This is my short reply to a Martin Wolf Ft article about "the big questions" raised by the wave of protest movements we have seen around the world over the last few months.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86d8634a-ff34-11e0-9769-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1bDhVx6QL
Quite a thoughtful summary from Wolf considering the obvious limitations of space. He hits the target in two respects, the first historical, concerning the conservatism of the social democratic "labour" parties of the last century aiming exclusively at "defending" wages and conditions, and the second and more important concernig the apparent absence of an over-riding "ideology" (I prefer to call it "strategy") of the Left and of a "historical agency" (such as formerly the "industrial working class") to put such a "strategy" into effect. We need, with Gramsci, a new "philosophy of praxis". | October 27 11:18pm |
In my own case, as I have already acknowledged on his Exchange, Mr. Wolf played a significant role "through" his Exchange initiative, in my return to politico-economic theoretical reflection, the products of which are now assembled at www.eforum21.com - to which I extend an invitation to "all friends of good will". Cheers.
What Wolf suggests - the development of a new "strategy", a new "set of ideas" he calls "ideology" - is exactly what we are doing here almost on a daily basis. Here is the latest instalment, a draft discussion of Keynes's espousal of the marginalist or neoclassical theory of "labour". This piece will be reworked and I hope to re-publish it in its new form over the next few hours. But I am posting it now so you can form a view of the thought process that goes into the development of this "strategy". Ciao.
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http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86d8634a-ff34-11e0-9769-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1bDhVx6QL
Quite a thoughtful summary from Wolf considering the obvious limitations of space. He hits the target in two respects, the first historical, concerning the conservatism of the social democratic "labour" parties of the last century aiming exclusively at "defending" wages and conditions, and the second and more important concernig the apparent absence of an over-riding "ideology" (I prefer to call it "strategy") of the Left and of a "historical agency" (such as formerly the "industrial working class") to put such a "strategy" into effect. We need, with Gramsci, a new "philosophy of praxis". | October 27 11:18pm |
In my own case, as I have already acknowledged on his Exchange, Mr. Wolf played a significant role "through" his Exchange initiative, in my return to politico-economic theoretical reflection, the products of which are now assembled at www.eforum21.com - to which I extend an invitation to "all friends of good will". Cheers.
What Wolf suggests - the development of a new "strategy", a new "set of ideas" he calls "ideology" - is exactly what we are doing here almost on a daily basis. Here is the latest instalment, a draft discussion of Keynes's espousal of the marginalist or neoclassical theory of "labour". This piece will be reworked and I hope to re-publish it in its new form over the next few hours. But I am posting it now so you can form a view of the thought process that goes into the development of this "strategy". Ciao.
*********************
In
the chapter on “The Postulates of Classical Economics”, Keynes sets out quite
successfully to demonstrate the flaw in Say’s Law – that supply creates its own
demand and that therefore there cannot
be any involuntary unemployment – on the ground of the discrepancy that exists
between the postulate that aggregate supply equals aggregate demand in terms of
money prices, whereas the employment of labour is expressed in real terms: the
utility of the real wage at equilibrium equals the marginal disutility of
labour. We noted above how Keynes simply fails to tackle the problem of how
“real” quantities can be “aggregated” or “homologated” in terms of “marginal
units” constituting the “marginal product of labour” and how indeed this
“marginal product” can then be homologated or equiparated with the notion of “marginal
disutility of labour”.
Try
as one may, it will never be possible to achieve such a monstrous feat except
by means of the most fantastic leap of the imagination closer to certain forms
of insanity than to any process of ratiocination. Keynes never questions for a
single instant what is the most basic tenet or “postulate” of marginalism and
neoclassical theory.
To
make matters worse, Keynes never does even so much as question the neoclassical
postulate of “labour” as a homogeneous substance that can be “quantified” at
least in terms of its “marginal product” and then of its “marginal disutility”.
For if by “labour” we intend the “living activity” of human beings, it is
evident that no amount of “measuring” will ever turn such living labour into a “substance”
that can be measured in terms of its potential “marginal product”! Living
activity is a pure human “reality” that cannot be equiparated with its
“product” except through the most absurd reduction (or transmutation)! Indeed,
the very fact that such a “reduction” is politically possible is indicative not
of the “measurability” of living labour but of its repressive abuse and
alienation by the powers interested in enforcing – more or less violently –
such perverse reduction. The “measurement” of human living activity can occur
only by “abstracting” fictitiously, and that means violently, through the
coercion of human activity, from its subjective form of expression and also
from its mode of objectification, that is to say, through the “alienation” or
“separation” of living labour from the “object” of its exertion without which
it is a pure and sterile concept, a mere figment of the imagination, a pure
fantasy.
And
this “object’ from which living labour is “separated” forcibly by capital is
not solely the individual tools and raw materials to be used in production, in
the “objectification” of living labour. First and foremost is the “separation”
of living labour from its being intrinsic part of “social labour”, that is, of
being absolutely inseparable from the process of “social labour” without which
it would be utterly meaningless. That is what “the wage” achieves; that is its
real purpose: to slice and divide the living labour of workers into “separate
individual labours” – separate from both the means of its objectification and
from their “sociality” so as to be absurdly “measured” and “compensated” as
“individual separate labours”!
Keynes
abjectly acquiesces in this absurd exercise, culpably lending credence to what
must surely be the most repugnant theoretical myth in the horrific history of
bourgeois supremacy. But this is not the end of the unseemly mystification in
which Keynes engages with arguable degrees of complicity with the marginalist
counter-revolution of the neoclassical school. Keynes also fails to question
the very notion that “the utility of the real wage” can be commensurate with
the “marginal disutility of labour”. Given that there is no such entity as
“abstract quantifiable labour” except as a criminally violent imposition of the
bourgeoisie of its command over living labour, it follows that living labour as
the living activity of human beings simply cannot have a “disutility”. Human
living activity can be either “free” in the sense that it constitutes the
objectification of autonomously determined human abilities or else it can be
the object of more or less violent imposition. It is totally insensate to speak
of the “disutility of labour” – because once we define “labour” properly for
the only manifestation it can assume – that of living activity – then it
becomes apparent how “disutility”, whatever that expression may mean, cannot
even remotely be applied to such living activity!
To
compound Keynes’s absurd ignorance of even the most basic theoretical
appreciation of human reality and social meaning, Keynes thoughtlessly accepts
the “equation” of living labour (and its absurdly attributed “disutility”) with
the “utility” of a “real wage” made up obviously of the products of human
living labour. Again, it is impossible to attribute to the pro-ducts of living
labour – the objectification of living labour, what we call “dead labour” – any
“utility” however “marginally” measured. The very act of equating dead labour
with living labour is an act of violence so vile and violent that any and every
decent human being ought to detect it the instant that this gross
misapprehension is exposed!
It is
absolutely obvious from the foregoing analysis that no conclusions of any sort
can be drawn form Keynes’s analysis and internal critique of “the postulates of
classical economics”. As we have argued, Keynes evades the insuperable
scientific and analytical difficulties posed by this phantasmagoric
neoclassical theoretical framework by concentrating his analysis on monetary
“aggregates” of supply and demand that transpose his entire analysis to the
level of overall political command through the monetary medium. Let us see how.
[Money wage]
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