Introducing Serious, Permanent Bugs into Your Wetware

Voluntarily introducing serious, permanent bugs into your wetware...

A previous post contained links to how you could temporarily misprogram part of your wetware--your visual cortex--for amusement.

Here we find Michael Fitzgerald, a man who has seriously misprogrammed substantial chunks of his frontal lobes by reading Karl Marx's Capital--something that, I am becoming convinced, should only be done by somebody with immunity to the mental virus--by a trained intellectual or social or economic historian, or by a trained neoclassical economist.

Jeff Weintraub quotes Michael Fitzpatrick's favorable review of Francis Wheen's "biography" of Karl Marx's Das Kapital:

Jeff Weintraub: Francis Wheen's "Biography" of Marx's Das Kapital: Capital: I first read Capital when I was a student in the mid-Seventies. The onset of recession and an upsurge of trade union militancy... a wave of interest in Marxism and the Marxist theory of capitalist crisis.... I fell in with a small group of people who repudiated... facile arguments and the philistine approach towards theory....

[I]nstead of merely spouting Marxist slogans it was necessary to embark on a deeper study of Marx. So we read Capital. When I say we read Capital, I mean we read Capital, in a group, out loud, line by line, paragraph by paragraph (at least in the early chapters), discussing and arguing over every page, through volumes one, two and three, even unto Theories of Surplus Value....

In retrospect, this approach sounds rather like that of students of the Bible, the Talmud or the Koran, but this was not a process of rote-learning, rather one of active collective engagement with the most important attempt to capture the process of capitalist development in theory. I have never read any other book in this way, but, as Wheen observes, Capital is unique....

[R]eading Capital is not easy.... Marx's dialectical method.... Marx does not present a theory of capitalist crisis as such... process of reproduction of capitalist society in its totality. Capital analyses the dynamics of capitalist production and reveals the limitations of capitalism as a mode of production in its incapacity to develop consistently the productive potential of society and achieve social progress. Marx's dialectical method aims to depict in a theoretical form the development of a social system which is simultaneously a process of producing the material needs of society and a process for ensuring the profitable expansion of value.

Capital begins, famously, with the commodity, "the simplest social form in which the product of labour in capitalist society presents itself". Marx explores the twofold character of the commodity, as use-value and exchange-value, revealing in an elementary form the contradictory character of capitalist production.

This contradictory character... the money form.... The separation of economic processes into two phases--production and exchange--implies "the possibility, and no more than the possibility, of crises". However, "the conversion of this mere possibility into reality is the result of a long series of relations".... The law of value operates in capitalist society as the only possible, albeit indirect, mechanism through which social labour can be distributed. Hence under capitalism... social relations between people appear--and can only appear--as relations between things... market relations conceal the operation of the law of value, the money form conceals the social character of labour... human beings are dominated by the products of their own labour, objects are endowed with supernatural qualities... money acquires divine power... this "fetishism of commodities" meant that it could only be abolished through a fundamental reorganisation of society: "[T]he life process of material production does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan."...

Reading Capital provided an invaluable methodological training as we engaged in the campaigns of the late Seventies and the Eighties, seeking to give organisational expression to an anti-capitalist outlook. Having gone back to Marx, we were able to move forward to attempt to grasp new developments in capitalist society through discovering the mediating links between appearances and the inner movement of capital, in the process developing the basic elements of an anti-capitalist programme...

Where does one begin? Let me make two observations only:

First, I observe that the idea that the best way to understand the political economy of the 1970s is through intensive, group, line-by-line study of an unfinished, inconsistent, and ambiguous text first drafted in the 1850s by a very smart, sometimes far-sighted, but definitely not divine human being--that that idea is already a delusion peculiar to those who were a little too good in school in seeking truths from reading books rather than seeking truths from facts.

