Marxism is a science

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Tue Jan 1 10:00:57 PST 2002


In message <20020101151730.62794.qmail at web20005.mail.yahoo.com>, Cian O'Connor <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk> writes
>I think you're talking about something else. Unless
>I've read Scott very badly wrong, he's saying that
>Marx's investigation was not a dispassionate objective
>one. Rather Marx came with preconceived ideas about
>morality, the way the world is, etc and tried to prove
>them.

Well, if that's what Scott is saying, then I think he is mistaken. Marx was no dogmatist, nor indeed was he a communist by inclination (an excellent paper by EV Ilyenkov, in Lobkowicz, Marx and the Western World, 1967, demonstrates as much). Marx came to the view that the proletariat was the class that, having no vested interest in the status quo, had the ability to transcend its limitations through the experiences of the Silesian Weavers' strike. His shift from radical democrat to communist was based upon the practical experience of the limitations of the middle classes struggle for democracy. Marx had no preconceived ideas to fulfil, but drew his conclusions from the world around him.

This next, I think, is a welter of confusion:


>
>The problem with the objectivity of value, as I see
>it, is that objects and actions quite obviously have
>different value to different people.

Marx wasn't interested in 'value' in the sense you use it here (as in 'value judgement') which is largely influenced by Weberian sociology. Marx was interested in the concept of value that he found in political economy, which has no bearing on value judgements, but is a concept that accounts for the proportions in which commodities exchange. Marx was interested in that, and shared the view of the earlier political economists - which he called 'classical' - that it was objective (but differed in thinking that it was not a natural law). He differed with the later economists - which he called vulgar - who thought that value was a wholly subjective expression of the wills of the trading parties.

I raised this discussion originally in this exchange to make it clear that Marx - however successfully or not - was interested in developing an objective science, a critique of political economy.


>Unless one moves
>to a transactional world based upon something other
>than money, I can't really see any model other than
>the free market which can deal with this. And if there
>is a good replacement for money I'd love to know what
>it is.

This is just so full of confusion it is hard to know where to begin. First, there is no free market, nor has there ever been. The latest round of WTO talks at Qatar illustrate as much. Second, the lion's share of human history has operated without market exchange accounting for the majority of the social division of labour, under any number of different modes of exchange. Third, you assume that people have a plurality of values, which is merely to assume what you must set out to prove (and, ironically, under capitalism, on the contrary, it is the uniformity of values that screams out at you).

-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP3.26 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list