[OPE] Recent serious theoretical discussions: reply to Dogan

From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@tiscali.nl)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2008 - 15:10:20 EDT 







Well OK then just to finish
this dispute (I have to get on with other things): Dogan's idea about
the "fundamental contradiction between use-value and exchange-value"
might have some validity if Marx's Das Kapital was simply a study of
the circulation of commodities. But as Marx himself says, it is not
simply a study of circulation of commodities, or of simple commodity
production, but rather a study of the capitalist mode of production, in
which the central contradiction (however much obscured) is between
Capital and Labour. 



Marx's own argument was that authors such as Adam Smith and David
Ricardo often confused the characteristics of simple commodity exchange
with capitalist commodity exchange, thereby overlooking what is
historically specific to capitalism. This difference could be
understood only by referring to the specific "social relations of
production" defining each of the two.



This central contradiction between Capital and Labour is "dialectical"
according to Marx, in the precise sense that capital and wage labour
depend on each other for their existence, yet they also have
conflicting interests which, consequently, have to be mediated
continuously, with a whole apparatus of carrots and sticks. Behind the
exchange relation between commodities is a social relation between
people.



But in dialectical thought it is not usually possible to "reduce" all
contradictions to one fundamental contradiction, because thinking in
terms of a dialectical whole means precisely to reject methodological
reductionism. A contradiction is "fundamental" only from a certain
point of view, i.e. we cannot completely understand all the other
contradictions and the way they are mediated without understanding that
one. True, "the commodity" may be regarded as the "cell form" of the
bourgeois economy, but what animates the body as a whole cannot be
"reduced" to this cell-form, anymore than I can understand e.g. the
dynamics and function of a car, simply by inspecting a cylinder.



In neoclassical economics, the above type of insight is not really
possible, precisely because the ownership relations which create the
power to command capital assets and wage labour are abstracted from. 



J. Sheahan points out in this regard for example that:



"It is possible to study a great deal of economics without ever
encountering a serious question about ownership. The core of the
subject is a logical system that treats capital and land as factors of
production to be analyzed by universally applicable techniques without
regard to who owns them." (J. Sheahan, Patterns of Development in Latin
America: poverty, repression and economic strategy. New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1987 p.130). 



In other words, neoclassical economics studies markets in abstraction
from the mode of production on which they are based. The corrollary of
that neoclassical "factors of production theory" (which Marx
sarcastically calls the "holy trinity" of capital, labour and land) is,
that neoclassical economics experiences great theoretical difficulties
when it has to explain how new markets are to be created, expanded and
maintained in areas where previously there existed no (monetised)
markets at all. If it is claimed that markets always existed, how then
can they emerge where they observably don't exist?



Eventually some modern academics (such as Hernando De Soto) rediscover
that capitalist markets always presuppose a stable system
("infrastructure") of property rights plus the behaviours that go along
with that, and that you need an upwardly-mobile middle class to promote
those property relations culturally with an ethos of "possessive
individualism" (C.B. Macpherson's term) and a "work ethic" (Weber's
concept). This recalls Marx's ironic observation in Das Kapital Vol. 1
about the English lord who emigrated to colonial Australia with an
entourage of servants, only to find that his servants ran away, because
the English property relations which bound them to their lord did not
exist in Australia at the time. Capitalism could not be
aristocratically willed into existence.



For another modern example, we can witness in Iraq how the
Anglo-American occupying forces have devoted a lot of energy and time
overthrowing and re-establishing property relations, so that certain
business interests can claim assets, and others are shut out from
owning them, because these occupying forces understand practically that
this is the real basis of a viable bourgeois society, in which workers
are forced to work for a boss who can claim part of the value-added
which they produce with their labour, as profit. This is justified with
all kinds of arguments about "creating civilisation", "liberal
democracy" and "human progress" etc. but of course they wouldn't go
into all that trouble and strife simply out of the goodness of their
christian hearts, unless they had something very tangible to gain -
such as a plentiful oil supply which has a positive effect on world
markets, and plentiful income from taxpayer's funds. 



Marx famously said that, historically speaking, capital arrives into
the world violently, "dripping with blood and gore from every pore"
(the reference is not to menstruation, but warfare). Why? As Rosa
Luxemburg explained in her book "The Accumulation of Capital", because
the property relations which its existence presupposes do not emerge
just naturally out of commodity trade - the possession by some of a
source of capital accumulation is predicated on the dispossession of
others, which necessarily involves a power conflict between different
interests. Hence, the quest for market expansion is inextricably bound
up with the overthrow of previous social structures and property
rights, through a continuous series of wars which enrich some and
impoverish others. But Marx himself did not arrive at such an insight
through a "philosophy of dialectics" - he gained that insight through
studying historical facts.



In his writings on the "philosophical tendencies of bureaucratism",
Leon Trotsky explained how, after riding to power and privilege over
the backs of the workers, the Marxist-Leninist bureaucrats develop a
certain fondness and propensity for discoursing about "dialectics".  In
this respect,  dialectics offers the advantage that any premise can be
flexibly deduced from any other premise to suit one's purpose; any idea
can be connected "dialectically" to any other. However, Trotsky
recognized this kind of dialectics is totalitarian. Why? Because the
bureaucrat defines his vision of the totality in advance, so that his
inferiors may be cajoled to conform to it and think accordingly - the
whole purpose is to impose that totality on the workers, like it or
not. Thus, this "dialectical totality" is merely the philosophical
justification and rationalization of bureaucratic power. It is a sad
thing when modern Marxists succumb to the same nonsense - and I say
this as someone with a lengthy experience of bureaucratic absurdities.



Jurriaan






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