I wrote: >>the use of value concepts allows the understanding of the capitalist system as a totality. Lacking this understanding -- and more importantly, the ability to act on this understanding -- is one aspect of the "anarchy of production," a necessary component of the existence of crises.<<
>Ok but surely we can understand Capital systemically without value conepts? I was introduced to systems theory before I read KM and it was easy to see the consonances but value theory didn't do a friggin' thing for me. Apparently I'm not alone, so maybe it's just a matter of taste?< you can't understand what Marx is talking about in CAPITAL if you don't understand his jargon and more importantly, his way of approaching the question, which is summarized by his phrase "the law of value." This lack of understanding has led to all sorts of misinterpretations -- with the standard one being that Marx was interested in price theory and followed Ricardo -- and, more interestingly, caused superficial critiques. I don't think it's a matter of taste: the standard framework of mainstream academia is individualistic, where as value theory is inherently oriented toward seeing society as exactly that, a society. >>As Cornel West's analysis of Marx's take on morality suggests, Marx applied the standards of "bourgeois right" (trading at price = value) to show that capitalist violates _its own standards_. Marx clearly had his own moral standards, but he never elaborated on them (he was never an ethicist): living in an era (not that different from our own) when people throw around moral slogans and then routinely turn around to violate them, he focused instead on the contrast between moral theory and practice. West argues that Marx gave up on the project of finding the fundamental basis for all morality. [partly because he saw efforts such as Kant's as so sterile.] >Well I don't identify the normative with morality although they share many family resemblances. I can understand and sympathize with KM's skepticism regarding foundationalism in moral discourse, but there's a bit of Kant in KM I think we should appreciate rather than dismiss.< there's also a critique of Kant. If I remember, it's that Kant's theory is so abstract that it's useless, though I'm sure someone knows that stuff better than I. >To the extent that KM pointed out that Capital, under liberalism, violates it's own standards, is a great place to connect and make alliances with non-Marxist critiques of liberalism. It's part and parcel of why I like Cohen's stuff; he's made a serious effort on that score as a critique of Capitalism must facilitate a critique of Liberalism especially the legal 'foundations' of Capitalism. It's part and parcel of asking what, if any, would be the legal foundations for Socialism or any other non-Capitalist political economy.< which Cohen? G.A.? I see nothing wrong with alliances with non-Marxist critiques of liberalism, but I think it's good not to mush them together so that we can preserve some conceptual clarity. Also, I bet that the non-Marxist critiques are based partly on Marx. >>The Law of Value is not specifically a normative theory. The way I explain exploitation's ethical edge is by the phrase "taxation without representation." Capitalist exploitation rests on state use of force, on domination of workers' lives in the workplace and elsewhere, and on the structural coercion inherent in the reserve army of the unemployed. The role of coercion makes exploitation like taxation. Now, in theory, this exploitation could be the basis for building up civilization and the like. But workers have no say -- no representation --in any of this.<< >Well I simply told co-workers that firms are oligarchies and are fundamentally un-democratic and there's a reason for that and that was an opening into all sorts of interesting discussion about labor costs, class etc. You'd be amazed at contemporary workers responses to the simple question of 'where do profits come from'?< good, but it's important to remember that capitalist society as a whole is also undemocratic and hierarchical. >>Value theory starts with the notion that we all live in a society which works as a group (though often poorly coordinated). That basic notion of interdependency is missing in MI.<< >Right, which is why I don't adhere to MI, but I came at the problem from philosophy of science and some of the same issues as Justin--he did physics, I looked at ecology and the ontological status of species--before I really engaged KM.< According to Paul Burkett, Marx was very ecological in his thinking. ... Jim Devine
