So this is a real update. I know you all love my cut and paste jobbies about what I'm reading that day. But here we go, what's going on with my life for those who cares.
I won the battle with the landlord. The fucking goof didn't even show up for the third hearing that he had adjourned so his case got dropped and mine ended up winning because he wasnt there to defend himself. Not that he had a case anyways. You cant threaten someone with eviction because they wont pay your illegal rent increase. Nor can you demand that roommates be on a lease. And just so everyone is informed: LEASES DO NOT EXPIRE. Once the term of the lease is up, it goes month to month bound to the same articles in the lease, the main one being rent and some other small items.
I urge anyone having landlord problems to organize, educate yourself and fight, fight FIGHT!!! Any information can be checked out on the Landlord and Tenant Board's website: http://www.ltb.gov.on.ca/
Positive as it is to school the landlord, its a sad time at the apartment. Udai and I bid farewell to Mike the Mosher. He's heading back to newcastle to work for the summer. Unsure as to whether or not he'll be back for the fall. With Mike on the injured list, its time to bring up rookie sensation Jason Mansey.
I think this will be a great summer. Ive always enjoyed Jay and everyone speaks highly of the dude. Beers, BBQ and bikerides are what I have envisioned for pretty much the whole summer.
Sarah is also moving in part time. She got a couple of jobs up on Bloor Street. She's going to be serving until she finds a "big girl job". Kinda stoked on this. Shes pretty much over all the time anyways...its just semi-official now. <3 <3 <3
I'm getting more and more involved in my activism. Volunteering and attending meetings and actions seem to be how I'm filling my time when I'm not partying or working. Attended my first CAIA (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid) meeting. Amazing group. So dynamic and really gung ho. Its a pretty busy time at CAIA right now in preperation for for the 60th anniversry of the Nakba.
Nakba is arabic for catastrophe. 700, 000 Arabs were forced from their homes during the war of independance with the newly formed state of Israel. So coincidentally, its also the 60th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. No plans to engage any of the zionists. We've got our shit and they have theirs. Hopefully people realise that international law and the fundamental right of return are paramount issues in peace negotiations.
Two big actions in the month of May. No one is illegal march for immigrant rights on the 3rd. And the march in solidarity for the Palestinian struggle on the 10th. Anyone who can make it out...please do.
I bought a bicycle the other day. Slapped down 350 on a nice hybrid. Seems to ride well. Im going to try biking to work. Itll be good to get excercise on the days when Im working. For some reason I cant motivate myself to hit the gym on the days when I work.
Anyways, this is my attempt at an update. I realised I've lost my flair for writing. I really need to do this on the regular. It helps me pinpoint my thoughts and focus.
Im thinking about taking a university distance education course. Its a toss up with buckling down and trying to buy a house or rent for a longer time but enrich my brain with either: Political Economy, Economics or Political Science. Another one I think would be worth while is Labour History. If I want to get more involved in my union it would be a very effective course.
Speaking of getting involved in my union, I also attended my first meeting. It was kind of dry but I figured I have to start attending them to get my face known. Im going to try and get them to pass resolutions similar to the ones CUPE and CUPW passed in regards to recognizing Israel as an apartheid state and supporting the boycott, divest and sanction campaign.
So I think that about does it. Havent seen some faces in a while. Hopefully going to try and catch up with some people soon. Word.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Political economy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy (e.g. Adam Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow[1]), it developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states — polities, hence political economy.
In contradiction to the theory of the Physiocrats, wherein land was the source of all wealth, some political economists proposed the labour theory of value (introduced by John Locke, developed by Adam Smith, and later by Karl Marx), according to which labour is the true source of value. Many political economists also noted the accelerating development of technology, whose role in economic and social relations was important (Joseph Schumpeter).
In late nineteenth century, the term "political economy" was generally replaced by the term economics, used by those seeking to place the study of economy upon mathematical and axiomatic bases, rather than the structural relationships of production and consumption (cf. marginalism, Alfred Marshall).
History of the term
Originally, political economy meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the newly-born capitalist system.[citation needed] It first was used in England in the eighteenth century, in replacing the earlier approach of the (French) physiocrats; Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx were the principal exponents of political economy. In 1805, Thomas Malthus became England's first professor of political economy, at the East India Company College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire. The world's first professorship in political economy was established in 1763 at the University of Vienna, Austria; Joseph von Sonnenfels was the first tenured professor.
In the United States, political economy first was taught at the College of William and Mary, in 1784; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was a required textbook.[1] Glasgow University, where Smith was chairman of Logic and Moral Philosophy, changed the name of its Department of Political Economy to the Department of Economics (ostensibly to avoid confusing prospective undergraduates) in academic year 1997-1998, leaving the Class of 1998 as the last to be graduated with a Scottish master of arts degree in Political Economy.
Current approaches to political economy
Contemporarily, political economy refers to different, but related, approaches to studying economic and political behaviours, ranging from the combining of economics with other fields, to the using of different, fundamental assumptions that challenge orthodox economic assumptions:
Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics, law, and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system — capitalist, socialist, mixed — influence each other. When narrowly construed, it refers to applied topics in economics implicating public policy, such as monopoly, market protection, government fiscal policy,[2] and rent seeking.[3]
Historians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes beneficial to their interests.[citation needed]
"International political economy" (IPE) is an interdisciplinary field comprising approaches to international trade and finance, and state policies affecting international trade, i.e. monetary and fiscal policies. In the U.S., these approaches are associated with the journal International Organization, which, in the 1970s, became the leading journal of international political economy under the editorship of Robert Keohane, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Stephen Krasner. They are also associated with the journal The Review of International Political Economy. There also is a more critical school of IPE, inspired by Karl Polanyi's work; two major figures are Susan Strange and Robert W. Cox.[4]
Economists and political scientists often associate the term with approaches using rational choice assumptions, especially game theory, in explaining phenomena beyond economics' standard remit, in which context, the term "positive political economy" is common.[5]
Anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers, use political economy in referring to the neo-Marxian approaches to development and underdevelopment postulated by André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.
Contemporary political economy students treat economic ideologies as the phenomenon to explain, per the traditions of Marxian political economy without its deterministic class war assumptions. Thus, Charles S. Maier suggests that a political economy approach: interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises....in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained. [6] This approach informs Andrew Gamble's The Free Economy and the Strong State (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), and Colin Hay's The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester University Press, 1999). It also informs much work published in New Political Economy an international journal founded by Sheffield University scholars in 1996.[7]
Disciplines related to political economy
Because political economy is not a unified discipline, there are studies using the term that overlap in subject matter, but have radically different perspectives:
Sociology studies the effects of persons' involvement in society as members of groups, and how that changes their ability to function. Many sociologists start from a perspective of production-determining relation from Karl Marx.
Political Science focuses on the interaction between institutions and human behavior, the way in which the former shapes choices and how the latter change institutional frameworks. Along with economics, it has made the best works in the field by authors like Shepsle, Ostrom, Ordeshook, among others.
Anthropology studies political economy by studying the relationship between the world capitalist system and local cultures.
Psychology is the fulcrum on which political economy exerts its force in studying decision-making (not only in prices), but as the field of study whose assumptions model political economy.
History documents change, using it to argue political economy; historical works have political economy as the narrative's frame.
Economics focuses on markets by leaving the political - governments, states, legal frameworks - as givens. Economics dropped the adjective political in the 19th century, but works backwards, by describing "The Ideal Market", urging governments to formulate policy and law to approach said ideal. Economists and political economists often disagree on what is preeminent in developing production, market, and political structure theories.
Law concerns the creation of policy and its mediation via political actions that have specific results, it deals with political economy as political capital and as social infrastructure - and the sociological results of one society upon another.
Human Geography is concerned with politico-economic processes, emphasizing space and environment.
Ecology deals with political economy, because human activity has the greatest effect upon the environment, its central concern being the environment's suitability for human activity. The ecological effects of economic activity spur research upon changing market economy incentives.
International Relations often uses political economy to study political and economic development.
Cultural Studies studies social class, production, labor, race, gender, and sex.
References
^ Bucholz (1989) New Ideas from Dead Economists, p.12
^ Groenwegen (1987, p.906).
^ Anne O. Krueger, "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, 64(3), June 1974, pp.291-303
^ Cohen, Benjamin J. (2007), ‘The transatlantic divide: Why are American and British IPE so different?’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 2, May 2007
^ Alt, James E. and Kenneth Shepsle (eds.) (1990), Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (Cambridge [UK]; New York: Cambridge University Press).
^ Charles S. Mayer "In search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp.3-6.
^ cf: David Baker, "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pp.227–250.
Groenwegen, Peter (1987). "'political economy' and 'economics'," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 904-07.
Winch, Donald, Riches and poverty : an intellectual history of political economy in Britain, 1750-1834 Cambridge [etc.] : Cambridge U.P., 1996.
Winch, Donald, "The emergence of Economics as a Science 1750-1870". In: The Fontana Economic History of Europe, Vol. 3. London: Collins/Fontana, 1973.
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy (e.g. Adam Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow[1]), it developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states — polities, hence political economy.
In contradiction to the theory of the Physiocrats, wherein land was the source of all wealth, some political economists proposed the labour theory of value (introduced by John Locke, developed by Adam Smith, and later by Karl Marx), according to which labour is the true source of value. Many political economists also noted the accelerating development of technology, whose role in economic and social relations was important (Joseph Schumpeter).
In late nineteenth century, the term "political economy" was generally replaced by the term economics, used by those seeking to place the study of economy upon mathematical and axiomatic bases, rather than the structural relationships of production and consumption (cf. marginalism, Alfred Marshall).
History of the term
Originally, political economy meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the newly-born capitalist system.[citation needed] It first was used in England in the eighteenth century, in replacing the earlier approach of the (French) physiocrats; Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx were the principal exponents of political economy. In 1805, Thomas Malthus became England's first professor of political economy, at the East India Company College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire. The world's first professorship in political economy was established in 1763 at the University of Vienna, Austria; Joseph von Sonnenfels was the first tenured professor.
In the United States, political economy first was taught at the College of William and Mary, in 1784; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was a required textbook.[1] Glasgow University, where Smith was chairman of Logic and Moral Philosophy, changed the name of its Department of Political Economy to the Department of Economics (ostensibly to avoid confusing prospective undergraduates) in academic year 1997-1998, leaving the Class of 1998 as the last to be graduated with a Scottish master of arts degree in Political Economy.
![[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Priorities_of_the_College_%28W%26M%29.jpg){kind=link}
Current approaches to political economy
Contemporarily, political economy refers to different, but related, approaches to studying economic and political behaviours, ranging from the combining of economics with other fields, to the using of different, fundamental assumptions that challenge orthodox economic assumptions:
Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics, law, and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system — capitalist, socialist, mixed — influence each other. When narrowly construed, it refers to applied topics in economics implicating public policy, such as monopoly, market protection, government fiscal policy,[2] and rent seeking.[3]
Historians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes beneficial to their interests.[citation needed]
"International political economy" (IPE) is an interdisciplinary field comprising approaches to international trade and finance, and state policies affecting international trade, i.e. monetary and fiscal policies. In the U.S., these approaches are associated with the journal International Organization, which, in the 1970s, became the leading journal of international political economy under the editorship of Robert Keohane, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Stephen Krasner. They are also associated with the journal The Review of International Political Economy. There also is a more critical school of IPE, inspired by Karl Polanyi's work; two major figures are Susan Strange and Robert W. Cox.[4]
Economists and political scientists often associate the term with approaches using rational choice assumptions, especially game theory, in explaining phenomena beyond economics' standard remit, in which context, the term "positive political economy" is common.[5]
Anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers, use political economy in referring to the neo-Marxian approaches to development and underdevelopment postulated by André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.