Second, I observe that Marx's claim that the "twofold character of the commodity, as use-value and exchange-value," is a difficulty in need of "exploration" is a claim that can only be made by a deranged Hegelian mystic. Consider the following thought experiment:

Suppose that at my left hand I had a fresh-cooked hard-shell lobster and a lobster cracker. The lobster cracker would have a lot of use value to me right now: If I didn't have one, then half an hour from now my hands would be bleeding and cut--something I would rather avoid. I would be glad that I had it. But the lobster cracker would have little exchange-value: nobody nearby would exchange for it, would trade for it, anything I would particularly need or want.

Suppose that at my right hand I had a financial portfolio long the shares of residential construction companies, and short mortgage-backed securities. At the moment share of residential construction companies are low, but mortgage default premia are also low. If the shares of residential construction companies are fairly priced, than housing construction and housing prices are in free-fall, defaults on mortgages will rise, and the prices on mortgage-backed securities will fall as well--producing profits on the short position. If mortgage-backed securities are fairly priced, then defaults on mortgages will stay low and housing prices and construction will stay healthy, in which case shares of residential construction companies are underpriced--and there are profits to be expected from the long position. Such a portfolio would have no use-value at all. But it could well--if one could get the hedge ratios right--turn out to have a mighty exchange value, in the sense that other people would be willing to exchange for it, to trade for it, a lot of things I would like to have.

What's the mystery here? What's in need of "exploration"? Things are useful for two reasons (A) Because their physical nature is such that you find them directly useful--that's use value. (b) Because we live in a society in which other people will trade you things for them, things that you can use--that's exchange value. This is not hard to grasp. This is not particularly subtle.

Fitzgerald says that Marx's analysis of use-value and exchange-value "reveal[s] in an elementary form the contradictory character of capitalist production" which requires the abolition of private property and market exchange in order for the "mystical veil" of market prices to be stripped off "the life process of material production" and "production by freely associated men... consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan." In what sense is this dual role of commodities a "contradiction"? Marx never offered me a coherent answer. And Fitzgerald does no better. How would eliminating markets and prices help resolve this "contradiction"? That was never explained either

Moreover, in Fitzgerald's phrase "the contradictory character of capitalist production," the adjective "capitalist" is incorrect. A moment's look back at history reveals that the distinction between use-value and exchange-value is not something invented by or peculiar to the capitalist mode of production: it is found in all human societies, no matter how large or small.

The cattle slaughtered and cooked by the thralls of Hrothgar, King of the Geats, have use-value to Hrothgar: He and his family can eat (some of) them. The cattle have exchange-value to Hrothgar as well: He feeds them to his warriors at their nightly banquets in his great hall of Heorot. In exchange for livery and maintenance, the warriors fight Hrothgar's wars. Success in war gains Hrothgar more thralls, more cattle, and a bigger and better reputation as a great Drighten.

If you try to ground an analysis of capitalism-in-particular on a feature (the distinction between objects' direct usefulness and their role in social processes of reciprocity, redistribution, or market exchange) that capitalism shares with every other human social system--well, you won't get anywhere. And those who read Capital "in a group, out loud, line by line, paragraph by paragraph... discussing and arguing over every page, through volumes one, two and three, even unto Theories of Surplus Value" don't get anywhere at all.

Comments

[Robin]

There is certain irony in that there is evidence that Marx expected his ideas to be superceded by thinkers from eras which had the material bases to understand the world better and who could, in fact, make a better sense of the social world. The only people who reject these propositions seem to be Marxists.

[Maynard Handley]

Both Brad's post and the one he is commenting on would be rather more worthwhile if they pointed out the obvious extensions of:

"
First, I observe that the idea that the best way to understand the political economy of the 1970s is through intensive, group, line-by-line study of an unfinished, inconsistent, and ambiguous text first drafted in the 1850s by a very smart, sometimes far-sighted, but definitely not divine human being--that that idea is already a delusion peculiar to those who were a little too good in school in seeking truths from reading books rather than seeking truths from facts.
"
and
"
In retrospect, this approach sounds rather like that of students of the Bible, the Talmud or the Koran
"

I'm all for making fun of idiots, but I'm less than impressed by making fun of one particular class of idiots while ignoring others.

