re: "Marx' LTV"

[Justin Schwartz <jschwart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 7 Jun 1995, lisa rogers wrote:

>
> Marx said that CAPITALISM acts as if value is created by labor, CAP
> treats labor as a commodity, etc.  And we don't expect capitalism to be
> internally consistent, do we.

Uh, Lisa. There's a problem here. As a number of writers have argued at
length, the notion of "contradiction" in Marx (and Hegel) isn't logical
inconsistency. it's more like (very roughly) systematic instability: a
real contradiction in a social system creates pressures to resolve it by
changing the system. But our descriptions of these system had better damn
well be internally logically consistent. A description of a contradiction
(real) isn't and can'r be a contradiction (logical). See the articled in
the Cambridge Companion to Hegel on dialectical logic for helpful discussion.

>
> I found Marx rather compelling, reading him with a somewhat forgiving
> [and non-economist] eye.

And so do we all. That's why we're here.

  If parts of his argument cannot hold up to
> modern, rigorous, quantitative methods, I can live with that.

Why? Because you like inadequate, internally inconsistent theories?

  Maybe we
> can come up with even better analyses of how and why Capitalism SUCKS.

This is much better. Let's do.

  A
> desire for justice and human growth will still unite us, no?
>
Mais oui!

> BTW, does anybody think that Marx was "totally objective" in his
> analyses, and was never swayed by his beliefs and his agenda, to tweak
> his analysis, bend his logic or shape his arguments?  If so, he must be
> the only such person.

He never pretended to be unbiased. But the thought he was objective and
intellectually honest, and I think he wwas right about that.

--Justin




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