Ellen Meiksins W'ood
The Separation of the Economic and the
Political in Capitalism
The intention of Marxism is to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting
the world in order to change it. This is not an empry slogan, It has—or ought to |
have—a very precise meaning. It means that Marxism seeks a particular kind of
knowledge, one which is uniquely capable of illuminating the principles of
historical movement and, at least implicitly, the points at which political action |
can most effectively intervene. This is not to say that the object of Marxist,
theory is to discover a ‘scientific’ programme or technique of political action.
Rather, the purpose is to provide a mode of analysis especially well equipped
to explore the terrain on which political action must take place. It can, howeve. |
be argued that Marxism since Marx has often lost sight of his theoretict!:
project and its quintessentially political character. In particular, this is so to the
extent that Marxists have, in various forms, perpetuated the rigid conceptual
separation of the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ which has served doug
ideology so well ever since the classical economists discovered the ‘economy’ id
the abstract and began emptying capitalism of its social and political content!
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