The American Political Economy Tradition

If Cohen and De Long (2016) are to be believed, there is an American Political Economy tradition, that harks back to Alexander Hamilton, that goes against the free market canon of the profession. In their view, the American Political Economy tradition consist of an interventionist approach to economic policy, that arguably should be seen as neomercantilist [1]. Classical political economy, as represented by their main figures in the United Kingdom, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, upheld the laissez-faire and free market tradition, and in this view the same would be true for the marginalist or neoclassical tradition. In that respect, some might see a continuity between both schools of thought and the American Political Economy tradition would be a somewhat heterodox tradition from its inception, at least on policy issues.

Read rest here.

A Terse Elucidation of Marx’s Concern with Alienation in the Mature Writings

By David Fields

Note: The references below are drawn from The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker.

Is Marx’s concern with aspects of alienation subsumed in his mature writings? To suggest so is a falsity. Marx’s depiction of the proletariat becoming, in the Hegelian sense, emancipated from the objective conditions of estranged labour, is not withered as the analysis moves toward the technical conditions of production. Marx’s humanism is still apparent.

In Wages, Labour, and Capital, Marx explicates that labour power is a life activity (204). It is the manifestation of human creativity, so that when it is sold as a commodity, a worker, in fact, sacrifices his life; the “product of his activity is no longer the object of his activity” (204-205). Life, as such, no longer has meaning.

Marx asks a pertinent question: “And the worker, who for twelve hours weaves, spins, drills, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stones, carries loads, etc.-does he consider this twelve hours’ weaving, spinning, drilling turning, building, shoveling, stone breaking as a manifestation of his life, as life” (205)? The answer is a resounding no: “On the contrary, life brings for him where this activity ceases, at table, in the public house, in bed […] The twelve hours’ labour, on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, drilling etc., but [only] as earnings […] If the silkworm were to spin in order to continue its existence as a caterpillar, it would be a complete wage-worker” (205).

Another example is Marx’s attention to commodity fetishism: “In production, men not only act on nature but also on one another. They produce only by co-operating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social connections and relations does their action on nature, does production, take place” (207). This actuality is mystified given that “the noble reproductive [labour] power that the worker surrenders to the capitalist [for sustenance]” (209) is the mechanism that generates the “means of employment” (210), of which labour, which by definition “possesses nothing but its capacity to labour” (208), socially depends on. This social dependency is the force that manufactures ‘false consciousness for “to say that the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital is […] to say that the more rapidly the worker increases the wealth of [capitalists], the richer will be the crumbs that fall to him” (211).

In Marx’s Grundrisse, there are more examples of where Marx alludes to alienation. For instance, Marx begins his analysis with a scathing critique of Enlightenment ideology: “The [rational] individual [who] belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century Robinsonades […,] which brings natural independent, autonomous subjects into relation and connection by contract”, is an “ideal whose existence is [systematically] project[ed] […] by [the] detach[ment] [of the individual] from [his] natural bonds” (222). Hence, “forms of social connectedness confront the individual as mere means toward his private purposes, as external necessity” (223). And to suggest that material production, of which forms the bedrock of society, is determined “by isolated individual[s] […] is as much as an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other” 223). Society “does not consist of [isolated] individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which […] individuals stand” (247).

In continuance with a concrete understanding  of the nature of commodity fetishism, Marx indicates that the unity of production, distribution, and consumption is a mystification that clouds the reality that the worker is inherently an agent in production, of which the worker’s social position determines its pattern of distribution, and ultimately its pattern of consumption (223-234)…the unperceived “mutual interaction” that consummates the capitalist system as an “organic whole” (236).

Furthermore, Marx discerns that when labour exchanges with capital in the selling of labour power, a worker “divests himself” of his “vital forces” to the submission of superfluous “forced labour”, surplus value, of which work in production is in excess of that which is necessary for the means for “mere subsistence”, to generate a “general form of [capitalist] wealth (247-249). This facet of capitalism is striking for that it inevitably blinds the worker from realizing that his social condition is, indeed, a relation of domination similar to that of slavery, or what Marx defines as “direct forced labour” (250). Work in capitalist production is “indirect forced labour” for that wealth generated from labour is not accumulated for the gratification of overlords, but exploited to foster general industriousness that generates the means of employment, the means of subsistence, of which labour, by definition, socially depends on. Workers are nothing else than soulless cogs in a wheel, an “alien person”, whose objective social conditions appear as separated, independent, and of another kind (252-253).

Examples of Marx’s adherence to the thesis of alienation are also prevalent in Das Kapital. We again see commodity fetishism highlighted: “A commodity is […] a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason the products of labour become commodities, social things, whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses” (320). Commodities thus appear, according to Marx, as a social hieroglyphic (322), an alienating state of existence where one “cannot decipher the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them […] in the same way [that] light from an object is perceived […] not as the subjective excitation of the optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself” (321).

