"I still think much of the left uses the 'excuse' that issues of race and gender and sexuality fall under identity politics to avoid the arduous task of synthesizing issues of race AND gender and sexulity AND class ... many people interested in traditional marxian issues such as surplus value have not begun to do [this]. So, f'rinstance, in every iaffe session I went to at the easterns, there were synthesis articles presented on gender and class, race and gender, etc. The marxist sessions offer no such allurements."
And, in a message of Thursday, June 25, 1998 9:08 PM, she wrote:
"i've only made one statement on i.d. politics, -- a specific comparison of the synthesis of research being conducted by members of iaffe, a large and well respected feminist group, and marxists at the eastern economic association who basically are conducting the same research they have been for decades ...."
The "marxist sessions" at the Easterns apparently means the sessions sponsored by the International Working Group on Value Theory (IWGVT). As co-organizer of the IWGVT, I would like to make the following comments:
(1) There is a whole lot of truth in what Maggie writes. This is regrettable. But it is not something the IWGVT promotes. Rather, our mini-conferences are open, and participants who identify with our goals and perspectives are a decided minority. I think it's fair to say that most participants are either indifferent toward or hostile to our perspectives. They come to our conferences because they get an audience they wouldn't get otherwise, or at least a larger one, and especially because they get someone else (us) to do the organizing.
(2) In particular, there's a lot of truth in Maggie's characterization of "marxists ... who basically are conducting the same research they have been for decades." But the IWGVT does NOT promote this "business as usual" attitude. Far from it. The research of those who identify with the IWGVT represents a fundamental challenge to the research programs to which I think she refers.
(3) The IWGVT is not a Marxist organization. Most participants at our conferences call themselves Marxists (but what's in a name?), yet we have actively encouraged the participation of others. This effort has met with some success, especially this past year, in which participants included those who identify with post-Keynesianism, Austrian economics, "Sraffianism," and a financial economist who identifies with no particular "school."
(4) We have also actively encouraged, again, with some success, new explorations of domestic labor in relation to the concepts of abstract and concrete labor. We had a panel on this topic at the last conference and hope to do so again next year. I mention this because it may fall under the synthesizing of issues that Maggie wants.
(5) Instead of being a Marxist group, we are a group organized to discuss value theory and the concept of value. It is true that the word, value, is often identified with Marxism, because other economists tend not to use it much nowadays, but we mean it in a much broader and more inclusive sense.
(6) Now, this might still seem to implicate us as being "interested in traditional marxian issues such as surplus value" to the exclusion of other things, but I don't think this is in fact the case. Speaking for myself (I'm sending this to Alan Freeman, the other co-organizer, who may wish to speak for himself as well), I'm not interested in the *issue* of value or surplus-value per se. I mean by this that I'm not an advocate for value theory in the abstract. My agenda isn't to say that value is important. And it certainly isn't to defend the primacy of class or any such rot.
I don't do research in value theory or organize conferences on it because I think it is the only important thing, or even the most important thing, around. In a certain sense, the *opposite* is the case. Let me explain. Marxists and non-Marxists alike have long held that Marx's value theory is internally inconsistent. This has given the Marxists the license to revise and "correct" it. The "corrected" versions and Marx's own theory are ultimately irreconcilable, however, so the result has been a continual, obsessive attempt to square the circle, as it were. Although the obsession of some Marxists with value does have something to do with class-exclusivism and class-firstism, it also results from people having made whole careers and having formed whole research programs out of attempts to make the "corrected" versions look like the original. That this cannot ever really succeed is precisely what makes it an interminable project. So what we get is the same research for decades on end, a focus on ever-more minute and abstruse problems, etc. -- the very stuff Maggie rightly deplores.
Now, here's where I think the research of those who identify with the IWGVT (which is, again, not synonomous with those who attend it conferences) comes in. We say, halt! We have shown that Marx's theory *is* internally consistent. (The main struggle now is to have this understood and recognized more widely.) What this implies is that the circle-squaring efforts can stop. People can -- and should -- get on with some *real* matters. It also implies that the wheel need not be re-invented -- people don't need to spend their whole lives re-writing _Capital_ -- only this time getting it right, or "completing" it.
In short, my view is that the origin of profit was explained in 1867, and we can and should be moving forward, tackling other problems. But there's also the need, right now, for a *few* of us also to be involved in winning recognition of all this. I don't blame Maggie for finding no allurements in the debates in which we do so. It is a dirty business ... but someone's got to do it. I think of it as a labor of hate.
(7) I also have no more patience for class-exclusivism or class-firstism or class-centrality than Maggie has. I happen to identify with the philosophy that Raya Dunayevskaya called "Marxist-Humanism." From the founding of her organization in 1955, onward, she singled out four *independent* forces of revolution in the U.S. -- rank-and-file workers, Blacks, women, and youth -- and she considered them to be not force alone, but reason. What she meant by this is that the thinking and creativity of each, which arises from its own particular struggles, deepens and enriches the struggle for freedom as a whole.
Ciao,
Andrew
Andrew ("Drewk") Kliman Home: Dept. of Social Sciences 60 W. 76th St., #4E Pace University New York, NY 10023 Pleasantville, NY 10570 (914) 773-3951 Andrew_Kliman at msn.com
"... the *practice* of philosophy is itself *theoretical.* It is the *critique* that measures the individual existence by the essence, the particular reality by the Idea." -- K.M.