From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Wed Apr 14 2004 - 15:39:59 EDT
Hi Jurriaan: > You might argue that mentioning papers I haven't even > completed yet is a bit fraudulent of me to do, <snip> Not at all. I can appreciate satire -- providing I recognize it as satire. > Although I am very interested in Marx from the point of view > of social science, I personally reject the very idea of "Marxism", > because this transforms Marx's critical-scientific and philosophical > thought into an all-encompassing ideological system or cosmology, > which stifles individuality and innovation and can lead people to try > an impose ideological or political systems on others which disrespect > or violate the real natures of those people. So I think you can be a > socialist or communist etc. but being a "Marxist" typically causes > attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, and a form of thinking which > is no different from religion, except that religious people normally > exhibit healthier forms of association. I accept though that this is a > minority viewpoint and that there are many self-styled "Marxists" > who do perfectly good research or pursue a successful politics with > honorable motives. I will not quarrel with your refusal to be designated as a Marxist, but will instead note that you go on to write (in the very next paragraph): > As regards value-form theory, I think it offers some important insights > but really I don't think it reflects what Marx really intended. There's the (satirical?) rub, in my view. It's easy enough to write that one isn't a Marxist. It's quite another thing for those who have been influenced by Marx's writings and praxis to _not_ argue from authority. *Even if* (for the sake of discussion) it is the case that VFT does not reflect "what Marx really intended", so what??? So what if a theoretical perspective does not proceed in the way in which you or some others believe Marx "really intended" (as if that were an easy matter to determine!!!)? Why -- without resorting to "religion" -- should this be viewed as a legitimate critique of a (in this case, VFT) perspective? The issue shouldn't be whether one wants to call one's self a Marxist, a radical economist, or whatever. The issue is whether one takes a *genuinely* critical stance towards the subject matter. To do the latter requires that one move beyond a critique of political economy, the marginalists, heterodox economists, and (even) Marxists of various stripes and hues. It requires that one subject *Marx's own writings* to critique. De omnibus dubitandum. In solidarity, Jerry >>> Value-form theory really suggests to me an inability to apply Marx's research method and that it "Hegelianises" Marx's method in an erroneous, idealist way. Marx suggested that inquiry must proceed both through an empirical analysis of the facts and through criticism of the interpretation of the facts by economists and social theorists. It was a question of discovering the dialectics in the empirical material and in the evolution of interpretations of that empirical material. Only then could the subjectmatter be dialectically represented. However, what the value-form theorists try to do is to derive and develop concepts and analyses from Marx's value theory in a way which only provides a social phenomenology. The result is that either the empirical analysis doesn't conform to Marx's concepts, or that theorising is done which has no empirical content. But that just suggests that Marx's theory cannot be applied to real experience. <<<<
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