tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post8223947625166981220..comments2024-03-29T06:09:37.749-04:00Comments on The Slack Wire: What Comes Before Capital?JW Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10664452827447313845noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-50894260802546806302013-08-08T05:13:55.485-04:002013-08-08T05:13:55.485-04:00Sorry, it was 4am here when I wrote that comment. ...Sorry, it was 4am here when I wrote that comment. <br />The point about competitive equilibrium and Hayeck means this:<br />While apparently the LTVers didn't get the purpose of the price system, in reality they just suppose that in the long run the supply of every good is very elastic, so that changes in demand are reflected in an increase in quantity produced, not in prices. <br />This means that, under LTV, the market allocates labor power efficiently, and thus is a way to organize society. <br />This reminds me of that point of Heinlein 's "Stranger in a strange land" where the protagonist, who is an alien, after living for some years on earth is flashed with the understanding of how the price system organises ultra complex activity on earth. Heinlein was obviously a libertarian, hence the connection to Hayeck. Random Lurkernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-69793346859517483792013-08-07T22:08:18.151-04:002013-08-07T22:08:18.151-04:00Thanks for the explanation.
I'll try to expla...Thanks for the explanation. <br />I'll try to explain my beef with the LTV in a way that is more relevant for the OP. <br />There is a tradition that says that "values" in Marx are something different from prices. I think that this is wrong and that Marx is speaking of prices, implicitly in a situation of "competitive equilibrium".<br />In other words, the market is the way society organises labor, and there is a small bit of Hayeck in the LTV (I know it sounds strange). <br />This is important because for Hegel, for what I can understand, the individual is just a reflection of the "spirit" of the whole mankind. Marx takes this concept and basically substitutes "society" to the spirit. <br />Thus there are IMHO four levels in Marx:<br />1) at the first level, there is mankind that is not completely developed or self conscious, and thus lives in a continuous war against itself (class conflict). <br />2) at the second level, the individual experiences this conflict as alienation, including religion that is an alienated projection of society (Feuerbach).<br />3) at the third level, Marx theorises about how society becomes conscious of itself (dialectic materialism )<br />4) at the fourth level, Marx analizes the specific way the current stage of society works and is organised (marxian economics). <br /><br />The common interpretation where "values" are something different from prices sees exploitation happening at the individual level, skipping the idea that economics is the way society organises itself. <br />Incidentally this is the point where marxism diverges from liberal keynesianism, since keynesians believe that the purpose of the economy is to produce stuff, while Marx believed that the purpose of the economy is in large part to perpetuate a class system, and only incidentally produces welfare. <br />Going back to the OT, I think that alienation is not between the producer and the product, but between the producer and the purpose of the product, or the producer and his / her role in society, so there is no need to go back to subsistence economics to avoid alienation, at least in theory. <br />Random Lurkernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-32090550908332411992013-08-07T20:49:03.176-04:002013-08-07T20:49:03.176-04:00Well, I might be a bit out of my depth here, but.....Well, I might be a bit out of my depth here, but... Sraffa replaced Ricardan labor-values with technical co-efficients of production, "physical" recipes, which dropped out labor-costs, and provided only a highly abstract static-equilibrium "model", the point of which was to show the fundamental inconsistency/incoherence of neo-classical marginalism when systematically deployed, especially with respect to the "marginal products of the factors of production" providing an account of income-distribution, (and thus investment and demand). And the further point of the whole exercise was to re-raise the core question of economic "value", without necessarily claiming to definitively answer it. <br /><br />Whether that effects the Marxian account is unclear. His version of LTV being an extracted rather than embodied account of "labor-value". And far from laying claim to any "physically" fixed rate-of-profit, the variability of the latter is precisely its focus. (I'm assuming you already know this, but the "organic composition of capital" isn't the same as "capital-intensity", but rather the ratio between wages advanced, "variable", and other capital outlays, "constant", and it is not a matter of an infinite regress in ever diminishing amounts to determine the labor-content of capital as "dead labor", but of the way that labor-values reset under technical change in order to reproduce the labor-capital relation). Some Sraffans sought to deploy the criticism against Marxian LTV, (though it is unclear what Sraffa himself thought, since he was still mulling it over at the time of his death), but that is precisely the "dual system" interpretation, between "physical" and nominal capital, that the "temporal single system" interpretation rejects. Precisely because the separation between "physical" and nominal capital can't be made out and because the temporal dimension, (and thus the constant resetting of labor-values against profit-extractions in long-run dynamic disequilibrium), is the key point, not captured in a static-equilibrium framework.