Contemporary political economy students treat economic ideologies as the phenomenon to explain, per the traditions of Marxian political economy without its deterministic class war assumptions. Thus, Charles S. Maier suggests that a political economy approach: interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises....in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained. [6] This approach informs Andrew Gamble's The Free Economy and the Strong State (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), and Colin Hay's The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester University Press, 1999). It also informs much work published in New Political Economy an international journal founded by Sheffield University scholars in 1996.[7]
Disciplines related to political economy
Because political economy is not a unified discipline, there are studies using the term that overlap in subject matter, but have radically different perspectives:
Sociology studies the effects of persons' involvement in society as members of groups, and how that changes their ability to function. Many sociologists start from a perspective of production-determining relation from Karl Marx.
Political Science focuses on the interaction between institutions and human behavior, the way in which the former shapes choices and how the latter change institutional frameworks. Along with economics, it has made the best works in the field by authors like Shepsle, Ostrom, Ordeshook, among others.
Anthropology studies political economy by studying the relationship between the world capitalist system and local cultures.
Psychology is the fulcrum on which political economy exerts its force in studying decision-making (not only in prices), but as the field of study whose assumptions model political economy.
History documents change, using it to argue political economy; historical works have political economy as the narrative's frame.
Economics focuses on markets by leaving the political - governments, states, legal frameworks - as givens. Economics dropped the adjective political in the 19th century, but works backwards, by describing "The Ideal Market", urging governments to formulate policy and law to approach said ideal. Economists and political economists often disagree on what is preeminent in developing production, market, and political structure theories.
Law concerns the creation of policy and its mediation via political actions that have specific results, it deals with political economy as political capital and as social infrastructure - and the sociological results of one society upon another.
Human Geography is concerned with politico-economic processes, emphasizing space and environment.
Ecology deals with political economy, because human activity has the greatest effect upon the environment, its central concern being the environment's suitability for human activity. The ecological effects of economic activity spur research upon changing market economy incentives.
International Relations often uses political economy to study political and economic development.
Cultural Studies studies social class, production, labor, race, gender, and sex.
References
^ Bucholz (1989) New Ideas from Dead Economists, p.12
^ Groenwegen (1987, p.906).
^ Anne O. Krueger, "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, 64(3), June 1974, pp.291-303
^ Cohen, Benjamin J. (2007), ‘The transatlantic divide: Why are American and British IPE so different?’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 2, May 2007
^ Alt, James E. and Kenneth Shepsle (eds.) (1990), Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (Cambridge [UK]; New York: Cambridge University Press).
^ Charles S. Mayer "In search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp.3-6.
^ cf: David Baker, "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pp.227–250.
Groenwegen, Peter (1987). "'political economy' and 'economics'," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 904-07.
Winch, Donald, Riches and poverty : an intellectual history of political economy in Britain, 1750-1834 Cambridge [etc.] : Cambridge U.P., 1996.
Winch, Donald, "The emergence of Economics as a Science 1750-1870". In: The Fontana Economic History of Europe, Vol. 3. London: Collins/Fontana, 1973.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Historical materialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Historical materialism is the methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history which was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx himself never used the term but referred to his approach as "the materialist conception of history".
Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to live, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies). The fundamental proposition of historical materialism is premised in the following materialist conception:
“
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
”
—Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Historical materialism as an explanatory system has been expanded and refined by thousands of academic studies since Marx’s death. Although Marx said he was only proposing a guideline to historical research, by the twentieth century the concept of historical materialism became a keystone of modern communist doctrine.
Key ideas
Historical materialism started from a fundamental underlying reality of human existence: that in order for human beings to survive and continue existence from generation to generation, it is necessary for them to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life. While this may seem obvious it was only with Marx that this was seen as foundation for understanding human society and historical development. Marx then extended this premise by asserting the importance of the fact that, in order to carry out production and exchange people have to enter into very definite social relations, most fundamentally production relations.
However, production does not get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrarily or random relations that they choose at will. Human beings collectively work on nature but do not do the same work; there is a division of labor in which people not only do different jobs, but some people live from the work of others by owning the means of production. How this is done depends on the type of society. Production is carried out through very definite relations between people. And, in turn, these production relations are determined by the level and character of the productive forces that are present at any given time in history. For Marx, productive forces, refer to the means of production such as the tools, instruments, technology, land, raw materials, and human knowledge and abilities in terms of using these means of production.
Following Marx, writers who identify with historical materialism usually postulate that society has moved through a number of types or modes of production. That is, the character of the production relations is determined by the character of the productive forces; these could be the simple tools and instruments of early human existence, or the move developed machinery and technology of present age. The main modes of production Marx identified generally include primitive communism or tribal society (a prehistoric stage), ancient society, feudalism and capitalism. In each of these social stages, people interact with nature and make their livings in different ways. The surplus from production is allotted in different manners. Ancient society was based on a ruling class of slave owners and a class of slaves, feudalism on landowners and serfs. Capitalism is organized on the basis of capitalist class who privately own the means of production, distribution and exchange (e.g. factories, mines, shops and banks), and the working class who live by selling their socialized labour to the capitalists for wages.
Marx identified the production relations of society (arising on the basis of a given productive forces) as the economic base of society. He also explained that on the foundation of the economic base there arise certain political institutions, laws, customs, culture, etc., and ideas, ways of thinking, morality, etc. These constituted the political/ideological superstructure of society. That all of this not only have as their origin in the economic base but also ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base, i.e. the way people come together in order to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life.
Historical materialism can be seen to rest on the following principles:
1. The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.
2. There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labour of others.
3. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production.
4. The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces.
5. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, where by the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it.
Marx’s clearest formulation of his "Materialist Conception of History" was in the 1859 Preface to his book A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Marx himself introduces the concept in the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The relevant passage is reproduced here:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production."[1]
Key implications in the study and understanding of History
Many writers note that historical materialism represented a revolution in human thought, and a break from previous ways of understanding the underlying basis of change within various human societies. The theory shows what Marx called a "coherence" in human history, because of the fact that each generation inherits the productive forces developed previously and in turn further develops them before passing them on to the next generation. Further that this coherence increasingly involves more of humanity the more the productive forces develop and expand to bind people together in production and exchange.
This understanding counters the notion that human history is simply a series of accidents, either without any underlying cause or caused by supernatural beings or forces exerting their will on society. This posits that history is made as a result of struggle between different social classes rooted in the underlying economic base.
Marx's materialism
While the "historical" part of historical materialism does not cause a comprehension problem (i.e., it means the present is explained by analysing the past), the term materialism is more difficult. Historical materialism uses "materialism" to make three separate points, where the truth or falsehood of one point does not affect the others.
First there is metaphysical or philosophical materialism, in which matter-in-motion is primary and thought about matter-in-motion, or thought about abstractions, is secondary.
Second, there is belief that economic processes form the material base of society upon which institutions and ideas derive and rest. While the economy is the base structure of society, it does not follow that everything in history is determined by the economy, just as every feature of a house is not determined by its foundations.
Third, there is the idea that in the capitalist mode of production the behaviour of actors in the market economy (means of production, distribution and exchange, the relations of production) plays the major role in configuring society.
Historical Materialism and the future
In his analysis of the movement of history, Marx predicted the breakdown of capitalism (as a result of class struggle and the falling rate of profit), and the establishment in time of a communist society in which class-based human conflict would be overcome. The means of production would be held in the common ownership and used for the common good.
Marxist beliefs about history
According to Marxist theorists, history develops in accordance with the following observations:
Social progress is driven by progress in the material, productive forces a society has at its disposal (technology, labour, capital goods, etc.)
Humans are inevitably involved in production relations (roughly speaking, economic relationships or institutions), which constitute our most decisive social relations.
Production relations progress, with a degree of inevitability, following and corresponding to the development of the productive forces.
Relations of production help determine the degree and types of the development of the forces of production. For example, capitalism tends to increase the rate at which the forces develop and stresses the accumulation of capital.
Both productive forces and production relations progress independently of mankind's strategic intentions or will.
The superstructure -- the cultural and institutional features of a society, its ideological materials -- is ultimately an expression of the mode of production (which combines both the forces and relations of production) on which the society is founded.
Every type of state is a powerful institution of the ruling class; the state is an instrument which one class uses to secure its rule and enforce its preferred production relations (and its exploitation) onto society.
State power is usually only transferred from one class to another by social and political upheaval.
When a given style of production relations no longer supports further progress in the productive forces, either further progress is strangled, or 'revolution' must occur.
The actual historical process is not predetermined but depends on the class struggle, especially the organization and consciousness of the working class.
This sketch is abstract - real historical understanding needed for developing political strategy and tactics must involve "concrete analysis of concrete conditions" (V.I. Lenin).
Alienation and freedom
Hunter-gatherer societies were structured so that the economic forces and the political forces were one and the same. The elements of force and relation operated together, harmoniously. In the feudal society, the political forces of the kings and nobility had their relations with the economic forces of the villages through serfdom. The serfs, although not free, were tied to both forces and, thus, not completely alienated. Capitalism, Marx argued, completely separates the economic and political forces, leaving them to have relations through a limiting government. He takes the state to be a sign of this separation - it exists to manage the massive conflicts of interest which arise between classes in all those societies based on property relations.
The history of historical materialism
Marx’s attachment to materialism arose from his doctoral research on the philosophy of Epicurus [2], as well as his reading of Adam Smith and other writers in classical political economy. Historical materialism builds upon the idea that became current in philosophy from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that the development of human society has moved through a series of stages, from hunting and gathering, through pastoralism and cultivation, to commercial society. [3].
Frederick Engels wrote: "I use 'historical materialism' to designate the view of the course of history, which seeks the ultimate causes and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, with the consequent division of society into distinct classes and the struggles of these classes." [1]
Warnings against misuse
"One has to "leave philosophy aside" (Wigand, p. 187, cf. Hess, Die letzten Philosophen, p. 8), one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the philosophers... Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love." (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, International Publishers, ed. Chris Arthur, p. 103)
Marx himself took care to indicate that he was only proposing a guideline to historical research (Leitfaden or Auffassung), and was not providing any substantive "theory of history" or "grand philosophy of history", let alone a "master-key to history". Numerous times, he and Engels expressed irritation with dilettante academics who sought to knock up their skimpy historical knowledge as quickly as possible into some grand theoretical system that would explain "everything" about history. To their great annoyance, the materialist outlook was used as an excuse for not studying history.
In the 1872 Preface to the French edition of Das Kapital Vol. 1, Marx also emphasised that "There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits". Reaching a scientific understanding was hard work. Conscientious, painstaking research was required, instead of philosophical speculation and unwarranted, sweeping generalisations.
But having abandoned abstract philosophical speculation in his youth, Marx himself showed great reluctance during the rest of his life about offering any generalities or universal truths about human existence or human history. The first explicit and systematic summary of the materialist interpretation of history published, Anti-Dühring, was written by Frederick Engels.
One of the aims of Engels's polemic Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (written with Marx's approval) was to ridicule the easy "world schematism" of philosophers, who invented the latest wisdom from behind their writing desks. Towards the end of his life, in 1877, Marx wrote a letter to editor of the Russian paper Otetchestvennye Zapisky, which significantly contained the following disclaimer:
"(...) If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction - she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not enough for my critic. He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.)"
Marx goes on to illustrate how the same factors can in different historical contexts produce very different results, so that quick and easy generalisations are not really possible. To indicate how seriously Marx took research, it is interesting to note that when he died, his estate contained several cubic metres of Russian statistical publications (it was, as the old Marx observed, in Russia that his ideas gained most influence).
But what is true is that insofar Marx and Engels regarded historical processes as law-governed processes, the possible future directions of historical development were to a great extent limited and conditioned by what happened before. Retrospectively, historical processes could be understood to have happened by necessity in certain ways and not others, and to some extent at least, the most likely variants of the future could be specified on the basis of careful study of the known facts.
