On Sat, 19 Feb 2000 14:47:29 -0600 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
>
>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Well that's what I'm trying to get all the FROP fans to clarify.
> If
> > it's just a theory of the business cycle, that's not
> uninteresting,
> > but it's also about as conventional a kind of economics as you can
> > find. Every standard issue Wall Street economist does business
> cycle
> > economics. I don't think Anwar Shaikh wants to be taken for a
> member
> > of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee. But if it's a more
> > long-term theory, then where is it pointing? You (a general you,
> not
> > a specific you) are going to have a hard time convincing me that
> FROP
> > theory isn't something that wants to be a theory of terminal
> crisis,
> > even if its proponents have gotten shy about admitting that at
> this
> > late date.
>
> I don't follow the technical economics, and I would reject offhand
> any
> "theory of terminal crisis" (though Rakesh seems currently to be
> arguing, on other grounds, for such a crisis). But by sort of a
> loose
> analogy I can see how a historical theory (FROP or some other)
> might be both far heavier than a theory of the business cycle but
> not
> at all a theory of terminal crisis. I think if a rough and ready way
> one
> could say that the theory of gravity was a theory of the tendency of
> the universe to condense into one enormous black hole. But there
> are numerous "counteracting tendencies" (some of them generated
> by gravity itself) which give us an expanding universe instead. (I'm
> not at all sure whether the physics here are very accurate, but they
> don't have to be for the analogy to have some force.) But it would
> obviously not be very useful to repudiate the theory of gravity just
> because the tendency which it reflects does not operate in in
> empirical actuality. It is gravity which explains both why planes
> stay
> in the air and why they fall out of the air.
>
> Now physics proceeds on the assumption (which may be demonstrated
> to be wrong some day, but it works pretty well so far) that the
> physical world is intelligible -- not a trash heap of unrelated
> entities
> impermeable to analysis and understanding. Is capitalism
> intelligible
> or is it a mass of *mere* contingencies? FROP seems one way of
> affirming that it is intelligible. No? Incidentally, Sweezy argues
> in one
>
> or two of his articles, I can't remember which ones, that socialism
> will
> *not* be intelligible in the way that he assumes capitalism is. That
> is
> there will be in a social order based on planning (the will of the
> freely associated producers) nothing corresponding to the law of
> value
> (or I suppose FROP) under socialism. Hence there cannot be a
> "science" of a socialist order as there can be of the capitalist
> order.
>
G.A. Cohen as I recall discussed that issue in an appendix to his *Karl Marx's Theory of History* titled "Karl Marx and the Withering Away of Social Science." Cohen contended that in Marx's view we construct sciences to understand those aspects of reality that are more or less opaque to us - that is to understand those phenomena where there is a disjunction between reality and appearance. Marx gave a number of examples of this in the natural sciences. Thus air appears to us to be an elementary substance but chemistry reveals it to be a mixture of distinct gaseous elements which cannot be detected by our noses. The sun appears to orbit the earth but science has revealed that is the earth that is the body doing the orbiting. Marx contended that social science especially political economy had a similar role to play. That it is the job of political economy to reveal the essences underlying the appearances. Thus political economy through such means as the labor theory of value and the analysis of surplus value would expose the underlying realities of capitalist relations of production which are visible to us through the appearances of prices, wages, and profits. Marx criticized vulgar economists for failing to penetrate the level of appearances (as represented by prices, wages, interest, and profits) to the underlying relations of production which are based on class exploitation. Thus he condemned vulgar economists like Say and Bastiat while commending Smith and Ricardo on this basis.
Cohen argues that for Marx social science like the state and the existence of distinct social classes will wither away under socialism as the rule of blind market forces and of the anarchy of production is replaced by conscious economic planning. Under communism the schism between reality and appearance will be healed because social relations will become transparent. Thus social science as such will no longer be necessary for the apprehension of social reality. In this respect Marx's view as interpreted by Cohen had both significant similarities and differences with the views of Vico. For Vico society is more intelligible than nature to man because it is his creation. However, for Marx this creation is riddled with mystery such that special theoretical constructions are required for us to understand the setting in which people live and act. However, under socialism, social relations will lose their opacity as conscious planning replaces the rule of blind market forces.
Jim F.
> In any case, looked at broadly, what seems to be at issue in the
> FROP debate is less a question of technical economics than a
> question of how we are to conceive of capitalism as a whole, how
> we are to see it as a historical complex???????
>
> Carrol
>
>
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