<< The response by Andrew Kliman to some of my recent comments is printed in full below -- and I am very pleased that he took the time to address some of my criticisms. Let me just say that I was using the surplus value mini conference as an example of how many marxists (not all) (at least in economics and political economy) are decades behind other groups of people in economics and political economy who have attempted to synthesize race/gender/class/ and ethnicity issues. My comments were not meant to demean the work done in other areas nor the diminish the efforts by the organizers of the mini-conferences to broaden out the diversity of the presentations -- in no way did i mean to imply that anyone was consciously prevented from participating in the surplus value discussions.
That said, I would like to respond to some of AK's points. Particularly, the miniconference did sponsor a panel on domestic labor. While I didn't attend the panel, I did skim some of the papers and I am relatively familiar with the domestic labor debates. In fact, the issue of domestic labor and marxism is probably one of the best to use to explain my problems with the integration of feminism and marxism. The domestic labor debates, at least in the papers I looked at, for this miniconference are not significantly different than the domestic labor debates which went on beginning in the early 70s and continuing through the mid 1980s, and that is exactly the problem. The domestic labor debates were new and exciting then, and they have become repetitive, trailing far behind the feminist dialogue of the late 80s and 1990s! MOST WOMEN DO NOT SIMPLY PERFORM DOMESTIC LABOR -- in fact, minority women and immigrant women have NEVER BEEN PRIMARILY HOUSEWIVES. Helllloooooooo, is anyone listening? The inclusion of an old debate is not a way of engaging the marxist/feminist dialog which is, imho, a natural one -- both feminists and marxists have a vested interest in examining and realizing the tremendous importance of women as a construct for increased class exploitation. Further, by continuing to buy the bourgeois view of woman as homemaker, marxists refuse to see that women of color and recent immigrant women have different life experiences than middle and upper class white women -- and different than working class white women -- which is at heart a CLASSLESS analysis of women!!!!!! So by not exploring the deconstruction of women by class and race, marxists are ultimately saying exactly the same thing about women which is said by the right wing!
I realize that the organizing committee for the surplus value debates is not marxist -- but it is the center draw for most marxists, and the work presented by these marxists make it clear that they see the way to either 'proving' or 'disproving' the theory of surplus value as a sexless/raceless/neutral task. I say this can not by so. The working class on which the theory of surplus value is based is not raceless and sexless. In fact, the very social constructions of race and sex have paved the way for very different extractions of surplus value from workers performing similar occupations. On the assembly line, women make one rate, people of color make another and white males make another. This means the surplus value of their work differs, with capital making different rates of surplus value from different segments of the working class. To me, this should take a central place in the surplus value debates, but it does not because marxists tend to assume that there is a 'normative' worker -- the white male, and that other workers are white male wannabes. F'rinstance, in one of the sessions I attended, the speaker used data on only white male production workers to discuss rates of profit and surplus value -- when I asked why there were no women production workers included, he told me with a straight face that women, in general, do not produce surplus value. allllllrighty then.
this leads to my final point. The organizers of the miniconference do seem to be an interesting and active bunch who seek variety in presentations. However, if the result is that any attempt at variety is sort of frozen out by the other participants, either by non-interest or by intellectual doublespeak, or whatever, then variety will not be forthcoming, and the debates which should be sparking and speaking to each other, will continue to be carried out in separate rooms.
maggie coleman mscoleman at aol.com
In a message dated 98-06-30 05:27:51 EDT, you write:
<< In a message of Wednesday, June 24, 1998 11:33 PM, Maggie Coleman
wrote:
"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.
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