Marx also rehashes his argument, albeit in condensed form, of labour power as a life-activity that is ultimately dispossessed in capitalist exchange. When a capitalist purchases labour power for capitalist production, “the labourer, instead of being in a position to sell commodities in which his labour is incorporated, must sell that very labour-power, which exists in his living self” (337). Workers are free in the double sense; on the one hand, “as a free man, [the worker] can dispose of his labour power as his own commodity, on the other hand […] he has no other commodity for sale, which is short of everything necessary for the realization of his labour power”. This is an estrangement whose unadulterated existence makes the so-called rational-maximizing individual a self-perpetuating mythological understood form of social life (324).

In hindsight, Marx’s interest with the social conditions of alienation is not abandoned as he matures. To suggest that this is indeed the case would be to assume that there is supposedly an epistemological break between Marx’s early and later writings. This, however, would ignore a critical comprehension of Marx’s work as a totality.

Originally posted on URPE Blog

The Mission of Radical Political Economy

The mission of radical political economy is to accentuate the perseverance of critical social scientific enquiry. As such, the aim is to make palpable how the insights of social justice research widely make apparent how the global socioeconomic system does not automatically generate efficient situations whereby unique organizations of production, exchange, and distribution guarantee the attainment of maximum social welfare.

The idea that humans are simple instrumentally rationalists, who supposedly oscillate like a homogeneous globule of Hobbesian brutes, is conclusively a fiction. Radical political economy exposes hidden complex social fractures that limit the capability of humans to safeguard social assets, social claims, and social ties requisite for sustaining an institutional nucleus for human survival. Hence, the goal is to embrace scholarship that evinces the impingement upon the accruement and management of resources vital for catholic cogitation, and realization, of conscious desires for humans to reach their full potential.

In this sense, the purpose is to establish the appropriate consciousness needed to untie the Gordian knot of social complexity, in order to surpass rudimentary assumptions concerning the nature of human social interaction. Accordingly, the concern is with elucidating the intrinsic causal social relationships—the Hegelian ‘notion’ of truth submerged and contained within the confines of appeared ‘being’—that furnishes meaning and understandability, so as to strengthen a philosophy of praxis that strives to build the social conditions for a reconstruction and reconstitution of the social world, such that higher stages of human development are sought and achieved.

In other words, what is requisite active engagement in the construction and strengthening of a broadly shared paradigmatic and methodological orientation that emphasizes the trenchant questioning of manifest social phenomena, in order to expose the underlying structural dynamics that engender mass deprivation and dispossession. This is a tireless exercise in solving the inherent problems related to relationship between abstraction and social reality, in order to elucidate the philosophical, metaphysical, epistemological, ephemeral, and ontological qualities that condition the human lived experience and, regrettably, foster the unnecessary barriers for humans to be masters of their own social organization.

The human brain confronts matters in the most efficient manner possible; so much so that it often becomes counterintuitive to undergo analysis that extends beyond the simplest explanation, even if that explanation is suspect. It is in this inherent method where dogma is born. This process of edification, however, has the power to overcome innate tendencies towards such reductionism. Since radical political economy presents an authentic humanism, which posits as fundamental that human beings of all social locations subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation, then this predisposition towards apathy—intensified through systems of coercive, disconnected, and hierarchical social institutions—can be broken down, spawning a community that is both cooperative and collaborative, whereby all human dignity, creativity, and survival are held in the highest regard.

Another post on radical political economy is here

Amitava Dutt on Pluralism (or lack thereof) in Economics

The recent issue of ROPE is an excellent symposium on nature of pluralism (or lack thereof) in contemporary economics. This following article by Amitava Dutt is quite insightful.

From the abstract:

Recent debates about the nature and desirability of pluralism in economics suffer from a lack of clarity about the meaning of pluralism. This paper attempts to remedy some aspects of this problem by distinguishing between different dimensions of pluralism, that is, epistemological, ontological, methodological, normative and prescriptive dimensions. Although, in principle, these dimensions are distinct, they are difficult to keep apart because of the relations that exist in terms of choices made in the different dimensions. It is argued that the recognition of these distinctions and relations allows for a resolution of some of the debates about pluralism.

Read rest here (subscription required), and for an introduction to the symposium by John Davis, see here (subscription required).

New Book: "Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa" Edited by Bellofiore & Carter

Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa examines the legacy of Piero Sraffa by approaching his ideas in a new light, thanks to the insights gained from the opening of the archive collection of his papers at the Wren Library (Trinity College, Cambridge, UK). It provides a refreshing perspective into Sraffa's approach to money, the role of equilibrium and of the surplus in economic theory.  The study is backed by previously unpublished, original, archival material. It provides an appraisal of the discontinuities in the path leading to the publication in 1960 of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities since its conception in the late 1920s. It unlocks significant new perspectives about the connection of Sraffa to Marx regarding Standard commodity, the macro-social and monetary theory of exploitation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the transformation of values into prices of production. It also offers insights on how Sraffa dealt with money in the various phases of his thinking, and explores his ideas about the role of equilibrium and of the surplus in economic theory. It concludes with an account of some recent Sraffa scholarship and points towards future research avenues. 

See rest here.

PS: (Matías here) There was a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics on the topic here, with a response by Heinz Kurz here (subscriptions required). (David here) And here is an earlier piece by Kurz on Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts, in relation to the history of economic thought.

Fundamental Books by Michael Burawoy Downloadable

Classics by Michael Burawoy, from "Manufacturing Consent" to "The Politics of Production"

See here.