From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 27 2002 - 02:09:12 EST
re 8065. Michael E wrote: > >I think that Marx, in his Critique of Political Economy; is wanting to place >his bets (at least) two ways. He wants to ground a law of value with SNLT as >its quantitatively determining causal factor (in some sense or other), but >at the same time, his phenomenology is richer, in that it deals with the >simple everyday phenomena of commodity exchange, etc. He emulates the >Cartesian/Newtonian casting in expounding a law of value, but there is more >to his analysis of value than this (viz. the value-form). So variation in capital structure becomes the third body for Marx's theory of the transformation from prices to values (I interpret the transformation problem in inverse terms, but that's another point)? At any rate, Michael, I don't understand this charge of quantitative fetishism as Marx after all disclosed how our relations of living social labor are and can only be mediated through purely quantitative relations among inanimate things (the necromancy of the commodity world) as a result of historically specific class relations. As Tony T's comment suggests, Marx probed the roots and meanings of this thralldom to the quantitative, i.e., prices (see Korsch's chapter on commodity fetishism ). It was Ricardo who was happy to ground the exchange relation "in SNLT as its quantitatively determining factor." Marx's dialectic only accepts this starting point--the Ricardian law of labor value-- to demonstrate both its failure in its own terms (as a result of the forced abstractions by which Ricardo responded to Malthus) and (in quasi Kantian fasion) the (socio-historic) limits of its validity (see Gideon Freudenthal). Marx is not a minor post-Ricardian. If Heidegger rejected the scientistic attempt to reduce understanding to the mathematical exact sciences or more generally those claims that endeavor for universality through purely formal languages (e.g., Heidegger's rejection of Carnap's critique of H's conception of nothingness because it could not be translated into the putatively universal language of the propositional calculus), Marx's laws of motions are not written in the language of number or do not at times resemble an exact mathematical science for the purpose of achieving universality across cultures and time, i.e., timeless validity (see Korsch on historical specificity). Marx, unlike a Newton of economics (Ricardo?), explicitly argued against universalizing the application of the law of value to each capitalist commodity (see Farjoun and Machover?) or over all modes of production (see John Weeks, Moishe Postone); the Marxian law of value also does not explain a celestial order in the world of commodities but crises and disturbances and non equilibrium (see Grossmann, Mattick Sr, Freeman and Carchedi, eds. who all argue against Dobb's and Sweezy's misinterpretation of Marx's law of value as a law of economic equilibrium). There is nothing theistic about Marx's law of value. Yet because Marx also disclosed how the fate of capital rests on a quantitative increase in value, he did indeed have to devise conceptual tools by which to understand its circulation quantitatively ( Grossmann and Lapides but see Lebowitz). But this quantitative dimension to his laws of motion is a great strength of Marx's critique of capital. For example, Marx was the first to discover how much the reduction in turnover time contributed to the increase in value (Grossmann again; Allin wrote an important note on turnover time for this list many months ago); and any attempt at a phenomenology of time would be seriously impoverished without accounting for the experential changes wrought by attempts to reduce turnover or circulation time. There is no contradiction between Marx's quantitative theorizing and his phenomenology, as I think you are implying. In short, I must say that I remain confused why exactly you believe that the Cartesian or Newtonian model of the mathematical exact sciences (as their founders interpreted them or as others received them or as Marx understood them?) and their timelessly and universally valid laws of motion (but see Ronald Giere) had a baleful influence on Marx's conception of social science. Yours, Rakesh
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