[andres]

Ah yes, it's time for the annual "Time to Trash Marxism and Marxists So as To Maintain My Non-Leftist Credentials" post by Brad. What's ironic is in treating Das Kapital as if it were the insertion mechanism of a mental virus

[Do you dispute my judgment that this guy has badly misprogrammed his wetware?]

, as if _Wealth of Nations_ or _The Protestant Ethic_ were any different in that respect. It's good for Adam Smith and Max Weber that they were not transformed after their deaths into deified Caesars by two murderous totalitarian dictatorships, or else their followers would also be treated with condescending disdain by Brad and their like.

I don't know about trained intellectuals, but it's been my experience in reading critics of Marx from Bohm-Bawerk to Samuelson etc, that trained neoclassical economists are the _least_ likely to gain anything from reading Capital because for some reason they start out with a pre-conceived notion that the Marxian labor theory of value (LTV) is some sort of alternative to determinist neoclassical price theory, whereas any intelligent reading of volume III makes it clear that the LTV is nothing of the sort. Anyway, let's start with the spotlight method:

"First, I observe that the idea that the best way to understand the political economy of the 1970s is through intensive, group, line-by-line study of an unfinished, inconsistent, and ambiguous text first drafted in the 1850s by a very smart, sometimes far-sighted, but definitely not divine human being--that that idea is already a delusion peculiar to those who were a little too good in school in seeking truths from reading books rather than seeking truths from facts."

This is a straw man. I've never known a single intelligent person who thought that they would understand a contemporary capitalist economy by reading _Capital_ only. Rather, they thought of _Capital_ as a starting point just as most intelligent neoclassical economists see _Wealth of Nations_ as a starting point for understanding the modern economy (and a few of the more intelligent neoclassical economists actually go as far as reading it, as opposed to obtaining its insights second-hand from principles textbooks). And no, intelligent analysts influenced by Marx do not believe they are examining the Holy Grail of political economy anymore than a modern reader of Machiavelli's _Prince_ believes he is reading _the_ instructions manual for political infighting in the US Congress.

(btw the term Marxist has become a pejorative for those who read _Capital_ and Marx's other works with the fervor of near-Biblical theocratic absolutism. Such people died out along with Mao and Brezhnev. Any idiot who reads _Capital_ knows that it is often inconsistent and sometimes wrong. The different descriptions of the LTV between vols. I and III is one prominent example ).

"Second, I observe that Marx's claim that the "twofold character of the commodity, as use-value and exchange-value," is a difficulty in need of "exploration" is a claim that can only be made by a deranged Hegelian mystic....What's the mystery here? What's in need of "exploration"? Things are useful for two reasons (A) Because their physical nature is such that you find them directly useful--that's use value. (b) Because we live in a society in which other people will trade you things for them, things that you can use--that's exchange value. This is not hard to grasp. This is not particularly subtle."

Come on now; you have a particular fondness for straw man arguments. Marx did _not_ invent the use-value/exchange value dichotomy, which is at least as old as Adam Smith, and in fact Smith placed as much emphasis as Marx did on the dichotomy in those chapters where he discussed the nature of value. Nor would Marx or any of his followers claim that the dichotomy is in any way unique to capitalism as a social system; any system in which trade and barter occurs has such a dichotomy. Nor would a Marxian-influenced analyst deny that there are many goods and services imbedded in a capitalist economy which have use value but not exchange value and vice-versa (though in the latter case what is actually occurring is a redistribution of surplus value, not the creation of further value).

Time for me to parrot Marx: what makes capitalism unique is that it is the only mode of production in which the dichotomy is used to conceal the nature of surplus labor extraction. Slavery, feudalism, and antiquity/command economies were fairly obvious in the ways in which they expropriated and distributed surplus labor. But the basic argument of _Capital_ is that the labor process consists of a trade of exchange-value equals even though one item exchanged (the actual use of labor) has greater use value than the use value of the labor-equivalent given back to workers in the form of wages.

