File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9711, message 29


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


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