Marxism is a science

[James Heartfield]

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
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