In subsequent posts in AntiCapitalist Chats and MeetUps, I will be doing an occasional series of pieces on introducing some current methodological approaches to Marxist political economy. I am introducing this occasional series with an excerpt of a paper by James Craven below. Advance apologies for the density of the topic, but life is too short and I’d like to get some ideas into cyberspace.
As much as ‘marxism’ is demonized by US presidential candidates, it is ever more important to disabuse the public of its dangers.
The materialist conception of history has a lot of (friends) nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French ‘Marxists’ of the late [18]70s: “ ’All I know is that I am not a Marxist.’ (-Engels Letter to Schmidt, 1890.)
And finally, Marx was supposed to have meant several things when he said that “…je sais, je ne suis pas Marxiste” is not only that individuals do not make history or the theory of it, it is the masses who make history, but also that Marxism itself will be and should be always open to challenge from facts, application and prediction, and even the “negation of the negation” (Marxism is an analysis of capitalism fundamentally not a utopian scheme of socialism). I suspect he also meant please do not associate me with some of those calling themselves Marxists and what they do and say in the name of Marxism.
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Marxism deals with the history and stages of a phenomenon and seeks to go below the surface to the essence and laws of motion of all phenomena across location, time, space, place and history.
Neoclassical and like-minded economists see capitalism in Newtonian terms:
a) absolute undefined and constant give time and space;
b) an ethereal pure economy detached from other dimensions of society; individual particles – owners, suppliers and demanders—driven by individual preferences,
c) given resources, acting and interacting in various markets to produce successive punctuated static equilibriums, and potential general equilibriums;
d) exogenous or external forces and shocks that trigger “endogenous” or internal morphostatic mechanisms restoring new equilibrium states;
e) the axiomatic imposition of focus on equilibrium, where disequilibrium is the normal order of things under capitalism;
f) derivative assumptions necessary for both mathematical formulations and cardinal-level predictions of static equilibrium states;
g) supply and demand functions must assumed to be driven by separate and independent forces on the supply versus demand sides so that no co-determinacy between demand and supply (and thus no possible calculations of any discrete predictable equilibrium state) is possible;
h) transportation, information and transactions cost are assumed as given or negligible;
i) markets are assumed to be competitive with no friction of distance, asymmetrical information and power;
j) no notion of power, market, asymmetrical or otherwise;
k) no time-lags between when market forces shape price signals, transmit signals, receive and, interpret signals, make decisions and take actions and reactions, etc. over time and space (all transactions instantaneous);
l) no notion of historic-geographic, politico-legal, socio-cultural and global contexts that themselves are endogenously changed and interrelated, as well as being agents of “exogenous” forces and shocks between supply and demand;
m) ultimate exogenous (independent) variables on the demand sides drive changes in supply and demand, that then cause shortages and surpluses in the short run, that trigger endogenous processes that lead to new equilibriums in linear and unidirectional chains of causality to final effects until the next exogenous variables shift. (See Appendix A);
n) no money, debt or veil of money in transactions;
o) no adaptive expectations;
The method of exposition of Capital , of “Successive Approximations” is from the most abstract (and yet in dialectical terms the most concrete) “simple commodity” as a “cell form” or microcosm of the bourgeois mode of production as a whole.
From the simple commodity, to Capitalist Production (Vol. I);
to, via removing simplifying assumptions, Capitalistic Circulation (Volume II);
to Capitalistic Production as a Whole (Vol. III);
deductively from the general and abstract to the specific and concrete (General to Specific).
The expository structure is the opposite of the inductive structure of the specific processes of the research and construction of the work, that formed and supported the generalizations, principles, abstractions of the deductive side of the Marxist System of theory and praxis.
The core postulates and elements of Marxism form a system in the sense that:
a) the core general postulates, from which specific conclusions and hypotheses are deductively and derived (both Episteme and Techne bases and levels of knowledge involved4 that are asserted to be self-evident truths or “axiomatic”), are all mutually supporting and generally not contradictory;
b) The first order or primary, second-order or secondary, and specific, predictions and conclusions of Marx, follow deductively and specifically (as tight logical derivatives5) from the core (or “primary”) and second-order (or “secondary”) and specific postulates of the theoretical system6
c) The primary and secondary predictions and conclusions are all interdependent, mutually supporting and not contradictory (with proper caveats about tendencies under assumed conditions rather than asserted iron laws and inexorable outcomes);
d) The arrangements and publications of Volumes II, III and IV of Das Capital were made after Marx’s death and without his guidance and input except in the notes he left; these considerations must be noted as one of the limiting caveats in points a to c above.
To proceed to build upon the foundation and uncompleted system of Marxism, it is critical to have a firm understanding of what Marx and Engels actually wrote, actually argued, actually predicted and how and why these elements form an integrated system of theory and praxis from which to move forward.
sttpml.org/...
"If socialism doesn't occupy the battlefront, capitalism surely will."
—Chairman Mao Zedong
The reading group that I’m in is doing Marx’s Capital Volume I and I will recommend this lecture series which is now discussing Volume II.
MARX’S CAPITAL (Vol. I) LECTURE RECORDINGS (2022)
The Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) was pleased to host a series of public lectures on Volume 1 of Marx’s Capital, given by the political economist and activist Andy Higginbottom.
For those needing something less complex.