<br /><br />I have no interest in antiquarian or monumental concerns here. But I think the question of economic "value" remains at issue for any coherent economic theorizing, precisely because nominal prices (and their distributive and decisionistic effects) are part of what needs to be explained. And because the limits of economic value in an increasingly resource and ecologically constrained world need to be addressed.john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17176419625607679150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-89207079518782212222013-08-07T13:33:38.867-04:002013-08-07T13:33:38.867-04:00Just one further point on this stuff, since it'...Just one further point on this stuff, since it's cool. Everyone agrees that when wages rise, profit-maximizing producers will shift toward more capital-intensive techniques. One of Sraffa's results is that you cannot say this, because which techniques are the most capital-intensive ones itself depends on the wage rate. In fat, it is possible to write a down a perfectly-well-behaved set of production techniques such that technique A is the profit-maximizing one when wages are low, techniqueB is profit-maximizing when wages are moderate, but technique A is again profit-maximizing when wages are high. <br /><br />Again, mainstream people always brush this off by saying their story is almost always true in practice. but that misses the point. It's not that the conventional claim is wrong. It's that it's meaningless, because there is no consistent way to measure "capital-intensiveness" independent of wages.<br /><br />But again this has nothing to do with the rest of the conversation.JW Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664452827447313845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-66012136252208948882013-08-07T13:13:42.808-04:002013-08-07T13:13:42.808-04:00RL-
The Shaikh article is an intervention in a qu...RL-<br /><br />The Shaikh article is an intervention in a quite different debate, against Sraffa. In this debate, Marxist and mainstream economics are on the same side. Both claim that both the profit rate and profit share can be derived from the physical conditions of production. The idea is, we can reduce all produced goods to one or more primitive nonproduced goods (usually just labor, for simplicity) applied at very dates in the past. In other words, a "capital-intensive production technique is one that requires less total labor, but requires more of that labor to come at earlier dates. (This is not controversial.) Then we see which techniques will be chosen by profit-maximizing producers; profits will be the difference between total output and the wages of the labor that went into it.<br /><br />The argument of Srafa (and other Cambridge School economists, like Joan Robinson) is that this procedure will not in general give a determinate result. This is because to combine al the labor into a single quantity, we need to apply a discount rate to compare later-dated to earlier-dated labor. But the appropriate discount rate depends on the rate of profit. So we can't actually know which technique is the profit-maximizing (or cost-minimizing) one unless we already know the profit rate. A further implication is that capital-intensive and labor-intensive cannot be taken as descriptions of physical processes; given the same two physical techniques, it may be that one is more capital-inensive at a low rate of profit and the other is more capital-intensive at a high rate of profit, because the value of the same physical capital good depends on the profit rate.<br /><br />The immediate target of Sraffa was the idea -- going back to at least Jevons and overwhelmingly dominant today -- that distribution can be derived from the technological conditions of production. But it is just as destructive of Marx's efforts to derive the rate of surplus value from the conditions of production. So that is why Shaikh is arguing against Sraffa.<br /><br />It's important to understand that NOBODY disputes that Sraffa's results are formally correct. Mathematically, it is simply not possible to derive distribution from production technology in the way that both the mainstream and value theory do, except under very restrictive conditions. This was Samuelson's famous concession in the "Cambridge controversies" of the 1970s, and I am pretty sure that nobody has question it since. Nonetheless, everyone pretty much carries on just like before, with the excuse that pre-Sraffian theories, while strictly speaking false, still work as reasonable first approximations. This is what Shaikh is doing here. I have a nagging suspicion this is not really a sufficient response...<br /><br />Anyway, these are all EXTREMELY interesting (tho also rather tricky) questions, but they don't realy have anything to do with arguments like those on this thread. Again, in the context of this article, Marxists and the mainstream are on the same side.JW Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664452827447313845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-77857778086139097992013-08-07T03:56:36.484-04:002013-08-07T03:56:36.484-04:00WB,