This is of course, an argument about the capitalist social system as a whole, _not_ about the process of labor exploitation in the production of individual commodities which many neoclassicals and Marxists wrongly believe can be measured in output price/wage cost terms. If one takes Hegel seriously, then the LTV cannot be taken as a determinist model of labor value -> commodity prices, even after one does profit rate transformation adjustments.

"If you try to ground an analysis of capitalism-in-particular on a feature (the distinction between objects' direct usefulness and their role in social processes of reciprocity, redistribution, or market exchange) that capitalism shares with every other human social system--well, you won't get anywhere. And those who read Capital "in a group, out loud, line by line, paragraph by paragraph... discussing and arguing over every page, through volumes one, two and three, even unto Theories of Surplus Value" don't get anywhere at all."

As above, _Capital_ does not ground its analysis on this distinction, which would be utterly banal, but on the labor-market -> labor-process consequences of this distinction. People who read the Bible word-by-word, line-by-line and then discuss its interpretation with each other in a balanced give-and-take manner will not only get to understand the Bible very well (though of course individual understandings will vary), but will also find any number of ways to apply ideas gained from the Bible to modern social problems. Whether the Bible's teachings are interpreted in a dogmatic, absolutist, authoritarian manner is a different issue altogether, and may even be orthogonal to the first. And such a method of studying any book, be it the Bible or _Wealth_, _Capital_ or _The General Theory_, btw, is a better way of understanding it than to read a second-hand interpretation followed by a two-hour final exam. But that's my own bias.

[Walt]

Andres: What if Brad genuinely thinks Marx is worthless? It's not the rarest opinion in the world.

[andres]

By no means is it the rarest opinion in the world, though Brad does _not_ think Marx is worthless, merely (from previous posts on Marx) that he's no good as an economist (that Marx never intended to be an economist in the modern sense of studying markets in isolation seems to escape Brad).

I should mention that it is possible to intensely dislike another political thinker without thinking that their contribution is worthless. After having read some of Ayn Rand's writings, I've rejected her world view even though I think she makes some very valuable arguments against the sort of Stalinist totalitarianism that it was all too easy to be loyal to in her day.

[Walt]

I guess I object to the idea that Brad writes these posts solely as a form of positioning. But I think Ayn Rand actually is worthless, so what do I know.

[andres]

Walt: point taken. I'm being on the cynical side, and probably unfair, when I accuse Brad of posting these screeds just as a form of positioning. Still the near-once-a-year frequency of anti-Marxist posts by Brad is (thus far) an established regularity.

[JK]

And again...

Brad says:

"If you try to ground an analysis of capitalism-in-particular on a feature (the distinction between objects' direct usefulness and their role in social processes of reciprocity, redistribution, or market exchange) that capitalism shares with every other human social system--well, you won't get anywhere."

But Fitzpatrick says:

"For Marx, the distinctive feature of capitalism is the way in which the labour of society is allocated between different branches of production through the exchange of commodities as equivalents, as exchange values."

So yes objects are exchanged in all social systems, but (according to Marx) it is only in capitalist society that EQUAL exchange regulates the distribution of labour.

The idea here is that for Marx exploitaition arises out of EQUAL exchange. This is inextricably linked to the way that distribution of labour is determined by freely entered into contractual relations.

This distinguishes capitalist society from systems based on slavery, feudal obligation, etc, and also free production where the surplus is later extracted by taxation, religious dues, etc.

(It would be interesting, incidentally to know how Brad would characterise capitalism - or if he thinks there is a meaningful question here.)

For Marx, the intimate relationship between the distribution of labour and the equalisation of objects gives "things" a peculiar social existence that needs explanation.

But he only harps on this point because, unlike an economist who sees nothing remarkable in the distinction with Brad's cases A and B, Marx does not divide sociology off from economics.

Marx's theory attempts to capture human activity as a whole. That is why (unlike Smith or Ricardo) he starts with labour in order to explain value, not the other way around.

If Brad really can't make head or tail of Capital perhaps he could try the Paris Manuscripts on alienation which get at the same thing from another point of view and are incidentally quite critical of Hegelian mysticism. They're not as good though.