Towards the end of his life, Engels commented several times about the abuse of historical materialism. In a letter to Conrad Schmidt dated August 5, 1890, he stated that "And if this man (i.e., Paul Barth) has not yet discovered that while the material mode of existence is the primum agens this does not preclude the ideological spheres from reacting upon it in their turn, though with a secondary effect, he cannot possibly have understood the subject he is writing about. (...) The materialist conception of history has a lot of [dangerous friends] nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late 70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist." (...) In general, the word "materialistic" serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge — for economic history is still in its swaddling clothes! — constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous. And after that a Barth can come along and attack the thing itself, which in his circle has indeed been degraded to a mere phrase." [2]
Finally, in a letter to Franz Mehring, Frederick Engels dated 14 July 1893, Engels stated:
"...there is only one other point lacking, which, however, Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side — the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about — for the sake of the content. This has given our adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings, of which Paul Barth is a striking example." [3]
Historical materialism in Marxist thought
In 1880, about three years before Marx died, Friedrich Engels indicated that he accepted the usage of the term "historical materialism". Recalling the early days of the new interpretation of history, he stated:
"We, at that time, were all materialists, or, at least, very advanced free-thinkers, and to us it appeared inconceivable that almost all educated people in England should believe in all sorts of impossible miracles, and that even geologists like Buckland and Mantell should contort the facts of their science so as not to clash too much with the myths of the book of Genesis; while, in order to find people who dared to use their own intellectual faculties with regard to religious matters, you had to go amongst the uneducated, the "great unwashed", as they were then called, the working people, especially the Owenite Socialists". (Preface to the English edition of his pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)[4]
In a foreword to his essay Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886), three years after Marx's death, Engels claimed confidently that "In the meantime, the Marxist world outlook has found representatives far beyond the boundaries of Germany and Europe and in all the literary languages of the world." [5]
In his old age, Engels speculated about a new cosmology or ontology which would show the principles of dialectics to be universal features of reality. He also drafted an article on The part played by labour in the transition from Ape to Man, apparently a theory of anthropogenesis which would integrate the insights of Marx and Charles Darwin [6] (This is discussed by Charles Woolfson in The Labour Theory of Culture: a Re-examination of Engels Theory of Human Origins).
At the very least, Marxism had now been born, and "historical materialism" had become a distinct philosophical doctrine, subsequently elaborated and systematised by intellectuals like Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov and Nikolai Bukharin. Even so, up to the 1930s many of Marx's earlier works were still unknown, and in reality most self-styled Marxists had not read beyond Capital Vol. 1. Isaac Deutscher provides an anecdote about the knowledge of Marx in that era:
"Capital is a tough nut to crack, opined Ignacy Daszyński, one of the best known socialist "people's tribunes" around the turn of the 20th century, but anyhow he had not read it. But, he said, Karl Kautsky had read it, and written a popular summary of the first volume. He hadn't read this either, but Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, the party theoretician, had read Kautsky's pamphlet and summarised it. He also had not read Kelles-Krauz's text, but the financial expert of the party, Hermann Diamand, had read it and had told him, i.e. Daszynski, everything about it". [7]
After Lenin's death in 1924, Marxism was transformed into Marxism-Leninism and from there to Maoism or Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought in China which some regard as the "true doctrine" and others as a "state religion".
In the early years of the 20th century, historical materialism was often treated by socialist writers as interchangeable with dialectical materialism, a formulation never used by Friedrich Engels however. According to many Marxists influenced by Soviet Marxism, historical materialism is a specifically sociological method, while dialectical materialism refers to a more general, abstract, philosophy. The Soviet orthodox Marxist tradition, influential for half a century, based itself on Joseph Stalin's pamphlet Dialectical and Historical materialism and on textbooks issued by the "Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union".
Recent versions of historical materialism
Several scholars have argued that historical materialism ought to be revised in the light of modern scientific knowledge. Jürgen Habermas believes historical materialism "needs revision in many respects", especially because it has ignored the significance of communicative action. Leszek Nowak argues explicitly for a post-Marxist historical materialism.
Göran Therborn has argued that the method of historical materialism should be applied to historical materialism as intellectual tradition, and to the history of Marxism itself.
In the early 1980s Paul Hirst and Barry Hindess elaborated a structural Marxism interpretation of historical materialism.
Regulation theory, especially in the work of Michel Aglietta draws extensively on historical materialism.
Criticisms
There is objection by critics that the historical materialist conception does not hold true with retrospect upon history, and that adherents are biased to arbitrarily represent history according to the theory.
Some critics have argued that such a method can be twisted into trying to force the course of history in a particular direction, based on a false belief that one "knows" the way history is moving. The idea here is that the doctrine (or Marxism) really gets in the way of genuinely scientific historical research, and leads to political projects which run roughshod over the morals, interests and beliefs of the people.
In reply, Marxists have pointed to historical analyses by for example Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, Robin Blackburn and Perry Anderson among many others as valid examples of the application of historical materialism to the historical facts. They have also pointed to the social and material progress in many countries which would not have occurred without Marxist movements. In postmodern theory, however, the very notion of historical progress is contested.
Philosopher of science Karl Popper, in his Conjectures and Refutations, critiqued such claims of the explanatory power or valid application of historical materialism by pointing out that it could explain or explain away any fact brought before it, making it unfalsifiable.
Underlying the dispute among historians are the different assumptions made about the definition or concept of "history" and "historiography". Different historians take a different view of what it is all about, and what the possibilities of historical and social scientific knowledge are.
Historians also differ greatly about questions such as (1) the kinds of generalisations which can be validly made about history, (2) about the kinds of causal connections which can validly be postulated in history, and (3) about the validity of different kinds of explanation of historical development.
Different theoretical frameworks for historical research also lead to different questions being asked about the historical facts. All historians operate with guiding assumptions in their research - assumptions which may be modified by their results - even though these assumptions (or biases) may not be made explicit.
One way to assess the merits of historical materialism is to look at the actual results of the historical research done by the Marxists, the semi-Marxists (such as the Annales school) and the non-Marxists who claim to have been inspired by historical materialism.
Broadly, the importance of the study of history lies in the ability of history to explain the present. Historical Materialism is important in explaining history from a scientific perspective, by following the scientific method, as opposed to belief-system theories like Creationism which explain the present from a belief-system point of view.
It has been argued that the theoretical framework of Sociobiology explains certain facts better than does Historical Materialism.[citation needed]
References
^ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, with some notes by R. Rojas.
^ John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology
^ Ronald Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage)
Historical materialism is the methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history which was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx himself never used the term but referred to his approach as "the materialist conception of history".
Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to live, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies). The fundamental proposition of historical materialism is premised in the following materialist conception:
“
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
”
—Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Historical materialism as an explanatory system has been expanded and refined by thousands of academic studies since Marx’s death. Although Marx said he was only proposing a guideline to historical research, by the twentieth century the concept of historical materialism became a keystone of modern communist doctrine.
Key ideas
Historical materialism started from a fundamental underlying reality of human existence: that in order for human beings to survive and continue existence from generation to generation, it is necessary for them to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life. While this may seem obvious it was only with Marx that this was seen as foundation for understanding human society and historical development. Marx then extended this premise by asserting the importance of the fact that, in order to carry out production and exchange people have to enter into very definite social relations, most fundamentally production relations.
However, production does not get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrarily or random relations that they choose at will. Human beings collectively work on nature but do not do the same work; there is a division of labor in which people not only do different jobs, but some people live from the work of others by owning the means of production. How this is done depends on the type of society. Production is carried out through very definite relations between people. And, in turn, these production relations are determined by the level and character of the productive forces that are present at any given time in history. For Marx, productive forces, refer to the means of production such as the tools, instruments, technology, land, raw materials, and human knowledge and abilities in terms of using these means of production.
Following Marx, writers who identify with historical materialism usually postulate that society has moved through a number of types or modes of production. That is, the character of the production relations is determined by the character of the productive forces; these could be the simple tools and instruments of early human existence, or the move developed machinery and technology of present age. The main modes of production Marx identified generally include primitive communism or tribal society (a prehistoric stage), ancient society, feudalism and capitalism. In each of these social stages, people interact with nature and make their livings in different ways. The surplus from production is allotted in different manners. Ancient society was based on a ruling class of slave owners and a class of slaves, feudalism on landowners and serfs. Capitalism is organized on the basis of capitalist class who privately own the means of production, distribution and exchange (e.g. factories, mines, shops and banks), and the working class who live by selling their socialized labour to the capitalists for wages.
Marx identified the production relations of society (arising on the basis of a given productive forces) as the economic base of society. He also explained that on the foundation of the economic base there arise certain political institutions, laws, customs, culture, etc., and ideas, ways of thinking, morality, etc. These constituted the political/ideological superstructure of society. That all of this not only have as their origin in the economic base but also ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base, i.e. the way people come together in order to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life.
Historical materialism can be seen to rest on the following principles:
1. The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.
2. There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labour of others.
3. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production.
4. The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces.
5. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, where by the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it.
Marx’s clearest formulation of his "Materialist Conception of History" was in the 1859 Preface to his book A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Marx himself introduces the concept in the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The relevant passage is reproduced here:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production."[1]
Key implications in the study and understanding of History
Many writers note that historical materialism represented a revolution in human thought, and a break from previous ways of understanding the underlying basis of change within various human societies. The theory shows what Marx called a "coherence" in human history, because of the fact that each generation inherits the productive forces developed previously and in turn further develops them before passing them on to the next generation. Further that this coherence increasingly involves more of humanity the more the productive forces develop and expand to bind people together in production and exchange.
This understanding counters the notion that human history is simply a series of accidents, either without any underlying cause or caused by supernatural beings or forces exerting their will on society. This posits that history is made as a result of struggle between different social classes rooted in the underlying economic base.
Marx's materialism
While the "historical" part of historical materialism does not cause a comprehension problem (i.e., it means the present is explained by analysing the past), the term materialism is more difficult. Historical materialism uses "materialism" to make three separate points, where the truth or falsehood of one point does not affect the others.
First there is metaphysical or philosophical materialism, in which matter-in-motion is primary and thought about matter-in-motion, or thought about abstractions, is secondary.
Second, there is belief that economic processes form the material base of society upon which institutions and ideas derive and rest. While the economy is the base structure of society, it does not follow that everything in history is determined by the economy, just as every feature of a house is not determined by its foundations.
Third, there is the idea that in the capitalist mode of production the behaviour of actors in the market economy (means of production, distribution and exchange, the relations of production) plays the major role in configuring society.
Historical Materialism and the future
In his analysis of the movement of history, Marx predicted the breakdown of capitalism (as a result of class struggle and the falling rate of profit), and the establishment in time of a communist society in which class-based human conflict would be overcome. The means of production would be held in the common ownership and used for the common good.
Marxist beliefs about history
According to Marxist theorists, history develops in accordance with the following observations:
Social progress is driven by progress in the material, productive forces a society has at its disposal (technology, labour, capital goods, etc.)
Humans are inevitably involved in production relations (roughly speaking, economic relationships or institutions), which constitute our most decisive social relations.
Production relations progress, with a degree of inevitability, following and corresponding to the development of the productive forces.
Relations of production help determine the degree and types of the development of the forces of production. For example, capitalism tends to increase the rate at which the forces develop and stresses the accumulation of capital.
Both productive forces and production relations progress independently of mankind's strategic intentions or will.
The superstructure -- the cultural and institutional features of a society, its ideological materials -- is ultimately an expression of the mode of production (which combines both the forces and relations of production) on which the society is founded.
Every type of state is a powerful institution of the ruling class; the state is an instrument which one class uses to secure its rule and enforce its preferred production relations (and its exploitation) onto society.
State power is usually only transferred from one class to another by social and political upheaval.
When a given style of production relations no longer supports further progress in the productive forces, either further progress is strangled, or 'revolution' must occur.
The actual historical process is not predetermined but depends on the class struggle, especially the organization and consciousness of the working class.
This sketch is abstract - real historical understanding needed for developing political strategy and tactics must involve "concrete analysis of concrete conditions" (V.I. Lenin).
