This is a fun post - though it must have been hard, afterwards, to get all the lobster butter off your keyboard...
The trajectory suggested here for Marx's bio strikes me as correct - but I would emphasize as a friendly amendment that Hegel bedeviled Marx's output to the end, or at least through Capital 1, which - as pointed out in the post - founders right at the beginning from Marx's tendency to see simple distinctions as "contradictions", and from other idealistic baggage. There are much better things later in the book, but the ass has already chosen his burden.
And - yes! - I think the post in right on target with the insight that in his last phase Marx was attempting to master and use the "political economy" he previously sought to supplant. And it explains, possibly, why Capital 2 leaves off so abruptly: Marx may have realized that - in political economy terms - his setup could not take him from "simple reproduction" to accumulation. [An aside: Perhaps this was obvious to everyone, but Joan Robinson's 'Accumulation of Capital' (whose index does not even mention Marx) has seemed to me as an attempt - mutatis mutandis - to complete Capital 2. (Ditto with Kaldor's growth theories of the same period.)]
An issue ago, the Journal of Economic Perspectives had a retro article that recommended Robinson's early 1940's 'Essay on Marxian Economics'. I bought the book and was struck by two things:
1) Robinson's suggestion that we we read Capital backwards: 3 -> 2 -> 1. It was very interesting to follow her reading, but as I did so and looked up the citations (in her order), ...
2) it became clear that that her whole project was to de-Hegelianize Marx and somehow recover him as an economist. She was trying to isolate that last phase you mention - and 'Accumulation' follows quite naturally from that effort. (Perhaps this has always been obvious to everyone, but I wish I had realized it earlier.)
Reading Marx Robinson-style in no sense removes all the problems, but it does allow one to read the guy without having to bracket all the initial nonsense in Capital 1.
"The Wall Street Journal editorial page works day and night 365 days a year to make Marx’s prediction [of social democracy collapsing before an ideological assault from the right] come true. But I think this [project will not succeed]."
If there is one thing in Brad's essay that might need marking to market, this is it. Mammon's true believers have again allied with fascists. Such an alliance has often succeeded.
This is a fun post - though it must have been hard, afterwards, to get all the lobster butter off your keyboard...
The trajectory suggested here for Marx's bio strikes me as correct - but I would emphasize as a friendly amendment that Hegel bedeviled Marx's output to the end, or at least through Capital 1, which - as pointed out in the post - founders right at the beginning from Marx's tendency to see simple distinctions as "contradictions", and from other idealistic baggage. There are much better things later in the book, but the ass has already chosen his burden.
And - yes! - I think the post in right on target with the insight that in his last phase Marx was attempting to master and use the "political economy" he previously sought to supplant. And it explains, possibly, why Capital 2 leaves off so abruptly: Marx may have realized that - in political economy terms - his setup could not take him from "simple reproduction" to accumulation. [An aside: Perhaps this was obvious to everyone, but Joan Robinson's 'Accumulation of Capital' (whose index does not even mention Marx) has seemed to me as an attempt - mutatis mutandis - to complete Capital 2. (Ditto with Kaldor's growth theories of the same period.)]
An issue ago, the Journal of Economic Perspectives had a retro article that recommended Robinson's early 1940's 'Essay on Marxian Economics'. I bought the book and was struck by two things:
1) Robinson's suggestion that we we read Capital backwards: 3 -> 2 -> 1. It was very interesting to follow her reading, but as I did so and looked up the citations (in her order), ...
2) it became clear that that her whole project was to de-Hegelianize Marx and somehow recover him as an economist. She was trying to isolate that last phase you mention - and 'Accumulation' follows quite naturally from that effort. (Perhaps this has always been obvious to everyone, but I wish I had realized it earlier.)
Reading Marx Robinson-style in no sense removes all the problems, but it does allow one to read the guy without having to bracket all the initial nonsense in Capital 1.
Again, fun post. Thanks.
"The Wall Street Journal editorial page works day and night 365 days a year to make Marx’s prediction [of social democracy collapsing before an ideological assault from the right] come true. But I think this [project will not succeed]."
If there is one thing in Brad's essay that might need marking to market, this is it. Mammon's true believers have again allied with fascists. Such an alliance has often succeeded.