[Marxism] Wisdom and Society

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol Cox 



"Capitalist accumulation" is _not_ HISTORY. It is a very specific
process within a very specific context -- the accumulation of exchange (not
use) value under the conditions of capitalist production. There could be no
"law" (absolute or otherwise) of the accumulation of _use_ values under
capitalism or any other system.

^^^^^
CB: I don't know. Isn't the history of capitalism HISTORY ?  History is
specific. So the specificity of the process does not mean "it" is not
history. The fact that the abstract process of exchange of exchange-values
that Marx describes in _Capital_ repeats itself a trillion times over the
course of capitalism, this cell, as Marx analogizes it to the biological
cell, is a "law", a generalization about history in the capitalist epoch.

As to "use-values" , Marx says ( in the holy text) that the discovery of
them is the "work of history"


"Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two
points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many
properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the
various uses of things is the work of history.[3] So also is the
establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities
of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin
partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in
convention."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1

Discovering use-values is enhanced by natural science, so natural scientific
laws enter in in the work of history in discovering use-values, according to
holy text.


^^^^^^


And since one way to describe the goal of socialism is the replacement
of exchange value by use value, there can be no law of socialist
accumulation.

Carrol

^^^^^^
CB: In socialism, the "economy" is no longer an objective reality for us. It
is run consciously, subjectively. So, it will lose its natural law like
qualities.

As to whether Marx consider himself involved in a scientific project read
the following ( from holy text):


Karl Marx
Capital Volume One


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

1867
PREFACE TO THE
FIRST GERMAN EDITION

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

 

The work, the first volume of which I now submit to the public, forms the
continuation of my Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (A Contribution to
the Criticism of Political Economy) published in 1859. The long pause
between the first part and the continuation is due to an illness of many
years' duration that again and again interrupted my work. 

The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters
of this volume. This is done not merely for the sake of connexion and
completeness. The presentation of the subject-matter is improved. As far as
circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier
book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out
fully there are only touched upon in this volume. The sections on the
history of the theories of value and of money are now, of course, left out
altogether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however, in the notes
to the first chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history
of those theories. 

Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first
chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities,
will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more
especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of
value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. [1] The value-form,
whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and
simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in
vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the
successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been
at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is
more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of
economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of
use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society,
the commodity-form of the product of labour - or value-form of the commodity
- is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of
these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae,
but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy. 

With the exception of the section of value-form, therefore, this volume
cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I pre-suppose, of course, a
reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for
himself. 

The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their
most typical form and most free from disturbing influence, or, wherever
possible, he makes experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence
of the phenomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine the
capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of production and exchange
corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground is
England. That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustration in
the development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader
shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and
agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the
thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad; I must plainly tell
him, "De te fabula narratur!" 

Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of
development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of
capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these
tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The
country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less
developed, the image of its own future. 

But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised among
the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things
is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts
is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental
Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist
production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside
the modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from
the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their
inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only
from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif! 

The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe
are, in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But they
raise the veil just enough to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head
behind it. We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in
England, our governments and parliaments appointed periodically commissions
of inquiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with
the same plenary powers to get at the truth; if it was possible to find for
this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of
persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical reporters on
public health, her commissioners of inquiry into the exploitation of women
and children, into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic cap down over his
eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters. 

Let us not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century, the American
war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle-class, so
that in the 19th century, the American Civil War sounded it for the European
working-class. In England the process of social disintegration is palpable.
When it has reached a certain point, it must react on the Continent. There
it will take a form more brutal or more humane, according to the degree of
development of the working-class itself. Apart from higher motives,
therefore, their own most important interests dictate to the classes that
are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable
hindrances to the free development of the working-class. For this reason, as
well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume to the history,
the details, and the results of English factory legislation. One nation can
and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right
track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement - and it is the
ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern
society - it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal
enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal
development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs. 

To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the
landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with
only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories,
embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. My
standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is
viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the
individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains,
however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. 

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely
the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the
materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most
violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of
private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily
pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income.
Now-a-days atheism is culpa levis, as compared with criticism of existing
property relations. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer,
e.g., to the Blue book published within the last few weeks: "Correspondence
with Her Majesty's Missions Abroad, regarding Industrial Questions and
Trades' Unions". The representatives of the English Crown in foreign
countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France,to be
brief, in all the civilised states of the European Continent, radical change
in the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and
inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the
Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in
public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of
the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of
the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or
black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen.
They show that, within the ruling-classes themselves, a foreboding is
dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism
capable of change, and is constantly changing. 

The second volume of this book will treat of the process of the circulation
of capital (Book II.), and of the varied forms assumed by capital in the
course of its development (Book III.), the third and last volume (Book IV.),
the history of the theory. 

Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices of
so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as
aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine: 

"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti."
["Follow your own course, and let people talk."] 


Karl Marx 
London 
July 25, 1867 







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