If I were just stringing quotes together that ...WB,<br />If I were just stringing quotes together that would be indefensible, but I am not. This interpretation is pretty consistent with the historical record of what Marx (and his followers) did politically in their lifetimes and the debates surrounding his theories up until 1918. Btw, if you are the Will Boisvert writing for ITT and Dissent, both those publications have political cultures substantially in agreement with the view of Marx that I have been presented (or at least they did for many years and it is a view widely shared among in Europe - even self-described European conservatives occasionally will agree that that is the more accurate version of Marx).<br /><br />I don't really care if I convert you to the "quasi-liberal" (small l, not big L) Marx or not. I am merely pointing out in a comradely way, that there is lots of World political history you are going to misinterpret if you don't understand why pre-1918 conception of Marx is so different from the one that emerges in the Cold War. I think you will find the paradoxes and contradictions intellectually illuminating. You don't have to embrace Marx politically or intellectually (though you are likely at the least the to be more politically sympathetic, given a more full understanding of Marx's contribution to European socialism - as opposed to big "C" Communism). <br /><br />I mean the following without any rancor or intention to offend: The problem I have your viewpoint is not that you choose to reject Marx but that you are doing so on grounds that are properly viewed as superficial and erroneous. Take up some of my reading suggestions, you may still enthusiastically reject Marx as you do now, but I am pretty sure you will feel some benefit from the effort.Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-18936476429099145052013-08-06T12:03:25.302-04:002013-08-06T12:03:25.302-04:00@ Wallfly,
Marx the apostle of parliamentary refo...@ Wallfly,<br /><br />Marx the apostle of parliamentary reform and the welfare state? The bridge between the workers’ movement and liberals? The partisan of the ballot against the anarchist’s bomb? The theorist of proletarian dictatorship who nevertheless dreaded a possible socialist turn towards authoritarianism?<br /><br />You have read a lot more Marx than I have, Wallfly, so no doubt you can find many passages to support that picture of a democratic, prudent, ecumenical, liberal Marx. Any thinker as capacious and imprecise as Marx will support any number of contradictory interpretations. And yes, compared to anarchists even Marx is a paragon of realism and accommodation.<br /><br />Still, that’s not why people consider Marx important. Marx is important because he’s vulgar.<br /><br />What you tag as “vulgar Marxism” would be better termed “programmatic Marxism.” It’s what every Marxist up to about 1956 thought of as the canonical project of Marxism, whatever their disagreements on timing and strategy. Because it failed so disastrously, the non-sectarian left now ostensibly distances itself from that program. Instead, well-bred leftists embrace “analytic Marxism”—the (allegedly) urbane, sophisticated Marx whose sociological critique of capitalism is palatable precisely because it is not so distinct from that of more resignedly bourgeois progressives. <br /><br />But as hard as academics work to rehabilitate Marx as a social analyst presentable enough for the seminar-room, it’s still the caustic vulgarian who resonates.<br /><br />Because in fact, the social sciences are not devoid of progress; whatever original insights Marx may have come up with—meager, in my estimation—they have long since been digested, redacted and superceded by later, abler thinkers. The notion that yet more Talmudic exegesis of this manuscript or that treatise is going to yield new insights into modern economic and social problems is fanciful. No one really reads Marx for his foreshadowings of Weber or his grudging strategic endorsement of parliamentary initiatives and trade-unionism. If that were what he was about he would be nothing but a footnote to a few dissertations in intellectual and labor history.<br /><br />Championing analytic Marxism is just a way of quietly reinserting programmatic Marxism back into polite company. What people really crave in Marx is his thrilling vulgarity and nothing but: his insistence that capitalism and liberal demcracy are but spectacles of theft and fraud and degeneracy; his confidence that they are always teetering on the brink of collapse; his promise that just beyond the horizon a storm is brewing that will not just reform but sweep away entirely the rot of bourgeois society and its corrupt politics. Vulgar Marx is the Marx who mobilized armies and demolished empires; his is the vanguard to march in. Dress him up in a tweed jacket, he’s the same prophet of revolution that left romantics still yearn for.<br />Will Boisvertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-60490908558068755072013-08-06T11:48:12.995-04:002013-08-06T11:48:12.995-04:00Here is the research:
Anwar M. Shaikh
