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The Socialist Party, from the early 1920s onwards, has categorized the Soviet Union, as “state capitalism”. That’s exactly what it was/is as a static description.However, what it more importantly was/is, as dynamic determinism instead of mere static description, is a perfect instance of the “primitive accumulation of capital” working its inexorable way through all the ideas and morals of its actors. Materialism in deterministic operation.Marx’s “primitive accumulation of capital” is in many ways the crowning predictive achievement of Capital Volume 1, giving us confidence in his science and its methodology for achieving socialism. That is precisely why such an apparently irrelevant-to-production process concludes Volume 1.“Primitive accumulation" is accumulation for the few at the expense of the many—by dispossession of the many. It is never quick, never nice and always brutal, and the more clinically executed the more terrifyingly concrete its idealist “humanity”.Capitalism cannot function without a working class, and so its first priority, consciously or unconsciously, is to free its potential working class from any existing ownership of independent means of production. Capitalism must first turn the working class it’s going to exploit into a class dependent on it alone. “Primitive accumulation of capital” is for most of us, the making of the working class,It’s what we see occurring all around the “developing” world. Toy arguments based on sympathy for the victims of this terrible process are misplaced bourgeois indulgences, as piously hollow as the feigned sympathy of the professional burier of the dead for his corpses. Like death, the accumulation process is necessary to capitalism, and so is inevitable.I’m afraid the only solution is to comprehend world social processes, horrible as they are, and work to transcend a deterministically anti-social world, because it is divided into social classes.
stuart wrote:SocialistPunk and Robin are so obviously right that it's worth wondering why we're having the argument at all.So it’s self evident. In which case it can only be common prejudice or bigotry. Nothing else in this contingent world is self evident!
stuart wrote:The argument that morality is bunk is bourgeois! Thoroughly bourgeois!On the contrary, overt morality is essential to a conniving society like capitalism. Overt, and ostentatious, morality, of your obvious kind, is inextricably built into capitalism. It drips from the capitalist air you breathe, because it is indispensable to the functioning of class oppression. That’s where you pick it up your overt, ostentatious, morality from; unlike Marx who saw through capitalist appearance and exposed its rotten core.I’m sorry, but you and robbo are falling for the veneer of capitalism, even while convincing yourself you aren’t by giving lip service to its rotten core.
stuart wrote:The argument may sound all up your arse and philosophical, but it matters, as the history of Bolshevism and Stalinism readily attest.Bolshevism and Stalinism could equally be condemned for being too zealous in their morality, like you and robbo.Actually, of course, they were going through one of that most terrible and protracted phases of human social transition, called the “primitive accumulation of capital”, which is currently working its terrifying way through Muslim, Asiatic, African, and South American nations, but swept through the Soviet block in the 20th century, and Britain, France, Germany, earlier.As Marx said “capitalism comes into the world dripping in blood from head to foot”. But it comes in through horribly protracted revolution heralding decades of ruthless “primitive accumulation”—a great practical testing ground for your theory of morality—and “bloody” well disproves it.
SP wrote:So what if people thousands of miles away are being slaughtered by a brutal regime. Or what if a serial killer is running riot in America again, or homosexuals being stoned to death in Brunei. What concern is it to you, me or anyone else on this forum?What are you planning to do to the serial killer, or to the stoners-to-death, or to “your” own national brutal regime perpetrating “your” national slaughter “thousands of miles away”?You can’t ignore human practical sociability.If you want to transcend relying on insipid emotion that can be twisted, for-and-against, wringing your heart to shreds, the stock in trade of charities, religions, politicians, advertising agents—tendentious liars of all stripes—you need human practical socialism.
SP wrote:So what if people thousands of miles away are being slaughtered by a brutal regime. Or what if a serial killer is running riot in America again, or homosexuals being stoned to death in Brunei. What concern is it to you, me or anyone else on this forum?Well, you tell me what that has to do with socialism and war, which was the point of discussion.
