Karl Seldon’s Sagacious Sayings Series -- #6. The Opening Sentence of Marx’s Das Kapital.
Full Title:
Karl Seldon’
s Sagacious Sayings
Series,
#6 --
The Opening Sentence of Marx’
s «
Das Kapital»
and the --
‘
Meta-
Pythagorean’ -- ‘
Universal Theory of
«
Arithmoi»’.
Dear Readers,
From time to time, I like to
share with you some of the gems of insight that leap from out of the
‘‘‘multilogues’’’, among Karl Seldon and other members of the Foundation, and from the transcribed
versions, published internally, including of those ‘‘‘multilogues’’’ in which I
did not happen to participate, when and if those [edited] transcripts are
cleared for public sharing by the Foundation’s General Council.
Below is an excerpt from the transcript of a recent such ‘‘‘multilogue’’’.
The content of this
‘‘‘multilogue’’’ extract should be grasped in the light of previous content
presented here, regarding the F.E.D. ‘Meta-Pythagorean Proposition’, and ‘Universal Theory of «Arithmoi»’ --
Regards,
Miguel
[Karl Seldon]: “ ... For example, the global capitalist system is, from one fundamental point of
view, an «arithmos» of
commodity units [later, in a systematic-dialectical, categorial-progression presentation
of such, seen, after the progressive evocation
of somewhat greater explicitude, to consist, primarily, of units of the commodity-CAPITALs category, qKC [---) q5] -- a ‘‘‘number’’’ of commodities in the ancient sense, i.e., an “assemblage” of qualitative units, or «monads»,
each of which is an individual commodity, but also in the modern sense, that of an exact abstract “number” which represents the global
census of commodities,
e.g., at/for a given
instant of historical time.”
However, that exact
“number” of commodities,
in the modern sense, may not be known with certainty, for any given instant of
historical time -- may never be
so known -- and need not be so known, e.g., for the presentation of Marx’s
scientific theory of the global, world-market, capitals-system.
That exact numerosity,
that precise count, can remain indefinite -- a generic, ‘‘‘indefinite
number’’’, never specified -- without that condition detracting from that
presentation one iota!
It is the characteristics, the qualities, that all such units share in common, that is
important, for connoting, and for knowing the essence of,
the category, or the concept, that Marx named “commodities” [qC = C [---) q1].
Of course, in the course
of his systematic, critical presentation of the global, world-market, capitals-system, Marx goes on to show that,
and to show how, this concrete/qualitative ‘‘‘number’’’, or “assemblage”, of commodities exists in systematic
interconnexion to/with
other such concrete/qualitative ‘‘‘numbers’’’, “assemblages”, or «arithmoi».
E.g., the capitals category is also, from various
points-of-view, an «arithmos» of monetary units [qCC = qM = M [---) q2], and an «arithmos» of [abstract, and of concrete] labor hour units, and an «arithmos» of individual capital units, etc.
Marx wrote, in his
Preface to the first German edition of Capital,
volume I, as follows, about his choice of the «arché» category, or starting category, for his systematic-dialectical,
categorial-progression presentation of the modern, present, capitalist, system of human-social reproduction --
“...in bourgeois society
the commodity-form of the product of labour -- or the value-form of the
commodity -- is the economic cell-form.” [Karl Marx, Capital I, NW,
1867, p. 8].
The opening sentence of that same masterpiece of critical
human-social science, of
that same ‘‘‘immanent critique’’’ of ideology-contaminated science, and of that pioneering work of ‘psychohistorical meta-science’, conveys this concrete/qualitative ‘‘‘number’’’ character -- this «arithmos» character -- of the opening category of its categorial progression, or ‘progression of «arithmoi»’, in the following words --
“The wealth of those
societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself
as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”1 its unit being a single
commodity.”
“1 Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik der
Politischen Oekonomie.” Berlin, 1859, p. 3.” ”
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