Re: [OPE] free competition

Jerry,

This discussion is getting more and more insipid. If I say:

> Nobody - including Marx - denies that there is a lot of ideological hoo-hah
> about "free competition". But for Marx this sort of insight was just
> superficial; anyone can observe that, the point is to understand what is
> behind the ideological hoo-hah, what are the economic relationships which
> structure the ideological myths.

It does not follow that I "acknowledge that free competition was an ideological myth!". This is just a lying Jewish-American forgery of what I said!

What it means is, that everybody recognizes that "there are ideological myths about free competition", AND NOT that free competition IS an ideological myth! There is a big difference here!

What Marx means positively by "free competition" in his economic theory is, simply, "the competition by capitals against other capitals, rather than against something else", in other words the system-immanent competition of capitalism. His argument is that the political economists (and Levyite philosophers pretending to be economists) failed to explain the laws governing free competition in this capitalist sense, and then he explains why this is the case (see Grundrisse p. 649-652 in the Nicolaus edition, as I said before).

Marx is quite explicit: "FREE COMPETITION IS THE REAL DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITAL. (...) The reciprocal compulsion which the capitals... practise upon one another, on labour etc. (the competition among workers is only another form of the competition among capitals), is the *free*, at the same time the *real* development of wealth as capital. So much is this the case, that the most profound economic thinkers, such as e.g. Ricardo, *presuppose* the absolute predominance of free competition in order to be able to study and to formulate the adequate laws of capital..." etc. (op. cit., p. 650-651, my emphasis).

In the shallow ideology of Jerry Levy, however, the "state controls capital", sort of like Stalinist stamocap theory. In reality, it is just the other way around: "capital controls the state".

Clearly Marx is NOT saying here, that the "presupposition" of the "absolute predominance of free competition" MEANS that "absolute predominance of free competition" really existed all the time and everywhere. That would just be an unscholarly Levyite error. Marx refers to a "presupposition". Such absolute predominance rarely existed; but it existed on a sufficient scale, to be able to inspire the theory of competition. Evidently Marx did think that free competition really existed, even although it might not always be "predominant". He keeps referring to it.

With his crude dictionary definition, Jerry is therefore forced to argue that Marx was wrong, because Marx does not conform to Jerry's vulgar economics, and then Jerry claims that the onus is on others, to prove the Levyite metaphysical definition is wrong. But nothing can prove Jerry's definition wrong, precisely because it is metaphysical, and anyway, "it only means what Jerry wants it to mean" circumstantially from time to time, depending on what suits his purpose.

With his nose in the dictionary instead of in Das Kapital, Jerry complains that nobody can give him an historical example of free competition, but the point is, that he has already defined free competition in such a way that such an example is impossible "a priori". Namely, as soon as capitalists and workers are subject to government laws, they cannot be said to engage in "free" competition according to Jerry. Wow! What an astonishing "scientific" insight (sic.) !

In contrast, Marx and Engels note in the Communist Manifesto: "the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm And that is essentially what happened!

Last year, I edited a book by top historians about the slave trade, which offers excellent examples of free competition in the slave business, despite the very best efforts of governments to regulate and ban slavery (although the slave trade in the British empire was banned in 1807, it continued anyway, and, indeed, in absolute numbers there are more slaves today, than there ever were before).

Of course, I cannot expect that Jerry Levy will actually read the book. His method of research consists simply of defining things in or out of existence, on the basis of what he read in a dictionary. For my part, I am not willing to prepare a scientific lecture on the real history of free competition for the benefit of klutzy, overpaid kindergarten professors.

Leaving aside that I have better things to do, I am not even being paid a professorial salary for it! My fee is 56 USD per hour, as a minimum!

Jurriaan

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Received on Sun Apr 17 13:35:30 2011