On Economic Crisis and Transition from Capitalism

On Economic Crisis and Transition from Capitalism Paresh Chattopadhyay SURENDRA J PATEL has honoured us by replying to our critique of his original paper (EPW, Vol 22, No 12). In what follows we shall first sum up his points of criticism of our position and then try to examine them in that order. In oider not to prolong the debate unnecessarily we shall, in our reply, basically confine ourselves to those issues which we had raised earlier and around which he has criticised our position. We shall leave aside rest of the issues, however important they are otherwise and however much we would have ordinarily liked to comment on them (those concerning, for example, the 'correspondence' between the forces and the relations of production, etc) According to Patel (1) we have incorrectly characterised his use of the term 'economic formation' as 'class-neutral', whereas his discussion of the term in the context of "broad historical epochs and particular economic and social structures" would prove the contrary, more so when "even Marx in his presentation ot historic evolution in the preface to the 'critique' did not mention the word 'class' " [1987 ; 519|.