On 6/7/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
huh? I thought Marx's whole point was to suspend _belief_ in the magical properties of commodities, to expose the relationships between people that are hidden by the relationships between things. (It's true that some of his followers fall for the fetishism of commodities, however.)
Well, yeah... to an extent. That's the point of the section in Chapter 1 on the fetishism of commodities. But Marx expects you to keep two thoughts in mind at the same time: 1. that it isn't really a relationship between things and 2. the lawlike development of this relationship between things (that isn't really a relationship between things). It's damned hard to keep those two thinks in mind (unless you're smokin' hashish, maybe)
> But the suspension of disbelief > can only go so far and it flounders on the reef of > productive/unproductive labor. why?
Because when something flounders, it's gotta be on something and a reef is a likely thing to flounder on. ;-)
I haven't the slightest idea how to get the pamphlet. Is it available on-line? (My googling of - "Dilke's pamphlet 'The Source and Remedy of National difficulties'" made Google spit out "did not match any documents.")
In addition to my little introductionary essay to Dilke, here's the entire pamphlet: http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/source%20and%20remedy.pdf
hmm. I couldn't find Dilke in the index of either volume I or volume III of CAPITAL. Did Marx plagiarize? I wouldn't be surprised, since the standards of plagiarism were different back then.
No Marx didn't plagiarize, although he could have been a bit more forthcoming in publicly acknowledging Dilke's contribution. How one assesses the importance of that contribution depends on what one's interpretation of Marx is. I would align myself generally with Moishe Postone's interpretation and on that score, Dilke's contribution seems major. See also: http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/dispose.htm with links to selections from the Grundrisse, Economic Manuscript of 1861-63 and Postone's Time, Labor and Social Domination.
> The pamphlet itself, however, proceeds to develop a political > analysis to which those first six pages were somewhat of a feint. That > analysis centres on the distinctions between productive and > unproductive labor and between real and fictitious capital. oh. Is it a Smithian analysis of productive/unproductive labor? or is it the kind that we might (incorrectly?) term "Marxian"?
Neither? I can't speak for Smith's analysis. Proto-Marxian? Ricardian Socialist? I would call it a moralistic argument and one that has certain affinities even with Thomas Carlyle's.
Not understanding exactly what Tom is talking about here, I'll stick to my point that the whole productive/unproductive labor distinction is a theoretical cul-de-sac, until convinced otherwise.
Ah, but Jim, I AGREED from the start with your point about it perhaps being a theoretical cul-de-sac but on the grounds that cul-de-sacs may be all that we have and that the search for a theoretical thoroughfare may be even more futile (or hubristic) than learning from those cul-de-sacs. -- Sandwichman
