Reading Capital: Part II Continued (Final Remarks on Chapter 4)

It seems this whole only subsists in knowledge. How then do we understand the way that knowledge is determined by the real? This question still insists itself in various forms.

The economism of the Second International was a bastardization of the theoretical and the real: a theory of “economy” being arrived at, it was used to explain real events rather than the forms these events take (or the proper KO of the various other levels rather than a catch-all notion of the “empirical” standing in for knowledge). In other words, to understand the economy, a knowledge-object must be constructed. To understand how the economy determines other levels, then, knowledge-objects must be constructed for these, rather than trying to explain isolated facts by the KO “economy,” which is a crossing of levels.

The critique of historicism seems to be similar, but in the opposite direction: attempt to explain a KO or a theory based on ill-digested facts rather than another KO or theory.