Marx studied the classical political economists and explained the declining rate of profit. He clarifies exploitation and alienation whereas conventional economists mystify labor-capital interactions.
Engels funded Marx's research and wrote The Dialectics Of Nature, "The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man" and The Origins Of The Family, Private Property And The State.
They did not reduce consciousness to mechanical interactions but explained it as arising from qualitative transformations. They did not dismiss religion as a hoax or mistake but explained it as expressing the deepest contradictions in human experience.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI don't everything you said in the first paragraph. If Marx/Engels came to think there were errors in THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, why shouldn't they have revised it? LIVING authors can revise their own works!
And I disagree with what Marx/Engels said about declining rates of profits. There has been many companies since they wrote which has prospered, some of them very much so. Esp. firms pioneering in making new technology available to mass use, such as Henry Ford's motor company, or Bill Gates "Miscrosoft," for computers.
Ad astra! Sean
Drat! I wanted to type "understand" after "I don't..." in the first sentence of my first paragraph. I really need to double check before uploading a comment.
ReplyDeleteSean
Sean,
ReplyDeleteThank you for a comment on another blog. Later lessons were incorporated into prefaces rather than into a revised text.
I think that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall because of competitive reinvestment in technology is generally accepted by economists but, of course, the economy booms and slumps. It doesn't just slump.
Paul.