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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Health Care, Wonderful Market fo
Message-ID: <28200155@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 20:12:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200155
Posted: Mon Oct  7 20:12:00 1985
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Nf-From: inmet!janw    Oct  7 20:12:00 1985


[carnes@gargoyle]
> In article <28200136@inmet.UUCP> janw@inmet.UUCP writes:
> > Unfortunately, few Marxists read Marx; they don't  suspect,  for
> >instance, that the main propositions of the 1st volume of Das Ka-
> >pital (on which their whole case is built) are retracted  in  the
> >3d volume.

> Not really.  One must recall that Vol. III was written first, so if
> there were any retractions, it was the other way round.

The way I've learned it was that Marx kept working on Vol. III
till his death. Then Engels edited it, using Marx's drafts.
Vol.I had been completed and published by Marx long since.

 Anyway, chronological order of writing is unimportant, since
the reader is not obligated to know the author's private life.
 If, in the next paragraph, I disavow this one - are you
supposed to investigate which was typed first ?

> But most apparent discrepancies are explained by  the  fact  that
> Marx is using different *models* of the capitalist economy in the
> two volumes.  For example, in Vol. I he assumes that  prices  are
> directly  proportional to labor values, stating that this is only
> a temporary simplification that will later be dropped, as  it  is
> in  Vol.  III.  Admittedly Marx does not make all this clear as a
> bell.

This is just what I mean. The Vol.I model is what most popular
Marxism was based on - but it is grossly untrue. Vol.III model
describes facts better, but does not lend itself easily to Marxist
conclusions. 

> I strongly recommend a reading of Vol. I to 
> net.politics.theoreticians, not merely because it is good for
> your soul but also because you will enjoy it. If you start with
> Chapter 4 and save Chapter 1 for last, you may find that it is
> much more readable than you think. Chapters 2, 3, 13-22, and 26
> of Vol. I are all skippable.

 These are valuable tips; I wish someone had told me this when I
read the damn thing  (I  was  in my teens, MANY long years ago).
 I would especially join you in the advice to skip Chapter 1.
Lenin wrote once that to understand it, one had to study first *all*
of Hegel's Logic (his emphasis). Slightly exaggerated, maybe ...

But, underneath its philosophical profundity, that chapter is pure
rot. It says, really, that labor theory of value has got to be
true, because, if you strip from any goodies their specific qualities
- what else is left, but the labor invested; and if you strip this
labor of *its* specifics - what else is left but the labor time.
So, values *must* be reducible to man-hours.

No other chapter is as silly as that; and many of them, as you
say, make good reading. Marx has a very high idea/byte rate.

> I agree with Jan that Marxist insights can be very useful for the
> critique of "actually existing socialism."  Besides Djilas, one might
> mention some books by Roy Medvedev, Charles Bettelheim, Leszek
> Kolakowski, Rudolf Bahro, Svetozar Stojanovic, and others.
> Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes

Thank you. This was my main point. (Even though the quoted words
aren't mine).

But, Richard, what about Marx's *positive* insight - his vision
of a stateless, anarchic, libertarian future ? Nothing worth
retaining there, eh ?

		Jan Wasilewsky