The Empirica...Here is the research:<br />Anwar M. Shaikh<br />The Empirical Strength of the Labour Theory of Value<br />http://www.ehu.es/Jarriola/Docencia/EcoMarx/EcoMarx%20frances/labthvalue.pdf<br />(this file looks like an ocr of a paper chapter of the book, I couldn't find a better source online).<br /><br />Problems:<br />1) It's too math-heavy for me, can someone tell me wether he is cherrypicking or not?<br />2) I don't understand very well but he says he calculates labor quantities for "vertically integrated" industries, that I think menas he is only calculating final (consumption) products, not inter-business sales of non-finished goods?<br />3) At some point the author speaks of the "reswitching" problem, but says that this happens very rarely and with minimal effect, because, as far as I can understand, of the economical structure of production (and in particular because of the various average levels of capital utilisation across industries). This sounds like an important empirical trove, but I can't understand what it means.Random Lurkernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-31561486640196943032013-08-06T07:49:43.202-04:002013-08-06T07:49:43.202-04:00I'll repost this long comment about the LTV he...I'll repost this long comment about the LTV here, even if it's a bit OT. <br /><br />I have three unrelated points:<br /><br />1 While I think Marx took the LTV seriously, you are right when you say that in DK he is wrestling against it. It just is an "even though " instead of an "even if ".<br /><br />2 The LTV has been discarded because it poses logical problems, not because it fails empirically.<br />In facts browsing the web yesterday I found a research that tested Marx 's formulae against input / output tables of the USA in the 70s and found that the LTV predicts actual prices with more than 90% accuracy . More about this in another comment. <br /><br />3 But why did Ricardo and Marx believe in the LTV in the first place ?<br />In my opinion, the most intuitive theory of value is that price is determinated by utility. According to this logic, if I can find a way to produce twice as much stuff as yesterday, I'll produce twice as much value as well. <br />But Ricardo and Marx lived through the industrial revolution and they saw that technical improvements in the wool industry didn't make textile workers rich, it was the price (exchange value) of textiles that fell instead.<br />As such, the LTV is a theory about the price structure vs technical change, and not a stupid one at that. <br />For this reason, I think that the LTV in Marx is a theory about empirical prices, not about some mistycal concept of value, and Marx handwaving about the fact that singular prices may diverge from it just mean that Marx is speaking of equilibrium prices, but lacks the word to express this concept. Random Lurkernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-7506152569285021742013-08-06T01:18:48.240-04:002013-08-06T01:18:48.240-04:00I basically agree with Wallflower above. I do not ...I basically agree with <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919" rel="nofollow">Wallflower above</a>. I do not think the TSS project is useful. Marx's engagement with the LTV was bound up with its place in the "scientific" (his word) economics of his time. To take it as an absolute, quantitative claim about social reality is, I think, a misunderstanding of Marx's use of it and, much more importantly, an intellectual dead end.<br /><br />Apropos of nothing in particular, but its my blog and I can indulge myself:<br /><br />I had a dream once where I met Karl Marx. He told me, "How could I believe in the labor theory of value? That would be like confusing the robber with the gold."<br /><br />JW Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664452827447313845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-73951926577319410852013-08-06T01:12:23.625-04:002013-08-06T01:12:23.625-04:00Sadly, the key work is his book, which he never pu...Sadly, the key work is his book, which he never published. I and others have been pushing him to pick it up again and it may yet happen.<br /><br />In the meantime, check out the papers <a href="http://people.umass.edu/~crotty/archive.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>, especially "Was Keynes a Corporatist?" and the 1985-1990 ones.<br /><br />JW Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664452827447313845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-36158325298905333002013-08-06T01:02:35.760-04:002013-08-06T01:02:35.760-04:00Actually, from what I've read of the TSS guys,...Actually, from what I've read of the TSS guys, they are thoroughly versed in the formalisms of logic and mathematics as well as in philosophy of science. (I'm not going to get into minute internecine disputes over interpretation between them and Duncan Foley, Anwar Shaik and others, which is a bit beyond my ken or interest). But their point is anything but an antiquarian revival of fundamentalist "orthodoxy", even if that is often the terms by which they are dismissed. TAhe neo-classical criticism of the "transformation problem", which demanded that labor-values be "transformed" into cost-prices of production, given different "organic compositions of capital" between sectors, (when In Marx, actually both prices and values needed to be "transformed" together), underwrote a claim that Marx' LTV was fundamentally inconsistent in logical terms, thus refuting the entire Marxian enterprise. Since