SocialistPunk, #403, wrote:What I was looking for, and it may not be available, was some sort of actual historical, anthropology based explanation or addition.From a founder of anthropology [along with Bachofen and Morgan].Engels “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf.Related is Kautsky’s “Foundations of Christianity” http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/.Interesting article on (1) by Chris Knight, “Early human kinship was matrilineal” http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/ww930/supplement-early-human-kinship-was-matrilineal
SocialistPunk wrote:What makes [war] slaughtering each other for anything [either] wrong or right?Nothing outside of the opposing interests of all parties involved.
Marx wrote:Between equal rights force decides.War is conflict resolution between rival capitalists for ownership and control of the means of social reproduction.Yet another reason for opposing the violent capitalist social system.
The clearest instance of my point is Marx.Capital Volume 1 is pure theory abstracted from the capitalist production process, and is based upon the theoretical abstraction that “commodities exchange at their value”.Capital Volume 3 is the contingent application of the Volume 1 pure theory back upon the concrete capitalist production process it was abstracted from. And all of a sudden “commodities exchange at their price of production”. Consequently, Bohm-Bawerk gleefully crowed that Marx refutes himself.You have been making the same charge against me as Böhm-Bawerk made against Marx, in this case against my defence of the determinism of the materialist conception of history.And like all such “greedy reductionism”, which is a perfect analogy, you immediately assume that I must be wrong to defend what is clearly refuted by the contingent concrete world, whereas you want to “greedily reduce” pure abstract theory to impure concrete contingency.I am defending the materialist conception of history as an abstract scientific principle in opposition to these contrary “interpretations” that take the principle to be a description of the concrete contingency it was abstracted from, all of which ‘interpretations’ make the same categorical mistake, based as they are on the same anti-scientific misconception as Böhm-Bawerk.
[6] GENERAL SECRETARY’S PAGEIn the same issue of the “Seamen’s Journal”, General Secretary Jacob Johnson submitted his report on the “Murada” strike.¹
Seamens Journal, 25 Sept 1935, wrote:General Secretary’s Page THE LAST SEAMEN’S STRIKE² & THE MINORITY MOVEMENTTo be taken to task by the Minority Movement after the failure of a strike for which they themselves were responsible is nothing new.Their condemnation of others and glorification of themselves after such events can usually be found in such organs as the “Worker’s Weekly”, “Marine Worker”, and “Red Leader”, etc.It has been a tactic practiced by the Communist Party from the time of its birth in this country, and handed down to its offspring, the Minority Movement, and other illegitimate bodies in the Trades Union Movement, in order to smoke-screen their own blunders, and smother the lies, deception and misrepresentation in which they usually indulge during most strike issues, as was the case with them during the last [i.e. “Murada”] Seamen’s strike. [Minority Movement’s Accusations]The “Marine Worker” of September 5th [1935] reports that the Seamen’s strike would have been a success had it not been for Johnson, Clarke,³ etc. [This is] the old [Communist] story over again, History has repeated itself. The other fellows are to blame, not them.Referring to the Minority Movement in our August issue, did we not tell our readers: “If a Union move is a success, although they (the Minority Movement) might never participate in it, they claim the kudos; and in the event of failure they attribute the failure to others”.Little did we think, when we⁴ wrote those lines, that a practical demonstration would again prove the truth of the words at such an early date. [What Sort of Failure?]The “Marine Worker” bemoans the fact that [for them] the strike was a failure.What they mean by “a failure” is that[1] all the seamen did not walk out of the ships sheep-like upon the command of the Minority Movement[2] the strike lasted only three weeks. [Whose Failure]Anticipating success in an issue on propaganda based upon deliberate lies and misrepresentation of facts is typical of Minority Movement ignorance. It is to expect a house built upon a rotten foundation to withstand the fury of a cyclone. The practical impossibility of this is a lesson which has not yet been learnt by the M.M. and its followers.Referring to them in our August issue of the “Journal”, we said “lying with them, appears a virtue, and truth a vice”. [Scotching a Lie]Brazenly, without even a blush on his face, the Minority Movement’s main spokesman [Joe Keenan] in order to gull members into a false sense of security, commenced his lying campaign at one of the first meetings after the commencement of the strike, by stating that the Waterside Workers in Melbourne had promised us their full moral and financial support.This deliberate lie was exposed a few days layer, when I [Jacob Johnson] received the following lettergram⁵ from Mr Turley, the General Secretary of the Waterside Workers:“RE YOUR DISPUTE WITH SHIPOWNERS [STOP]. I ADVISE YOU MY FEDERATION WILL NOT BECOME INVOLVED OR DIRECTLY AFFECTED IN ANY WAY UNLESS AND UNTIL DEFINITELY INSTRUCTED BY THE A.C.T.U.⁶ AS THE PROPERLY CONSTITUTED INDUSTRIAL AUTHORITY TO DEAL WITH SUCH MATTERS AFFECTING MARITIME OR TRANSPORT UNIONS. TURLEY, GENERAL SECRETARY, WATERSIDE WORKERS’ FEDERATION MELBOURNE.”
