> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> On Feb 25, 2009, at 9:33 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>>
>>> Marx does not make moral judgments.
>>
>> Right. Got it. It's science. Purely objective.
>>
>> What a strange belief.
>
> It has nothing to do with science.
>
> I suggest you try seriously to demonstrate a moral judgment of
> anything.
> You also can't demonstrate that anyone ever first makes a moral
> judgment
> then acts on the gbasis of that judgment. You can't separate thought
> and
> action that crudely.
How about the "theoretical consciousness" of its "loss" that Marx makes a prerequisite for the sucessful emancipatory "action" he claims will ultimately issue from the "proletariat"?
"since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need -- the practical expression of necessity -- is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself" <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm>
Does this have any connection with what Marx makes the defining feature of human "labour" in Capital?
"We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm>
How can the kind of "materialism" you keep identifying with Marx's be made consistent with the following?
"Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm>
"According to Hodgskin, circulating capital is nothing but the juxtaposition of the different kinds of social labour (coexisting labour) and accumulation is nothing but the amassing of the productive powers of social labour, so that the accumulation of the skill and knowledge (scientific power) of the workers themselves is the chief form of accumulation, and infinitely more important than the accumulation—which goes hand in hand with it and merely represents it— of the existing objective conditions of this accumulated activity. These objective conditions are only nominally accumulated and must be constantly produced anew and consumed anew.
“… productive capital and skilled labour are […] one.” “Capital and a labouring population are precisely synonymous” ( [Hodgskin, Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital, London, 1825,] p. 33).
These are simply further elaborations of Galiani’s thesis:
“… The real wealth … is man” (Della Moneta, Custodi. Parte Moderna, t. III, p. 229).
The whole objective world, the “world of commodities”, vanishes here as a mere aspect, as the merely passing activity, constantly performed anew, of socially producing men. Compare this “idealism” with the crude, material fetishism into which the Ricardian theory develops in the writings “of this incredible cobbler”, McCulloch, where not only the difference between man and animal disappears but even the difference between a living organism and an inanimate object. And then let them say that as against the lofty idealism of bourgeois political economy, the proletarian opposition has been preaching a crude materialism directed exclusively towards the satisfaction of coarse appetites." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch21.htm
>
Piero Sraffa, by the way, endorses your idea of "materialism". In doing so, however, he explicitly understands himself as siding with McCulloch against Marx (and Alfred Marshall).
“From this perspective it was also quite natural to question the special treatment of 'human labour' as opposed to other kinds of labour in several classical and also marginalist authors, especially Alfred Marshall. The latter had specified the 'keynote' of his Prinicples to consist 'in the fact that free human beings are not brought up to their work on the same principles as a machine, a horse, or a slave.' (Marshall, [1890] 1920, p. 504; similarly F. Y. Edgeworth: see D3/12/42: 36). Sraffa objected:
‘There appears to be no objective difference between the labour of a wage earner and that of a slave; of a slave and of a horse; of a horse and of a machine; of a machine and of an element of nature (?this does not eat). It is a purely mystical conception that attributes to human labour a special gift of determining value.’ (D3/12/9: 89; emphasis added)
“Sraffa's argument echoes a statement by John Ramsey McCulloch which had been criticised by Marx in the Histoire (Marx, 1925, vol. VII, pp. 22 and 24; see also Marx, 1972, p. 179). Sraffa did not agree with the criticism. In his own index of the volume he stressed: 'Sbagliata critica c.{ontra} {Mistaken criticism of} McCulloch 22, 24'. He also added the following reference: 'Smith appelle un boef {sic} un ouvrier productif {Smith calls an ox a productive labourer} 23'.” (Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori: Representing the Production and Circulation of Commodities in Material Terms: On Sraffa's Objectivism”) <http://www.uni-graz.at/heinz.kurz/pdf/ROPE_25.pdf
>
Ted