Re: K vs. M

[ken hanly <khanly@xxxxxxx>]

Surely Keynes is a hopeless Idealist. He talks of people changing their
motivations,getting rid of certain motivational features of capitalism such
as the love of money. changing moral values and ideas,  not changing the
relations of production that is getting rid of the underlying foundations
for those values by overthrowing the capitalist system. He is a preacher not
a revolutionary. There is not a word about class struggle or the need to
socialise the means of production, no explanation of the love of money in
terms of the structure of capitalism itself. Ideas are not the fundamental
determinant of radical change but are primarily determined by the class
struggle itself at least according to Marx as I understand him. The two are
worlds apart. Certainly one can see family resemblances in what Keynes has
to say about money and what Marx says in the Manuscripts but they result
from quite different and conflicting frameworks. Keynes doesnt even mention
relations of production.


Cheers, Ken Hanly

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2004 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] K vs. M


Jim wrote:

> It may be that there are shared elements in Marx's and Keynes'
> abstract ethical and psychological conceptions, but the fact that
> their political-economic conceptions were so different suggests that
> it's wrong to equate the two thinkers. Two people can share abstract
> principles (e.g., Marx and Aristotle) while disagreeing profoundly
> (e.g., the issue of slavery). (Oh no! I've opened the
> Aristotle-on-slavery can of worms! Some pedant will argue that Ari
> really _didn't_ support slavery if you read him carefully, from the
> right philosophical perspective, and in the original Greek. Please
> humor me. Please.)

Which part of the interpretive claim I made is this disputing?

In what sense are the following claims "abstract"?

  "the essential characteristic of capitalism" is "an intense appeal to
the money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals as the main
motive force of the economic machine."

"The love of money as a possession ...  [is] a someÂwhat disgusting
morbidity, one of those semiÂcriminal, semiâpathological propensities
which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental
disease."

"For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that
everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall
do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich toâday, only
too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this,
we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butterâto make what
work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible.
Threeâhour shifts or a fifteenâhour week may put off the problem for a
great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old
Adam in most of us!"

"When the accumulaÂtion of wealth is no longer of high social
imÂportance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We
shall be able to rid ourÂselves of many of the pseudoâmoral principles
which have hagâridden us for two hundred years, by which we have
exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the
position of the highest virtues."

"I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and
certain principles of religion and traditional virtueâthat avarice is a
vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of
money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue
and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once
more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall
honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day
virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking
direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not,
neither do they spin."

How would getting rid of "the essential characteristic of capitalism"
be not too different from reforming capitalism in order to save it i.e.
from not getting rid of "the essential characteristic of capitalism"?

Ted