Alienation and freedom
Hunter-gatherer societies were structured so that the economic forces and the political forces were one and the same. The elements of force and relation operated together, harmoniously. In the feudal society, the political forces of the kings and nobility had their relations with the economic forces of the villages through serfdom. The serfs, although not free, were tied to both forces and, thus, not completely alienated. Capitalism, Marx argued, completely separates the economic and political forces, leaving them to have relations through a limiting government. He takes the state to be a sign of this separation - it exists to manage the massive conflicts of interest which arise between classes in all those societies based on property relations.
The history of historical materialism
Marx’s attachment to materialism arose from his doctoral research on the philosophy of Epicurus [2], as well as his reading of Adam Smith and other writers in classical political economy. Historical materialism builds upon the idea that became current in philosophy from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that the development of human society has moved through a series of stages, from hunting and gathering, through pastoralism and cultivation, to commercial society. [3].
Frederick Engels wrote: "I use 'historical materialism' to designate the view of the course of history, which seeks the ultimate causes and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, with the consequent division of society into distinct classes and the struggles of these classes." [1]
Warnings against misuse
"One has to "leave philosophy aside" (Wigand, p. 187, cf. Hess, Die letzten Philosophen, p. 8), one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the philosophers... Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love." (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, International Publishers, ed. Chris Arthur, p. 103)
Marx himself took care to indicate that he was only proposing a guideline to historical research (Leitfaden or Auffassung), and was not providing any substantive "theory of history" or "grand philosophy of history", let alone a "master-key to history". Numerous times, he and Engels expressed irritation with dilettante academics who sought to knock up their skimpy historical knowledge as quickly as possible into some grand theoretical system that would explain "everything" about history. To their great annoyance, the materialist outlook was used as an excuse for not studying history.
In the 1872 Preface to the French edition of Das Kapital Vol. 1, Marx also emphasised that "There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits". Reaching a scientific understanding was hard work. Conscientious, painstaking research was required, instead of philosophical speculation and unwarranted, sweeping generalisations.
But having abandoned abstract philosophical speculation in his youth, Marx himself showed great reluctance during the rest of his life about offering any generalities or universal truths about human existence or human history. The first explicit and systematic summary of the materialist interpretation of history published, Anti-Dühring, was written by Frederick Engels.
One of the aims of Engels's polemic Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (written with Marx's approval) was to ridicule the easy "world schematism" of philosophers, who invented the latest wisdom from behind their writing desks. Towards the end of his life, in 1877, Marx wrote a letter to editor of the Russian paper Otetchestvennye Zapisky, which significantly contained the following disclaimer:
"(...) If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction - she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not enough for my critic. He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.)"
Marx goes on to illustrate how the same factors can in different historical contexts produce very different results, so that quick and easy generalisations are not really possible. To indicate how seriously Marx took research, it is interesting to note that when he died, his estate contained several cubic metres of Russian statistical publications (it was, as the old Marx observed, in Russia that his ideas gained most influence).
But what is true is that insofar Marx and Engels regarded historical processes as law-governed processes, the possible future directions of historical development were to a great extent limited and conditioned by what happened before. Retrospectively, historical processes could be understood to have happened by necessity in certain ways and not others, and to some extent at least, the most likely variants of the future could be specified on the basis of careful study of the known facts.
Towards the end of his life, Engels commented several times about the abuse of historical materialism. In a letter to Conrad Schmidt dated August 5, 1890, he stated that "And if this man (i.e., Paul Barth) has not yet discovered that while the material mode of existence is the primum agens this does not preclude the ideological spheres from reacting upon it in their turn, though with a secondary effect, he cannot possibly have understood the subject he is writing about. (...) The materialist conception of history has a lot of [dangerous friends] nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late 70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist." (...) In general, the word "materialistic" serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge — for economic history is still in its swaddling clothes! — constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous. And after that a Barth can come along and attack the thing itself, which in his circle has indeed been degraded to a mere phrase." [2]
Finally, in a letter to Franz Mehring, Frederick Engels dated 14 July 1893, Engels stated:
"...there is only one other point lacking, which, however, Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side — the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about — for the sake of the content. This has given our adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings, of which Paul Barth is a striking example." [3]
Historical materialism in Marxist thought
In 1880, about three years before Marx died, Friedrich Engels indicated that he accepted the usage of the term "historical materialism". Recalling the early days of the new interpretation of history, he stated:
"We, at that time, were all materialists, or, at least, very advanced free-thinkers, and to us it appeared inconceivable that almost all educated people in England should believe in all sorts of impossible miracles, and that even geologists like Buckland and Mantell should contort the facts of their science so as not to clash too much with the myths of the book of Genesis; while, in order to find people who dared to use their own intellectual faculties with regard to religious matters, you had to go amongst the uneducated, the "great unwashed", as they were then called, the working people, especially the Owenite Socialists". (Preface to the English edition of his pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)[4]
In a foreword to his essay Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886), three years after Marx's death, Engels claimed confidently that "In the meantime, the Marxist world outlook has found representatives far beyond the boundaries of Germany and Europe and in all the literary languages of the world." [5]
In his old age, Engels speculated about a new cosmology or ontology which would show the principles of dialectics to be universal features of reality. He also drafted an article on The part played by labour in the transition from Ape to Man, apparently a theory of anthropogenesis which would integrate the insights of Marx and Charles Darwin [6] (This is discussed by Charles Woolfson in The Labour Theory of Culture: a Re-examination of Engels Theory of Human Origins).
At the very least, Marxism had now been born, and "historical materialism" had become a distinct philosophical doctrine, subsequently elaborated and systematised by intellectuals like Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov and Nikolai Bukharin. Even so, up to the 1930s many of Marx's earlier works were still unknown, and in reality most self-styled Marxists had not read beyond Capital Vol. 1. Isaac Deutscher provides an anecdote about the knowledge of Marx in that era:
"Capital is a tough nut to crack, opined Ignacy Daszyński, one of the best known socialist "people's tribunes" around the turn of the 20th century, but anyhow he had not read it. But, he said, Karl Kautsky had read it, and written a popular summary of the first volume. He hadn't read this either, but Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, the party theoretician, had read Kautsky's pamphlet and summarised it. He also had not read Kelles-Krauz's text, but the financial expert of the party, Hermann Diamand, had read it and had told him, i.e. Daszynski, everything about it". [7]
After Lenin's death in 1924, Marxism was transformed into Marxism-Leninism and from there to Maoism or Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought in China which some regard as the "true doctrine" and others as a "state religion".
In the early years of the 20th century, historical materialism was often treated by socialist writers as interchangeable with dialectical materialism, a formulation never used by Friedrich Engels however. According to many Marxists influenced by Soviet Marxism, historical materialism is a specifically sociological method, while dialectical materialism refers to a more general, abstract, philosophy. The Soviet orthodox Marxist tradition, influential for half a century, based itself on Joseph Stalin's pamphlet Dialectical and Historical materialism and on textbooks issued by the "Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union".
Recent versions of historical materialism
Several scholars have argued that historical materialism ought to be revised in the light of modern scientific knowledge. Jürgen Habermas believes historical materialism "needs revision in many respects", especially because it has ignored the significance of communicative action. Leszek Nowak argues explicitly for a post-Marxist historical materialism.
Göran Therborn has argued that the method of historical materialism should be applied to historical materialism as intellectual tradition, and to the history of Marxism itself.
In the early 1980s Paul Hirst and Barry Hindess elaborated a structural Marxism interpretation of historical materialism.
Regulation theory, especially in the work of Michel Aglietta draws extensively on historical materialism.
Criticisms
There is objection by critics that the historical materialist conception does not hold true with retrospect upon history, and that adherents are biased to arbitrarily represent history according to the theory.
Some critics have argued that such a method can be twisted into trying to force the course of history in a particular direction, based on a false belief that one "knows" the way history is moving. The idea here is that the doctrine (or Marxism) really gets in the way of genuinely scientific historical research, and leads to political projects which run roughshod over the morals, interests and beliefs of the people.
In reply, Marxists have pointed to historical analyses by for example Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, Robin Blackburn and Perry Anderson among many others as valid examples of the application of historical materialism to the historical facts. They have also pointed to the social and material progress in many countries which would not have occurred without Marxist movements. In postmodern theory, however, the very notion of historical progress is contested.
Philosopher of science Karl Popper, in his Conjectures and Refutations, critiqued such claims of the explanatory power or valid application of historical materialism by pointing out that it could explain or explain away any fact brought before it, making it unfalsifiable.
Underlying the dispute among historians are the different assumptions made about the definition or concept of "history" and "historiography". Different historians take a different view of what it is all about, and what the possibilities of historical and social scientific knowledge are.
Historians also differ greatly about questions such as (1) the kinds of generalisations which can be validly made about history, (2) about the kinds of causal connections which can validly be postulated in history, and (3) about the validity of different kinds of explanation of historical development.
Different theoretical frameworks for historical research also lead to different questions being asked about the historical facts. All historians operate with guiding assumptions in their research - assumptions which may be modified by their results - even though these assumptions (or biases) may not be made explicit.
One way to assess the merits of historical materialism is to look at the actual results of the historical research done by the Marxists, the semi-Marxists (such as the Annales school) and the non-Marxists who claim to have been inspired by historical materialism.
Broadly, the importance of the study of history lies in the ability of history to explain the present. Historical Materialism is important in explaining history from a scientific perspective, by following the scientific method, as opposed to belief-system theories like Creationism which explain the present from a belief-system point of view.
It has been argued that the theoretical framework of Sociobiology explains certain facts better than does Historical Materialism.[citation needed]
References
^ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, with some notes by R. Rojas.
^ John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology
^ Ronald Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage)
Monday, April 14, 2008
Longshoremen to close ports on West Coast to protest war
By Jack Heyman
While millions of people worldwide have marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and last week’s New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 81 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction – key concerns being the war and the economy – the war machine inexorably grinds on.
Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers’ Day, to call for an end to the war.
This decision came after an impassioned debate where the union’s Vietnam veterans turned the tide of opinion in favor of the anti-war resolution. The motion called it an imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were being wasted and declared May Day a “no peace, no work” holiday. Angered after supporting Democrats who received a mandate to end the war but who now continue to fund it, longshoremen decided to exercise their political power on the docks.
Last month, in response to the union’s declaration, the Pacific Maritime Association, the West Coast employer association of shipowners, stevedore companies and terminal operators, declared its opposition to the union’s protest. Thus, the stage is set for a conflict in the run up to the longshore contract negotiations.
The last set of contentious negotiations (in 2002) took place during the period between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Iraq. Representatives of the Bush administration threatened that if there were any of the usual job actions during contract bargaining, then troops would occupy the docks because such actions would jeopardize “national security.” Yet, when the PMA employers locked out the longshoremen and shut down West Coast ports for 11 days, the “security” issue vanished. President Bush then invoked the Taft-Hartley Act, forcing longshoremen back to work under conditions favorable to the employers.
The San Francisco longshore union has a proud history of opposition to the war in Iraq, being the first union to call for an end to the war and immediate withdrawal of troops. Representatives of the union spoke at anti-war rallies in February 2003, including one in London attended by nearly 2 million people, the largest ever held in Britain. Executive Board member Clarence Thomas went to Iraq with a delegation to observe workers’ rights during the occupation.
At the start of the war in Iraq, hundreds of protesters demonstrated on the Oakland docks, and longshoremen honored their picket lines. Without warning, police in riot gear opened fire with so-called less-than-lethal weapons, shooting protesters and longshoremen alike with wooden dowels, rubber bullets, pellet bags, concussion grenades and tear gas. A U.N. Human Rights Commission investigator characterized the Oakland police attack as “the most violent” against anti-war protesters in the United States.
And finally, last year, two black longshoremen going to work in the port of Sacramento were beaten, Maced and arrested by police under the rubric of Homeland Security regulations ordained by the “war on terror.”
There’s precedent for this action. In the ‘50s, French dockworkers refused to load war materiel on ships headed for Indochina, and helped to bring that colonial war to an end. At the ILWU’s convention in San Francisco in 2003, A. Q. McElrath, an octogenarian University of Hawaii regent and former ILWU organizer from the pineapple canneries, challenged the delegates to act for social justice, invoking the union’s slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” She concluded, “The cudgel is on the ground. Will you pick it up?”
