marxist method without marxist content

[homo sapien]

I'm watching the David Harvey lectures and reading Capital. He makes the point that a lot of what Marx is doing is taking all the assumptions of classical economics but drawing radical conclusions from them by putting them in conversation with utopian socialism and German philosophy. Of course, economics has long since moved on from the imagined ideal markets of classical economics.

So I was wondering: are there any modern others who have used a similar methodology-- taking most of the assumptions of modern economics as is, but coming at them from a radical socialist direction, and perhaps bringing them into contact with some other areas of study in order to develop a picture of the workings of modern capital which would help to change the system by starting with the system as it is?

Is there a modern day "Marx" operating this kind of intellectual project, but not necessarily calling him/herself a "Marxist?"

[Sasha]

Negri?

[homo sapien]

How would you describe his methodology?

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm watching the David Harvey lectures and reading Capital. He makes the point that a lot of what Marx is doing is taking all the assumptions of classical economics but drawing radical conclusions from them by putting them in conversation with utopian socialism and German philosophy.
I wouldn't rely on much that Harvey has to say about Marx's work. This example is particularly striking, as there is little to none of "German idealism" as a paradigm in Das Kapital, and the idea that Marx upheld all the assumptions of classical political economy is simply false (one of those being the assumption of the natural, everlasting existence of capitalism; instead, Marx shows how it was historically formed, and that it is a historical social formation).

It is not by employing speculative, traditional forms of thinking that Marx is able to draw out radical implications, but from a close study of the way capital functions vis-a-vis workers and from the movement of the working class.

I'd recommend this piece by Paul Mattick Jr. on Harvey: http://libcom.org/files/mattick.pdf



Is there a modern day "Marx" operating this kind of intellectual project, but not necessarily calling him/herself a "Marxist?"
To quote from the article I posted:


As is well known, it was Marx’s original intention to continue his work with further volumes analysing the aspects of capitalism left out in his study of capital: the economic specifics of wage-labour and landed property; the complexities of finance; the interplay of national economies in the world market; the ways in which the abstract tendencies toward systemic breakdown that he worked out in the first part of his study manifest themselves in economic history. Harvey’s extension of Marx’s argument can therefore be seen as an attempt to carry out the original programme is certainly an objective that is more than worthwhile: it is necessary, if Marx’s work is to function, as he wished it to, as the core of a living tradition of scientific investigation.

Going back to Negri, the whole of Autonomist Marxism clearly highlights what Mattick here states, and more often than not call it the "provisional closure" in Marx's work - the most important of which is the provisional disregard to calss struggle and its impact on capital (as capitalism isn't a set of technical occurrences - it is a social formation, and the economic can't be reduced to technical operations which have nothing to do with social struggle and so on).

This thematic concern is, imo, a specificity of Autonomist method.