Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 11:19:52 -0700 Sender: pen-l@ecst.csuchico.edu From: "Michael Lebowitz" Subject: Re: PoMo in the 90'ies In Message Fri, 6 1994 May 10:44:51 -0700, Jim Devine writes: >More to my taste is Mike Lebowitz's BEYOND CAPITAL. In my inter- >pretation, he criticizes those Marxists who make the mistake >of seeing Marx's CAPITAL as the whole story of Marxism's vision >of capitalism. But that book simply represents the "political >economy of capital" without including Marx's "political economy >of wage labor" and is thus an incomplete version of Marx's >theory. Those who see CAPITAL as the whole story pick up the >fact that Marx saw *capitalism* as totalizing, as relentlessly >trying to absorb the world (both natural and human) into its >"modernist" project, among other things reducing everything >to the status of mere commodities. >But Marx's own vision was not totalizing or totalitarian. >Because the "political economy of wage-labor" is inherently >*human* and thus pluralist (or as some say, de-centered). >People refuse, or try to refuse, to be put into the little >commodity boxes that capitalism tries to stuff us. For this >reason and others, >there is a possibility that a new kind of progress can >be attained, not the "totalizing" or "modernizing" progress >of capitalism >or stalinism, but a humanizing, democratic, and pluralist >progress of the struggle for socialism. > >(Again, the above is my interpretation of Mike's views >rather than being his views.) > Once again, I owe Jim a beer. I also endorse his interpretation. I try to stay away from discussions of pomo. As Comrade Zippy the Pinhead correctly stated, "if you can't say something nice, say something surreal." cheers, mike Mike Lebowitz, Economics Dept.,Simon Fraser University