File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1996/96-10-29.043, message 126


Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 22:43:11 +0200 (EET)
From: j laari <jlaari-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: Re: M-TH: marxian, marxist, and the LTV


Justin wrote:

> I disagree with the cornerstone position of the LTV. I think you can
> acknowledge the basic antagonism between capital and labor and the
> exploitative character of capitalism without it.

Might be so. I guess I should read your Nous article before I say
anything on that. (I've never really understood why exploitation
should be seen as a negative factor - except, perhaps, from common
sense viewpoint: it somehow insults our 'intuition' that we own our
bodies and therefore its fruits should belong to us?) For us
non-economists it's quite hard to follow finesses of economic theory.

> According to this, Marx might have made false analyses (in
> > Capital), and he surely was one-sided in his analyses (an 'economist'
> > who reduced the whole social world into economic basic relations),
>
> Well, I differ here too. I think Marx's theiory is not a form of economic
> reductionism, nor one sided in the way that you suggest.

It depends from what angle you're looking at it. Either as theory of
society or as social theory it surely is. That is, from sociological
viewpoint ("Marx as a sociological classic"). I should have said it.
I'm not qualified to value his work in the light of pol. economy.

By the way, we had Capital group in early eighties (after that I
haven't read much Marx, except some shorter writings - my shame) and
that was our final result. In a sense, problem was to choose whether
to skip diamat or value law, histomat or LTV - so to speak:
alternatives weren't exactly those - and we decided to keep
'scientific' Marx without leninism-stalinisms. Years passed and I
never really had to think about LTV or value law, until recently.

> I don't quite follow this. Are you saying that if liberal or other
> bourgeois ideoloigy cannot live up to iys own promises because of the way
> capitalism works, that's an argument for change? Surely it is, but Marx
> suggests a different basis, namely that capitalism cannot live up the
> expectations and values generated in class struggle by the workers, in
> opposition to bourgeois ideology.

Yes, but today it's hard to find such working-class expectations and
values as clearly (and hopefully powerfully) stated alternatives to
bourgeois ideologies. On the contrary, issues that concentrate on wage
(and other labour market policy questions) are the ones where workers
and capitalists understand each others very well. And that concerns
not only social democrats. Both social democratic and ex-communist
trade unions are quite strongly against labour time cuts. At least
here in Finland. Main issues concern wage. In this sense capitalism
does live up expectations and values of workers. It can afford couple
of pennies more every now and then.

> So, we agree on that. What happened to the "cornerstone" thesis, then?

I guess I left it to eighties... I should have written at the
beginning that *earlier* I used (etc)...

I have never really went through Marx's economic writings as economic
ones because I don't know economics that much (dare I say that I even
skipped Marx's 1861-3? manuscripts, I even can't remember anymore that
year). So the point was to find out what capitalism causes to social
relations in general (guess this is one of the reasons exploitation
never really seemed to be of major importance). And, say, 'frame of
reference' we used to use when reading Marx, 'capital logic',
concentrated on inner logic of Capital rather than on its objective
truth (not much references to contemporary research) in order to
clarify whether Marx delivers what traditionally have been understood
as his contribution. I was able to refresh my memories few weeks ago
when I read lectures on Marx by H-J Schanz, Danish veteran of capital
logic. Capital logicians concluded that 'communism' didn't meant for
Marx such stahanovian enterprise as it has been understood especially
in marxism-leninism. Rather it was a question of cuts in labour time.
'Fisher in the morning, poet in the afternoon and critical critic in
the evening' sort of idea. To me it sounded overtly romantic one
(beautiful, yes, but unrealistically romantic). Utopian one, I'm
afraid. I guess these kind of reasons pushed us to stick to more
'scientific' causes of social critique. Hard to remember after all
years.

Jukka




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