the 3 equalities between values and prices, total output, total profits, and rates of profit, allegedly couldn't hold at once, Marx must be guilty of double-counting, and since the cost=prices of production are the actual determinants of capitalists' decisions, Marx' value theory is not only inconsistent, but redundant and thus nugatory. <br /><br />But the point isn't simply to refute the neo-classical "refutation" of Marx, which has bedeviled the matter for 80+ years, by demonstrating a coherent reading of Marx is possible and that the neo-classical account is a mis-reading based on their own assumptions rather than Marx', whereby they are in fact doing the double counting. In fact, the neo-classical account is actually a complete inversion of what Marx is actually getting at and the Marxian account is itself of interest. Of course, accounting for the competitive equalization of profits across inter-sectoral differences in the "organic composition of capital" is required to complete Marx' version of LTV. But boiled down, what Marx is saying is that cost-prices of production can not be determined without first determining distributions of surplus-value, (between profits, interest, taxes, rents, etc.), which applies in both price and value terms. In other words, market processes will re-distribute extracted surplus-value from direct production sites across sectors and enterprises. Given tendencies toward the concentration of capital, that implies an account of oligopoly rents accruing to capital intensive sectors and firms. Further, given constant technical change due to competitive pressures (and increasing returns), which disrupts any simple reproduction scheme, it implies a complex and dynamic account of (output) price formation, in contrast to the truism of supply-and-demand equilibrium auctioneering. One of the reasons, Marx seemed to have a fairly relaxed attitude toward the alleged "transformation problem" is that, though cost-prices of production in nominal terms are indeed the determinants by which capitalist investment decisions would be made, their "equilibrium" determination is largely beside the point, given the account of long-run dynamic disequilibrium he was after.john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17176419625607679150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-89114361000638794022013-08-05T14:32:32.740-04:002013-08-05T14:32:32.740-04:00JW, any recommendations of Crotty for non-econ peo...JW, any recommendations of Crotty for non-econ people?Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-44833962834716478822013-08-05T14:28:21.005-04:002013-08-05T14:28:21.005-04:00And the historical Marx didn't just start to l...And the historical Marx didn't just start to lean this way as a result of becoming involved with the trade unions. In his early writing, e.g. German Ideology, Marx is pretty clear you have to let capitalism development material abundance otherwise socialist revolution just redistributes poverty and you get authoritarian rule. Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-25270248269512925782013-08-05T14:23:50.569-04:002013-08-05T14:23:50.569-04:00"your take" refers to WB not JW"your take" refers to WB not JW<br />Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-16370829314309412352013-08-05T13:03:22.379-04:002013-08-05T13:03:22.379-04:00Wallfly, I think "obtuse" may be the rig...Wallfly, I think "obtuse" may be the right word. Some contemporaries of Marx, like Tocqueville, had a considerably subtler and shrewder understanding of how class structures were evolving.<br /><br />But I'll accept "wrong or rather a failed prediction" as a serviceable description of Marx's sociology.Will Boisvertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-7492110361734443552013-08-05T12:41:36.479-04:002013-08-05T12:41:36.479-04:00One of the ways in which Marx put a stamp on Europ...One of the ways in which Marx put a stamp on European social democracy, is that Marxism (in a way you wouldn't get because your take on Marx's idea of revolution is the "vulgar" one, that's not meant as a put down but an observation) is Marxism really provided the glue between middle class radicals (liberals and socialists) and the emerging workers movements. <br /><br />Had Marxism not so heavily influenced that historical nexus, European workers movements might have evolved in a more populist direction, perhaps the result being more anti-Semitism. The point I don't think you really understand about the historical Marx is the degree how his ideas of Revolution really encompassed the notion of mass movement organizing, electoral democracy, the parliamentary road to the welfare state, etc., and why the radicals should support those things and not try to drag the proletariat off into supporting one or another insurrectionary schemes. <br /><br />(Btw, by the end of the 19th C, Social-Democratic really was widely understood as code for Marxist/Socialist)<br /><br />I.e., Marxism had a fairly deterministic theory<br />theory of historical change based on the homogeneity of a growing proletariat (i.e. the bespoke erroneous sociology) which would not only become the "vast majority" but be socially situated so as to be easily organized and physically near the heart of industrial production. In short, the revolution was quite easily conceivable as an electoral or a relatively bloodless turnover of