--- DJ Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond at efn.org> spun: > On Mon, 9 Jul 2001,
Ted Winslow wrote:
>
> > 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.
This just isn't true on anything but a contorted reading of either Roman and medieval history or Becker. Becker doesn't just make general claims about "maximising utility" -- he makes the specific (IMO, ridiculous) claim that von-Neumann/Morgenstern utility functions can be specified which meaningfully and usefully describe human behaviour and goes on to make the (IMO, absolutely ridiculous) methodological assumption that you can make meaningful tests of such claims using linear regression models. Becker would (because he is, IMO, a loony) claim that the behaviour of the Roman slave-lords was about maximising utility, but even he wouldn't claim to be able to prove it. "Utility maximisation" is a very small subset of "looking after one's own interests", and it is precisely the difference between this subset and the larger set which is of interest if we are talking about an economised culture.
> Exploitation didn't start with capitalism, it predates it.
Oh come on, I'm sure that Jameson in his talk didn't equivocate between the loose and technical senses of "exploitation" and neither would you if you were concentrating.
>
> > 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).
It is by no means established among Hume bods that Hume didn't have a coherent conception of causation.
>
> 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.
This seems to come pretty close to saying that Marx thought that the development of capitalism was a retrograde step, which would require a reading of large tracts of "Capital" which was not so much dialectic as bloody perverse. And to portray Marx as regarding one side of a dialectic as "the goodies" and the other as the baddies doesn't fit with my understanding of dialectic either.
I'm beginning to think that there may be less to Jameson than meets the eye.
dd
===== ... in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. -- Bertrand Russell
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