MarxReadingGroup

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Hey

This is not by way of an introduction, just an empty space from which to begin. If anyone is lacking a copy of Capital they can get it off the web (www.marxists.org) where you can get it chapter by chapter. A good guide to the text is Harry Cleaver's- both the book (Reading Capital Politically), and the course he teaches at tthe University of Texas (google it). As for myself I will declare my own prejudices right from the start.

I don't think Marx's intent was to produce a philosophy, either as a tool for the working classes or as a blueprint for a future. I am sure that Cleaver is correct in his reading(a political reading) but I think there are other things in there as well that it would be a shame to ignore- judging a content to be essential and the rest simply illustrations, or examples, or signs of an earlier or later development. Capital is a book about processes- the messy and often absurd processes of Capitalist growth and the forms of life that it produces, reproduces, co-opts, surrounds, encloses and refashions. The radicality of the text is precisely this- that it does not recognise a Ground on which Capital works, nor is this an oversight. It is essential to the political project of Marx, who will have as little to do as he can with moralising, or value judgements about the situation that Capital confronts us with.

I am particularly interested in what would now be called Ontological currents in the text- How the process of Capital is articulated in its objects and its subjects and what this may tell us about what these objects and subjects are, that is to say what we are, and what we can do. In this sense it is a very political text, but in a very particular way- it does not ask how we can use politics for ends which are not political. It makes the divisions between politics, economics, time, measure, value and 'form of life' its problem, and not necessarily so these divisions can be overcome. To that extent Marx's politics are prior to everything else, not that he reads the world through an ideology- he rather shows how ideologies themselves are part of the production of Capital. It is in the sense that every question is already a political question, including the most private fantasy, and the fondest hope.

Capital is probably the most dangerous book ever written ( a toss up with Beyond Good and Evil)- it literally dissolves the world we live in and refuses to put anything in it's place. This makes it a very difficult book to read and even more difficult to understand. I would argue that this is part of the value of the text- it does not provide a yardstick by which to measure the truth about Capital (which is what it does- it measures itself) and so it does not supply a yardstick to measure its own comprehension. In many ways it makes Capitalism less comprehensible rather than more, and the confusion that I often feel while reading Marx is as much a part of understanding as the ability to explain the Transformation problem. Often it makes me feel "that can't be right..." or "this can't continue.." or " so what do we do?"..... none of these are problems in Marx, they are problems in our own existence. The confusion exists in the world and not in any single interpretation of that world. That means working out where these confusions lie and how we are confronted with them.

I will be very interested to see what we make of this- thanks in advance for showing an interest-

Scott, Dec 5 2005