Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 14:31:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Some Bordieu and a pinch of RegSchool


On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, david jacob jurriaan bendien wrote:

> My comments on the discussion of David Bedggood, Justin Schwartz et al.:
> 
> 1. I thought Pierre Bordieu's name was actually "Bourdieu". 

Who cares what the French think?

> 2. The concept of "economic surplus" is not necessarily the same as the
> concept of "surplus product" or "surplus value" as Marx defines it.

Right, it's a more abstract notion. It applies to societies like feudalism
and slavery that have surplus but not value. Marx uses this notion to
emphasize the continuities between feudalism (saY) and capitalism as
exploitattive societies. On this notion the economic surplus is what's
left over after using up some of the productive assets in production.

> however the source of profits being clear.  The notion of economic surplus
> as used by Baran and Sraffa among others lends itself to ideas that in a
> "good society" the surplus ought to be more "fairly distributed", without
> any awareness of the fact that production relations would need to change to
> permit this to happen (since the "surplus" happens to be privately
> appropriated as profits).  

Never mind that Baran and Sraffa have a  great deal of awareness of that
fact. It just goes in a different place in their analyses. But in any case
the notion of an economic surplus defined without reference to a
particular set of production relations has an essential role in Marx's own
critique of political economy. Marx also has a more capitalism-specific
notion of S-_value_, which, hiowever, is just a particular case of
economic surplus.

> 4.  A conceptual difficulty in Marxian political economy is to define
> precisely the boundaries of "commodity production".  For instance, under
> what circumstances is information (a set of symbols constituting a
> meaningful communication) a commodity, and under what circumstances is it
> not ?  This is insufficiently explored in the Marxian literature in my
> view.

It's difficult in law as well. The notion of intellectual property, e.g.,
copyright, trademarks, and patents, is how the bourgois order defines the
commodification of information, broadly construed. People interested in
this concept would do well to study the substantive law of these concepts. 

> 6.  "Symbolic power" is not power at all.  It may be that power derives
> from a monopolisation of symbol systems, or from being able to use symbol
> systems in a superior way.  But in general, the domination of certain forms
> of symbolism presupposes the real power to assert that symbolism as
> dominant, and that real power derives normally from ownership of the means
> of production and communication, or from military power.

I disagree on Gramscian grounds. No doubt monopolization of the means of
production helps explain why some groups have symbolic power, but not by
reducing the symbolic power to the economic one. The authority of Church
in the middle ages, for example, was symbolic and real, and the power of
the Church to extract a large amount of the surplus depended in large part
on this power. As to military power, I suspect that Gramsci is right that
if that has to be invoked to maintain a social order, that order is in
touble. The normal operation of any social order depends on consenmt or at
least acquiesence, and this is in large part a function of symbolic power.  

 There exists a
> vast literature on the theory of ideology which examines the specific
> mechanisms by which the rulers impose their ideas on the ruled.

This is a misleading characterization of ideology, a sort of conspiracy
theory a la Voltaire (the French again!) rather than a Marxist theory.
Much ideology is generated from below.

> as it erodes basic human rationality. For Marx, the standard for evaluating
> ideas, symbols etc. is human practice, the "test of practice", but more
> than that, "praxis", i.e. practice informed or guided by theory, and this
> assumes a rational relationship between theory and practice, i.e. a
> consistent and continuous relationship between means and goals which is
> clearly specifiable.


I disagree. I think Marx's notion of praxis is far more Hegelian than this
rather a prioristic Bolshevik formulation would suggest. The relation
bewteen theory and practice is not specifiably in advance. Rather one
tests out certain half-baked ideas and revisses them in view of their
efficacy or lack of it in attaining goals which themselves are subject to
revision. The relation of theory topractice is in any case only a
hypothesis of efficacy before hand and can only be confirmed, to the
extent that it can be at all, post hoc. 

--Justin




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