[andres]

"[Do you dispute my judgment that this guy has badly misprogrammed his wetware?]"

Er, yes Brad. That was the point of the next 45+ minutes of typing.

[No it wasn't: you talk a lot about Marx, and very little about Fitzgerald.]

Not to mention that misprogramming is frequently in the eye of the beholder. Robert Lucas would assert that anyone who reads _The General Theory_ is inserting bad vibes into their brain chemistry, and the late Pope John Paul II would say that there's something really unCatholic in all of Smith's harping about the beneficial effects of self-interest as the engine of modern capitalism.

There is always a danger that if you take something you read as literal God-given truth, you are messing up your brain cells. This can happen with any major work on politics or social theory, not just _Capital_.

[andres]

"[No it wasn't: you talk a lot about Marx, and very little about Fitzgerald.]"

Well, yes. But in your passage it is implicit that the problem is not Fitzgerald's interpretation of Marx, but Marx himself. Here's your key sentence:

"Second, I observe that [Marx's] claim that the "twofold character of the commodity, as use-value and exchange-value," is a difficulty in need of "exploration" is a claim that can only be made by a deranged Hegelian mystic."

(my brackets) Or the following:

"what sense is this dual role of commodities a "contradiction"? Marx never offered me a coherent answer. And Fitzgerald does no better."

Either I'm reading very badly or your main point is that Fitzgerald has messed up his brain chemistry by reading Marx in the first place, not by _misinterpreting_ Marx. If I'm wrong, please write a new post explaining how your interpretation of Marx differs from Fitzgerald's.

[dsquared]

[First, I observe that the idea that the best way to understand the political economy of the 1970s is through intensive, group, line-by-line study of an unfinished, inconsistent, and ambiguous text first drafted in the 1850s by a very smart, sometimes far-sighted, but definitely not divine human being]

attempting to understand the political economy of the 1990s and 00s by first learning a lot of the mathematics of Walrasian general equilibrium is presumably different of course.

I think Brad's example of a portfolio of securities is pretty silly (the attempt to bring "viruses" and "wetware" is also daft but probably betrays too many science fiction books rather than an economic confusion). Such a portfolio could not exist other than under a capitalist means of production. The big point about capitalist societies is that they allow for accumulation as well as consumption, and the big point about accumulation is that it depends on the commodity form.

[Jon Fernquest]

This sort of Marxist textual study really reminds me of bible study, which might be a good way to gain solidarity and power, something that conservatives seem to be a lot better at, but works against exactly what liberals do best, **questioning the existing order**, to the extent that liberals become doctrinaire, they don't seem to really be liberals anymore (Niall Ferguson in Colossus dares to question the liberal status quo though)

"Intellectual history" seems exactly the right way to read Marx along with the intellectuals who took him too seriously to the point of avoiding obvious signs that all was not what it was cracked up to be in Stalinist Russia (see Simone de Beauvoir's diaries or "Les Mandarins" including fights with a drunk Koestler).

The intellectual history of Marx and Marxists is still at the root of a lot of important ideas in the social sciences like the materialist conception of history, base-superstructure, Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses, modes of production and the origins of the state, but so is Edmund Burke whose ideas can be seen in the important role Japanese era elites played in post-WWII South Korean economic history for instance. One of the reason's I enjoy reading Brad DeLong's blog is its pulling apart of the strong associations between economics and conservatism, at least here in Asia.

[Brad DeLong]

As I said: Marx needs to be read only by trained professionals with immunity to the viruses--mystic Hegelian, chiliastic, et cetera--spread by the work. Fitzgerald has a *really bad* case.

[Padraig]

Well, I'm jumping in far too late to do any good here, but what the hey.

On Fitzgerald's method of group readings. Yes, the form does seem more than a little akin to Taludic or Madrassic study programs, but it's unfair to assume that they were like that without some better evidence than that. The key point is the discussion aspect - it seems a little absurd to assume that people arguing over the meaning and interpretation of a text are simply reinforcing an orthodoxy. Sure, that could be the end result, but the end result could as easily be a nuanced understanding of the flaws and weaknesses of the text in question. The end result is a product of the intellectual effort put it, and on this we have little in the way of evidence.

