From: "Dave Bedggood" <dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 11:32:00 +0000 Subject: M-TH: Theory and Practice Some (over)simple points on Marxist theory and Practice... When I look out my window I see many trees [bush in NZ]. If I were ignorant of science I would say that God moves in the trees. However since I have some basic science I know that the trees live because of chemical processes which take place in cells, photosynthesis etc. If I was ignorant of marxism I would look out my window and see people buying and selling things because that was ordained by God as good. But since I know some basic marxism I know that these commodies sell [cell] because they are useful and that they exchange in proportion to the labour time etc embodied in them. In my ignorance I would be an idealist as my idea of God would motivate what I see. As a marxist I accept that science produces knowledge of social processes in the same way that botany or physiology produces knowledge of trees. Do I need to ponder this point? Not really until my scientific knowledge fails in its task of helping me intervene in these processes to cultivate or breed trees or to understand and intervene in those social laws that derive from the production of commodities for use. In which case more knowledge is necessary. Marx came up against such a problem which the current science of political economy could not explain. Political economy could not explain why there were tendencies in capitalist society which disturbed the equilibrium. Marx' immediately discounts biology in the form of human nature [Malthus] or soil fertility [Ricardo], and discovers that the source of the disburbances are internal to the social processes of capitalism. But he could not have done this without removing the last vestiges of idealism from political economy. That is, he removed the ahistorical abstractions which " stood in" for historical processes, namely "labour" and "value". These abstractions stood as idealist barriers to a full understanding of capitalist production. Political economy naturalised [idealised] production thus separating it from exchange, distribution and consumption. This naturalisation had a lot to do with God. Marx could not have made these discoveries without the aid of Hegel. Hegel in his keenness to abolish the finite in the name of God, took the finite seriously [the work of God] and saw it as a contradictory, moving, totality in which form and content were in opposition yet ultimately in unity [harmony]. Marx borrowed and corrected this approach to develop his scientific method so that he could break through the naturalised notions of labour and value and reveal a contradictory unity. Hence Marx was able to remove the idealist encrustations to labour and value and represent the form in which labour was commodified under capitalism as labour-power, and value as exchange-value [abstract labour]. In one stroke Marx made the discovery in the social world that was the equivalent of those made of the physical world by a Galileo a Newton or an Einstein. How could he have done this if not by subjecting the commodity "cell" to a scientific method of investigation? In particular the discovery of the dual nature of the commodity, when applied to the commmodity labour-power revealed the fundamental social relation of capitalism and its internal dynamics [laws of motion]. For the commodity labour-power had an exchange value, [now consistent with equal exchange destroying all unequal exchange theories of capitalism], but just as important, a use-value to the capitalist who could by dispossessing the wage worker of his/her means of subsistence force the worker to produce more value than the value of his/her labour power. In one blow Marx made a brilliant scientific discovery that allowed him to theorise laws of motion which included the tendency for rising relative surplus value extraction, rising organic composition and the TRPF. Following from these basic laws a number of predictions flowed including concentration and centralisation, relative immiseration, role of state and imperialism in counter-tenedencies etc etc. However, for Marx the whole point of science is in practice. He had demonstrated that capitalism was a unity in which the opposites would create the conditions for its supercession. If we accept that Marx's theory and its predictions is still the most powerful social science of capitalism [many deny that Marx's theory generates testable propositions etc usually from remote academia or state offices] and that today it can account for the increasingly obvious concrete manifestations of the underlying deep structures and tendencies, how do we apply it in practice? If we do not defend the most basic science in Marxism, we end up in one or other deformed version of psuedo-marxism. We have to defend Marx's long run strong predictions and apply this method in our organised politics. This is not difficult when the cracks in the surface are widening as the geo-social tectonic plates move and twist. Even someone like Derrida thinks that the pronouncments of the death of Marxism are premature. But what does he offer? Another marketised marx who is junked except for what he opposed but which is now offered in his name - "messianic eschatology" which is bullshit for "socialism as the promised land '. Derrida et al's attempts to repackage marxism piecemeal logically leaves us with nothing but a pre-marxist ethical socialism which guarantees iin advance that when capitalism collapses it will end in barbarism rather than socialism. Dave. Dave Bedggood --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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