power. While the prediction failed it did deliver the historical form of social democracy in Europe. <br /><br />The alternative to Anarchism that Marxism offered was really the ballot box. Now you could say well wouldn't people have pursued the ballot box anyway? To some extent, but in the 19C, even Liberals were deeply wed to the idea of political revolution. Marxism offered a vision of political change based in the sociological dynamics of capitalism (of which workers activism was held up as the chief evidence). In a sense Marxism really acted as foil a hedge to other more violence-oriented political movements (one of the counter-intuitive facts from the viewpoint of conventional "wisdom", which is mostly derives from the Cold War, actually stemming from both East and West)Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-71587729326585671932013-08-05T12:10:05.981-04:002013-08-05T12:10:05.981-04:00WB, the point about capitalism's class structu...WB, the point about capitalism's class structure is not "obtuse". It may be wrong or rather a failed prediction, but the class structure of Marx's day was significantly less continuous and complex than it became in the 19C and later.<br /><br /><br />Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-49342897084197865322013-08-05T11:54:32.175-04:002013-08-05T11:54:32.175-04:00I realized these can be touchy subjects, so apolog...I realized these can be touchy subjects, so apologies in advance if I offend:<br /><br />JW and josh, I reread the Kliman comment. Either or both of you may be sympathetic to Kliman's project, but my gut tells that general type of project is a dead end. Even if successful, you are likely to end up with an unwieldy model(s) which may be hard to analyze/test or even tweak, because Kliman is not just digging for gold in DK, he is trying to raise an intact treasure ship. That seems very unlikely, let alone from a book that is largely a critique, not a completed system - as JW agrees.<br /><br />On the other hand, if someone came along and said, well there are tantalizing clues that keep reappearing from other schools of economics (institutionalist, Keynesian, etc) as to why this really might be worth it, i.e., it might address concerns other than those are disproportionately ideological, that might be interesting. [Maybe my point is best simplified as saying, the choice of hermeneutics over empiricism has to have a really strong argument in its favor.]<br /><br />My imagination may be limited, but that is the only way I can see why someone would take up Kliman's project as described by Beggs. The ethic of modern science is that if you are going to erect complex theories or methodologies, the pay-off has to be worth it (and in general, the size of the pay-off is inversely correlated with the probability of success). <br /><br /><br />My political orientation (as a socialist) just doesn't depend on Marxism being "right" or that any of the Marxian theories (plural was deliberate) are always useful. Personally I value many of the insights, but it is just a far too common attitude on the Left to be emotionally invested in the "correctness" of Marxism (whatever that is). If a "Marxist science of economics" was the only way to counter Panglossian neo-liberalism, it might be a different story, but I really doubt it <br />requires artillery that heavy. <br /><br />I mean how much energy has been wasted intellectually on the Left trying to revive, post-Bernstien, a heavily dertiminstic theory of History (i.e., some version of the inevitable Revolution, social or political)? <br />To pursue that in the current context, I think, takes a somewhat oblivious frame of mind, no matter how plausible a conjecture it was in Marx's day. <br /><br /><br />You might respond, if this type of grand project rooted in "getting Marx right" is pointless, where does that leave Marxian econ. It leaves it as a set of practitioners with common concerns/values, research agenda and some shared language/methodologies but lacking a grand theory. I think Beggs's point is that is not such a bad thing. My gut responds favorably to that. <br />Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-16552253005092924592013-08-05T10:31:41.618-04:002013-08-05T10:31:41.618-04:00JW, on social science, spot on. Social science liv...JW, on social science, spot on. Social science lives in the realm where facts and values are inextricably intertwined. <br /><br />Wallflyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852136998154262919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-59145641243008645592013-08-03T22:07:03.276-04:002013-08-03T22:07:03.276-04:00Crap I wrote an ultra long comment then deleted it...Crap I wrote an ultra long comment then deleted it accidentally. <br />Expanding on JCH:<br />The reason the approach WB calls mechanicistic doesn't work well in social sciences is that while the physical world isn't culture dependent, the social world is. <br />To analize our culture through itself is tautological.