At a subsequent meeting, the same spokesman [Joe Keenan] informed members that the SYDNEY Branch of the Waterside Workers had carried a resolution pledging us full support in “our struggle”. Not knowing what had taken place, I was unable to dispute this [allegation] at the time the statement was made, but immediately after the meeting I wrote the following letter:“Mr B. Mullins, Waterside Workers’ Federation, Sussex Street, Sydney.Dear Sir, At a mass meeting of members of the Seamen’s Union held in the basement of the Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday, the 14th instant, it was reported by Mr. Keenan, one of the members of our Strike Committee, that the Sydney Branch of your Federation had pledged its full support to the Seamen’s Union in its present dispute. I shall be extremely obliged if you will write and inform me whether your Union has considered this matter and, if so, the nature of the resolution carried. Thanking you in anticipation, Yours faithfully, (Signed) JACOB JOHNSON, General Secretary”The reply was as follows:“Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia Sydney Branch. Secretary: G. B. Mullins, M.L.C.⁷ 60–66 Sussex Street, Sydney, 16th August, 1935.Jacob Johnson, Esq.,⁸ General Secretary, Seamen’s Union, 12 King Street, Sydney.Dear Sir, In reply to your letter of yesterday’s date, I have written to inform you that the statement which you attribute to Mr. Keenan, a member of the Seamen’s Strike Committee, that the above branch at its meeting last Wednesday carried a resolution pledging its full support in the present dispute is not in accordance with the facts. I may add that when the matter of the strike was mentioned at the meeting a resolution was adopted by a two-to-one majority, deferring consideration pending receipt of official correspondence from your Union. I am Yours respectfully, (Signed) G. B. MULLINS, Secretary.” [A Whopper of Deception]Undaunted by the exposure of these deliberate lies, the same individual [Keenan], about thirty minutes before the strike was finally called off on 24th August, made a last desperate attempt or continue the farcical issue by appealing to about 1,200 members not to declare the strike off, as by doing so they were deserting their “comrades” the crew of the “MUNGANA”, who, he said, had been gaoled in Port Kembla for refusing to take the vessel to sea.This mean, low and contemptible lie was exposed when, on enquiry, we found, after the meeting, that the “MUNGANA”, instead of her crew being gaoled, had actually sailed from Port Kembla the previous day with her full original crew.Many of our members were, no doubt, fooled by the deceptive and lying propaganda of the Minority Movement in the last strike issue. Some of them might even be fooled by them again in future, but we have little doubt that the majority will not allow themselves to become the easy catspaws of their lying and distorted propaganda, as was the case in the last strike. [Advice to the Militant Minority Movement]“Cheats” some people will have it “never prosper”. Whether or not this is borne out by the facts does not concern us for the time being. What we are concerned about, however, is not to allow the Minority Movement, by cheating, lying and deceptive propaganda, to undermine the prestige and solidarity of the Seamen’s Union and, by the use of these methods, further their own ends.Honesty of purpose and speaking the truth is alien to the Minority Movement. Once they learn that, at its best, only remote temporary success is achievable by trickery and dissemination of lying propaganda, and that in the final analysis such methods must fail and only bring disrepute upon themselves, they might become useful in the Trades Union Movement.Whether or not they are amenable to such reform, time alone will be the deciding factor.In the meantime, however, let us remind them that the Seamen’s Union will not tolerate its policy being dictated by the Communist Party, through its agents and hirelings in the Minority Movement, or any of its other auxiliaries.The Seamen’s Union is quite capable of mapping out its own destiny without their advice and interference. Their intrigue, lies, corrupt practices, skite and bombast does not in any way impress us as being fearful opponents, as they have chosen to travel a path which — instead of gaining converts — must inevitably lead to them being despised by anyone possessed of a grain of decency as time goes on.Undeterred by the Minority Movement attempt to smash the Seamen’s Union, we calmly proceed with our reconstructive work in the Union,⁹ commenced a few years ago, being firmly convinced notwithstanding their noise that the vast majority of members will support us in this issue. Jacob Johnson General Secretary.
