Date: 	Tue, 23 Sep 1997 11:28:28 -0800
From: bhandari-AT-phoenix.princeton.edu (Rakesh Bhandari)
Subject: Re: M-I: proletarians


OK Carrol, then we can differentiate between the actively exploited, the
industrial reserve army of labor (in its different forms of floating,
latent, stagnant), and the surplus population. Marx of course didn't make
these distinctions in an academic seminar but in Capital, vol. 1. Of
course, we could also look at Marx's critique of the bourgeois compensation
theory, the stupid idea that those who are displaced by machinery, in turn
displacing those who produce means of subsistence, are all fully reemployed
by new capital.  Perhaps we do need an academic seminar on Marx's law of
population, especially as modified by capitalism's historic interaction
with non-capitalist mode of productions and and its nature in a global
capitalism.

Rakesh


>        No confusion possible. The "working class" *is* the "prole-
>triat." The only difference is in pronunciation. Any attempt to make
>a distinction here brings the whole of marxism down in flames. It
>makes both marxist historiography and marxist politics impossible.
>It isn't even too bright to play this word game in an academic
>seminar.





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