File spoon-archives/marxism-theory.archive/marxism-theory_1997/marxism-theory.9712, message 19


Date: 	Mon, 15 Dec 1997 04:06:11 -0800
From: bhandari-AT-phoenix.princeton.edu (Rakesh Bhandari)
Subject: Re: MT: "Ideology" (1)


. I haven't
>read the book for many years. Pat Murray, well, I like Pat personally. His
>writing is a bit opaque, goes in for the usual excessive Hegelizing of
>discussions about dialectics.

I agree with Justin that Daniel Little's and Tony Smith's books are
tremendously stimulating interpretations of Marx's method.

I remember two arguments for the importance of Hegel offered by JPMurray in
Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge (which is with a friend at present).
First, JPM argues that Marx drew from Hegel the idea of immanent critique.
What immanence and critique entail are explored with care. Marx's early
critique of the Young Hegelians is quite important here (and Murray devotes
chapters to it) because by failing to keep on the narrow path of immanent
critique, these  critical critics lapsed into the dual, though
intrinsically related, temptations of moral hubris and totalitarian
politics. Second, Murray explores and contrasts Hegel's understanding of
the relationship between essence and appearance to Descartes' understanding
of that relationship. The importance of this for the analysis of the value
form is explored. One of the problems to grasp is why the value of a
commodity can only be expressed in the use-value of another commodity.
There are a few other peculiarities to the value form. But as promised
Murray does help prepare one for the opening chapters of *Capital*. The
argument is elaborated in Marx's Method in Capital, ed. Fred Moseley.

Rakesh




   

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