File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0205, message 40


From: "howard Engelskirchen" <lhengels-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Re: BHA: me again -- same topic
Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 19:27:46 -0400



Thanks Marshall for the great example!

Carrol, at 28 mecw 195 Marx writes "Society does not consist of
individuals, but expresses the sum of the relationships and conditions in
which these individuals stand to one another."

The discussion of the determinations of capital in these pages is very
important and bears on the question of how we are to understand social
relations.  The significance of relation as form is powerfully developed.  

Mervyn, how can relations be "material"?  Marx in fact refers to "material
relations of production" in e.g. the Poverty of Philosophy, but he means
what is said above: individuals and the physical conditions in which these
individual stand --individual persons, earth, rivers, buildings, shovels,
steam engines -- constitute the material of the matter, and we seize the
particular form of those arrangements as relations.  In Aristotelian terms,
the material causes of social action are just such physical things; form
captures the specific arrangements so decisive to what in fact gets done.

Howard  

> [Original Message]
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-ilstu.edu>
> To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
 > Date: 5/6/2002 10:39:46 AM
> Subject: Re: BHA: me again -- same topic
>
> 
> 
> howard Engelskirchen wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Carrol, Hi Ruth!
> > 
> > Carrol, the statement that society is an ensemble of social relations
comes
> > from the Grundrisse. 
> 
> I'm currently reading the Grundrisse for the third time. Could you give
> me an exact cite for this -- in either the Nicolaus translation or the
> MECW. I'm still a bit bothered by the seeming tautology which results
> from applying it to "society." But then, come to think of it, my usage
> may be a tautology too.
> 
> Carrol
> 
> 
>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


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