It appears that longshore workers may be doing just that on May Day and calling on immigrant workers and others to join them.
Jack Heyman is a longshoreman who works on the Oakland docks.
This article appeared on page B – 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle
This article appeared on page B – 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Marxist Political Economy as a Science
Hajime Kawakami 1928
The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.
-Lenin: Materialism and Empiro-Criticism
The Mission of Science– The Essence and Phenomenal Forms of Things –
A general election was recently held in Japan. According to a survey by the Ministry of the Police, of the total 9.58 million valid votes cast, proletarian political groups received 470,000 votes. This means that ninety-five percent of the citizens lent their support to bourgeois parties, with only five percent supporting proletarian ones
Here we see a completely reverse reflection of the actual state of society. Political parties representing the wealthy and the large landowners, who are a small minority – roughly five percent of the population – were able to obtain an overwhelming ninety-five percent of the votes. Meanwhile, political parties representing those who are not wealthy, who make up ninety-five percent of the population, only managed to obtain five percent of the total votes. Such a result arises from the masses of people having an upside-down awareness of the essence of reality.
The destiny of any science is to run counter to the common sense that prevails. There would be little need for science if the layman were able to understand an object through simple thought that does not rely upon scientific examination. But what the layman thinks is often the reverse of the essence of reality, making it necessary to overturn such thought through the scientific consideration of a given matter. This means that science is destined to struggle against common sense, so that only a courageous person is capable of becoming a true scientist.
Let me offer one, easy-to-understand example. The earth orbits the sun while rotating on its own axis-not the reverse-but to our eyes it seems that the sun is instead orbiting the earth. What is reflected in our field of vision is the sun rising every morning in the east, then setting in the west in the evening. Given this appearance, no one had thought that the planet we inhabit is itself in motion. The consciousness of those who grasped this phenomenal form, which is the form that appears to the naked eye, was in fact the reverse of the essence (or truth) of the matter. This was the source of their error, which acted as an enormous barrier to cultural development
Here is another example. A man who consumes a few alcoholic drinks may turn red in the face, and even in winter feel warm enough to take off an article of clothing or open the window. Another person, seeing this, would think that the man’s body is warm. In fact, however, a person’s body temperature will decrease after consuming alcohol, as verified by tests carried out by specialists, and which we can also simply demonstrate using a thermometer. The drinker feels warm because the alcohol dulls the nerves that perceive cold. There are nerves in our skin that perceive cold, and these nerves play the role of sentries that communicate to the brain the fact that cold air has penetrated. But when a person has a few drinks, these sentries gradually start to doze off, so that when the body’s temperature gradually drops, and the order to do something about this does not reach the hub of the brain, the drinker gradually feels warmer even though the body’s temperature is dropping, due to a weakened perception of cold.
Science not only teaches us that the essence of a matter can be the reverse of its phenomenal form, but also explains why the essence comes to have a phenomenal form that is its opposite. In addition to teaching us that the earth, not the sun, is in motion, it also explains why our eyes perceive that the earth is in motion rather than the sun. (This is the dialectical unity between essence and phenomenal form.)
The people who are leading establishment political parties may think that they are striving for the interests of the country and the welfare of the people, but we cannot judge such people according to what they think of themselves. A person who thinks himself good is not always in fact so. And even a drinker who thinks himself warm will in fact have a falling body temperature. There may also be many people who see establishment parties as promoting their own interests. But this is no different from a drinker appearing to be warm or the sun appearing to rise in the east and set in the west.
If someone says that the sun is in motion, it certainly does appear to be the case in one’s eyes, and this is an explanation that people found easy to accept, just like the idea that drinking warms a person up.
This makes it easy to deceive people. It is easy to lie, whereas a true explanation is complicated. And when those with the power of the state and money on their side are the ones freely spreading lies, it is certainly no easy task for a person lacking this power to reveal the truth to others under conditions where extreme limitations are placed on personal speech.
These are the reasons that give rise to a situation where establishment parties, despite representing the wealthy and the large landowners – who make up around five percent of the population – were able to gain an overwhelming ninety-five percent of the votes in the recent general election, whereas the parties of those without property – about ninety-five percent of the population – only managed to win five percent. The establishment parties base their constituency on the dormant masses of people, who are prey to an illusion wherein reality is perceived in a form that is the opposite of the truth.
Whether it be a natural or social phenomenon, there are often illusions that are the reverse of the essence of a matter. In terms of overturning such illusions alone, science is revolutionary. It was a revolutionary task to overturn the idea that sun orbits the earth in order to recognize that in fact it is the earth that is in motion. And what Marx achieved in the realm of political economy was also a revolutionary task.
Established political power, of course, always has an interest in taking advantage of people’s illusions-making use of the illusions of those who think in terms that are the opposite of the truth of a matter-and this power has a keen interest in maintaining and promoting this state of affairs. Every instrument of propaganda available is mobilized to this end, including schools, youth groups, religious organizations, newspapers, magazines, books, and so on. In the recent general election as well, numerous members of establishment parties delivered one speech after speech, from an infinite number of rostrums, to achieve this purpose. As pointed out in book one of Musansha seiji kyōtei [A Course on Proletarian Politics], “when the causes of troubles are concealed, and when people are unable to combat these causes, there is no way for those suffering from these troubles to use their own power to change the situation.” And this suits the ruling class just fine. Established power, therefore, is always hostile to new science. In the recent election, as the reader knows from newspaper articles, extreme limits were placed on our speech, which I happened to experience first-hand on a number of occasions.
New science can only develop itself by engaging in a struggle against powerful established forces. Scholars who in the past declared that the earth, not the sun, is in motion, were thrown into prison. There were scholars who called for the abandonment of the idea that the planet we are standing upon does not move, and they explained that the earth is capable of movement and is in fact in motion, which brought fear to the ruling class at the time. So those who today seek to do something similar regarding social phenomena – which is a domain where a direct negotiation takes place between people’s life interests – naturally generate a barrage of criticism, slander, misunderstanding, pressure and the like, and one needs to be prepared for this. As Marx writes:
Free scientific inquiry [in the domain of political economy] does not merely meet the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with summons into the fray on the opposing side the most violent, sordid and malignant of the passions of the human breast, the Furiers of private interest.[1]
The “ultimate aim” of Capital, as Marx notes in this same preface to the first German edition, is to “lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” The economic law of motion referred to is similar to the physical law that governs the earth’s motion. Just as people once believed that the planet they inhabit does not move at all, so people today are resigned to the idea that the modern social organization they live within is eternal and unchangeable. But Capital teaches us that what appears to be unchanging is capable of movement and is in fact in motion. This reveals the “special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one.” Capital is a book that awakens the oppressed from their resignation based upon illusions, reveals to them the causes of their troubles, while also indicating the possibility and the path to sweep these troubles aside, thereby instilling in them hope and a direction for their own self-liberation. In a word, Capital is a crucially important textbook for revolution[2].
There is no need to speak further here about the outcome of human action led by scientific knowledge. Our predecessors though that thunder was the fearsome anger of the gods. But today, as the outcome of scientific research on electricity, not only do we know that this is nothing more than the sound of electricity being discharged in the sky, but this once fearsome specter has also been transformed into something docile and obedient that is utilized for telegrams, telephones, lights, trains, etc, and for the powering of fans in the summer to generate wind or electric stoves to heat rooms in winter. In short, the progress of science has turned what had been a most fearsome thing into its opposite: something that is highly useful. Thus, for political economy to merit the name “science,” it must be able to furnish guiding principles to transform the powerless masses of people, who are submerged in their troubles, into the opposite-strong people who enjoy a happy life. And Marx’s book does indeed have this value.
2. Revealing the Particular Laws of Motion within Capitalist Society
“Vulgar economists” are those economists who do not deserve to be considered scholars. They are so named because they are on the same level as a vulgar person. Completely attached to phenomenal forms, they do not seek to grasp the essence of a matter. For example, when it appears that the sun is moving from east to west, this is the superficial, phenomenal form reflected in our eyes, but a vulgar scholar does no more than describe this phenomenal form – making it sound plausible through the use of scholarly terminology – taking not a single step beyond this level. Their “scholarship” amounts to nothing more than lining up items of common sense. Given this, even if their ideas are easy to understand, they are without usefulness. Such scholars, needless to say, exist in droves in various countries, such as the historical school of political economy in Germany or the psychological school in Austria. These two schools are essentially identical and yet superficially opposed to each other, just like the Seiyukai and Minsei parties in Japan compete with each other despite both being bourgeois political parties. The methods of the two schools are different, with the former listing up facts instead of elucidating laws (thereby missing the forest for the trees), while the latter offers up abstract laws in place of the particular laws of capitalist society. Still, both schools are identical in terms of rejecting the special laws of capitalist society. Thus, just as the founder of the historical school, Wilhelm Roscher, discovers the primitive accumulation of capital among primitive peoples catching fish using their bare hands, Bohm-Bawerk, the head of the psychological school, sees the characteristics of capitalist production in the example of water being obtained through a bamboo pipe. Both schools are identical in terms of turning the concept of capital into something general, abstract and external.
Marx, contrary to this, seeks in Capital to reveal the particular historical laws of modern society (capitalist society). Regarding this, we can find the following passage in the postface to the second edition of that work:
It will be said...that the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. But this is exactly what Marx denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist...On the contrary, in his opinion, every historical period possesses its own laws...As soon as life has passed through a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws...The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when the likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of the phenomena shows that social organism differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals.[3]
For example, the various social organisms of slave-based society, feudal society and capitalist society are not equivalent to the childhood, adolescence and adulthood of the same living organism. Rather, they are like three completely different living organisms, such as the differences between a snake, a dog and a human being. A snake does not develop into a dog, just as a dog does not develop into a person. Each is rather a fundamentally distinct living organism, and therefore “one and the same phenomenon” will even “fall under quite different laws in consequence of the different general structure of these organisms, the variations of their individual organs, and the different conditions in which those organs function."[4]
In his introduction to Foundations of the Critique of Poltical Economy (Grundrisse), Marx notes:
Although it is true, therefore, that the categories of bourgeois economics possess a truth for all other forms of society, this is to be taken only with a grain of salt. They can contain them in a developed, or stunted, or caricatured form etc., but always with an essential difference. The so-called historical presentation of development is founded, as a rule, on the fact that the latest form regards the previous ones as steps leading up to itself, and, since it is only rarely and only under quite specific conditions able to criticize itself-leaving aside, of course, the historical periods which appear to themselves as times of decadence-it always conceives them one-sidedly.[5]
As long as a person believes that the society he is living in is the ultimate form of society, the social forms of the past will appear to be nothing more than a means of reaching this goal, thus losing their own independent existence. The past forms do not seem to be in opposition to this final form but rather subordinate to it. This accordingly rules out a comprehensive understanding of the past forms. This is the reason why “the latest form regards the previous ones as steps leading up to itself” and “always conceives them one-sidedly.”
Thus, as Marx explains in Capital, we cannot overlook the specific laws of capitalist society.
Marx thus says: “What I have to examine in this work is the capitalist mode of production, and the relations of production and forms of intercourse [Verkehrsverhältnisse] that correspond to it."[6] The mechanism of capitalist production, as I shall explain in a moment, is the specific mechanism of production wherein capitalists employing numerous wageworkers, themselves take possession of all of the products produced by the labor of workers in return for paying them a wage. A society where such a mechanism has come to be the dominant power is a society where “the capitalist mode of production prevails,” or simply put: a capitalist society.
Capital elucidates the specific laws of such a capitalist society. We must note, however, that a pure capitalist society has yet to exist, and could not exist. Within actual society, therefore – regardless of the degree to which capitalist development has been achieved – there will always be some part of it that is made up of past social forms, “maintained as a remnant that was not overcome.” And, needless to say, the theory in Marx’s Capital cannot be directly applied to these remnants of the past.