<br />Hegel's theory of the spirit is an attempt to solve this problem (though with different language) , Marx attempts to give a materialistic foundation to this. <br />An example of this problem is that the idea that there is no involuntary unemployment, while it sounds stupid, cannot be negated without some fairly complex (and culture dependent ) assumptions of value. Random Lurkernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-43869177278470468102013-08-03T14:38:53.029-04:002013-08-03T14:38:53.029-04:00John C. Halasz, yes, the dispute between atomism a...John C. Halasz, yes, the dispute between atomism and holism is age-old. The two are resolved by “mechanism.” Mechanistic science explains how seemingly holistic phenomena arise from the rule-bound interactions of subordinate parts.<br /><br />It’s true that the assertion of unexplained universal laws in science may derive inspiration from a mystical bent. But the subsequent program is to mechanize them. Thus, the quasi-holistic phenomenon of Maxwell’s electro-magnetic field was eventually shown to operate by the mechanistic exchange of elementary particles (photons). And mechanistic reasoning is mainly how we integrate reality into a broader frameworks of understanding—by demonstrating that disparate phenomena are outcomes of a common underlying mechanism.<br /><br />But you’re right that there’s an unresolved epistemological quandary in mechanistic science, since each mechanistic advance simply refers the question to a lower level of wholes. Objects are the mechanistic interactions of atoms, which are the mechanistic interactions of protons and neutrons, which are the mechanistic interactions of quarks. Then what? <br /><br />So maybe—or perhaps certainly—science will arrive one day at some fundamental whole that cannot be reduced to mechanism. But when we find that irreducible essence, that indivisible something-that-is-not-nothing, we will have reached the end of science, the point where reason must indeed bow to mystic reverence. To go there before we absolutely have to is a mistake that impedes understanding and progress.<br /><br />That’s clearly borne out by Marx’s notion of alienated labor.<br /><br />The question is, how do we explain the brute fact that labor is often horrible and exploitative? We could do so by analyzing the mechanisms that generate horrible, exploitative labor—exhausting, stultifying and dangerous work processes; laws that consign certain castes to certain occupations; inequalities of wealth that yield poverty and desperation; violence against striking workers by elites and the state; etc. <br /><br />And we could then work out mechanistic remedies: labor regulations; mass unionization; transfer payments so the poor are more equal and less exploitable; liberal democracies that let workers organize politically, etc. We might even conclude—I wouldn’t—that the mechanisms of capitalism inevitably give capitalists so much tyrannical power over workers that we have to abolish the system entirely.<br /><br />But that mechanistic treatment of the ills of labor isn’t ultimately where Marx goes. Instead, he locates the problem in the alienation of the worker from his work and from himself. That’s a fundamentally mystical analysis: the problem is not mechanisms gone awry, but the division of a mystic whole into parts.<br /><br />That style of mystification obfuscates far more than it illuminates, and leads the Marxist tradition astray. For one, it makes Marxist discourse opaque: Marx is so often unreadable not because he’s a bad writer—he’s not—but because he’s trying to convey incoherent mystical ideas. For another, it leads Marxists to disparage mechanistic ameliorations of labor, and liberal democracy itself, as just a more comfortable form of alienation. Most tragically, the fixation on an abstract concept of alienated labor led Marxists to mistake the mechanistic brutality and exploitation in communist countries for a kind of teleological progress towards liberation.<br />Will Boisvertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-89019069017856286162013-08-03T01:55:06.932-04:002013-08-03T01:55:06.932-04:00Reductionism can be a fruitful research strategy, ...Reductionism can be a fruitful research strategy, but is hardly an "ontological" truth. On the other hand, you're dealing here with a tradition of thought oriented since Kant by inquiring into the limits of "reason". And that necessarily entails that there must be something beyond "reason" and its limits: call it unreason, irrationality, madness, or just plain existence. Any "mysticism" involved is rational "mysticism". To quote another famous "mystic", not how the world is, but that it is, is "mystical". The intelligibility of existence is not simply granted by a demand for "clarity", least of all in a complex world.<br /><br />The task of understanding does not reduce to gathering together bits of deterministic causal mechanisms. The world as historically formed by socio-culturally induced human activities, (of which natural science is an instance), exceeds such simplistic terms.<br /><br />Nor is "logical empiricism" simply "science". To the contrary, it a specific philosophical position ( or tradition of positions). And it offers a poor understanding of the methodology, philosophy, and historical formation of science(s), or, more broadly, methodically rational studies or inquiries. <br /><br />Of course, I said that the thinking of the world as a human objectification makes a certain amount of sense, while imparting a peculiar skew to its understandings, which must be grasped if one is to effectively criticize, if, as determined by prior tradition, "consciousness is held to be the root of reason, knowledge and activity". But of course, that hypothetical isn't exactly "true". If such a "root" is to be discerned, it is not consciousness, but rather language. And some of the impasses of Marx' thinking could be traced to that inevitable "mistake". No one here, I think, is claiming that Marx can be taken out of the box and wound up and is ready to go. Rather the claim is that his work remains of considerable heuristic value and contributes to current understandings, if in de-constructed and re-constructed ways. Which has nothing to do with simplistic and uncritical accounts of the "progress" and "autonomy" of technocratic "science".