Ian said:
> >Economies are Newtonian in only the trivial sense that we're all "just"
> >physical objects moving in space.
I said:
> why do theories have to be Newtonian? I don't get this. Please explain.
Ian replies:
>They don't; I was commenting on the use of "the laws of motion of capitalist
>development".
>
>Is the above a metaphor or simile? "The circulation of commodities"; is
>this metaphorical/analogical to physiology or is it, along with the
>circuits of capital, a precursor of cybernetics/systems theory [this is
>what I was taught by a German prof. who worked with Habermas] and
>complexity theory. M--C--M' is a wonderful little algorithm and model of
>iterativity. As the Phish song puts it, "expanding exponentially like some
>recursive virus."
Metaphor or simile? it depends how the sentence is structured. When
economists use a model to describe the economy, that's metaphorical. If
they say that the economy is _like_ the model, that's a simile. It's all
poetry, though hopefully it's logically consistent on the inside (unlike
most poetry).
We can't judge Marx's theory by what it was a precursor to (since "even the
Devil can quote scripture"). More specifically, I'd say that Marx's "laws
of motion" of capitalist development are not and cannot be deterministic.
[We seem to agree that excessive determinism is a problem; I hope we agree
that some determinism helps us understand the world.] They aren't (in
practice, which is what counts) because Marx never finished his work, as
with crisis theory, which he left as a bunch of brilliant but incomplete
insights. [If we're smart, we might be able to fill in the gaps and make
the links...] They can't be, because (as Mike Lebowitz argues) in CAPITAL,
Marx deliberately left the "laws of motion of working-class development"
out, treating the working class as either a passive or a merely reactive
force. The "laws of motion" of actually-existing capitalism are a
combination of an incomplete story of the laws of motion of capital and the
laws of motion of wage-labor. The latter -- the so-called "subjective
factor," the collective self-liberation of the working class via developing
its organization and class consciousness -- seems to be an inherently
non-deterministic process.
If capitalism is expanding like a virus, we're trying to find a vaccine. So
the process isn't deterministic in practice.
Ian said:
> >Plus Marx was wedding Newtonian metaphors which are
> a-teleological [primacy of efficient cause] with Hegel [Aristotelian,
> Taoist-itself largely a-teleological, post-Kantian] models of logic and
> teleology which have cross theoretic iconsistencies/incommensurabilities.
> The coherence doth not "work".....
I wrote:
>I don't see how Marx was Newtonian at all, nor how Hegel was Taoist.
>In general, I don't explain the theory you're putting forth, Ian. Please
>explain.
>Well, what's "the laws of motion...."?
Ideally, though not in practice, Marx's laws of motion are akin to but also
different from the "dynamics" of the perfectly competitive market that I
tell my students about. There's a structure that has internal tendencies
toward an equilibrium (if "economic profits" differ from zero, entry or
exit moves them toward zero, the ideal equilibrium). [This is similar to
Marx's tendency for the rate of profit to be equalized between sectors,
except that the NC economists lack a valid theory of what determines the
overall average profit rate.] In Marx's system, there's a fundamental --
structurally-based -- conflict of class (collective) interests between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat, that represents a constant source of
actual struggle and other problems, along with the general problems of any
commodity-producing society (the conflict between socialized production and
individual appropriation of wealth). These structurally-based conflicts
imply tendencies toward their solution.
For Marx, however, the internal tendencies are not realized automatically,
unlike with the NC theory of a perfectly competitive market. Though he was
optimistic about the chances of revolution, his theory was never
deterministic. Even in the very-rhetorical MANIFESTO, he and Engels saw the
possibility of a Hobbesian-style result (the mutual destruction of the
contending classes) rather than a successful socialist revolution. Instead,
we see the structurally-based moves toward class conflict (these days, a
one-sided war, the neoliberal movement) and crisis, without the culmination.
>As for Hegel's Taoist influences, the Jesuits brought back the Tao Te
>Ching, the Analects and the I Ching and translated the stuff about
>1600-1620 or so [I think the main guy doin' the shuttle diplomacy was
>Matteo Ricci]. Leibniz was one of the first to get a
>hold of these translations [bein' a diplomat and all] and wrote extensive
>commentaries on them [I think Open Court Press recently republished the
>stuff]. I can't remember sources off the top of my head and my books on
>the issues are buried in boxes, but somehow Hegel got a hold of the stuff
>and loved it [as did Leibniz and of course boatloads of westerners still
>do]. That Yin/Yang symbol is an icon of the dialectical interpenetration
>of opposites.
interesting [and I believe that it was Ricci]. But doesn't "Western"
mysticism precede that?
>Anyway, Chinese poetics/cosmogony is pretty damn a-teleological; there's
>no taxonomy of formal/efficient/final causes a la Aristotle. Galileo and
>all the usual suspects banished teleology from physical dynamics and left
>only efficient causes; the laws of motion. Marx wanted nothin' to do with
>the Aristotelian taxonomy of causation but because he spent more time with
>Hegel's texts than, say Leibniz' Monadology, and with the Aristotelian
>logic of bivalence being so ubiquitous in Hegel even as he tried to
>transcend it in his argument against Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" in
>"The Phenomenology of Mind", Marx inherited all the baggage [see the
>Grundrisse intro on Lenin's claims for how to read]. The question of
>whether Marx' view of history is secularized teleology/eschatology is, of
>course, a controversy to say the least. [Justin's the Hegel fan, so he can
>probably give you a lot more on these issues].
One thing is that even though emotionally, Marx was subject to waves of
optimism about the possibilities of socialism, intellectually he was a
materialist (which includes the notion that the actual empirical world is
quite important). His waves of optimism were based on popular upsurges
against the system. Given his materialism, I don't think there's any basis
for the argument of Tucker _et al_ that he was a eschatologist.
I'd say that though Marx rejected final causes (intellectually), the
formal, material, and efficient causes are part of his theory. Old
Althusser helped us to understand Marx by pointing to the role of
"structural causes," which involve both formal and material causes. Since
individual actions do affect the results (though not exactly as they
please, due to structural causation), efficient causation plays a role too.
In fact, it's common to criticize Marx for over-emphasizing structural
causation. Thus, I don't think that Marx's "laws of motion" are Galilean at
all. Galileo didn't emphasize structural causation at all, did he?
Marx didn't cite the Aristotelian taxonomy of causation (as far as I know),
but he was definitely a student of Aristotle: he links his stuff about
C-M-C vs. M-C-M to Aristotle's POLITICS. And his dissertation was on
ancient Greek philosophy.
>In fact, the first real rigorous steps beyond bivalence in the west
>didn't get it's first real start until George Boole published his work in
>1854. Hegelianism went out the window as Boole and Frege's, along with
>Cantor's work, swept philosophy and math departments with some pretty
>heavy implications for political thinkers in Euro academies. I haven't
>seen anything as to whether Marx knew of Booles' work. The debate over
>multivalued logics and their use in modeling causal dynamics is extremely
>heated and can lead to madness :-), Just ask J. Barkley Rosser Jr.
I agree that Marx was not an expert on, or a regular practitioner of,
formal logic (nor am I: please explain exactly what you mean by
"bivalence"). He was not one to think that the empirical (material) world
can be understood simply by the application of formal logic (an idealist or
rationalist position), though he sure tried to be logical in his arguments
where appropriate. Instead of being a rationalist, he was trying to
synthesize rationalism and empiricism, apply a modified (upside-down)
Hegelian dialectic to do so.
>Hope this helps,
it sure does. Thanks.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
