Max, thanks for the review. There are better post-Marxists, clearly. The new translation of Capital Volume 1 is amazing, with an introduction by Wendy Brown, author of Nihilistic Times, and of a recent January 2025 piece in Dissent. The amazing thing is that the new translation had something like 3 times more uses of the phrase "needs and wants" than previous translations. Right up my alley as author of a needs-based partial theory of human injustice. Can't wait for your take on it. Marx clearly assumed we should distinguish between needs and wants. The problem is, he assumes needs themselves change historically. Yes, how we address them and conceive of them changes, but the needs themselves are species specific and haven't realy changed since before we were cave dwellers. Links to works about this in About in my Other Works. The lesson is, don't be a post-Marxist; rather explore the compatibility of various sociological and philosoophical and economic approaches within the Marxian, Durkheimian and Weberian tradition and how they can inform class, institutional and organizational analysis of the best mix of sectors within each policy domain in order to address the poverty about which you write.
Max: You might want to re-examine David Schweickart's more modern take on Marxism. Here are links to Vol 2 of After Capitalism, plus my study guide on the book:
you write that >... Marx’s pretensions to science are askew ... I’m going to have to read (again, after decades of neglect, the text distinguishing Marxism from “utopian socialism.<
Max, I believe that both Marx and Engels used a different word in German from that meaning "hard science" (physics, etc.) when they refer to "science." Their perspective fits the modern idea of "social science" or "soft science." In contrast with the utopians who presented merely moral visions, they try to understand the empirical historical process.
Max, thanks for the review. There are better post-Marxists, clearly. The new translation of Capital Volume 1 is amazing, with an introduction by Wendy Brown, author of Nihilistic Times, and of a recent January 2025 piece in Dissent. The amazing thing is that the new translation had something like 3 times more uses of the phrase "needs and wants" than previous translations. Right up my alley as author of a needs-based partial theory of human injustice. Can't wait for your take on it. Marx clearly assumed we should distinguish between needs and wants. The problem is, he assumes needs themselves change historically. Yes, how we address them and conceive of them changes, but the needs themselves are species specific and haven't realy changed since before we were cave dwellers. Links to works about this in About in my Other Works. The lesson is, don't be a post-Marxist; rather explore the compatibility of various sociological and philosoophical and economic approaches within the Marxian, Durkheimian and Weberian tradition and how they can inform class, institutional and organizational analysis of the best mix of sectors within each policy domain in order to address the poverty about which you write.
Great rip brother
One point d
Have the flaws of 19th century capitalism received
a sustainable antidote
Thru K macro ?
Of course no
The class struggle has not
Evolved a sustainable antidote internal to market capitalism itself
Consider inflation
In particular
The role of supply agents
pricing power
We just saw this bug/ feature
Derail a recov we ry b4 it became a boom
The history of market earth since 1970
Includes the perfected reign
of central banking
As macro turkey rope
One phrase
Non accelerating Inflation rate
of unemployment i
Aka the great moderation
Goldie locks macro
Aka
The cycle of credit
The Army of surplus laborers
Boom preempting
To prevent run away inflation
Aka
Protecting the extraction of surplus value
From perpetually tight job markets
And a secular trend of profit
Constriction
No there is no
great clothonc mechanism
guiding our path forward
thru new times and technology
No social force above
The collision
of conscious
agencies
We must take pricing power away from the agents of
corporate capitalism
Max: You might want to re-examine David Schweickart's more modern take on Marxism. Here are links to Vol 2 of After Capitalism, plus my study guide on the book:
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/Schweickart2.pdf
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/AfterCapitalism.pdf
Thanks, Carl. I have a Schweickart book sitting in my office and hope to get into it.
Cool. After Capitalism is better than the earlier Against Capitalism
you write that >... Marx’s pretensions to science are askew ... I’m going to have to read (again, after decades of neglect, the text distinguishing Marxism from “utopian socialism.<
Max, I believe that both Marx and Engels used a different word in German from that meaning "hard science" (physics, etc.) when they refer to "science." Their perspective fits the modern idea of "social science" or "soft science." In contrast with the utopians who presented merely moral visions, they try to understand the empirical historical process.