ever
anticipated.
Moreover, is it really possible to divorce Marx's theory of crisis
from his theory of accumulation? Certainly, in Marx's analyis, crisis
emerge directly from the valorization process of capital.
ricardo
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