Historical Materialism

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Historical Materialism
by Justin Schwartz
01 February 2002 03:05 UTC



I have defended that formulation in What's Wrong with Exploitation?, Nous
1995, availabkle on the net in the old marxism spoons archive. However, I
argued that it did not require the labor theory of value in Marx's canonical
formulation to state it.

^^^^^^^

CB: What would be the advantage of formulating this without Marx's way of formulating it , or Engels' way ?

^^^^^

 More generally, the point is that capitalism is
exploitative, a point that _can_ be put without reference to any theory of
value at all--Roemer has an argument to this effect. I think that Roemer's
version loses a lot of the point of Marx's socological analysis, which, as I
say, can be maintained without holding that labor creates all value or that
price is proportional to value understood as socially necessary abstract
labor time.

I will add that Jim and Chris B have cast amniadversions on the reductionism
of "classical" analytical Marxism, which has largely been abandoned by its
founders (Erik Olin Wright excepted, also Alan Carling). But the points I am
making do not require reductionism of any sort. What remains of AM--and it
does survive in places like the journal Historical Materialism--is an
emphasis on clarity, precision, explicitness, and rigorous standardss of
argument, along with a totally unworshipful attitude towards traditional
formulations or classic texts. These are worth preserving.

Because AM as a  movement has evaporated, it is not worth beating up on or
defending. What is worth defending is what has always mattered--intellectual
honesty and care, the pessimism of the mind that must accompany optimism of
the will. Leave fundamentalism to the religious. If there is a scientific
dimension to historical materialism, it will survive. But it requires a
skeptical temperment.

jks

^^^^^^

CB: The discussion of AM has gone on often on this group of related lists. I think that discussion and the discussion of the law of value are worthwhile - what is wrong with a theoretical or abstract discussion on a theoretical email list ?

I want to say this respectfully, but I think it is slanderous or insult without foundation to characterize those who adhere more strictly to Marx and Engels position in the law of value debate with AM as "religiously fundamentalist" . The claim is never substantiated with demonstrating that someone is "not thinking" or not arguing rigorously and with a lively and critical mind on an issue at hand. It's a sort general declaration that "we think ,but you worship". This is a self-serving, gratuitous slander , at least it is as far as it is applied to me, I'll tell you that,. AM has no monopoly on clarity, precision, explicitness, and rigorous standards of argument in comparison with standard Marxists. Don't even try it. It's like declaring yourself the winner before you even have the argument.

So, if we are going to have the Marx/Engels vs AM debate, please drop all gratuitous insults and self-serving claims that you think critically and we don't because we think that Marx and Engels got it better in the 1800's than AM got it today.

As far as I am concerned it is like claiming that any physicist or biologist who adhere's closely to Einstein or Darwin's positions is being worshipfully religious. Horseshit !