[PEN-L:11633] Re: wojtek

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxx>]

At 11:11 AM 9/24/99 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
>The problem with Wojtek's proposal below is that it is anti-dialectical:
he reverses the priority of the whole over the part. One MUST start with
the largest "unit", the whole system. You must, despite the difficulty of
it, start with " the world system". This error taken to its typical
bourgeois level places the "unit" at the level of the individual, and then
it derives the characteristics of the group or the "social" from the
individual. Thus, capitalism is explained by the "rational man(sic)" who is
an individual, Robinson Crusoe.
>
>This is an error of Cartesianism.


Charles, with all due respect, i disagree.  I lean toward philosophical
nominalism and tend to view 'wholes' as nothing but figments of human
imagination, platonic ideas imbued with 'real' existence - or a way of
interpreting the world, if you will.

More precisely, a 'whole' can be either a product of assembling and
aggregating individual units of analysis in a partricular way (e.g.
statistical sample), or something that has a 'real existence' (e.g. an
assembly of individuals forming an organization).  Thus, it is of key
importance to distinguish between the 'whole ' as contsructed by the
researcher, and the 'whole' as existing independently of the researcher's
cognitive processes, existing in the objects being studied.

For example, neo-classical economists do not make that distinction.  They
assume that the form or rationality that guides their research (e.g. utlity
maximisation) is also the form of rationality that guides human behavior
they study.  In other words, they tend to belive that all human actors know
what the nc researches do.  based on that, they describe the "whole" (i.e.
equilibrium, which is a property of the system of exchange i.e. a whole) by
simply agregating those individual rationalities which are reflections of
their own rationality. That is why, imho, nc economics is pure science
fiction incapable of predicting a single fact.

If we start with "naturally" existing wholes - i.e. social assemblies that
exist in the minds and behavior of people who form them, not just in the
mind of the researcher - we came closer to empirical science than to
tautologies of th enc variety.  For example, in a particular historical
setting, certain units of production may operate in a "capitalist" mode
(i.e. employing wage labor to produce commodities for exchange, profit
maximizing, accumulating, etc.) whereas other do not (for example, peasant
households, artisan shops, etc.).  Does that mean that the "whole" i.e.
entire nation-state where both kinds of units exist is capitalist or
non-capitalist?  Of course, the decision is arbitrary, a typical
"half-full, half-empty" dilemma, and thus subject to ideological
interpretations.

If, on the other hand, we focus on individual units of production (instead
of nation states or even larger wholes) as the unit or analysis - we avoid
that arbitrariness, and may actually learn something about the nature of
capitalist institutions, instead of assuming that a priori, by definition.

cheers,

wojtek