The population of rural agricultural villages in Japan, according to a 1921 survey, accounts for 48.2 percent of the entire population, but most of the agriculture in these villages is still not carried out under capitalistic production methods, and is therefore not capitalist agriculture. This means that the theory of capitalist ground rent explained by Marx in Capital is not applicable to the farm rent (kosakuryo) paid by tenant farmers in Japan. This was already effectively indicated by Murayama Toshirō[7] in Marxism and Problems of Agriculture, where he writes:
In Japan, tenant rent paid in kind is the dominant form of ground rent. There has arisen the peculiar phenomenon of mistaken arguments being raised by those who have not seriously considered this fact and instead attempt to apply the schema of Marx’s theory of ground rent to tenant rent in Japan. This can be seen, for example, in the work of Motoyuki Takabatake, Sentarō Kitaura and others.
3. Materialist Starting Point (External Phenomena as the Starting Point of Investigation)– The Commodity as the “Cell” of Capitalist Society –
Every effort is being made, from every direction, to prevent those submerged in troubles from locating their source. If we resist such confusion and identify the truth, we will discover that the source of problems is not that the area of land is too small, the population too large, foreigners too domineering, nor that we are too ignorant. This source can rather be traced to the organization of society. And we can also discover that if we want to eliminate these problems, we have no choice but to fundamentally revolutionize[8] this organization.
First and foremost, we need to identify as accurately as possible what exactly is the structure of the world we inhabit and the direction it is headed.
If we are to accurately know this, our method of cognition must be correct. And this correct method is the materialist dialectic. Here I would like to first say a word about the standpoint of materialism, and then deal briefly with the nature of a dialectical understanding.
What is the economic mechanism of the world we are living in? If we were idealists, when examining this problem we would likely close our eyes and cross our arms. But we are materialists and believe that only a materialist method of cognition will provide us with a correct understanding – an objective, scientific understanding – so we begin by opening our eyes and looking around at the phenomena that surround us. There is no way to avoid being taken in by the phenomenal forms that appear in our eyes, but our investigation must begin with these external phenomena as they appear to our eyes. Our starting point must be what is reflected in everyone’s eyes, what everyone would agree that they also see; the clear and indisputable facts that would satisfy anyone. Because this is our point of departure, our research is able to be reliable. If, instead, we were to start with what we are thinking inside our own hearts, even if this is thought to be correct, it would be doubtful whether this is indeed the case. And if one sought to convince others, some further proof would be necessary, meaning that the argument would wander hither and thither, with the entire investigation ending in error.
So we start from the clear facts that can satisfy everyone. In the postface to the second German edition of Capital, there is the following passage regarding this that Marx cited from a review of his book:
Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence.... If in the history of civilization the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilization, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point.[9]
Our economic lives appear in people’s eyes as a clear fact. – In order to live, we know that labor must be directed towards the external, natural world in order to create food, clothing and shelter, along with other things. In a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, written on July 11, 1868, Marx writes:
Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society’s aggregate labor. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labor in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves.[10]
This means that human beings, in order to live, have no choice but to create things through labor. So if such labor were to cease, even less than a year, every human being would also cease to exist. Also, because human beings have many needs, the labor of society as a whole must be distributed to each of the production sectors at a given proportion in order to produce the various products that correspond to these needs. This is a natural law that applies to any organization of society as long as there are people living upon the planet. The change that occurs between different social organizations involves the type of phenomenal form that this natural law is manifested within. All of this, in the words of Marx, is “self-evident” even to a child. Likewise in today’s society, it is evident that labor must be continually expended to produce the things needed to maintain our lives. And this aggregate labor of society must be distributed to the production sectors engaged in iron-making, shipbuilding, spinning, textile production, agriculture, mining, etc. However, all of the products produced are produced as commodities, so that social production is carried out through the method of commodity production. This means that in society today the natural law mentioned above is manifested specifically as commodity production.
This is why Marx, at the very beginning of Capital, writes: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form.”
This is also an external phenomenon that appears in the eyes of anyone living today. Even a child would be aware of this. Instead of producing what is needed for one’s own family, a person is able to obtain wealth, via payment, that is produced by other people (society) and comes in diverse varieties and infinite quantities. But everything is in the commodity form. This is the reason why “the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities.” It is called an “immense collection of commodities” because any and every thing becomes a commodity, so that anything can be obtained if money is paid and every product without exception is available as a commodity. But this has not always been the case. When commodity production had yet to develop sufficiently, there was no one to buy from even when a person wished to buy something, leaving that person no choice but to produce for their own consumption. But as the capitalist method of production gradually took hold, large numbers of products came to assume the commodity form. This can be understood if we journey from the countryside of Japan to the city. In rural areas, where capitalist production has yet to fully penetrate, one can get along to a greater extent without money. But in the city, where capitalist production has established itself as the prevailing force, one has to pay money for nearly everything. And anything can be bought, provided that money is paid. If we stroll over to the nearest department store, we will be afforded a first-hand view of a “collection of commodities.”
In this manner, the wealth of capitalist society appears as an “immense collection of commodities” and the individual commodity is the cell of this social wealth. Just as the human body is composed of an infinite number of individual cells, the wealth of capitalist society is composed of an infinite number of individual commodities. This is also something that can be clearly seen by anyone. If a person heads to the city to obtain something he wants, the item will have a price tag attached to it, or if not a sales clerk will tell the person how much it costs. At any rate, it is immediately clear to anyone that every item on the store’s shelves is a commodity. This is why Marx says that the individual commodity appears as the “elementary form” of the wealth of capitalist society. Here “appears” means that it is reflected in our eyes as an external phenomenon or phenomenal form. This phenomenal form is the starting point of Capital.
The points above can also be explained in the following manner.
The problem we are dealing with is the nature of the economic mechanism of the world we live in. If we take a glance at this world, we can see the economic relations between people in present-day society and discover the exchange relation between one commodity and another. As long as we are unable to survive without acquiring what other people produce, everything that people (particularly those living in cities) require – which includes their rice, miso, soy sauce, fish, meat, milk, vegetables, and other food, as well as their clothes, utensils, newspapers, pens, ink, and so on – is produced by other people. Things that are either stolen or received for free constitute a rare exception to this. As a rule, things must be purchased for a given amount of money. Because of this there are infinite exchange relations established between people, and the total of these exchange relations constitutes the economic structure of society today.
Seen from this standpoint, therefore, the economic structure of capitalist society appears as an “immense accumulation” of exchange relations, and it could be said that the individual exchange relation is the “elementary form” of this. Therefore, according to Lenin, commodity exchange is the “simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times”; in a word: the “cell” of capitalist society.
In short, our investigation should not begin right away with complex things. Rather, we must move progressively from the simplest things to ascend towards the more complex. This is why Marx says: “Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.”
4. A Dialectical Grasp– The Locus of Every Contradiction of Capitalist Society is Uncovered through the Analysis of the Commodity –
Next, I would like to say a word about the manner of a dialectical grasp.
In modern society, needless to say, a variety of contradictions appear from various directions. As one example I can point to the following newspaper article I happened to come across in today’s Osaka Mainichi (March 2, 1928):
Electrical companies are apparently suffering from an excess of electricity, claiming that they may be unable to continue production unless a limitation is placed on production. But this is outrageous! Where exactly is this supposed excess electricity? The electricity, said to be in excess, is apparently being conveyed through wires, but it fails to reach the most basic users. Of all the types of fuel, electric heating is the most convenient, but it is the most expensive and thus not commonly used. We have to make do with very dim electric lighting. In mountainous parts of the country, which are full of tunnels, the trains still burn coal that generates a great amount of soot. Even though railways are built for political reasons where there are neither passengers nor belongings to transport, we have yet to hear someone talk about using the excess electricity to electrify the railways. We often hear commercials about the electrification of households and a modern lifestyle, which everyone knows is convenient, but this is not affordable. Yet, what could make less sense than the idea that there is a problem of excess electricity or the call to reduce production? This would mean that the machines built will not be used, with water falling from waterfalls while these machines merely watch it flow out to the ocean. What a waste! And the electrical companies, despite this waste, still sell electricity at a high price, thus impeding the realization of a modern lifestyle, all the while talking about excess electricity.
Here we have an example of why many people fall into poverty in the midst of wealth. Electricity is not reaching the general consumer. And yet the electrical companies are struggling because of an excess of electricity. If this is not a contradiction what should we call it? Moreover, to resolve this contradiction, electrical companies are seeking to limit production. This means that the facility that we went to the trouble of building will not be used. And without this curtailment it is said that the companies may be unable to continue production. Under the system of present-day society, this contradiction can only be solved by limiting production-i.e. by curtailing productive power and deliberately preventing an increase in the production of wealth. This clearly signifies a clash between productive power and the relations of production, indicating that the current relations of production (the social relations or mechanism of society) have already become a barrier to the further development of productive power.
How did such a contradiction arise? Lenin writes:
The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence of dialectics...The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their “unity"...) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies of all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society). The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their “self-movement,” in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites.[11]
And he adds:
In his Capital, Marx first analyzes the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz. the exchange of commodities. In this very simple phenomenon (in this “cell” of bourgeois society) analysis reveals all the contradictions (or the germs of all the contradictions) of modern society. The subsequent exposition shows us the development (both growth and movement) of these contradictions and of this society in the ? [summation] of its individual parts, from its beginning to its end.[12]
This simple presentation by Lenin adequately expresses the nature of a dialectical grasp within political economy.
The commodity as the “elementary form” of wealth in capitalist society – and the commodity as the “cell” that is the fundamental constituent part of capitalist society – must be analyzed first, as noted earlier, but this analysis seeks to split the commodity qua unified thing into its contradictory parts.
Once it is discovered that the commodity contains a contradiction, the movement of the commodity can be grasped as self-movement, because a contradiction is the origin of movement. Here self-movement means that this is not movement dependent upon something else, but rather movement that possesses a motive force of its own. It is only by grasping the movement of a thing in this manner that we can first come to a fundamental understanding. This is because if the motive force of movement does not exist within the thing itself, but rather within something else, our study would have to further trace this other thing, and thus would to attain its ultimate aim.
The fundamental opposites within the commodity are use-value and value. A commodity must be a useful thing for people other than its owner, which is to say that it must be a use-value-or material wealth. At the same time, every commodity has a certain price, in terms of being such-and-such Japanese sen worth of gold. The value encompassed in the commodity is expressed in money. So the commodity is dualistic – a use-value on the one hand and a value on the other.
A use-value is the outcome of productive power but value is the expression of the relations of production. A commodity is the unity of opposites (use-value and value), and the commodity encompasses this fundamental contradiction. Encompassed within the commodity is every contradiction (and the germ of every contradiction) of commodity-production society – and of capitalist society as the highest development of commodity production.
The fact that electrical companies must limit production, even though electricity is being delivered to those who require it, is the result of electricity being produced as a commodity. If this is provided above a certain point, the unity of use-value and value is destroyed. Underlying this is a fundamental cause, which is the collision between the productive power of capitalist society and the relations of production within it.
In his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx offers the general conclusion of his research:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.[13]
When capitalist production reaches a certain stage of development, the material productive power of society inevitably collides with the capitalistic relations of production. How is it that the relations of production, which had been the developmental form of productive power, are necessarily turned into the opposite, becoming a fetter on productive power? It is this question that Marx’s Capital seeks to elucidate.
Endnotes
1. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, 1976) 92.
2. The word “revolution” (kakumei) was removed by censors and replaced with “xx.”
3. Capital vol. 1, 101.
4. Ibid.
5. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 106.
6. Capital vol. 1, 90.
7. Names are listed with the family name second, which is the opposite of the custom in Japan.
8. The words “fundamentally” (konponteki) and “revolutionize” (henkaku) were removed by censors and each replaced with “xx.”
