Re: -Reply

[Jim Devine <JNDF%LMUACAD.BITNET@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On determinism and psychology (the complexity of human minds, emotions,
etc.):

Economists usually eschew studying psychology (as Ajit does).  Instead,
in order to understand human behavior, economists emphasize the role
of constraints.  Since (to an economist), tastes are unfathomable and
unpredictable, the more constraints on human behavior one can find,
the more predictable human behavior is.  Marx, like the institutionalists,
went beyond the neoclassical view and saw constraints as not only
natural but due to artificial (human-made) organizations, specifically,
capitalism.  The institutions of capitalism, for example, push
capitalists to accumulate; specifically, it is the battle of
competition that does this. This doesn't seem _totally_
deterministic to me. However, if one is trying to understand or
even predict the system's laws of motion, it seems best to
emphasize the deterministic side rather than the "heck we don't
know anything" part.

Though Marx's theory in CAPITAL
did not get into psychology in any depth, he adds a theory of
consciousness: people inside the system suffer from what he
termed "the fetishism of commodities." Seeing the system from the
inside, people typically do not
see the class-exploitative nature of capitalist society and
the social relations involved in this exploitation, instead
seeing only the superficial relationships between commodities
in markets (supply and demand and all that).  This simple
theory seems consistent with learning-by-doing, or rather
learning-through-experience. (An example: though Marx
argues that profits arise due to worker production of surplus-
value, he knows that actual capitalists mostly see profits as
arising from their investments and therefore invest most
where the profits are highest.)

As Ajit notes, this doesn't require a "theory of human nature."
However, Marx did get into a heck of a lot of stuff that veers
toward such a theory in his 1844 MANUSCRIPTS and also in the
GRUNDRISSE.  It seems to me that such a theory is needed,
if one is to get beyond a purely positive theory of
capitalism (to critique capitalism as opposed to merely
describing it) or if one is interested in the possibility
of workers and other oppressed groups developing consciousness
and organization that
go against the system's requirements for its own
reproduction.  If I remember correctly, Marx was interested in
such questions.

sincerely,

Jim Devine
jndf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx or jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"Many workmen could not subsist for a week, few could
subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employ-
ment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary
to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity
is not so immediate." -- Adam Smith