How to Analyze Nature & Reproduction without Becoming a Post-Marxist (was Re: poll)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>I think they are of equal importance.
>>
>>People probably write about them less here, because the name of 
>>this list has "Economists" in it.
>
>There's plenty to talk about with respect to the economics of 
>sex/gender, but for some reason that happens in feminist forums, and 
>rarely among "progressive" or "radical" economists. And a lot of 
>feminist economists don't like to talk much about class. This split 
>is bad for both camps.
>
>But progressive/radical economists should also do more to challenge 
>the obscene narrowness of their discipline, which is cut off - often 
>proudly - from sociology, politics, psychology, anthropology, 
>culture, history....you name it. It's bad enough when mainstreamers 
>do this, when Krugman says something like bad economists are 
>reincarnated as sociologists. I don't see enough evidence that 
>radical economists are taking exception to this disicplinary rule. 
>In fact, the entire sterile apparatus of Marxian value theory is a 
>double of the mainstream's sterility.
>
>Doug

We're not seeing much success in changing the minds of goofy devotees 
of Andrea Dworkin & Catherine MacKinnon on M-Fem, to be sure.  And we 
are unlikely to easily change the minds of radical economists whose 
primary interest is not feminism.

One thing that occurs to me, though, is that when Ricardo posted 
obnoxious remarks on gay men & feminism on PEN-L, a lot of posters 
rose up and criticized the remarks variously.  The same happens on 
M-Fem, which becomes active whenever obnoxious posts of MacDworkin 
varieties get posted.  So, if we have the Devil's Advocates, so to 
speak, we can & do discuss how we may integrate class & gender 
analyses.  The problem is that we only reply to the most idiotic 
negations of class & gender respectively, so our e-list discussion 
seldom rises above affirmations of basic principles ("both class & 
gender matter") & goes on to conduct more sophisticated analyses.

As for Marxian value theory, there is a good reason that it may 
_appear_ to be a "double" of the mainstream variety.  Political 
economy under capitalism functions -- both in theory _& practice_ -- 
as if nothing outside of M-C-M' mattered.  Marx's capital is mindful 
of this "as if" modality which has real effects (which some Marxists 
may have forgotten).  When political economy -- in theory _& 
practice_ -- treats nature & reproduction (of labor power & social 
relations) as if they were externalities, this exclusion has real 
effects, which are contradictory to both capital & labor.  What Jim 
O'Connor calls secondary contradictions affects primary 
contradiction, and vice versa.  Lise Vogel, for instance, writes 
about this dialectical relation with a focus on reproduction.  The 
trick is to analyze the dialectic of primary & secondary 
contradictions without forgetting that political economy -- not just 
in theory but _in practice_ -- functions "as if" nothing outside of 
M-C-M' mattered (if we forget the latter insight on the compulsory 
"as if" modality, then we go down the slippery slope of 
Post-Marxism).  Take a look at criticisms of Alain Lipietz by various 
writers in a recent issue of _Capitalism Nature Socialism_

Yoshie