[Marxism] Karl Marx And the Classics

[Angelus Novus]

Louis Proyect:

> maybe I am missing something, but after taking a 
> quick look at the "New  Reading of Marx" link you 
> posted, I don't find much there different from what
I > have read on the archives of Gerry Levy's OPE-L
list.

I share your critical assessment of OPE-L, which is
why I think it is unfair to subsume Michael Heinrich
entirely under that project.  The "New Reading of
Marx" as it emerged in West Germany in the 1970s has
more to do with placing a renewed emphasis upon the
centrality of Marx's analysis of the fetishism of
bourgeois relations for his overall project.

It has not much to do with the "transformation
problem" and such, and more to do with highlighting
Marx's innovations and the aspects that distinguish
Marx from classical political economy.

The usefulness of this, I think, consists of being
able to formulate a communist critique of reformist
projects that regard capitalist production as
fundamentally "innocent" and that concentrate their
critique solely upon "speculative capital" (ATTAC, for
example).


> In my view, the best thing that a Marxist economist 
> can do today is conduct studies of the capitalist 
> economy

Absolutely.  Elmar Altvater, I think, has been
publishing amazing analyses of the real movement of
capital.  His book co-authored with Birgit Mankopf,
_Grenzen der Globalisierung_, is *the* work for
understanding the "globalization" phenomenon, and has
criminally not been translated into English (perhaps
when I'm done with my current translation projects,
which should be in about half a year)

Also, his dealing with ecological themes in books like
"The Future of the Market" and "Der Preis des
Wohlstands" is of immense importance.




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