In essence, Brad is arguing against an entire method of learning from books - actively engaging in them, as opposed to simply imbibing them. The former is a method that has been with us for some time, and is used in a lot of disparate fields, not just theology. The fact that Brad focuses like a laser-beam on group arguement as proof of the Marxist tendency towards the semi-religious merely betrays his own biases - Marxists are religious nutjobs, regardless of the fact that Marx himself did not intend his works to be read in such a manner, and that most modern students of Marx do not read him in such a manner. There is not a sane Marxist in the world today who does not recognize the anti-Liberal dangers of such a reading, with the proof being the bloody histories of the PRC and the Soviet Union.

Treating Fitzgerald as if he is insane for following a learning methodology that Brad does not approve of (but, I would guess that he only disapproves of it when reading Marx) is also full of anti-Liberal danger - our Political opponents are rarely insane, and protestations to the contrary are generally meant to prevent the reader from listening to those opponents and making up their own minds. It is the opposite of a marketplace of ideas - and for the extrema, you only have to read Limbaugh's latest at Digby's.

[Altoid]

Well, this is fun!

I'd have to agree with many that Brad's problem isn't with Fitzgerald but with Marx. Beyond that, I wonder why it's being assumed that the reading circle operated like a self-criticism group, the dangers of which we all know. Intensive reading is also done in seminars, which enjoyed pretty high repute in graduate education at last report.

As a related observation, if it *was* more like a seminar than a brainwashing operation, it seems to me that naive and/or untutored people who are trying to think about what's happening in their societies might be better served by taking a systematic approach of this kind, even if they end up disagreeing with it or rejecting it, than not taking any systematic approach at all. System is one of the reasons we used to be taught languages, isn't it?

Finally, I think JK has something: as far as I understand him (which isn't so much), the problem with Marx for a neo-classicist is that as far as he's concerned you really can't paribus the ceteri.

[andres]

"As I said: Marx needs to be read only by trained professionals with immunity to the viruses--mystic Hegelian, chiliastic, et cetera--spread by the work. Fitzgerald has a *really bad* case."

Come on now Brad. Every single pathbreaking work in the social sciences has the potential to spread some undesirable virus around. If I were as condescending as you, I would say that Walras's _Elements of Pure Economics_ should only be read by highly trained economists who are immune to the virus of thinking about the economy as being made up of atomistic, mechanically propelled individuals who follow invariable optimization laws. Or that anyone who reads _Wealth of Nations_ should be a highly trained political scientist who will not indulge in the fond notion that the state can possibly exist in impartial independence of the commercial interests that run the economy.

But I don't buy it. If one is sufficiently literate to understand a famous work of political economy, and one is open-minded enough to realize that the book being read is not a Holy Grail, then it should be read. Period.

[anne]

Now, Brad DeLong can play too and play well when he is playing which is what he is about here. After all, George Bush was reading "The Stranger" deep in Texas, and imagine what can be done with Camus who I dearly appreciate though thinking we are suddenly all existentialists is somewhat unnerving.

[eyelessgame]

I think "Beware the man of one book" is a decent piece of advice, whether said book is Atlas Shrugged, the Bible, the Koran, Das Kapital, Wealth of Nations, Book of Mormon, Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions Of Your Life, Stranger In a Strange Land, or any other volume being used (or misused) as a general life guide.

[eweininger]

I'm certainly not terribly interested in long threads of Marx exegesis, and it has been a while since I read any of it.

But. It would be easy easy easy to show that Marx never, ever considered the use/exchange dichotomy to be definitional of capitalism. Ever. It was, certainly, a central part of the definition of commodities. They, however, were not unique to capitalism for Marx, nor for any thinker I am aware of.

