File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0005, message 4


From: Howard Engelskirchen <howarde-AT-wsulaw.edu>
Subject: RE: BHA: Radical Chains Indeed
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 13:07:23 -0700


Hi Colin!

You say markets won't go away because "there will still be systems where
objects are produced and exchanged."  Later you say "we cannot live in a
marketless world due to our social being."  I take it in this last quote you
mean the same thing as in the first -- that is, it is in the nature of our
social being to produce and exchange objects, therefore, we will always have
markets.

Notice that this is exactly like saying that the Stone Age hunter is a
capitalist because he uses a spear.  After all capital is the way we refer
to means of production, the spear is a means of production, and it is in the
nature of our social being to use means of production.  So therefore we will
always have capitalism.  Socialized capitalism, no doubt, democratized
capitalism too, but capitalism always, can't get around that because we will
always need to use means of production. I mean we are not just going to rip
things off trees with our hands.

So the first problem with your statements is that they are ahistorical and
unscientific insofar as they say any time human beings exchange objects
there is a market.  Instead of trying to specify the form of a thing as it
is transformed through history, and trying to present the distinctions of
social form which occur in words we use, you reduce everything to one
general abstraction that applies to all social forms indifferently since,
you are absolutely correct, human beings always have and always will
exchange objects among themselves.

Or in fact by saying we can't live in a market-less world you mean to cling
to the historically specific social form the word market actually does refer
to, ie to the social relation of autonomous entities engaged in independent
production for private exchange.  But now what you are saying is that we
can't live in a world without some form of private property.  

In response to my statement that "I'm concerned with whether we mean to take
social control of social production," you wrote:

"But this is the eradication of the private control of social production, as
Heikki says Capitalism, not the eradication of the market."  

You miss the significance of Marx's analysis of the commodity here.  The
basic contradiction of capitalism, is that while production is social, the
form of appropriation is private.  But close attention to the commodity form
shows that this germ is already present there.  When a good is produced for
the market, there is already social, not private production.  But since
production occurs autonomously and is not in coordination with others,
production is private in form.  (My little excerpt from the I Ching was
already social production, but private in form.)  This contradiction, so
deeply important ideologically (bourgeois notions of equality and freedom
live there), already carries the need for coercion, even without the wage
relation, and carries also as a tendency inherent within it the germ of
capitalism itself.  By contrast, if we democratically coordinate production
and distribution with others, we still exchange things, but not through a
market.  The democratic coordination of production and distribution makes
production both social in form as well as in substance.

You ask:  "Is your target private property or the control of the means of
production? . . . One doesn't have to be a biological determinist to see
that the thing that generates the desire for private property is us."

In other words, the desire for private property is part of our being, what
we are (essentially?) as humans.

Marx is typically criticized for not realizing that, e.g. greed is part of
human nature.  Of course some sort of instinct like greed is part of our
makeup.  But that is not what marxism is about.  The question is what the
social terrain is within the framework of which greed gets exercised.  So
here.  Human beings must consume things individually, without doubt.  That
sets up individual desires for individual things.  But nothing in these
facts implicates private property.  Questions of property concern the social
relations within the framework of which nature is appropriated.  The
commodity presupposes autonomous units producing privately for private
exchange.  Private property is a way we speak of this form.  Anyway if
producing and exchanging entities consciously coordinate their production,
then they are no longer autonomous.  They don't produce autonomously and
they don't exchange autonomously.  

The point is that the transition to socialism is not just about overcoming
the social relation of capital, but of bringing an end to the operation of
the law of value, also.  The law of value, remember, operates beyond social
or private control.  The idea is, step by step, to bring it under social
control, and finally to eliminate its operation altogether.  But for this to
occur we must abolish not only the wage relation but also the autonomy of
productive units.  In other words, ending private control of the means of
production means not only overcoming the capital relation as such, but also
the commodity relation.  Abolishing the autonomy of private productive units
means that we relate democratically to one another.  For the autonomy of
productive units, we substitute their coordination.  This is what is meant
by abolishing private property.  That is what I mean by taking conscious and
voluntary social control over the production of our commonwealth's common
wealth.

Howard




-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Wight [mailto:Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk]
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 2:24 AM
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: RE: BHA: Radical Chains Indeed


Hi Howard,


I must admit, it is a very strange experience for me to be pushed into the
role of defending postmodernism, but it is not an altogether unenjoyable
experience.

My definition of markets was a very off the wall, rough and ready affair and
I certainly would not want to defend it all of the way. However, I will
defend it in this context, because doing so might help us see the
epistemological and methodological limits of social inquiry.

You argue that according to my definition the Ford assembly line would count
as a
> paradigm

I wouldn't agree that it would count as a paradigm, but I do accept that it
would count. But is this is problem? To go into pomo guise, surely all this
demonstrates is that we can describe all sorts of things in many ways; i.e.
there is no one true description of either a market or the Ford assembly
line. But, equally, and to drift back into CR mode, this should not be taken
to mean that each description is equally valid and the Ford production line,
is best described as a production line and not a market. This puts the onus
very much on the ontological nature of the object under description. But I
do see the problems you are pointing to here and it certainly seems to
suggest that my definition would require modification. However, this need
not imply an instance of Popperian falsification.

On the family, I would defend my definition. Certainly the exchanging of
presents is probably not best described as a market, but as an exchange of
presents, but there is certainly a flourishing market in terms of my family
relations re who does the washing up etc.

> The issue, of course, is not words.  if you want the word
> "market," take it.

No, I don't want it either Howard, but that is the point, which was about
the critique of MOM. Now it seems to me that if a market is X (money
exchange+commodities (which incidentally I am not saying is your position))
then any attempt to reform the market can only be seen as more of the same;
i.e. playing into the hands of the capitalist lackeys. Now it may be that
when the form of socialism advocated by the review of MOM comes that those
who advocated it will say, "we have no market". This  won't have made the
market go away however, because there will still be systems where objects
are produced and exchanged. This is necessarily the case since we are not
isolated individuals but social beings with needs wants and desires that we
cannot fulfil individually.

So the critique of Bhaskar's position on market transformation etc. is based
on a very particular form of market. Socialism under Radical Chains will
still have markets, and more than likely the will be of exactly the form
that Bhaskar advocates, the only difference will be that Bhaskar will still
refer to them as markets and radical chains as something else.


 I'm not concerned with how we label categories.  I'm
> concerned with whether we mean to take social control of social
> production.

But this is the eradication of the private control of social production, as
Heikki says Capitalism, not the eradication of the market. I don't think we
disagree, reforming and transforming the market, and abolishing others as Rb
advocates, does not mean he is susceptible to the critique launched in
Radical Chains. he would only be susceptible to such a critique if one
thought that all markets must rest on the private control of the means of
production.

You asked for another word, Heikki has given you one - Capitalism - not the
market. We can live in a non-capitalist world (I hope); we cannot live in
market-less world due to our social being.

  We want to cling to the thing that generates private property.  And that,
Marx showed, is inconsistent with
> genuine human
> emancipation, at least if we mean by that taking conscious social control
> over the conditions of social life to the end that we make the
> full and free
> development of each a condition for the full and free development of all.

It seems to me Howard, that you have moved the ground of argument somewhat.
Is your target private property or the control of the means of production?
It seems to me that if you are arguing that emancipation depends upon
getting rid of the thing that generates private property you are close to
saying that we can only be emancipated when we no longer exist. One doesn't
have to be a biological determinist to see that the thing that generates the
desire for private property is, in part, us. Unless, of course, we are
falling back into a structuralist determinism.


Cheers,

=================================Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: 01970 621769
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cow
==================================>



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