> Date sent: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 14:10:06 -0800
> Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: James Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: immanent critique (was: dialectics)
> Concerning Marx's work after the 1844 manuscripts, Ricardo writes:> My
> point is the very simple one that the late Marx gives _greater emphasis_ to
> the structural tendencies of capitalism than he does to the values and
> norms of that society. He seeks to show there are certain crises that
> emerge out of necessity from the "laws of motion" of capitalism, which
> explains why his analysis of those crises is based in economics, not
> ethics.< (emphasis added by JD)
Devine:
> Here we agree: rather than your current emphasis on Marx's relative degree
> of emphasis, your earlier missive seemed to totally dismiss any kind of
> study of the laws of motion of capitalism as somehow being anathema (a
> petty "obsession" of the pen-lites), while criticizing Marx for >>>no
> longer confront[ing] capitalism in terms of the universal ideals of
> justice, equality, and freedom...<<< But as we agreed, Marx still
> criticized capitalism for failing to live up to its own ideals.
>
No, we don't agree. Marx's early immanent critique was that the world
had not become rational in the way Hegel had argued. He saw no
reconciliation between reality and the idealist assumptions of
hegelian philosophy. The world was not philosophical and philosophy
was not worldly. Later he drops this philosophical critique and moves
to a critique of political economy. His critique is now about
the objective tendencies of capitalism itself; it becomes
a theory of crisis.
> I don't know how theories of crisis could ever be "based in" ethics. But
> what I said was that Marx's immanent critique of capitalism (the
> contradiction between pretensions of democracy, etc. and practice) was
> _intimately tied to_ the idea of laws of motion: an actual, real-world,
> contraction between democratic pretensions and dictatorial practice causes
> all sorts of social problems, i.e., a societal crisis. More specifically to
> Marx's CAPITAL, an immanent critique, e.g., of the contradiction between
> pretensions of equal exchange of commodities and the actuality of
> surplus-value extraction is linked to class antagonism and Marx's crisis
> theories. What Marx does is to refuse to leave the issue of exploitation at
> the utterly abstract level of Kantian ethics and the like. It's not just
> "wrong" (as John Roemer will tell you) but has a concrete impact on society.
>
Yes, but the point is the later Marx dismisses "equal exchange" as
an *ideological* pretension of bourgeois society.
> Concerning economic crises, Ricardo writes: >The problem with crisis-theory
> is that it cannot set the boundaries of capitalism beyond which it will no
> longer be able to function. Why couldn't capitalism function with 40%
> unemployment?<
>
> I don't understand the first sentence, so focus on the second: of course it
> could function that way (at least in the crisis theory I've seen). But
> social unrest and/or crime would continuously increase, causing obvious
> problems for the system. Capitalists would also suffer from incomplete use
> of their capacity, which would depress their profit rates. If the problems
> of disorder, revolt, and crime don't depress the capitalists' "animal
> spirits," the destruction of capitals would allow the competition among
> capitalists to move away _from_ competitive efforts to cut wages, increase
> the intensity of work, and the like (allowed and encouraged by high
> unemployment and low capacity utilization) _toward_ pushing accumulation
> forward. The latter eventually causes unemployment to fall. It's hard to
> predict exactly what would happen, but I think it's very clear that things
> would _change_ in some way rather than seeing persistent 40% unemployment.
>
My point is that a purely objective critique of capitalism, based on
its tendencies for crises, is impossible: a critique of unemployment
presupposes certain normative standards. Can anyone specify the
objective boundaries of the capitalist system beyond which it will
collapse?
> Concerning Marx's adherence to and/or support for "bourgeois values" such
> as freedom, Ricardo writes: >So, I guess you now agree with me: the late
> Marx had a more cynical view of bourgeois values ("he viewed them as
> hypocritical"). If so, where those his critique of capitalism come from? <
>
> Of course, I think that you disagree with me in agreeing with Marx's
> cynicism concerning bourgeois sloganeering. You seem to take the slogans at
> face value, at least more than I do.
>
> The basis for Marx's critique is expressed pretty clearly in the 1844
> MANUSCRIPTS, which Marx never repudiated. If you read CAPITAL vol. 1
> carefully (especially chs. 7, 10, 13, 14, and 15), you'll see that his
> writing there is largely consistent with the MANUSCRIPTS. He still talks
> about workers being worn out physically and psychologically by capitalist
> domination in production. His emphasis shifts -- but not all the way --
> toward emphasis on a different kind of alienation, the extraction of
> surplus-value from workers (the estrangement of their labor efforts).
And that precisely is the problem in Marx. He wants to talk about
crises and contradictions without acknowledging that such talk
presupposes certain normative criteria. So, there is an ethics in
Marx which he never explicitly recognizes, and which he does not even
wish to write about.
> >If his crisis theory is not strictly grounded in his economics, what is
> the standard of his critique? His own personal sense of morality? Wow,
> that's utopian!<
>
> I don't understand this. Marx didn't separate "economics" from "politics,"
> "sociology," and the like the way we do. Broadly speaking, however, his
> crisis theory _was_ strictly grounded in (political) economics. He didn't
> finish the task of understanding crises, leaving quite an unfinished
> mishmosh, perhaps because he wasn't as obsessed with crisis theory as pen-l
> is. (see MARX'S THEORY OF ECONOMIC CRISIS, by Simon Clarke for a good
> summary of Marx's work on crisis and its unfinished nature.)
>
> I think Marx did have his own personal sense of morality, though he never
> thought it necessary or even possible to write a treatise on ethics.
> Cornell West writes that Marx decided that the best he could do was the
> immanent critique -- an emphasis on the contradiction between bourgeois
> ideals and capitalism's actual practice. On the other hand, people like
> Richard Miller (in the CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, suplementary vol. 7,
> 1981) argue that Marx's vision of morality is substantially the same as
> Aristotle's. (Aristotle saw morality not in terms of "thou shalt nots" but
> in terms of people attaining their (positive) potential potential as
> thinking, creative, etc. human beings.) In that case, you could say that
> Marx never saw the writing of a treatise on ethics as needed.
>
> I don't understand the bit about utopianism. Is it utopian to have personal
> morals that differ from the official "morality" that dominates our society?
Ethics are always inescapable, that's not the point. It is that
Marx's critique of capitalism is NOT based on an ethical THEORY.
> >On the other hand, bourgeois values are not utopian, for they are already
> part of the public sphere; they are institutionalized!<
>
> yeah right. The positive aspects of the "institutionalized" values were won
> by protracted struggle by workers and small farmers and other groups that
> had gotten the short end of capitalism's stick. And that's only in the
> richer countries like the US, where as Ajit points out, labor productivity
> is high, allowing the capitalists to make more concessions. There are lots
> of capitalist places that don't even have the minimum of
> "institutionalized" civil liberties. For example, here in L.A., we have the
> L.A.P.D.'s famous treatment of "minorities." (Hint: if you're black, don't
> jog or even drive your car in a white neighborhood.) It's worse in Haiti, I
> understand.
>
> I think Marx was absolutely right to focus on capitalism's practice as
> opposed to its ideologists' theories.
I will agree that a critique of capitalism cannot be based solely on
an immanent critique of the existing values of our society. But a
critique which is monological - purely subjective - makes no sense
either.
ricardo
> in pen-l solidarity,
>
>
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
> "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
> people talk.)
> -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
>
>