<br /><br />But then I don't get the sense that your really interested in engaging with such matters, rather than just repressively denouncing them in terms of shop-worn cliches. You strike me as a disciple of the sort of philosophical philistinism promulgated by Karl Popper, a founding member of the Mont Pelerin Society.john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17176419625607679150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-80720791682024817972013-08-03T01:53:51.135-04:002013-08-03T01:53:51.135-04:00W.B.:
There are so many mistakes in judgment and ...W.B.:<br /><br />There are so many mistakes in judgment and understanding there that I won't be able to deal with them all.<br /><br />But, for one, the dispute between atomism and holism is ages-old, not peculiar to Hegel and Marx, and not obviously reducible to one side or the other. "Reason" and "truth" are always torn between the two, and there are bad versions of either reduction. If you want to read an accounting with the issue from an "uncontaminated" source, I'd suggest you wrestle with this work:<br /><br />http://www.amazon.com/Process-Lectures-Delivered-University-Edinburgh/dp/0029345707<br /><br />The "objectification" viewpoint derives from Kant's insight that coherent cognition of the world or the objects in it can't simply be derived from blind experience, but requires a synthesis to "produce" any rational truth about the world and the objects in it. On a certain Fichtean reading of Kant, it follows quite "naturally" or consequentially. But also rational truth about the world isn't reducible to an enumeration of the objects in it, but requires an accounting of the relations between those objects and thus the larger context of the world into which they fit, in order to count as "rational truth". There is no crude "mysticism" or "irrationalism" involved here, nor any dissolution of the reasoning self into any imaginary "Whole". Nor is "romanticism" anything but a crude epithet.<br /><br />Integration of disparate elements or phenomena into a broader framework of understanding is one of the hallmarks of "reason". If you want an example from natural science, consider Maxwell's theory of electro-magnetism. And, in fact, Hegel reflects upon the notion of "science" in just such terms. What's more,- (and, in this respect, he's somewhat better than Marx),- he specifically recognizes the crucial role of "difference" in any rational integration or synthesis: the truth of the whole must be an "identity of difference and identity". Nowadays we might be a bit more alert to the fact that any "whole" of truth-in-the-world is virtual and incomplete, rather than final and "absolute". But we can readily recognize that prior efforts at hazarding a grasp of truth in the world, (and about it, though without assuming any extra-worldly immunity rather than implication in it) were rationally motivated and discerned differentiated understandings.<br /><br />john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17176419625607679150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5154389358831836369.post-34298408209498484042013-08-02T15:30:20.329-04:002013-08-02T15:30:20.329-04:00I think I agree with Joe's examples, but becau...I think I agree with Joe's examples, but because of a more general reason. I'm one of those that believes that “theoretical status” of alienation changes (it doesn't disappear as some Althusserians might believe). It is still considered an important problem, but itself “has to be explained by more fundamental theoretical concepts and analytical tools like mode of production, class structure, etc.” (Georg Fromm, Hegel y el joven Marx: Análisis del Trabajo Enajenado).<br /><br />Now, there are various explanations for this, but I'm convinced by the one Fromm advances: Marx's analysis of alienation is contaminated by Hegelian idealism (see for example Marx's intent to draw a parallel of the "slave/master dialectic" to try and analyze capitalism)-it seems to be no coincidence that Marx's manuscript on the subject in the manuscripts ends abruptly on this topic. <br /><br />The hypothesis is that he noticed the problems. The evidence provided is then to see how alienation is used in the 1845-46 German Ideology and after. <br /><br />And well, he also says that Marx “wouldn't have been able to develop his theory of surplus value within the narrow and limited theoretical framework of his juvenile analysis of the phenomenon of alienation as the key to comprehend and explain the capitalist system”. <br /><br />I find all of this extremely interesting and of course it would be great to read all of this together so I'm in!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Ian J. Seda Irizarryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03791805107306447252noreply@blogger.com