9. Capital vol. 1, 101.
10. Karl Marx, MECW vol. 43 (New York: International Publishers, 1988), 68.
11. Lenin “On the Question of Dialectics” in Collected Works vol. 38 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976) 357-8.
12. Ibid. 358-9.
13. MECW vol. 29 (1987), 263.
The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.
-Lenin: Materialism and Empiro-Criticism
The Mission of Science– The Essence and Phenomenal Forms of Things –
A general election was recently held in Japan. According to a survey by the Ministry of the Police, of the total 9.58 million valid votes cast, proletarian political groups received 470,000 votes. This means that ninety-five percent of the citizens lent their support to bourgeois parties, with only five percent supporting proletarian ones
Here we see a completely reverse reflection of the actual state of society. Political parties representing the wealthy and the large landowners, who are a small minority – roughly five percent of the population – were able to obtain an overwhelming ninety-five percent of the votes. Meanwhile, political parties representing those who are not wealthy, who make up ninety-five percent of the population, only managed to obtain five percent of the total votes. Such a result arises from the masses of people having an upside-down awareness of the essence of reality.
The destiny of any science is to run counter to the common sense that prevails. There would be little need for science if the layman were able to understand an object through simple thought that does not rely upon scientific examination. But what the layman thinks is often the reverse of the essence of reality, making it necessary to overturn such thought through the scientific consideration of a given matter. This means that science is destined to struggle against common sense, so that only a courageous person is capable of becoming a true scientist.
Let me offer one, easy-to-understand example. The earth orbits the sun while rotating on its own axis-not the reverse-but to our eyes it seems that the sun is instead orbiting the earth. What is reflected in our field of vision is the sun rising every morning in the east, then setting in the west in the evening. Given this appearance, no one had thought that the planet we inhabit is itself in motion. The consciousness of those who grasped this phenomenal form, which is the form that appears to the naked eye, was in fact the reverse of the essence (or truth) of the matter. This was the source of their error, which acted as an enormous barrier to cultural development
Here is another example. A man who consumes a few alcoholic drinks may turn red in the face, and even in winter feel warm enough to take off an article of clothing or open the window. Another person, seeing this, would think that the man’s body is warm. In fact, however, a person’s body temperature will decrease after consuming alcohol, as verified by tests carried out by specialists, and which we can also simply demonstrate using a thermometer. The drinker feels warm because the alcohol dulls the nerves that perceive cold. There are nerves in our skin that perceive cold, and these nerves play the role of sentries that communicate to the brain the fact that cold air has penetrated. But when a person has a few drinks, these sentries gradually start to doze off, so that when the body’s temperature gradually drops, and the order to do something about this does not reach the hub of the brain, the drinker gradually feels warmer even though the body’s temperature is dropping, due to a weakened perception of cold.
Science not only teaches us that the essence of a matter can be the reverse of its phenomenal form, but also explains why the essence comes to have a phenomenal form that is its opposite. In addition to teaching us that the earth, not the sun, is in motion, it also explains why our eyes perceive that the earth is in motion rather than the sun. (This is the dialectical unity between essence and phenomenal form.)
The people who are leading establishment political parties may think that they are striving for the interests of the country and the welfare of the people, but we cannot judge such people according to what they think of themselves. A person who thinks himself good is not always in fact so. And even a drinker who thinks himself warm will in fact have a falling body temperature. There may also be many people who see establishment parties as promoting their own interests. But this is no different from a drinker appearing to be warm or the sun appearing to rise in the east and set in the west.
If someone says that the sun is in motion, it certainly does appear to be the case in one’s eyes, and this is an explanation that people found easy to accept, just like the idea that drinking warms a person up.
This makes it easy to deceive people. It is easy to lie, whereas a true explanation is complicated. And when those with the power of the state and money on their side are the ones freely spreading lies, it is certainly no easy task for a person lacking this power to reveal the truth to others under conditions where extreme limitations are placed on personal speech.
These are the reasons that give rise to a situation where establishment parties, despite representing the wealthy and the large landowners – who make up around five percent of the population – were able to gain an overwhelming ninety-five percent of the votes in the recent general election, whereas the parties of those without property – about ninety-five percent of the population – only managed to win five percent. The establishment parties base their constituency on the dormant masses of people, who are prey to an illusion wherein reality is perceived in a form that is the opposite of the truth.
Whether it be a natural or social phenomenon, there are often illusions that are the reverse of the essence of a matter. In terms of overturning such illusions alone, science is revolutionary. It was a revolutionary task to overturn the idea that sun orbits the earth in order to recognize that in fact it is the earth that is in motion. And what Marx achieved in the realm of political economy was also a revolutionary task.
Established political power, of course, always has an interest in taking advantage of people’s illusions-making use of the illusions of those who think in terms that are the opposite of the truth of a matter-and this power has a keen interest in maintaining and promoting this state of affairs. Every instrument of propaganda available is mobilized to this end, including schools, youth groups, religious organizations, newspapers, magazines, books, and so on. In the recent general election as well, numerous members of establishment parties delivered one speech after speech, from an infinite number of rostrums, to achieve this purpose. As pointed out in book one of Musansha seiji kyōtei [A Course on Proletarian Politics], “when the causes of troubles are concealed, and when people are unable to combat these causes, there is no way for those suffering from these troubles to use their own power to change the situation.” And this suits the ruling class just fine. Established power, therefore, is always hostile to new science. In the recent election, as the reader knows from newspaper articles, extreme limits were placed on our speech, which I happened to experience first-hand on a number of occasions.
New science can only develop itself by engaging in a struggle against powerful established forces. Scholars who in the past declared that the earth, not the sun, is in motion, were thrown into prison. There were scholars who called for the abandonment of the idea that the planet we are standing upon does not move, and they explained that the earth is capable of movement and is in fact in motion, which brought fear to the ruling class at the time. So those who today seek to do something similar regarding social phenomena – which is a domain where a direct negotiation takes place between people’s life interests – naturally generate a barrage of criticism, slander, misunderstanding, pressure and the like, and one needs to be prepared for this. As Marx writes:
Free scientific inquiry [in the domain of political economy] does not merely meet the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with summons into the fray on the opposing side the most violent, sordid and malignant of the passions of the human breast, the Furiers of private interest.[1]
The “ultimate aim” of Capital, as Marx notes in this same preface to the first German edition, is to “lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” The economic law of motion referred to is similar to the physical law that governs the earth’s motion. Just as people once believed that the planet they inhabit does not move at all, so people today are resigned to the idea that the modern social organization they live within is eternal and unchangeable. But Capital teaches us that what appears to be unchanging is capable of movement and is in fact in motion. This reveals the “special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one.” Capital is a book that awakens the oppressed from their resignation based upon illusions, reveals to them the causes of their troubles, while also indicating the possibility and the path to sweep these troubles aside, thereby instilling in them hope and a direction for their own self-liberation. In a word, Capital is a crucially important textbook for revolution[2].
There is no need to speak further here about the outcome of human action led by scientific knowledge. Our predecessors though that thunder was the fearsome anger of the gods. But today, as the outcome of scientific research on electricity, not only do we know that this is nothing more than the sound of electricity being discharged in the sky, but this once fearsome specter has also been transformed into something docile and obedient that is utilized for telegrams, telephones, lights, trains, etc, and for the powering of fans in the summer to generate wind or electric stoves to heat rooms in winter. In short, the progress of science has turned what had been a most fearsome thing into its opposite: something that is highly useful. Thus, for political economy to merit the name “science,” it must be able to furnish guiding principles to transform the powerless masses of people, who are submerged in their troubles, into the opposite-strong people who enjoy a happy life. And Marx’s book does indeed have this value.
2. Revealing the Particular Laws of Motion within Capitalist Society
“Vulgar economists” are those economists who do not deserve to be considered scholars. They are so named because they are on the same level as a vulgar person. Completely attached to phenomenal forms, they do not seek to grasp the essence of a matter. For example, when it appears that the sun is moving from east to west, this is the superficial, phenomenal form reflected in our eyes, but a vulgar scholar does no more than describe this phenomenal form – making it sound plausible through the use of scholarly terminology – taking not a single step beyond this level. Their “scholarship” amounts to nothing more than lining up items of common sense. Given this, even if their ideas are easy to understand, they are without usefulness. Such scholars, needless to say, exist in droves in various countries, such as the historical school of political economy in Germany or the psychological school in Austria. These two schools are essentially identical and yet superficially opposed to each other, just like the Seiyukai and Minsei parties in Japan compete with each other despite both being bourgeois political parties. The methods of the two schools are different, with the former listing up facts instead of elucidating laws (thereby missing the forest for the trees), while the latter offers up abstract laws in place of the particular laws of capitalist society. Still, both schools are identical in terms of rejecting the special laws of capitalist society. Thus, just as the founder of the historical school, Wilhelm Roscher, discovers the primitive accumulation of capital among primitive peoples catching fish using their bare hands, Bohm-Bawerk, the head of the psychological school, sees the characteristics of capitalist production in the example of water being obtained through a bamboo pipe. Both schools are identical in terms of turning the concept of capital into something general, abstract and external.
Marx, contrary to this, seeks in Capital to reveal the particular historical laws of modern society (capitalist society). Regarding this, we can find the following passage in the postface to the second edition of that work:
It will be said...that the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. But this is exactly what Marx denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist...On the contrary, in his opinion, every historical period possesses its own laws...As soon as life has passed through a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws...The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when the likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of the phenomena shows that social organism differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals.[3]
For example, the various social organisms of slave-based society, feudal society and capitalist society are not equivalent to the childhood, adolescence and adulthood of the same living organism. Rather, they are like three completely different living organisms, such as the differences between a snake, a dog and a human being. A snake does not develop into a dog, just as a dog does not develop into a person. Each is rather a fundamentally distinct living organism, and therefore “one and the same phenomenon” will even “fall under quite different laws in consequence of the different general structure of these organisms, the variations of their individual organs, and the different conditions in which those organs function."[4]
In his introduction to Foundations of the Critique of Poltical Economy (Grundrisse), Marx notes:
Although it is true, therefore, that the categories of bourgeois economics possess a truth for all other forms of society, this is to be taken only with a grain of salt. They can contain them in a developed, or stunted, or caricatured form etc., but always with an essential difference. The so-called historical presentation of development is founded, as a rule, on the fact that the latest form regards the previous ones as steps leading up to itself, and, since it is only rarely and only under quite specific conditions able to criticize itself-leaving aside, of course, the historical periods which appear to themselves as times of decadence-it always conceives them one-sidedly.[5]
As long as a person believes that the society he is living in is the ultimate form of society, the social forms of the past will appear to be nothing more than a means of reaching this goal, thus losing their own independent existence. The past forms do not seem to be in opposition to this final form but rather subordinate to it. This accordingly rules out a comprehensive understanding of the past forms. This is the reason why “the latest form regards the previous ones as steps leading up to itself” and “always conceives them one-sidedly.”
Thus, as Marx explains in Capital, we cannot overlook the specific laws of capitalist society.
Marx thus says: “What I have to examine in this work is the capitalist mode of production, and the relations of production and forms of intercourse [Verkehrsverhältnisse] that correspond to it."[6] The mechanism of capitalist production, as I shall explain in a moment, is the specific mechanism of production wherein capitalists employing numerous wageworkers, themselves take possession of all of the products produced by the labor of workers in return for paying them a wage. A society where such a mechanism has come to be the dominant power is a society where “the capitalist mode of production prevails,” or simply put: a capitalist society.
Capital elucidates the specific laws of such a capitalist society. We must note, however, that a pure capitalist society has yet to exist, and could not exist. Within actual society, therefore – regardless of the degree to which capitalist development has been achieved – there will always be some part of it that is made up of past social forms, “maintained as a remnant that was not overcome.” And, needless to say, the theory in Marx’s Capital cannot be directly applied to these remnants of the past.
