Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 22:00:11 +0100
Subject: M-G: Re: The "Legacy" of the Enlightenment


Two comments:

First, Louis G writes:

>>So,  I am more comfortable with an interpretation that sets Marxism
>>*against* the main ideology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
>>rather than as the natural progeny of a movement that was quite varied,
>>contradictory and complex and whose true meaning continues to elude us
>>today.
 to which Adam H answers:

>I agree Louis that the Enlightenment was indeed a contradictory movement and
>I also agree that Marxism is a resolution of that contradiction.

In one word, the development was *dialectical*, destroying and preserving
at the same time by raising the essential core of the ideas to a higher
level.


Second, Adam writes:

>The reason for this is that the humanist side of Enlightenment
>philosophy overlooked the inequality inherent in the capitalist market.
>Circulation of commodities in the capitalist economy is not equal and relies
>upon the extraction of surplus value from the producer. The economic and
>political rights of the capitalist are far in excess of the *natural rights*
>of the average person.

The trouble with this formulation is that it confuses circulation with
production. Marx's line is that the market is fair and equal, and not where
things are at as far as exploitation is concerned. The  civil rights of all
are equal in a bourgeois democracy and the exchange rights of all are equal
in a capitalist market. It's when you leave the egalitarian surface of
circulation and the market or the law book and dig down into production (or
the crucible of private interests in which laws are forged) that the brutal
injustices of capitalist reality can be brought to light.

As Marx famously writes at the end of Part II of Capital I, at the very end
of chapter VI on  the Buying and Selling of Labour-Power:


	... The money-owner buys everything necessary for this purpose, such
	as raw material, in the market, and pays for it at its full value.
	The consumption of labour-power is at one and the same time the
	production of commodities and of surplus-value. The consumption of
	labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other commodity,
	outside the limits of the market or of the sphere of circulation.
	Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we
	therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where
	everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and
	follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose
	threshold there stares us in the face "No admittance except on
	business". Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how
	capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit
	making.

	This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale
	and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the
	innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property
	and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity,
	say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will.
	They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but
	the form in which they give legal expression to their common will.
	Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a
	simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for
	equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is  his own.
	And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that
	brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is
	the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each
	looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest,
	and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the
	pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an
	all-shrewd providence, work together for their mutual advantage, for
	the common weal and for the interest of all.

	On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of
	commodities, which furnishes the "Free-Trader Vulgaris" with his
	views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society
	based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the
	physiognomy of our dramatic personae. He, who before was the
	money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of
	labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of
	importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and
	holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has
	nothing to expect but -- a tanning.


It should also be obvious from this that Marx views the market as the
mechanism by which commodities, ie products of capital, are circulated in
the capitalist mode of production, and that he sees circulation as
subordinate to production. From which it follows that all the talk about
market socialism is alien to Marx's view of things, and constitutes an
inverted and utopian adaptation to a bourgeois perspective on economics and
history. It's an oxymoronic contradiction which far from giving birth to a
higher level of dialectical understanding just wipes itself out, leaving no
trace. If the market rules, there's no socialism, if socialism rules,
there's no market.

Cheers,

Hugh





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