I'm sure that people with better recall than me could pull all sorts of definitions out of Marx's writing of the capitalist mode of production. However, the one that jumps to my mind would hinge on the emergence of a genuine labor market, ie commodification of labor power, which presupposes the dissolution of clannish loyality abd feudal fealty, etc. etc.

The more-informed should feel free to correct me. Otherwise, maybe we should just move on.

[John Emerson]

Brad: "As I said: Marx needs to be read only by trained professionals with immunity to the viruses--mystic Hegelian, chiliastic, et cetera--spread by the work. Fitzgerald has a *really bad* case."

Marx can be wrong, and Fitzgerald can be wrong, but here Brad is exhibiting the center-totalitarian streak which comes out with him occasionally. He wants to be the left wing in and of himself, and have everyone to the left of him declared insane.

He went rhetorically on record a few months ago as asking whether there is any value at all, whatsoever, in any of Marx's writing, with the implied answer being "no". He got a lot of responses on that thread , but apparently his opinion was not changed.

If Marx's writings still have some power more than a century later, that suggests that maybe he was right about something, and that maybe trained professionals have some enormous blind spots.

but we already knew that trained professionals have some enormous blind spots. The whole shock therapy / globalization thing should have told us that.

[Jim Dandy]

Late to the party, but here’s the point. It seems obvious that, for an informed discussion of the issues raised here, it is crucial to have read Marx’s texts carefully and even to have done so in a group context (which I take to be Fitzpatrick’s very sound point that the Professor, strangely enough qua professor, treats which such disdain).

For instance, how could any serious reader miss the meaning and significance of the following statements in the text (which couldn’t be clearer in stating at the outset the object of the analytical project that Marx set for himself) as a complete rejection and dismissal of the point being made by the learned professor:

“Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely, value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies between these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakeable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour itself.” Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pp.80-81 (International Publishers, 1967).

“It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in discovering that form under which value becomes exchange value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps that production as a particular species of social production, and thereby gives it its special historical character. If then we treat this mode of production as one eternally fixed by Nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that which is the differentia specifica of the value form, and consequently of the commodity form, and of its further developments, money-form, capital-form, &c.” Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pp.80-81, footnote 2 (International Publishers, 1967).

Further reading of the rest of the text (beyond this first chapter) is strictly necessary to grasp the elements which Marx then goes on to identify as the “differentia specifica” of “capitalist production”.

Evidently, some interpreters never manage to get much further, or seek to understand much, beyond the discussion in Volume I, Chapter 1 of Capital. It seems odd that this sort of elision is allowed in academic discourse about Marx, but would never be tolerated for, Smith, Walras, or Samuelson.

[M. carey]

You kmow, the IMPORTANT distinction pointed out by Brad is the difference between "learning from books" and "learning from facts". Of course some/many books contain facts, but the FACTS are the important thing, not the book. This is different from (most) Talmud or Koran studies, where the is the thing.

[Robert Vienneau]

Aristotle, near the start of Politics, makes the distinction between use value and exchange value. Marx was much influenced by Aristotle. I expect he knew this text. So the appearance of this distinction in classical philosophy is more evidence that Marx was unlikely to have thought the use value/exchange value was a defining element of capitalism.

[no one]

There were lots of odd things in this entry, but the point about Hrothgar was the most unsettling. I explain embeddedness with your examples of babysitters, grocery stores, and blacksmithing uncles! Do you seriously believe that the relationship between a baron and his thralls is adequately explained as a beef-for-mercenary exchange? Does this represent a change from your earlier beliefs?

[Anderson]

One of my happiest moments in grad school was the realization that Derrida is a critic of Marx.

Marx's labor theory of value maps onto signification; what one means a piece of language to say, is not necessarily identical with what others take it to say. What one puts into making an object, isn't necessarily identical with what others will pay for it.

Marx, being a Romantic, is very unhappy about this division. To Derrida, the division is a given.

(Leaving as a bonus thought the strange juxtaposition amongst certain scholars of free-market ideology with a diehard literalism in the reading of certain religious and literary texts.)

