Guide2008 online Preface

A Guide to Reading CAPITAL

It was thirty years ago that the Australian, Neil Horne, a graduate of the Department of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney urban-squatting in London, decorated the cover of our just-finished book, Guide to Marx´s CAPITAL CSE Books, Mount Pleasant / London, with a human skeleton leaning on a cabinet and reading the three volumes of Capital.

The digitized edition now being made available online is an emendated version of the original, without any revisions to the content on the basis of later work. We are also publishing the 1978 Preface here once again. In 1976, Neil Horne and Michael Eldred were advanced students when, as visiting lecturer, I had the opportunity to present in the General Philosophy Department, and in the world language, a systematic reconstruction of the argumentation in Capital which had been developed since 1970 at the newly established University of Constance in Germany. Michael Eldred made this text out of my ‘broken English’ which, apart from the German teaching experiences, incorporated also the fresh Australian experiences in Capital Reading Groups. Besides the compact argumentation in a continuous text, in an appendix there is a collection of 145 learning cards for setting up a handy index of terms; it is uncontroversial that repeating what has been read is helpful for consolidating the learning of conceptual interconnections.

Because we formulated the skeleton of the systematic argumentation of the capital-analysis on roughly 30 pages, we added around 15 pages of notes on the contents of the several hundreds of pages of Marx’s text and his sometimes vacillating conceptual structure.

My article, ‘With Marx against Marx? Habermas and Historical Materialism’, appeared in the third number of the Australian journal, Thesis Eleven: Reassessing Western Marxism. We add this article to the online version as a third appendix, in addition to the two appendices in the printed version, ‘Family in Capital’ and ‘Science in Capital’. As a forth appendix you will find Marx´ own appendix to the first edition of DAS KAPITAL (1867), translated by Roth/Suchting: THE VALUE-FORM, first published in English in the spring 1978 number of Capital & Class (ISSN 0305-8247), 130-150.

See also Michael Eldred and Marnie Hanlon ‘Reconstructing Value-form Analysis’ in: Capital & Class No. 13 London 1981 pp. 24 60,
Michael Eldred, Critique of Competitive Freedom and the Bourgeois Democratic State: Outline of a Form Analytic Extension of Marx's Uncompleted System with an Appendix A Value-Form Analytic Reconstruction of ‘Capital’ co-authored with M. Hanlon, L. Kleiber & M. Roth, Kurasje, Copenhagen 1984 580 pp. ¹,
Michael Eldred, Marnie Hanlon, Lucia Kleiber, Volkbert M. Roth La Forma-Valore: Progetto di ricostruzione e completamento del frammento di sistema di Marx Lacaita, Manduria 1984 306 pp. (Italian)
and http://www.wertformanalyse.de (German).

We invite discussion at http://www.MARX101.blogspot.com

Mike Roth, Spring 2008

Translated from the German by Michael Eldred, artefact text & translation, Cologne

END OF TRANSLATION 3

30-Jahre-her

30 Jahre ist es her, dass in London der Australische squatterer Neil Horne, ein Absolvent des Department of General Philosophy, Sydney University, mit einem die 3 Bände (des KAPITAL) lesenden aufrechten Menschengerippe den Umschlag unseres gerade fertiggestellten Buchs „Guide to Marx´s CAPITAL“ bei CSE books, MOUNT PLEASANT / London schmückte.

Der 2008 online zugänglich gemachte Text ist eine neu durchgesehene Fassung des Orginals. Die Zeitbezüge wurden nicht verändert. Wir haben auch das Preface von 1978 hier wiedergegeben. Neil Horne und Michael Eldred waren 1976 fortgeschrittene Studierende, als ich als visiting lecturer die Gelegenheit hatte, am erwähnten Platz in Australien die seit 1970 an der neu gegründeten Universität Konstanz entstandene systematische Rekonstruktion des Argumentationsgangs im KAPITAL in der Weltsprache vorzutragen. Aus meinem broken English machte Michael Eldred diesen Text, in den neben den deutschen auch die frisch gewonnenen australischen Vermittlungserfahrungen in CAPITAL READING GROUPS eingingen. Neben der komprimierten Argumentation im durchgehenden Text findet sich im Anhang eine Sammlung von 145 Lernkarten für den Aufbau eines Zettelkastens. Die Bedeutung der Wiederholung für das Einprägen von Terminologie ist ja unbestritten.

Gerade weil wir das Gerippe der systematischen Argumentation in der allgemeinen Kapitalanalyse in nur etwa 30 Seiten formulieren, haben wir ca. 15 Seiten mit Bemerkungen zu den Inhalten der vielen hundert Seiten des Marxschen Textes und seiner teilweise abweichenden Gliederung angefügt.

In no.3 der Australischen Zeitschrift THESIS ELEVEN, „Reassessing Western Marxism“, erschien mein Beitrag: „With Marx against Marx? Habermas and Historical Materialism“. Diesen fügen wir in dieser online Fassung den beiden Anhängen der Druckfassung „Family in CAPITAL“ und „Science in CAPITAL“ als dritten Anhang bei.

See also Michael Eldred and Marnie Hanlon ‘Reconstructing Value-form Analysis’ in: Capital & Class No. 13 London 1981 pp. 24 60, Michael Eldred, Critique of Competitive Freedom and the Bourgeois Democratic State: Outline of a Form Analytic Extension of Marx's Uncompleted System with an Appendix A Value-Form Analytic Reconstruction of ‘Capital’ co-authored with M. Hanlon, L. Kleiber & M. Roth, Kurasje, Copenhagen 1984 580 pp. ²

and Michael Eldred, Marnie Hanlon, Lucia Kleiber, Volkbert M. Roth La Forma Valore: Progetto di ricostruzione e completamento del frammento di sistema di Marx Lacaita, Manduria 1984 306 pp.

sowie http://www.wertformanalyse.de (German)

Diskussion erwünscht via http://www.MARX101.blogspot.com !

Spring 2008 Mike Roth

1 See most recently on the critique of the labour theory of value and associated issues, in particular Chapter 6 iii) of Michael Eldred Social Ontology: Recasting Political Philosophy Through a Phenomenology of Whoness ontos verlag, Heusenstamm 2008 xiv+688 pp. http://www.webcom.com/artefact/sclontlg.html

2 See most recently on the critique of the labour theory of value and associated issues, in particular Chapter 6 iii) of Michael Eldred Social Ontology: Recasting Political Philosophy Through a Phenomenology of Whoness ontos verlag, Heusenstamm 2008 xiv+688 pp. http://www.webcom.com/artefact/sclontlg.html