Hi Michael,
Re your [8053]
7F00,0000,0000>
> Hi Andy,
>
> I think your objections have to be unfolded a bit and I appreciate
> that you lack the time to explicate. The issue of materialist
> dialectics is a large one, as you say.
Yes and apologies for the rush.
7F00,0000,0000The task here would be to
> interpret Marx's references to "law of motion" and "law of gravity"
7F00,0000,0000> in another way which puts a distance between these obvious
> Newtonian references and what Marx attempts to establish as a
> "law of value".
Well, let me start 'nuancing' or explicating my previous post by
qualifying your statement above. I would suggest that it is not the
references to Newton's laws that one must distance Marx from.
Newton's laws are true (approximately, within a limitied range of
magnitudes of relevant variables, as Einstein showed). Moreover,
they *do* share features common to all scientific laws, including
those of political economy, and Marx is correct to point to this fact.
Materialist dialectics does indeed suggest that there is an aspect
of unity between natural and social science.
0000,0000,0000However, it *is* important to distance Marx from the mechanistic
*interpretation* of Newton's laws offered by many philosophers from
Newton's time onwards. A classic such interpretation is offered by
Locke. Descartes' schema is consistant also with a mechanistic
interpretation. Contemporary philosophy also tends to have a
reductionist and mechanistic conception of matter. The image of
science and hence of matter prevalent in popular discourse is also
one where matter is conceived mechanistically.
A non-mechanistic interpretation of Newton's laws simply
recognises what has come to be termed 'emergence'. Complex
forms of matter require more than just Newton's laws in order to
comprehend them, witness chemistry and biology. Crucially, the
most complex form of matter we know is humanity and in humanity
matter thinks. Thinking is thereby a property of matter. This is
ultimately what it means to say that matter should not be
conceived of mechanistically, as if Newtonian mechanics exhausts
all laws, or provides the only 'true' laws.
This also gives us a dialectical development: matter is opposite to
thought, yet matter thinks!
7F00,0000,0000> My citing Descartes' handbook of rules for attaining well-founded
> scientific knowledge is to show how he lays down the _quantitative_
> approach to the phenomena which, in my opinion, economics and Marx's
> critique of political economy both adopt.
Perhaps the additional comments above are helpful in
communicating how I think Descartes is superseded by Marx? On
my view political economy must be both qualitative and
quantitative, since, to put it in the most abstract way possible,
value has substance and form as well as magnitude. Marx certainly
seems to take this point of view.
7F00,0000,0000>
> You apparently make a distinction between a law (of value) and an
> axiom. If so, what is the distinction? For the Greeks, an axiom is
> what is 'valuable'. For Newton, axiom and law are synonymous
> (Axiomata, sive leges
>
> motus).
By 'axiom' I have in mind the sort of axioms one finds in a formal
system. I do not think reality can be fully comprehended in any
formal system. Yet, laws must comprehend reality. Hence I do not
equate laws with axioms. Marx seems also to take this view. As
regards the transformation problem, he continually lambasts
Ricardo for his 'formal abstractions' and basically suggests that
Ricardo's insistence upon a mechanistic conception of the law of
value leads Ricardo to desire that prices are proportional to labour
times even as he knows they aren't (his '93 per cent' theory). Marx
dispenses with the mechanistic view of a law and thereby with the
view that proportionality is a requirement of the law of value. Pilling
offers this interpretation of Marx, as does Ilyenkov, from whom
Pilling draws a great deal. (Actually, Pilling and Ilyenkov do not
make explicit the quantitative implications as I have done)
What did Hegel think about this matter, I wonder?
7F00,0000,0000>
> Re:
> >AB: Labour time is the only possible material property of commodities
> >that could be systematically related to commodities (this is Marx's
> >opening argument in 'Capital' I think).
>
> That's right. Do you also know Boehm-Bawerk's objection to this,
> published
>
> long ago in 1896? I myself only recently took the trouble of digging
> this out. He writes:
>
> "If Marx had accidently reversed the sequence of the investigation,
> with precisely the same apparatus of argumentative conclusions with
> which he had excluded use-value, he could have excluded labour and
> then, once again, with the same apparatus of argumentative conclusions
> with which he had crowned labour, he could have proclaimed use-value
> to be the sole remaining and thus the sought-for common property and
> explained value as a
>
> ‘jelly of use-value’" (Boehm-Bawerk, 'Zum Abschluss des Marxschen
> Systems'
>
> in: Friedrich Eberle (ed.) _Aspekte der Marxschen Theorie 1: Zur
> methodischen Bedeutung des 3. Bandes des ‘Kapital’_ Suhrkamp Verlag,
> Frankfurt/M. 1973 p. 89 citing MEW23:73f)
>
> It is an interesting objection in my opinion, and is prior to any
> objection made on the level of the so-called transformation problem.
I agree that it is an interesting objection and also that it is prior to
the transformation problem. As it happens I have a PhD chapter
that goes through the objection and others in detail attempting to
refute it on the basis of materialist dialectics. The essential point is
that use value is *not* 'a thing of air' which means that it is not
something outside of the useful properties of the commodity. Yet
these useful properties are determined (conditioned) by the natural
material properties of the commodity which are entirely abstracted
from in exchange, hence Boehm-Bawerk's objection fails utterly, in
my view. By contrast, labour time is not utterly or palpably
abstracted from in exchange. There may be a systematic
relationship between labour time and exchange value even though it
clearly isn't a proportional one. That is a 'height' or 'weight' or 'age'
theory of value is clearly a joke (as is any theory involving a natural
material property), whereas a labour theory of value isn't.
7F00,0000,0000> It is
>
> also extremely interesting that Boehm-Bawerk makes his objection on
> the background of his own reading of Aristotle! It is as if not only
> Marx's and Boehm-Bawerk's but also our own thinking -- no matter
> whether we acknowledge it or deny it or are oblivious to it -- is
> still held in the grasp of the two-and-a-half millennia reach of
> Aristotle's casting.
I agree that this common relationship to Aristotle is interesting and
I hadn't noticed it before. Materialist dialectics upholds the notion
that there are universal (eternal) laws of nature. If Aristotle taps into
these it might not be so surprising that his views keep resurfacing.
7F00,0000,0000>
> >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!
Many thanks,
Andy