From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@lubs.leeds.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 08:03:55 EST
Hi Michael, re your [8059] I have tried and failed to deal with the problem with my email. > Andy, > If I understood what the thesis that "matter thinks" meant, I am sure > I would disagree. We are material bodies. We think. What is the problem? > As to mechanistic metaphysics, this goes back to Descartes casting > beings as res extensa on the one hand and res cogitans on the other. > This dualism has been under attack from its inception, first of all > and most notably by Leibniz, who introduces the category of vis, > force, which harks back to Aristotelean _dynamis_ (a category > insufficiently thought-through to the present day). Well, the dualism has certainly been under attack (my preferred solution is to be found in Spinoza). But far from overcoming the dualism what tends to happen is *not* that the dualism is truly overcome. Rather, the mechanistic conception of 'matter' is retained and 'mind' is simply blotted out of the ontology altogether. E.g. Searle on 'missing out the mind'. Or consider contemporary 'materialist' conceptions of mind as advocated by Armstrong and the like. But, frankly, I know little of contemporary Anlgo-American philosophy (and would be happy for you to enlighten me on this score). What is, I think, true, is that the conception of 'matter' in popular discourse, and indeed in the discourse of social scientists, tends to be a mechanistic one such that the relation of mind to matter is not fully worked out and is prima facie problematic. The very fact that you seem hostile to the simple proposition that matter thinks suggests to me that you are retaining a Cartesian and mechanistic conception of matter such that, for you, matter can't think. Obviously the suggestion that you unknowingly retain Cartesian mechanism is one you would flatly deny but it at least serves to show just how different our world views seem to be. We might both end up accusing eachother of Cartesian dualism! > > The phenomena of capitalist society themselves must force us to > recognize that they are both qualitative and quantitative. So far I > have only been focusing on and questioning a quantitative law of > value. That does not mean that value has no magnitude. My question > concerns rather what dimension allows commensurability of commodities > as values. > > To be able to formulate a law of value, a ground to the quantiative > determination of exchange proportions must be posited, a ground which > lies outside the exchange itself which causally (directly or in a > highly mediated way, perhaps only statistically) determines the > exchange proportions. Such a law would satisfy both Descartes' rule > book and Leibniz' "grand principle". The above is too truncated for me to be able to interpret your meaning (I fear my own posts suffer from the same problem). Previously you seemed to imply that a quantitative theory of value necessarily entailed axiomatic model building, i.e. Cartesianism. I think this is not the case. It seems you disagree but I can't quite tell why you disagree. > > Another point: > If you are comfortable with the categories: substance, form and > magnitude, then your materialist dialectics must cast an alternative > metaphysics to Aristotle's. Why? Because these three categories in > Aristotle are _ousia_, _morphae_ and _posos_, and _morphae_, i.e. > form, is the opposite of _hylae_, matter (Aristotle, Physics B 1). How > does materialist dialectics rethink this opposition to overcome it? Or > doesn't it need to? Alas, I have not studied Aristotle closely so cannot comment on that. My use of the terms stems from Marx's own work -- also I am influenced by Patrick Murray's exposition -- Murray refers to Hegel's Logic of Essence (and here is another can of worms!) Still, on my view, the appearance form of value is indeed opposite to its substance. The substance is abstract labour and this means labour stripped of all sensuousness, pure homogenous labour. Form is, on the other hand, sensuous by definition. Thus the substance (that is inherently non-sensuous) must appear in its own opposite, the sensuous commodity acting as equivalent. I rather doubt, however, that all this can define any true transhistorical schema of substance and form. This is because a defining feature of the above is its peculiarity, even absurdity. The whole notion of congealed abstract labour is a highly peculiar one, defining, at the most abstract level, capitalism and not valid outside of capitalism. > > Isn't the usefulness of a commodity, its value in use, only such > within the usages, i.e. within the human practices, in which it is > used? > It exists as a potential prior to actual use. > Do you agree that, when two commodities, such as wheat and iron, are > equated in exchange (in certain proportions), that not only the > concrete labours that produced them, but also the concrete values in > use are abstracted from? Yes. But the key point is that socially necessary labour time is *not* abstracted from. This is Marx's opening argument in 'Capital', in my view. And it seems quite correct to me. Do you agree that it is the practice of > exchange itself which (willy nilly -- "behind the backs" of the > exchangers) performs the abstraction? I think exchange is such because value is congealed abstract labour. I do not think that exchange creates congealed abstract labour. Wage labour creates congealed abstract labour. Congealed abstract labour is given appearance form in exchange. Thus I do not think that exchange performs the abstraction. Rather, exchange reflects the abstraction. This also seems to be Marx's view. > > To properly assess Boehm-Bawerk's objection, the one I quoted, would > require returning to reconsider the argument in Aristotle and Marx's > reply to it. > According to my interpretation of Marx, Aristotle correctly recognised that there must be a substance to value but Aristotle could not find such a substance. He could not do this because the society in which he lived did not reveal the 'concrete universal' nature of labour. Without recognition of labour as a concrete universal then 'labour' is no better than use value as a supposed substance of value. Therefore I think Marx would have rejected the argument that use value is the substance of value and also Marx believed Aristotle rejected such an argument. Note, however, that the above exposition must be nuanced: the law of value did not hold prior to capitalism hence Aristotle was, in an important sense, correct to pass off exchange value as irrational (lacking in substance), for the society in which he was living. From Marx's perspective, it is possible to see pre-capitalist value-forms (commodities and money) as containing, at best, value 'in embryo'. > > > > >AB: Without such a property then political economy would be quite > > > >impossible. I fear that Michael's apparent view leads down this > > > >impossible road. > > > > > > To attempt the impossible here would thus mean to risk the venture > > > of stepping out of the long shadow cast by Aristotle which > > > willy-nilly shapes and casts and moulds our thinking to the > > > present day. > > > > Yes it would. Clearly we have different views as to whether such a > > move is warranted! > > Or, in a given historical situation (our own), the risk is necessary > and we can not cede or elude or withdraw -- that is, without failing > to be a match for the situation. I would very be interested to see how you would theorise the magnitudes of wages and profits etc. My view is that this requires the LTV. Many thanks, Andy
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