CLASSES, CAPITAL AND THE SOCIAL FORMS IN BETWEEN - On the political and intellectual organization of the contradiction

Leonardo Ferreira Guimarães ()

No 2017_36, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: This working paper focusses on a rigorous and somewhat idiosyncratic exposition of the concepts of dialectics, determinations of reflection (or essentialities) and social forms, adopting a Marxist reading of Hegel's Science of Logic. The objective of this focus is to address one of the elements highly common in debates between Marxists and post-structuralists e amongst Marxist themselves: the centrality of categories of the one (like Universality, necessity, identity and so on) or of the multiple (like particularity, contingency, difference etc). Hence, the focus of this work is on the centrality of reflexive or mutual determinations (essence, non-identical identity, contradictory unity and social forms). Initially, even though Marx and some Marxist authors had used the notion of social forms, none of them had this notion developed in itself. The specific developments of this notion: such as the value forms, commodity form, political and juridical social forms were explored by various authors and by Marx himself. But, in the literature review made for this research, it wasn't found any conceptualization of the general notion. The concept of social form can be explored as a methodological resource to mediate those above-mentioned elements of the debates. For instance, to centralize the social forms is to centralize the negative and reflexive element when we discuss if it's the capital and its tendency laws that make for the historical march or the class struggle and the political contingency. The focus is on the something that exists in-between, the objectivation process in itself, not in its extremes

Keywords: Dialectics; Marxist method; Social Forms; Political Economy; Hegel-Marxrelation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B40 B49 B51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pke
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