[Marxism] -ismic doctrine or science? (was: Cockburn contrarianism )

[Haines Brown]

> I believe that Marx took an interest in the calculus as a result of
> his studies in political economy.

I regret that I'm not informed as to Marx's interest in mathematics,
but your point is interesting.

Calculus, of course, is the mathematics used to represent processes,
and his interest in calculus would seem to lend support to the
suggestion that Marx was a process theorist.

However, calculus is not _really_ a way to represent a process, but an
approximation of changes in state. To see process as a change of state
is hopelessly tied to empiricism (I'm not sure if this point is
intuitively obvious or whether I have to defend it). But if this point
carries weight, Marx's interest in calculus would only cast some light
on his outlook, but not be of much help to us (Marxists) today in an
effort to represent things as processes.

Actually, I believe Marx's handling of the commodity in Capital I is a
much more sophisticated and exciting approach to the representation of
process in thought than calculus. 

Haines Brown