↩ [Table of Contents] Editor’s Notes¹ The style of the General Secretary’s report bears the stamp of Clarke’s editing, and was probably written in collaboration with Clarke. ↩ [Back]² “The Last Strike” [= The “Murada” Strike]. The reasonable presumption is that the strike was now over, since the men agreed to call it off after the shipowners unconditionally lifted their work ban against employing the “Murada” men. ↩ [Back]³ Clarke has scrubbed out of his copy of the “Seamen’s Journal” the additional names Turley and [illegible]. [Turley, as General Secretary of the Waterside Workers Federation, was presumably being blamed by the M.M. for his Union’s decision not to send the M.M.’s claimed financial support to help fighting the “Murada” strike.] ↩ [Back]⁴ The use of “we” implies the Union [or its General Secretary, Jacob Johnson]. ↩ [Back]⁵ Lettergram. Postal message transmitted [by morse code] over telegraph wire, and so kept to a minimum length. Text was UPPERCASE, and was charged by the word. Sentences terminated conventionally with the tag-word “STOP”. ↩ [Back]⁶ A.C.T.U. Australian Council of Trade Unions. Governing body of the Australian trade union movement. ↩ [Back]⁷ M.L.C. [parliamentary honorific title ≡ Member of the Legislative Council]. The upper house of the NSW State Parliament. ↩ [Back]⁸ Esq. [= Esquire] Common honorific for a lay person, in lieu of a title. ↩ [Back]⁹ Reconstructive work. [to come.] ↩ [Back] ↩ [Table of Contents] THE 1935 AUSTRALIAN SEAMEN’S STRIKE — Installment 6
What Happens When Science Abolishes ExploitationI’ll consider your question generally, because the issue of indeterminate and negative exploitation annihilated marxian economics for the whole of the immediate past generation. Negative exploitation killed marxian economics stone cold motherless dead. Real World Test of Indignation or ScienceIn 1961 Piero Sraffa reformulated Marxian economics as input–output relations expressed as simultaneous linear equations. To everyone’s surprise, value and exploitation turned out to be sometimes positive, sometimes negative and sometimes diverging in different directions.If marxian value and exploitation behaved in this incoherent fashion, then there was something seriously wrong with them. If the rate of exploitation is negative, the worker is robbing the capitalist. Marx refutes himself.The consequences were impossibly embarrassing upon Steedman’s unanswerable “Marx After Sraffa” and Samuelson’s triumphant “eraser” sneer at value’s proven redundancy, that Marx introduces value only to remove it in prices, when Sraffa showed he could have worked in prices all along.Sure, indignation was mightily aroused by this unexpected turn of events, but it proved totally ineffectual in rebutting Steedman and Nobel economist Samuelson, and effectively finished up rebutting itself.Marxian value theory literally died on the day of Steedman’s publication, followed up by his funeral oration in New Statesman, where he condescendingly suggested that Marx might still be remembered for his philosophical theory of fetishism, but little else.Theoretical marxism died— not figuratively, but literally. Just read Steedman then or Keen now — “good try boys, but” and their hectoring stung like hell until the whole tribe of so-called marxian economists succumbed, swapped sides, or gave up, powerless before alternative theoretical might.That was the parlous state of affairs until Andrew Kliman resuscitated Marxian value and exploitation theory in 2006, giving us a hitherto unrecognized insight into Marx.Kliman and colleagues showed that simultaneous equations unconsciously abstract from the effects of marxian value [we were just discussing on another thread (if “discussing” is the right word) scientific “abstraction”].The world of capitalist reproduction is not simultaneous in the Sraffian sense, which is the same false sense as Walras, and neoclassical [or marginalist] economics. The actual capitalist world is none of these.Meanwhile, taking stock, all the marxian indignation in the world proved its worth as delicious gravy to the bourgeois economists who enjoyed themselves enormously at Marx’s and his economists’ expense.Marxian indignation simply backfired, literally wiping out the indignant marxian economists, just as effectively as all ideal “responses” to real world problems invariably wipe out those who rely on them.Don’t you preach to me the efficacy of your indignation. It is the best way of demoralizing those who rely on it.In the real world, actual resolution came not through indignation but through marxian science. The very last thing you want us to rely on.That’s the real world proof against you that I offer.In this real world test, so close to the bone, indignation came out bedraggled, licking its self-inflicted wounds. It was a bloody hindrance!In the next installment I’ll give my detailed response to your specific problem.
