> This can't be pointed out. Becker's model (which you've mischaracterized -
> it assumes individuals are everywhere and always concerned with "maximizing
> utility" not with simply surviving) is historically false.
But true in its falsehood. The behavior of the Roman slave-lords was indeed all about maximizing their individual utility; the medieval lords, same deal. Exploitation didn't start with capitalism, it predates it.
> Marx has not "pushed beyond the realm of causality". He's reconceived it by
> sublating the Newtonian conception of nature - a determinist external
> relations conception having no logical space for a coherent idea of freedom
> of any kind let alone of human freedom (or for a coherent conception of
> "causation" for that matter - see Hume).
Not quite, that was Kant's specific achievement, to create a model of cognition based on the natural science of the day. Hegel pushed beyond this to the Mind, which somehow encompassed all of history within it. Remember, the "iron laws" of capitalist development (not to be confused with natural laws) aren't something positive for Marx; they're something negative, something to be overthrown by the Revolution. Marx's early work traces out those laws, wrestles with them, etc., but his later work -- "Capital" -- makes the decisive break towards resisting them.
-- Dennis