The
original epistemological sin of bourgeois economic theory is that it begins
with the individual. The fundamental question of economics is to define and
determine value – the quidditas, the whatness or essence of
prices, what determines them – and its production and distribution. Yet, the aspect
of value that is in turn essential to economic enquiry is “exchange value” or “value
in exchange”. If indeed we wished to concentrate on human productive activity
in terms of universal human interest (here “inter-est” stands for the Latin
phrase inter homines esse – being among humans), then there would be no
room for the concept of exchange value – quite simply because there can be no “exchange”
of productive activity between humanity taken as a whole, as a totality. Exchange,
and therefore also value in exchange, can exist only “between” human
beings, taken individually or in groups because only that way can the products
of human activity “change hands” or be ex-changed.
But once human productive activity
is reduced to the activity of sub-groups of humanity, then clearly the ultimate
unit of human productive activity becomes the individual. This is so because
once we begin to analyze human productive activity in terms of human
sub-groups, then the ultimate reference point for a universal economic theory
can only be the individual – for the evident reason that any theory based on human
sub-groups would end up being peculiar and restricted to the particular “sub-group”
that we chose to analyze, be it a tribe or a nation or an enterprise. Even the
idea of a “theory of the firm”, first canvassed by Ronald Coase, can yield
interesting results but can never become the foundation for a comprehensive “theory”
of economic activity.
Thus it is
that “exchange” of human productive activity becomes inevitably the original
sin of economic theory: - because by concentrating on the “ex-change” of human
products between individuals or groups, economic theory (a) wholly neglects the
effects of human activity on our living environment, on the ecosphere; and (b)
it also introduces the notion of “private property” and consequently of a “marketplace”
where human products can be ex-changed. This is so because, quite obviously, no
“market” could exist without “exchange for value” and no “value in exchange”
would be conceivable without a legal entitlement to the human products that are
exchanged in the marketplace – without private property.
The full
deleterious effect of this original sin of economic theory can be easily
inferred because through it our enquiry into human productive activity must
necessarily neglect the interaction or metabolism between this activity and its
“object”, the eco-sphere or life-world of humans; and also because this enquiry
must take for granted as absolutely fundamental to its enterprise those very “proprietary
interests” – the laws that define and protect private property – without which
no “exchange’ of human products could ever take place “for value”! Yes, there
could be exchange of “gifts” or “presents” between human beings; but without legal
rights to products, without private property, such an exchange could never form
the basis for the calculation of “value in exchange” because gifts and present
by definition (!) could never form the basis of systematic measurable
calculation!
Hence, the
question arises of what it is exactly that we calculate when we ascribe a value
to human products – a value that forms the basis for the pricing of such
products. Here it is that value in exchange and corresponding prices must necessarily
reduce human productive activity – which, as we all know, is and must be
infinitely variable and impossible to define or let alone to calculate – to a “quantity”
that can be so defined and calculated in a manner that must also be necessarily
arbitrary and entirely contingent, that is to say, entirely political in
nature.
The vice of
bourgeois economic theory – and a possible pitfall for liberal bourgeois
political institutions, including nation-states – is precisely this inability or
ideological unwillingness to see economic relations for what they are –
political institutions. This is a vice principally because it leaves liberal
regimes, especially ones founded on parliamentary democracy, open to abuse by
powerful totalitarian regimes that use or abuse liberal market institutions to
bolster and strengthen their military-industrial complexes with the ultimate
aim to undermine, subvert and eventually dominate societies based on liberal
market capitalist institutions.
Nowhere is this
more evident than in the specific and historically unprecedented case of the Han
Chinese Dictatorship – unprecedented first because of the ruthless
will-to-power of this Dictatorship single-mindedly intent on extending its dominion
over the entire globe, and second because its existing dominion over one fifth
of humanity (over a billion people) gives it the human resources to exploit
trade with liberal market economies through mercantilist exploitation of
trade that allows it to accumulate product resources and know-how that it turns
immediately and purposefully toward the implementation of its global
imperialist and genocidal project. It is entirely obvious that this project is
reliant, first, in abusing market rules of exchange (which, once more, are not “natural”
or “objective” but entirely political in nature, and therefore open to manipulation)
with the sole purpose of acquiring sufficient military and industrial power to
be able – and here is the second point – to defeat and subjugate eventually
those liberal market economies whose “market rules” of trade and exchange it is
forced momentarily to observe to reach its final goal of world domination.
Clearly,
whilst it is essentially true that Western parliamentary democracies are ready
and willing to let their productive systems and trade to operate according to broadly-agreed
“market rules”, the same cannot be said of the Han Chinese Dictatorship – and that
for the obvious reason that its totalitarian rule and subjugation of its own people
and other conquered territories (Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and now
projection over Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea) is clearly inconsistent with
the operation of bourgeois liberal capitalist market rules within and outside
of the existing Han Chinese Empire.
No comments:
Post a Comment