OK, since you acknowledge relative autonomy, you may now be able to see why determinism is not straight-jacketing providence in either Castoriadis’s, Stillman’s or your own sense.Scientific determinism is rendered relative when applied back upon the messy contingent world from which we abstracted it in order to explain it.Determinism parallels autonomy. In scientific principle, within a paradigm, both are pure and absolute. When applied to the contingent world, their wings are clipped, and they emerge impure and relative. That is the way of all scientific explanation.
Well, you did say “reductionism or at least … greedy reductionism”.According to Wikipedia: “Greedy reductionism is when ‘in their eagerness for a bargain, in their zeal to explain too much too fast, scientists and philosophers … underestimate the complexities, trying to skip whole layers or levels of theory in their rush to fasten everything securely and neatly to the foundation’.”Oh, is that all you meant. I imagined you were dealing with something theoretically far more substantial. If discussion on consciousness-as-such generates such explanation, it reveals how debased the “discussion” has become.But, if that’s all you meant, I agree with you.My substantive point remains, that all autonomy is relative to the autonomy of the world and is not absolute, and so irreducibility is not absolute [Marx and Hegel].I did overplay my hand by reducing the materialist conception of history to “belly and labour”, and was dumb to assume that it would be taken figuratively, and it clearly backfired.
robbo203 wrote:That different levels of reality require different orders or explanation to make any sense at all seems to be a very strong reason for repudiating reductionism or at least what Dennett calls greedy reductionism. Indeed, would subscribing to such a form of reductionism even be compatible with socialist thinking? I don’t think so.Before jumping to such rash conclusions that our “levels of reality” are absolutely autonomous, and not partly relative to the necessary human practice of “divide and conquer”, and contrary assertion is absolutely incompatible with socialist thinking, you might first acknowledge that “levels of reality” are abstractions from experience.Abstractions from experience can only be turned into absolute barriers, if the world is actually disjointed like our theoretical apprehension of it. If you are here staking a claim that the world is actually isolated into conceptual pockets of parallel universes, then you find yourself totally incompatible with a foundation socialist thinker, who called such “thought” that fetishizes necessary human practice as mechanical materialism.It is impossible to put two electrons in the same quantum state, but it is possible to put two photons in the same state. But no-one today could claim with equal confidence that it is not possible to reduce chemistry to physics, because every chemist knows his science stands entirely upon the physics of atoms.I would urge caution. Yours is the sort of silly conclusion one is driven to by bourgeois discussion of consciousness [which is of minor concern to socialists], while socialists are concerned with the content of that consciousness, which we agree can be understood materialistically.Your problem is that of the autonomy of things/processes.Our concept of autonomy arises out of ordered experience. Like all concepts, it is neither wholly static [persistent] nor wholly dynamic [change] but is instead their conceptual union within an abstract theory. Even the apparently trivial autonomy of experiencing the unity of a cuckoo call, is mediated by abstract theory.Contrary to your assertion, there is no abstract reason why our theoretical autonomies, such as explanatory levels, are not subservient to the overall autonomy of the world, and so are relative, and can become suitable candidates themselves for theoretical treatment. [Engels gets roundly condemned for criticizing those who fetishize theoretical levels as absolute barriers, but he is correct.]In modern terms, we can readily conceive irreducibility-of-level as merely