[Blissex]

The argument in this blog entry confuses greatly and rather astonishingly the notions of ''use value'' and the _direct usefulness for a purpose_ of a commodity:

«Because their physical nature is such that you find them directly useful--that's use value.»

Not quite, because ''use value'' is a term of art and only superficially similar to the concept of ''direct usefulness [for a purpose]''. The ''theory of value'' is not the ''theory of direct usefulness [for a purpose]''; it is more about value added, and arguably more production side than demand side.

The difference between ''price'' (''exchange value'') and ''value'' (''use-value''), which was a big issue well before Marx in classic political economy, as other commenters noted, is particularly important in the case of means of production, which are not directly useful.

The difference is also historically important, because before Sraffa there was no good metric of ''value'', and this has affected both Marx and the neoclassics who did their research before Sraffa (and even many after Sraffa).

Sraffa's works have been known for a few decades, and they center entirely on the distinction between price and value (in the sense used by Smith, Ricardo, ...), and he solved the problem of finding a distribution invariant metric of ''value'', which then allows comparing price and value quantitatively.

Neoclassical Economists tried (and still try) to avoid the issue by assuming that there is no difference between price and value for any commodity, which has the consequence that neoclassical arguments are ill founded (because prices, and in particular those of means of production, are not invariant to the distribution of income).

Conversely the great mistake of Marxian political economy is the erroneous assumption that the difference between ''price'' and ''value'' exists for labor but not for capital (but someone says that Marx himself developed a different theory of value later, one that went unnoticed). His assumption was motivated by his bizarre belief that capitalists can shortchange workers but not other capitalists (Mr. Marx, meet Mr. Lay :->)...

To illustrate some of the points above...

* A scarf: its direct usefulness is that it keeps warm whoever wears it, and/or looks cool. Its ''value'' can be expressed as some combination of commodities. It gets bought when its ''price'' is lower than its (subjective) usefulness to a shopper (and the would-be buyer has the means to pay the price). It gets produced when its ''value'' is not higher than its ''price'', which must be not higher than its direct usefulness.

* A loom: its direct usefulness is zero, because it does not satisfy any want (except perhaps that of loom collectors, if any). Its ''value'' also can be expressed as some combination of commodities. But its price is not going to be zero and looms will get bought despite not having any direct usefulness, if they can produce a profit when an enterpreneur combines them with other means of production (raw materials, labor, ...) to make other commodities, like a scarf. Looms get produced when their ''value'' is not greater than their ''price'' too, which in turn must be such that they have (non-subjective) profitability.

In other words, while the price and quantity of some commodities are driven by their direct usefulness, the price and quantity of those commodities which are means of production are driven by their profitability, because they have no direct usefulness.

So the quantity of scarves sold depends on their price: the lower the price the greater the number of scarves that people can afford to buy (up to a point).

But the quantity of looms sold does not depends on their price, as such: because their direct usefulness is zero, enterpreneurs will buy a greater quantity only if adding extra looms increase profits, which is by no means assured even if the price goes down. Whether the price of a loom is high or low is irrelevant; what matter is profitability is high or low.

Put another way consumption is driven by price alone, investment (and hiring) is driven by profitability, of which price is just an aspect. Production of either is driven instead by value vs. price (ultimately).

The discussion above is of course very simplified, for example I should have added a few "relative", and the terminology and history are loose. But the purpose is to show how important and non obvious the distinction between ''use value'' and ''exchange value'' is.

[Randolph Fritz]

Sigh...

Is basing a class on *Capital* really more unreasonable than basing one on Keynes's *General Theory*? I will confess to not knowing either man's arguments as well as I might--I am after all not an economist--but it seems perfectly reasonable to carefully read Marx. If we shut out every philosopher with major ideas which had been seriously abused, there would be many we would not read. That said, it seems to me, from what I do know, that Marx is better understood as a historical and ethical philosopher than as an economist; he studied and theorized about economics to get at these subjects and that reading him in this light might make him a bit more palatable. I think also that one reason that people still study Marx is that no-one else has stepped into his shoes; among philosophers there are few so willing to speak for the common man and woman.