[Marxism] Review of what seems like a scientific, rational argument against religion

[Aaron Aarons]

At 18:27 -0500 2008/11/15, S. Artesian wrote:
<< That "a tendency to offer facts as an explanation in instances when it is the facts that require explanation" is exactly the criticism Robert Brenners levels against the "world systems," primitive accumulation, unequal exchange, empire, theories that are proposed to explain the origina of capitalism. >>

When dealing with historical processes, facts are both consequences of previous facts and causes of future facts. What needs to be explained by theory is how some facts at one moment lead to other facts at a subsequent moment, or, more generally, how one set of facts interacts with another. Of course, what aspects of observable reality are isolated as "facts" depends on both the needs (and fears and desires) and the previous mental constructs (theories, etc.) of the (individual and collective) observers, but I'm not trying to write a Ph.D dissertation here -- something I didn't manage to do even in my field of mathematics.

The process called "primitive accumulation" is a fact that may or may not have been necessary to the fact of capitalism, but it certainly shaped the latter. Moreover, the process/fact of primitive accumulation continues to shape and be shaped by capitalism as a whole.

The same goes for unequal exchange, which is essentially a form of ongoing primitive accumulation.

 - Aaron