[lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification)

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Mon Feb 15 09:06:26 PST 2010


Carrol Cox wrote:


> Try it this way (from Moishe Postone). Marx wrote a critique of
> political economy, looking _back_ on capitalism from a hypothetical
> future (socialism); but he did NOT produce a critical political economy.
> In other words, there is no such thing as Marxianeconomics: economics is
> by its natgure vulgar economy, not a science.

This isn't true.

Capital as a critique of political economy is a "science" in Hegel's sense of "the dialectic" as "the higher dialectic of the conception" which "does not merely apprehend any phase as a limit and opposite, but produces out of this negative a positive content and result."

"Science" in this sense makes it "the business of science ...simply to bring the specific work of the reason, which is in the thing, to consciousness." http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/printrod.htm

Thus Marx claims in the 1843 letter to Ruge that:

"Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true reality as its obligation and its final goal."

"True reality" is "human" reality where by "human" is meant, again appropriating Hegel, the idea of "human being" as "freedom" in the sense of the actualization of "self-concious reason" in "universally developed individuals" with the fully developed "capacities" constitutive of Hegel's definition of the "divine being" as "the Unity of the Universal and Individual." As production by such individuals in the realms of both "freedom" and "natural necessity," this unity is described in Marx's account of how we would produce if we "carried out production as human beings."

True "riches" and "wealth" are these developed "capacities" and human history is a process through which "riches" and "wealth" in this sense are developed.

Capitalism is one phase in such development.

A "scientific" demonstration of "the work of the reason in it" can be developed by means of a critical appropriation of classical political economy.

For instance, Ricardo's treatment of capitalist production as "production for the sake of production" means "nothing but the development of human productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself." A "science" of capitalism developed through such a critique makes capitalism consistent with "the fact that, although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed."

"Ricardo, rightly for his time, regards the capitalist mode of production as the most advantageous for production in general, as the most advantageous for the creation of wealth. He wants production for the sake of production and this with good reason. To assert, as sentimental opponents of Ricardo’s did, that production as such is not the object, is to forget that production for its own sake means nothing but the development of human productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself. To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does, is to assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order to safeguard the welfare of the individual, so that, for instance, no war may be waged in which at all events some individuals perish. Sismondi is only right as against the economists who conceal or deny this contradiction.) Apart from the barrenness of such edifying reflections, they reveal a failure to understand the fact that, although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.

"Thus Ricardo’s ruthlessness was not only scientifically honest but also a scientific necessity from his point of view. But because of this it is also quite immaterial to him whether the advance of the productive forces slays landed property or workers. If this progress devalues the capital of the industrial bourgeoisie it is equally welcome to him. If the development of the productive power of labour halves the value of the existing fixed capital, what does it matter, says Ricardo. The productivity of human labour has doubled, Thus here is scientific honesty. Ricardo’s conception is, on the whole, in the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, only because, and in so far as their interests coincide with that of production or the productive development of human labour. Where the bourgeoisie comes into conflict with this, he is just as ruthless towards it as he is at other times towards the proletariat and the aristocracy." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch09.htm

Ted



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