The population of rural agricultural villages in Japan, according to a 1921 survey, accounts for 48.2 percent of the entire population, but most of the agriculture in these villages is still not carried out under capitalistic production methods, and is therefore not capitalist agriculture. This means that the theory of capitalist ground rent explained by Marx in Capital is not applicable to the farm rent (kosakuryo) paid by tenant farmers in Japan. This was already effectively indicated by Murayama Toshirō[7] in Marxism and Problems of Agriculture, where he writes:
In Japan, tenant rent paid in kind is the dominant form of ground rent. There has arisen the peculiar phenomenon of mistaken arguments being raised by those who have not seriously considered this fact and instead attempt to apply the schema of Marx’s theory of ground rent to tenant rent in Japan. This can be seen, for example, in the work of Motoyuki Takabatake, Sentarō Kitaura and others.
3. Materialist Starting Point (External Phenomena as the Starting Point of Investigation)– The Commodity as the “Cell” of Capitalist Society –
Every effort is being made, from every direction, to prevent those submerged in troubles from locating their source. If we resist such confusion and identify the truth, we will discover that the source of problems is not that the area of land is too small, the population too large, foreigners too domineering, nor that we are too ignorant. This source can rather be traced to the organization of society. And we can also discover that if we want to eliminate these problems, we have no choice but to fundamentally revolutionize[8] this organization.
First and foremost, we need to identify as accurately as possible what exactly is the structure of the world we inhabit and the direction it is headed.
If we are to accurately know this, our method of cognition must be correct. And this correct method is the materialist dialectic. Here I would like to first say a word about the standpoint of materialism, and then deal briefly with the nature of a dialectical understanding.
What is the economic mechanism of the world we are living in? If we were idealists, when examining this problem we would likely close our eyes and cross our arms. But we are materialists and believe that only a materialist method of cognition will provide us with a correct understanding – an objective, scientific understanding – so we begin by opening our eyes and looking around at the phenomena that surround us. There is no way to avoid being taken in by the phenomenal forms that appear in our eyes, but our investigation must begin with these external phenomena as they appear to our eyes. Our starting point must be what is reflected in everyone’s eyes, what everyone would agree that they also see; the clear and indisputable facts that would satisfy anyone. Because this is our point of departure, our research is able to be reliable. If, instead, we were to start with what we are thinking inside our own hearts, even if this is thought to be correct, it would be doubtful whether this is indeed the case. And if one sought to convince others, some further proof would be necessary, meaning that the argument would wander hither and thither, with the entire investigation ending in error.
So we start from the clear facts that can satisfy everyone. In the postface to the second German edition of Capital, there is the following passage regarding this that Marx cited from a review of his book:
Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence.... If in the history of civilization the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilization, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point.[9]
Our economic lives appear in people’s eyes as a clear fact. – In order to live, we know that labor must be directed towards the external, natural world in order to create food, clothing and shelter, along with other things. In a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, written on July 11, 1868, Marx writes:
Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society’s aggregate labor. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labor in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves.[10]
This means that human beings, in order to live, have no choice but to create things through labor. So if such labor were to cease, even less than a year, every human being would also cease to exist. Also, because human beings have many needs, the labor of society as a whole must be distributed to each of the production sectors at a given proportion in order to produce the various products that correspond to these needs. This is a natural law that applies to any organization of society as long as there are people living upon the planet. The change that occurs between different social organizations involves the type of phenomenal form that this natural law is manifested within. All of this, in the words of Marx, is “self-evident” even to a child. Likewise in today’s society, it is evident that labor must be continually expended to produce the things needed to maintain our lives. And this aggregate labor of society must be distributed to the production sectors engaged in iron-making, shipbuilding, spinning, textile production, agriculture, mining, etc. However, all of the products produced are produced as commodities, so that social production is carried out through the method of commodity production. This means that in society today the natural law mentioned above is manifested specifically as commodity production.
This is why Marx, at the very beginning of Capital, writes: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form.”
This is also an external phenomenon that appears in the eyes of anyone living today. Even a child would be aware of this. Instead of producing what is needed for one’s own family, a person is able to obtain wealth, via payment, that is produced by other people (society) and comes in diverse varieties and infinite quantities. But everything is in the commodity form. This is the reason why “the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities.” It is called an “immense collection of commodities” because any and every thing becomes a commodity, so that anything can be obtained if money is paid and every product without exception is available as a commodity. But this has not always been the case. When commodity production had yet to develop sufficiently, there was no one to buy from even when a person wished to buy something, leaving that person no choice but to produce for their own consumption. But as the capitalist method of production gradually took hold, large numbers of products came to assume the commodity form. This can be understood if we journey from the countryside of Japan to the city. In rural areas, where capitalist production has yet to fully penetrate, one can get along to a greater extent without money. But in the city, where capitalist production has established itself as the prevailing force, one has to pay money for nearly everything. And anything can be bought, provided that money is paid. If we stroll over to the nearest department store, we will be afforded a first-hand view of a “collection of commodities.”
In this manner, the wealth of capitalist society appears as an “immense collection of commodities” and the individual commodity is the cell of this social wealth. Just as the human body is composed of an infinite number of individual cells, the wealth of capitalist society is composed of an infinite number of individual commodities. This is also something that can be clearly seen by anyone. If a person heads to the city to obtain something he wants, the item will have a price tag attached to it, or if not a sales clerk will tell the person how much it costs. At any rate, it is immediately clear to anyone that every item on the store’s shelves is a commodity. This is why Marx says that the individual commodity appears as the “elementary form” of the wealth of capitalist society. Here “appears” means that it is reflected in our eyes as an external phenomenon or phenomenal form. This phenomenal form is the starting point of Capital.
The points above can also be explained in the following manner.
The problem we are dealing with is the nature of the economic mechanism of the world we live in. If we take a glance at this world, we can see the economic relations between people in present-day society and discover the exchange relation between one commodity and another. As long as we are unable to survive without acquiring what other people produce, everything that people (particularly those living in cities) require – which includes their rice, miso, soy sauce, fish, meat, milk, vegetables, and other food, as well as their clothes, utensils, newspapers, pens, ink, and so on – is produced by other people. Things that are either stolen or received for free constitute a rare exception to this. As a rule, things must be purchased for a given amount of money. Because of this there are infinite exchange relations established between people, and the total of these exchange relations constitutes the economic structure of society today.
Seen from this standpoint, therefore, the economic structure of capitalist society appears as an “immense accumulation” of exchange relations, and it could be said that the individual exchange relation is the “elementary form” of this. Therefore, according to Lenin, commodity exchange is the “simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times”; in a word: the “cell” of capitalist society.
In short, our investigation should not begin right away with complex things. Rather, we must move progressively from the simplest things to ascend towards the more complex. This is why Marx says: “Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.”
4. A Dialectical Grasp– The Locus of Every Contradiction of Capitalist Society is Uncovered through the Analysis of the Commodity –
Next, I would like to say a word about the manner of a dialectical grasp.
In modern society, needless to say, a variety of contradictions appear from various directions. As one example I can point to the following newspaper article I happened to come across in today’s Osaka Mainichi (March 2, 1928):
Electrical companies are apparently suffering from an excess of electricity, claiming that they may be unable to continue production unless a limitation is placed on production. But this is outrageous! Where exactly is this supposed excess electricity? The electricity, said to be in excess, is apparently being conveyed through wires, but it fails to reach the most basic users. Of all the types of fuel, electric heating is the most convenient, but it is the most expensive and thus not commonly used. We have to make do with very dim electric lighting. In mountainous parts of the country, which are full of tunnels, the trains still burn coal that generates a great amount of soot. Even though railways are built for political reasons where there are neither passengers nor belongings to transport, we have yet to hear someone talk about using the excess electricity to electrify the railways. We often hear commercials about the electrification of households and a modern lifestyle, which everyone knows is convenient, but this is not affordable. Yet, what could make less sense than the idea that there is a problem of excess electricity or the call to reduce production? This would mean that the machines built will not be used, with water falling from waterfalls while these machines merely watch it flow out to the ocean. What a waste! And the electrical companies, despite this waste, still sell electricity at a high price, thus impeding the realization of a modern lifestyle, all the while talking about excess electricity.
Here we have an example of why many people fall into poverty in the midst of wealth. Electricity is not reaching the general consumer. And yet the electrical companies are struggling because of an excess of electricity. If this is not a contradiction what should we call it? Moreover, to resolve this contradiction, electrical companies are seeking to limit production. This means that the facility that we went to the trouble of building will not be used. And without this curtailment it is said that the companies may be unable to continue production. Under the system of present-day society, this contradiction can only be solved by limiting production-i.e. by curtailing productive power and deliberately preventing an increase in the production of wealth. This clearly signifies a clash between productive power and the relations of production, indicating that the current relations of production (the social relations or mechanism of society) have already become a barrier to the further development of productive power.
How did such a contradiction arise? Lenin writes:
The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence of dialectics...The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their “unity"...) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies of all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society). The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their “self-movement,” in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites.[11]
And he adds:
In his Capital, Marx first analyzes the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz. the exchange of commodities. In this very simple phenomenon (in this “cell” of bourgeois society) analysis reveals all the contradictions (or the germs of all the contradictions) of modern society. The subsequent exposition shows us the development (both growth and movement) of these contradictions and of this society in the ? [summation] of its individual parts, from its beginning to its end.[12]
This simple presentation by Lenin adequately expresses the nature of a dialectical grasp within political economy.
The commodity as the “elementary form” of wealth in capitalist society – and the commodity as the “cell” that is the fundamental constituent part of capitalist society – must be analyzed first, as noted earlier, but this analysis seeks to split the commodity qua unified thing into its contradictory parts.
Once it is discovered that the commodity contains a contradiction, the movement of the commodity can be grasped as self-movement, because a contradiction is the origin of movement. Here self-movement means that this is not movement dependent upon something else, but rather movement that possesses a motive force of its own. It is only by grasping the movement of a thing in this manner that we can first come to a fundamental understanding. This is because if the motive force of movement does not exist within the thing itself, but rather within something else, our study would have to further trace this other thing, and thus would to attain its ultimate aim.
The fundamental opposites within the commodity are use-value and value. A commodity must be a useful thing for people other than its owner, which is to say that it must be a use-value-or material wealth. At the same time, every commodity has a certain price, in terms of being such-and-such Japanese sen worth of gold. The value encompassed in the commodity is expressed in money. So the commodity is dualistic – a use-value on the one hand and a value on the other.
A use-value is the outcome of productive power but value is the expression of the relations of production. A commodity is the unity of opposites (use-value and value), and the commodity encompasses this fundamental contradiction. Encompassed within the commodity is every contradiction (and the germ of every contradiction) of commodity-production society – and of capitalist society as the highest development of commodity production.
The fact that electrical companies must limit production, even though electricity is being delivered to those who require it, is the result of electricity being produced as a commodity. If this is provided above a certain point, the unity of use-value and value is destroyed. Underlying this is a fundamental cause, which is the collision between the productive power of capitalist society and the relations of production within it.
In his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx offers the general conclusion of his research:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.[13]
When capitalist production reaches a certain stage of development, the material productive power of society inevitably collides with the capitalistic relations of production. How is it that the relations of production, which had been the developmental form of productive power, are necessarily turned into the opposite, becoming a fetter on productive power? It is this question that Marx’s Capital seeks to elucidate.
Endnotes
1. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, 1976) 92.
2. The word “revolution” (kakumei) was removed by censors and replaced with “xx.”
3. Capital vol. 1, 101.
4. Ibid.
5. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 106.
6. Capital vol. 1, 90.
7. Names are listed with the family name second, which is the opposite of the custom in Japan.
8. The words “fundamentally” (konponteki) and “revolutionize” (henkaku) were removed by censors and each replaced with “xx.”
9. Capital vol. 1, 101.
10. Karl Marx, MECW vol. 43 (New York: International Publishers, 1988), 68.
11. Lenin “On the Question of Dialectics” in Collected Works vol. 38 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976) 357-8.
12. Ibid. 358-9.
13. MECW vol. 29 (1987), 263.
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