Mode of production: Impasse or Passé?

Abstract

I was relieved to hear that Ignacy Daszyski, our famous member of parliament, a pioneer of socialism, an orator on whose lips hung the parliaments of Vienna and Warsaw, admitted that he too found Das Kapital too hard a nut. “I have not read it,” he almost boasted, “but Karl Kautsky has read it. I have not read Kautsky either, but Kelles-Krauz, our party theorist, has read him, and he summarized Kautsky’s book. I have not read Kelles-Krauz, either, but that clever Jew, Herman Diamond, our financial expert, has read Kelles-Krauz, and he has told me all about it.” I. Deutscher, 1973:257 The point missed is that dialectic is characterized by an ontology comprehensible only in a tradition that analysts and their forebears rejected long ago. Their historical memories do not serve them well enough to remind them of the struggle with that tradition. They have been completely occupied with changes within their own framework. And thus when they are presented with a position, such as the dialectic, that stems from t...