I suggested in the first edition that dialectics was also a form of stream of consciousness mode of thinking and presentation. However, I forgot saying that not all stream of consciousness were necessarily dialectical. Therefore, my connections were not been suggested by following strict dialectical logical coherence. Dialectics is the subject of my coming book “Social Dialectics”, which will complete “Stream of Connections” and be out in coming months. I would like to note that my stream of connections might seem to contradict in many sections with several classical Marxist theses and arguments such as the position of value in history. However, I think that a strict and refined dialectical analysis can be constructed upon the stream of consciousness, which prepares all materials for it and cannot escape from many seemingly incoherent surface appearances. As for the labour theory of value, it is assumed that value category is confined to the period of the capitalist mode of production. Well-known outstanding Marxist political scientist and philosopher Bertell Ollman already pointed to this problem in his message, which was the first feedback to the book:

11 July 2011

Hello-

Greetings. Your new book looks very interesting, but you don't tell us where / how we can get a copy. I know that one shouldn't draw too many conclusions about your book from the table of contents, a few lines of introduction, and the authors you mention, but it does indicate that our views on dialectics have a lot in common. This does lead me, however, to ask you one question about your title: does the inclusion of "value", which Marx applies almost exclusively to the period of capitalism, alongside of "power", which applies to the whole of human history, and "time" and "space", which apply to the entire history of the planet, suggest that the "connections" you trace crisscross - as it seems - developments on all these different scales? If so, this is not the best way to uncover the special dynamics (laws?) that occur on each one. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

In Solidarity Bertell Ollman

Author of DANCE OF THE DIALECTIC: STEPS IN MARX'S METHOD, ALIENATION

12 July 2011

Dear Professor, Comrade, Bertell Ollman,

Thank you so much for your message having a critical question.

My first two books are available in all amazons and the new one will be there in coming days. However, morebooks.de, below, circulates now.

https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/stream-of-connections-through-power,-time,-space-and-value/isbn/978-3-639-36991-5
https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/marxian-theory-and-socialism-in-turkey/isbn/978-3-639-13607-4
https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/a-theory-of-capitalist-urbanisation:-david-harvey/isbn/978-3-639-17686-5

As for your question regarding value and Marx's conception of it in the limited theoretical context of the capitalist m of p., I want to share one of my observations about Marx's all Capital with you. As all Marxists know, Marx sees the emergence of value conception as a result of the tarnsformation of all necessary plus surplus labour and product into wage plus profit, rent and interest categories.Surplus product becomes surplus value. These are well known.

However, value as a social calculation to compare and exchange products, I can argue, exists in all exchanges from barter to modern market economy. I suggest that whenever money appears for exchange, there must be a value conception, which appears only in its perfect and cyristialised form under capitalism.

Once this definition is made, the gap between Marx's theory of historical materism and theory of cmp, which exists as you can agree with me, can be closed. The origin of this idea of mine stems from my analysis of capital in which for Marx surplus and surplus value rathern than profit and its variants, is everything for exploiters. Therefore, not exclusively value and profit, but category of surplus in any kind matters more. For the analysis of capital and capitalism, we already do not lose anything.

Another observation of mine is that Marx assumes in his all Capital that surplus value is appropriated as whole first by the industrial capitalist and out of which interest and rent are paid to other capitalists. I realised that Marx also must have assumed that industrial profit was higher than the totality of interest and rent. In my recent two articles, one of which is under review now, and the other was added to the last part of my book, I focus on this problem.

Meanwhile, although I read and write in English, native English readers sometimes cannot follow my arguments easily. However, I hope you can.

I also hope I could answer you a little bit.

Best

Ercan Gündoğan

The second edition corrected technical mistakes, revised many sentences and paragraphs, and includes a section about “re-conceptualization of the internal contradictions of capital” as a part of previously published section on the future of capital and value of futures.

Introduction of the first edition was rather short and did not have a summary of the arguments. It was short because I tried to develop many theses, formulations and even laws within the general theory of Marxism. Its content already shows the complexity of the problem, which is nothing but the development of a grand theory of Marxist socialism that can see all connections between individual and social, and between local and global contexts of political power, time and history, space and geography and surplus product and surplus value. The book is not a new attempt to spatialize social phenomena or to insert space to it. It from the outset accepts that space is not external to time and social being. Our bodies, machines, built environment and nature are not external to our minds, labour, everyday life and social organization. The question is not the spatialization of time and history, but revealing the dialectic relations between time and space. That external conception follows a dualist approach rather than dialectics either by translating the language of time and history to the language of space and geography or inserting space and geography to the container of time and history, in other words, filling it with space and geography.

That external and dualist approach ironically has been based on the earlier attempts to supersede the division between time and space in theory and practice. On the ground of urban social movements and social uprisings in the 196os and 1970s, Manuel Castells’ famous study The Urban Question, Henri Lefebvre’s works on space and then David Harvey’s very influential book Social Justice and the City took theoretical attentions to urban social space. Harvey also established first theoretical connections between Marxist political economy and urban space. Especially thanks to him, we have now prestigious and productive Marxist studies on social geography in many faculties in the world.

Nevertheless, despite all successes, epoch-making studies and masterpieces, the connections between individual and society and between local and global spaces are still seen only through the mediation of value relations, in other words, labour process. This is correct, but not adequate for a grand theory of Marxist socialism. The ultimate source of surplus value is production, but its extraction and appropriation can be realized from nearly everywhere. Hence, power has many sources and forms and can be gained from all contradictory relations that create inequality. For more powerful Marxist theory, power in any kind is an authentic problematic or to say, paradigm. As for surplus value, it should be seen only as a specific and limited form of surplus product, which is more substantial and historical. Furthermore, the book does not see value as being confined only to capitalist system. Even for Marx, the questions are how social wealth is produced by many and appropriated by few in a class-divided society in general and the history that is the history of class struggles. It is nothing but the class struggles for power.

ERCAN GUNDOGAN GAZZETTA

27.5.12

STREAM OF CONNECTIONS THROUGH POWER, TIME, SPACE AND VALUE

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

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