an apprehension of Thomas Kuhn’s incommensurability, which he devised for incompatibilities within theoretical paradigms. Here it reveals itself across, or between, disparate systems of paradigms.Kuhn [unlike his contemporary, the baboon Feyerabend] never thought incommensurability was absolutely unbridgeable. We made the chasm, and we can work out how to cross it. If you don’t accept that, you really are a naive closet determinist, no different from your hated economic determinist.All of Marx’s Capital and especially his Theories of Surplus Value consists in bridging the divide between disparate “incommensurable” paradigms.For Marx, experience is ordered autonomously because the world is so ordered. The theoretical autonomies we grasp are our idealizations of the concrete autonomies of the world. We treat them as theoretically absolute, even though we know they are really relative.When we apply them back upon the world, the impure contingent world is not kind enough to let them act out their autonomy in pure isolation, free from contaminating interference. In this practice of application, when we reconnect pure abstraction with its impure source, we are made forcibly aware that our theoretical sciences are themselves contingent.Thus, in practice, we are forced to compare the abstract deterministic content of theoretical abstract categories of thought against the measured experienced phenomenal concrete, and prove that our theory describes actuality. [Engels’s “proof of the pudding”.] Without transgressing from theory to practice, we remain trapped forever within the abstract.In other words, your assertion is not proved by our necessary mode of explanation. It can only be proved in practice, and we already know that Marx was able to bridge the greatest chasm of them all by reducing human consciousness to our hungry belly and our compulsion to labour.I urge you not to jump to rash conclusions about refutation of socialism based on the contemplation of consciousness as such, and not from the only thing we can trust, the comprehension of its content.
[Just for your benefit, since you clearly approach my stuff from the prejudiced viewpoint that it corresponds to an economic determinist caricature, just drop that imbecility and try to understand what I am saying without misconstruing it from a predetermined prejudiced position.]You might find the following worth persevering with.Steedman proved that value and exploitation could be (1) negative and were (2) redundant, because everything could be expressed in terms of price.And nobody was able to disprove him. Nobody.Steedman’s neo-ricardian science had thereby demolished Marx, marxian science, and the socialist case. Marx was wrong to have dismissed Ricardo, etc.How would you have defended Marx when marxian value and exploitation had been proven beyond obvious doubt that they could be negative and did not influence price and profit at all. Our key concepts were meaningless.I automatically assumed you were aware of this.Indignation and your “value judgement” were all that remained to rely on. Exactly your scenario.As a consequence, of conditions most favourable to your case, you’d expect socialism, freed of encumbering science, to thrive. For marxian science was dead, and swept aside. Value judgement had the field to itself. I’m unsure whether you are a product of these value-judgement circumstances, but in any case your trump card of “at bottom” value judgment had no competition throughout three and a half decades. It held a monopoly.Yet, in circumstances most favourable to your case, socialism waned while triumphant Sraffian science [look up Okishio] thrived in its stead. And Sraffian science proved that Marx was way off the mark, up the creek. Who in his right mind could now defend Marx?Socialists might keep on reciting Volume 1, but as far as anyone knew they were spouting nonsense.The simplest approach these days for you to get to comprehend the demolition of Marx that took place is to read the chapter on Marx in Keen’s popular book “Debunking Economics”. It describes the anti-value/anti-exploitation view that dominated in the aftermath of the demolition, and is still Keen’s view today.Keen defends the Marx of Vols 2 and 3 only insofar as they abstract from marxian value and exploitation, but he scorns marxian value and exploitation as meaningless concepts. How would you go about rebutting him?You can rant and rave over exploitation and value as much as you like, but if they can both be negative and