RE: [OPE] Abstract Labor (a note for Dave Zachariah)

Bendien writes:

"Marxists often falsify Marx & Engels to make them say all sorts of things
that they want to say themselves. It is like a religion. You might as well
just say what you want to say, without the obligatory religious reference to
Marx." [I suppose "falsify" is a slip of the pen; I suppose what is meant is
something like "improperly use Marx"] Bendien might as well take this
seriously and apply this to his own style of writing.

That Marx did "not present" a theory of commodity money can be verified from
some instances. However, it can also be falsified from other texts (see e.g.
the last section on Bullion of the paper that I quoted in an earlier mail
http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/bin/366fulltext.pdf ). Of course this is not
surprising for an author writing at a time when commodity money dominates
banking.

Bendien "What you and the other "Marxist" PostKeynesians (like
Reuten/Williams) do, is to confuse the ESSENCE of a process with its
SUPERSTRUCTURAL manifestations." The labelling is not interesting before you
explain what you mean. In which texts is this confused? And if there is such
a text you might as well add why you are privileged to know what the essence
is. For a discussion it is useful to stop making unsubstantiated claims.

Geert Reuten

  _____

Van: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:adsl675281@tiscali.nl]
Verzonden: donderdag 5 maart 2009 20:00
Aan: Outline on Political Economy mailing list
Onderwerp: [OPE] Abstract Labor (a note for Dave Zachariah)

I get hassled sometimes because of my pro-Marx, anti-Marxist styles, but
then Marxists often falsify Marx & Engels to make them say all sorts of
things that they want to say themselves. It is like a religion. You might as
well just say what you want to say, without the obligatory religious
reference to Marx.

There is not a shred of historical evidence that it was the state which
originally invented money, and an enormous amount of historical evidence
that money-tokens of various kinds existed before the state assumed the
power to issue currency. That is, the state only aimed to regulate and
stimulate trading processes which existed already, as well as profit from
them.

Contrary to Marxist myths (propagated also by people like Ernest Mandel),
Marx himself never subscribed to a "commodity theory of money", and he makes
this abundantly clear in numerous passages. What Marx aimed to do,
specifically, was to explain the ORIGINS of money, where the increasing
sophistication of commodity trade begets the practical NECESSITY for a
general equivalent in exchanging goods and services, irrespective of how
exactly that happens to be achieved practically (an East India Company, a
municipality, a State, a Corporation, a merchant trader, a Clergy etc.). He
then explains the social and psychic consequences of this for human life.

What you and the other "Marxist" PostKeynesians (like Reuten/Williams) do,
is to confuse the ESSENCE of a process with its SUPERSTRUCTURAL
manifestations. Your own "Marxism" is often just a superstructure for a
PostKeynesian essence, even although it takes only a day of focused research
to make total mincemeat of the PostKeynesian explanation about the origin of
money.

The PostKeynesians do not offer any proof that originally the state invented
money. Why? Because there is no evidence, and the proof is impossible. It is
proof, only if you redefine the meanings of words to suit your case. But in
real trade, word meanings are mostly hot air - in the sense that, in real
trade, people want to see real goods and real cash at the end of the day.
And they will trade, even if Post Keynesians say that it is theoretically
impossible because the state wasn't involved.

In their book about Towards a New Socialism, Paul Cockshott & Allin Cottrell
similarly pronounce in favour of a Ricardian theory of foreign trade. But in
reality this is another alien theory grafted onto Marx by people who have
not thought through the argument properly. Here at home I have a pile of
literature at least 10 cms high explaining what is wrong with the Ricardian
theory and why Marx did not subscribe to it, mostly written in the 1970s and
1980s, in German and English. Nevertheless the myth of the Ricardian theory
persists among Marxists even today, twenty years later.

This is just to explain why I get a bit exasperated by arrrogant Marxists
who claim that Smith, Ricardo and Keynes got it right all along. They don't
know what they are talking about, they haven't studied the literature and
they haven't studied the economic history. But, perhaps most importantly,
they don't know what the questions really are.

Jurriaan

_______________________________________________
ope mailing list
ope@lists.csuchico.edu
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
Received on Thu Mar 5 16:25:18 2009