Thursday, October 18, 2012

Rorty on Marx on value (with applications to subjectivism)


This is in the paper A Spectre is Haunting the Intellectuals: Derrida on Marx. reminded me very much of people who make a lot of hay out of "radical subjectivism":

"But is there anything mysterious, or spectral about commodities? One will find a mystery here only if one has a pretty primitive idea of value, or if one finds it weird that a thing should have the property it does by virtue of its relations to other things. There are, I suppose, some hick logocentrists who still think that some things or properties (the 'natural' and 'real' ones as opposed to the 'cultural' and 'artifical' ones) are what they are apart from any such relations. Such simple souls may stil be impressed, or indignant, when the line between the natural and the social, the substantial and the relational, or the essential and the accidental, is blurred. But only such naifs are still susceptible to the line of patter which we antiessentialist philosophers have developed. ('Ha! Fooled you! You thought it was real, but now you see that it's only a social construct! You thought it was just a familiar object of sense-perception, but look! It has a supersensible, spectral, spiritual backside!")

There is not, in fact, much naivety left these days. Tell a sophomore at an American college that something is only a social construct, and she is likely to reply, Yeah, I know. So are you, Mac.' It's not really news that everything is what it is because of its difference from everything else. So it is hard to know who is going to be intrigued by the following deconstruction of Marx's distinction between use-value and commodity-value..."

He then goes on to quote more from Derrida.

I remember (and it was as a freshman or sophomore sociology major) first getting introduced to Berger and Luckmann and the social construction of reality. It resonated with the way my economics professors had talked about utility, but it was still a scales-falling-from-my-eyes moment. I'm not quite sure it's as prevalent as Rorty suggests, but certainly among his audience it is. And there may still be work to do in terms of applications. Just because most people who think about it are anti-essentialists doesn't mean there's not a lot of rote essentialism in the world. Then, of course, the pragmatist has to ask himself whether a little rote essentialism is useful for some purposes. Maybe it's a convenient fiction. Still, I think good points are made here.

I think many "radical subjectivists" talking about Hayek or Lachmann are like Derrida talking about Marx. They think they are making a mysterious point, but if they asked the average economics sophomore they'd respond "yeah, I know".

One bad part of the essay: Rorty calls Marx the greatest political economist of the 19th century, but questions what value his philosophy had (Dewey is alleged to have separated the wheat from the chaff in Hegel, so what does one need Marx for?). I don't even think my macro political economy professor - who is about the most pro-Marx economist I know of that I take seriously - would go that far.

A slight redemption: He later says that Keynes is better than Marx, so we don't really need Marx's political economy either. This is the only reference to Keynes from Rorty that I've ever come across (which is a shame because I think Rorty would have liked him).

14 comments:

  1. I for one don't understand what Rorty is talking about (as usual). And I especially don't understand what it has to do with Marx.

    If anything Rorty's postmodernist line of thinking seems to support Marx rather than criticize him, see Paul Sweezy's introduction to Bohm-Bawerk's "Karl Marx and the Close of his System" for a similar sort of argument.

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    1. He's not anti-Marx. This paper came after another in a volume I'm reading where he was quite pro-Marx. The point he's making here, in contrast to what Derrida was trying to say, is that Marx is fine as far as he goes but really not as important today as Derrida makes him out to be.

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    2. Now it's even less clear to me what you mean. Is the quote above from Derrida or Rorty?

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    3. Rorty. He is reviewing a book by Derrida on Marx. Derrida is arguing that people need to keep reading Marx and that he is critically important. Rorty is positively disposed towards Marx, although obviously has some concerns - and he thinks most people can do without reading him or worrying too much about him.

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  2. Here's what I don't understand.... Let's say you're someone who supports the idea of the "social construction of reality". In that case why can't Marx have his "use-value" and "commodity-value"? How are you supposed to argue against him? He or his supporters can always say your reality is socially-constructed.

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    1. I don't think anyone's arguing against Marx on use value and commodity value here. The point is that Derrida makes a big deal of how commodity value disembodies "value", makes it relational, socially constructed, non-esssential, accidental, etc. etc. etc. Derrida thinks this is some incredible insight and that Marx is critical to continue to read in the modern world because he points this out.

      Rorty's response is "Meh. I think everyone basically knows that. I'm not sure what value added Marx offers anymore."

      Sorry - I thought this was clear from the quote even though I didn't quote more from the paper.

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    2. "I think everyone basically knows that."

      The problem is here that I've never really been able to pick apart what Marx means by "commodity value". Perhaps this is because I'm a member of the bourgeoisie.

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  3. "It's not really news that everything is what it is because of its difference from everything else."

    Wow! I had seen Rorty praise the British Idealists before, but I didn't realize he had absorbed their thought this deeply: this could basically be taken straight out of, say, Bosanquet. What with Gaus in Arizona now channeling these folks, I think the British Idealist revival is in full swing.

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    1. I think I remarked back when I read your PPE paper that Oakeshott's comment about Plato's shadows not being forgeries made him sound like an American pragmatist.

      I'm not sure how far you can take this, of course. My Wikipediaing is turning up some big differences too.

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  4. Tomorrow I think I may ask a Senior to explain the Transformation problem. A Freshman should be at least able to explain commodity fetishism.

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    1. I slept through the transformation problem in history of thought.

      The only part of Marx's economics I haven't found exceptionally dull is the stuff on general gluts - some in Capital, but a lot in Economic Manuscripts. That's actually quite good.

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    2. I don't understand how you can be talking about Marx's ideas about value without these things. You need the labour-theory-of-value, labour inhering in commodities, and so on to get anywhere at all with understanding Marx's ideas about value.

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    3. I was joking Current! I'm just poking at my own inability to grasp the intricacies of the transformation problem. I know the broad sketch of it all.

      I think you're completely missing the point of all this. Rorty is just saying that this allegedly radical difference between use value and exchange value isn't all that radical. That's all.

      If you want to go into detail about Marx's own theory of the commodification process, yes, there's a lot more to be said.

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    4. "Rorty is just saying that this allegedly radical difference between use value and exchange value isn't all that radical. That's all."

      AFAIK Marx doesn't say that the difference between use-value and exchange-value is something radical he's thought of. He takes the difference from Ricardo and Smith. It's more the other ideas that he adds into the mix that he sees as radical.

      You can't criticize Marx by saying "everyone knows price and utility are different", of course they do, but that only scratches the surface of what Marx was talking about.

      That would be like you coming into my lab and saying "You electronic engineers have seven different definitions of phase noise, but I can show you that it's really a very simple concept that everyone can understand". Of course, it is a simple concept, but it has many intricacies and a lot of language is needed to express them precisely. The reason behind laborious exercises to make minor differentiations only becomes clear over time, when the reasons for constructing those differences are explored.

      Anyway, I'll remember your that American college students understand Marxist theory and I'll be sure to ask the next one I meet about it :)

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