"Although I value individual autonomy and admire JS Mill no end, I think Marx goes overboard in making autonomy the centerpiece of his critique of capitalism. He's not a liberal, of course, but he does this anyway. I think he improperly neglects/rejects justice and other values."
How and where does Marx make autonomy (defined in Kantian terms?) the centerpiece of his critique? OK I see that you are not endorsing what Marx thinks (in your estimation) is wrong with exploitation, you are laying out his thinking to show that it's one sided. Very interesting of course. But I don't see you would justify this claim.
Moreover, forget not Marx the social scientist. He does not neglect values but attempts a socio-genetic explanation of them. And consequently his explanation of behavior turns out not to be mechanistic--I sense a critique of Marx for mechanism and positivism in Yoshie's posts--for bourgeois society depends on the holding to values of self-interpreting beings. But he (and following him Adorno) develops socio-genetically these values animating peoples' social lives. Those values would include (drawing here Robert Albritton, follower of Japanese Marxist Uno) a juridical concept of morality or perhaps even a kind of legal amorality (the very legality of actions puts them beyond moral judgement), individualism as ontology and political/moral ideal, and a kind of subjective/objective schizophrenia (absolute valuation of subjective freedom and consignment to domination by objective forces which have escaped social control). Marx did not provide a good socio genetic explanation for why national patriotism would prove such an important value imbuing our lives.
So I think we have a different understanding of value once again. Not now the labor theory of value. But the place of values in Marx's social science which I see as remarkably value free (though I am uncomfortable with my own thoughts here). You on the other hand see it animated by a Kantian ethical ideal of autonomy? Correct me if I am wrong.
I also thought you accepted GA Cohen's theory of historical materialism, but now I see that you think it may be stagist or technologically determinist. But you accept a productive relations/class struggle account (perhaps Richard Miller's?)--but is that consistent with the methodological individualism of analytical Marxism?
You also seem to be suggesting that in the course of capital accumulation, the relatins of production will become more antagonistic; you insist though that you
don't need value to understand why the appropriation of labor time will become more antagonistic?
Rakesh
I am not sure whether I have not explained myself clearly enough or whether we just hopelessly disagree on what counts as accepting Marxism social science. I do think that some version of historical materialism is defensible, not an inevitablist or stagist version, or, probably, a primacy of the forces of productive version. I incline towards productive relations/class struggle accounts.
I do think that the core of Marx's critique of capitalism, stripped of the value-theoretical voodoo, is valid. Since, Rakesh, you regard the value theoretic voodoo as the core of Marx's project, we end up butting heads rather fruitlessly here.
I do not see how the following two views you attribute to me are consistent:
(1) you accept Marx's social science
> mostly as a
> description of the way in which capitalist work
> processes undermine
> autonomy. (2) That is, you reject Marxist social
science
> as an
> explanatory enterprise,
I'd say yes to (1) as far as it goes and no to (2).
I'm not sure my views about potential moral basis for a critique of capitalism, or Marx's implicit moral views either, are directly relevant to either of our assessments of Marx's explanatory theories.
The kind of liberal I am is not not who insists on the absolute priority of liberty in the manner of Rawls. As I have repeated explained, I am a political liberal, which means I believe in competitive elections, universal suffrage, and extensive social and political liberties as a matter of law; also a philosophical liberal, in that I think that the state should remain as neutral as possible in its policymaking between competing conceptions of the good life. None of these views commit to saying that the specter of individual liberty should silence all competing values or trump equality of opportunity or material equality (for example).