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From: JulioHuato <JulioHuato@aol.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 09:23:14 EST
To: andy@mira.net
Subject: Re: essence and notion
Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com)

"The Notion is the principle of freedom, the power of substance self-realised.
It is a systematic whole, in which each of its constituent functions is the
very total which the notion is, and is put as indissolubly one with it. Thus
in its self-identity it has original and complete determinateness."

Also, "The notion, in short, is what contains all the earlier categories of
thought merged in it. It certainly is a form, but an infinite and creative
form which includes, but at the same time releases from itself, the fullness
of all content. And so too the notion may, if it be wished, be styled
abstract, if the name concrete is restricted to the concrete facts of sense or
of immediate perception. For the notion is not palpable to the touch, and when
we are engaged with it, hearing and seeing must quite fail us. And yet, as it
was before remarked, the notion is a true concrete; for the reason that it
involves Being and Essence, and the total wealth of these two spheres with
them, merged in the unity of thought."

It seems to me that, in Marx, this translates as: "The concrete concept is
concrete because it is a synthesis of many definitions [determinations? JH],
thus representing the unity of diverse aspects.  It appears, therefore, in
reasoning as a summing-up, a result, and not as the starting-point -- although
it is the real point of origin, and thus also the point of origin of
perception and imagination."

I also think that the essence of capitalism is surplus value production.  But
I think that the Notion of capitalism is NOT "generalized commodity
production." IMO "generalized commodity production" is the Ground of
capitalist production (Capital, 2, ch. 1, paragraphs 1-3).  The Notion of
capitalism is, IMO, the concrete class struggle and the competition, the
dynamics of the profit rate, the State, the world market, the cycle, the
uneven and combined development of its parts, the "super-structural"
(political, etc.) scenary, etc.  In other words, the "messy world" but now
organized in our thought as a coherent whole.

And indeed, IMO, the Being of capitalism is the undetermined "messy world,"
"their (the economists') starting-point the living organism, the population,
the nation, the state, several states, etc. [...] the real point of origin,
and thus also the point of origin of perception and imagination."

Am I confused?

J.