redundant, and so economically incoherent, and thus not explanatory, then you are ranting and raving in defence of nonsense.Ask someone independent of me, if you want to know what happened from the 1970s to the 2000s, if you don’t trust my account. Ask the author of the Standard article on Kliman’s book, if you want confirmation of what I am saying, if you don’t trust me.It all started, robbo, after Sraffa embroiled Samuelson, and bested him, but then forced labour theory of value historian Meek [look at the Preface to his second edition of his “Labour Theory of Value” book] to renounce the labour theory of value!That was devastating enough. It soon became apparent that the implications of Sraffa’s remarkable book “The Production of Commodities by Commodities" were that Marxian economics was irrelevant because value didn’t influence price. Sraffa’s implications were soon recognized to hold for the Monthly Review school of Sweezy, etc. They were all pervasive.Marxian theory was in terminal crisis. The rest of the marxian economists quickly succumbed, falling like a house of cards, until it became embarrassing to hold to marxian value and exploitation. The few professional marxian economists who held out, like Anwar Shaik [whose non-“solution” dear old David Harvey fondly believes in] reproduced Sraffa in veiled or what’s called iterative form.Make no mistake about it, Sraffa inadvertently killed Marx, and marxian value along with marxian exploitation. The SPGB simply ignored the problem and went on teaching Vol 1 just as Marx wrote it, and was absolutely correct in doing so, but it too was powerless to mount a case against the Sraffians who had proven that Capital Vol 1 was nonsense. The fact remained that when Capital was expressed in input–output form in linear algebra, value and exploitation vanished, and indignation and “moral value judgement” were the sole remaining residue, which is a real-life instance of your fairy-tale scenario.Lots of people ranted and raved then, and solved absolutely nothing. Marxian value and exploitation remained resolutely incoherent concepts that ranting and raving could not save from obscurityYou rant and rave against me now, but it similarly doesn’t kill scientific socialism, although for you it “gives the wrong impression”.It’s you, apparently having slept through it all, who are insular, and— unlike you and your war dance—I am not grandstanding. I am describing actual history. The indignation arises naturally out of that. There’s no need to grandstand.The SPGB would be a standing joke in persisting with Marxian economics based on marxian value and exploitation if it wasn’t for Andrew Kliman.¹Forget about your perceived problems with the MCH [by the way, I’m exploding Stillman in my next post] it was the generally agreed core of marxian economics—value and exploitation—that were proved to be irredeemably problematic.In such circumstances, the SPGB would be clinging onto concepts that had been convincingly proven by linear algebra to be meaningless.So don’t knock Kliman. You owe the coherence of any argument you mount to his reclamation of Marx.You, standing on ignorance, have the cheek to grandstand that marxian materialism, as I express and defend it, is outdated. Grow up, and at minimum try to understand what I’m about to say in my next post. I want a reasoned response, not a rant and rave.Just try for once to comprehend the real-world implications of the death of Marxian science during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, that many still hold in the 2010s.Don’t you dare pull that miserable stunt again of assuming that I don’t recognize the moral dimensions of socialism.Dear Socialist Punk, who is going through difficult times, and is the founder of the original thread, knows my personal views. But I don’t parade them. Footnote¹ Kliman’s book “Reclaiming Marx’s Capital” is descriptive, interpretative [hermeneutics], and mathematical, which makes it inaccessible to some [its mathematics are typeset most ghastly].It is available, for example, from http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reclaiming-Marxs-Capital-Inconsistency-Dunayevskaya-ebook/dp/B00EORHR5Q/ref=la_B001JSALNS_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399169860&sr=1-2General information can be found from the Wikipedia articles on Andrew Kliman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Kliman, and the TSSI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_Single_System_Interpretation ↩ [Back]
