Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy, 1923
I’m thinking of writing a textbook, perhaps called How to Learn Marx’s Theory and Apply it for Yourself to the Contemporary World. It would have to involve i) a short history of dialectics; ii) an outline of, perhaps, The Phenomenology of Spirit, The Philosophy of History and perhaps The Logic (if I could manage that); iii) a short history of political economy, focusing on labour theories of value; iv) an outline of Smith and Ricardo in respect to this question in particular v) Marx’s philosophy of the interaction of the subject and the object, as originally formulated in the Theses on Feuerbach vi) Marx’s philosophy in practice, as he applied to concrete analyses of historical and contemporary history and journalism; vii) Marx’s philosophy/ methodology in practice, as he applied it to economic analysis; viii) the relevance or otherwise of any of his tools to understanding the contemporary world, especially the specific nature of contemporary imperialism and the ongoing crisis of global capitalism; ix) Marx’s theory of colonialism and Marxist theories of imperialism; x) the theoretical and organisational degeneration of anti-imperialism and the Western left as a large-scale modern socio-historical phenomenon, that can only be explained by a careful and judicious application of Marx’s philosophical and social scientific method of the interaction of the subject, ala Karl Korsh in Marxism and Philosophy; and xi) ongoing problems with Marxist philosophy, social theory and economics, and possible answers to them.
Some quick points about Marx's philosophy and economics.
1. Objectivity is distinguished by Marx in two ways i) material objectivity (eg use-values and wealth) and ii) social objectivity (in economics, exchange-values, or the quantities of abstract or homogenised labour). So both use values and exchange values are, in Marx’s theory, supposed to be objective, but in different ways. Many mix up the two, and, with regard to marginalism, mix up the perception of values of goods and services (a subjective, individual-psychological question) with use values, which can never be subjective.
2. The subject-object thing runs right through Marx from beginning to end, from the architecture of Capital—which begins with the general abstract conclusions on the nature of wealth in the capitalist mode of production and descends to the concrete evidence from which the general categories are derived—down to the detailed concrete passages detailing, say, the process of increasing subordination of the worker amid the process of development of manufacture. This is because Marx knows that all theory is inescapably subjective—but not only in the sense of being individually subjective,but also socially subjective, from a group point of view. However, he believes that the objective position of wage-labour in opposition to capital (again, the two form an inseparable mutually defining "unity") gives it a unique vantage point in the social structure. Hence the crucial distinction between a class in itself (an objective social-structural position in relation to property [land, labour and capital]) and a class for itself (a subjective awareness of position, interests and capabilities that informs social and political action). One reason why "subjective" in Marxism is not synonymous with "bias" in the everyday sense is that, once the accumulation of capital is seen to result from the labour process, as the product of dead labour, the subjective view from the objective position of the working class—that it is the class responsible for wealth creation—is seen to be objectively correct. That is, the subject and the object re-emerge as a unified whole, a unity. And in fact, the same thing is right there in the Theses on Feuerbach, as it is in The 18th Brumaire and the Civil War in France. Because one of the things that Marx is saying (or rather illustrating) in the quote from the Critique of the Gotha Programme is that wealth has a passive as well as an active side, a material as well as a social, an objective as well as a subjective. It is not possible to be a Marxist and not grasp that Marx's methodology—which conceives of reality as sensuous human activity, as political and social practice—is at base a conception of social change as the mutually determining relation subjective and objective factors at various levels. Because this is the very core of Marx's innovation, his specific philosophical advance over both mechanical pre-Marxist materialism (say, of Holbach or Feuerbach), which conceives of reality as an external object, and idealism, for which reality and contemplation are one and the same. That's more or less point one in Marxism, and if you haven't got that, nothing else is really available to you, and you are forced merely to decry it as "pseudo philosophical claptrap", in the manner typical of today's anti-intellectualism—essentially revelling in its own ignorance. "The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism—that of Feuerbach included—is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively".
3. Marxist objectivity, Marx's version of realist method—and so Rosdolsky's version of realist method—is always an everywhere understood as a mutually determining process between subjective and objective factors.
4. Without use value, there can be no exchange value, because any labour that goes into a product that no one wants is socially unnecessary.
5. Another reason why abstracting from use values can't mean excluding them from the value equation, or separating them from exchange value, in Marx's system: because the use value of labour power treated as a commodity is the source of fresh value when it is turned into labour during production. Therefore, the lines of manufactured trousers hung up for sale in Marks and Sparks imply the class struggle!
6. It is some time since I studied the question, but some common objections to the LTV are as follows: i) scarcity is also a feature common to commodities that gives them value (Austrian School); ii) in an economy in which food or energy are commonly part of the production of commodities (whether as imputs for the worker or for production), then the same relation applies as it does for labour, and we have a food or energy theory of value (neo-Ricardians, the most important of whom is Sraffa); iii) even if there is then a food or energy theory of value, can we talk of exploitation of food or energy? Technically, yes; but morally, no. Marx aims for a dispassionate account of exploitation as a technical relation, but it has an irreducibly human-centred moral component: normative ethics vs scientific socialism. iv) Most of the classical economists, including Marx, assumed a falling rate of profit, but it is unclear whether there is strong empirical evidence for this on a worldwide scale over time. v) Marx's theory of the falling rate of profit is based on the idea that, because labour power is the sole source of fresh value, as the capitalist invests in new machinery (dead labour) to give them a competitive advantage, this may raise individual profits in the short run, but, as capitalists as a whole adopt the new technology, over the long run, the ratio of fresh value-creating labour (variable capital) to constant capital (machinery) falls, and with it surplus value (the relation between value and prices is that value is something like the long-term equilibrium price around which prices fluctuate because of variations in supply and demand), the source of profits. But what about new lines of industry, which are being developed all the time, will they not offset the overall declining tendency? But what if the productivity increase delivered by the new capital offsets the falling tendency? This development is not specified in detail, ie there is no integrated theory of it.
7. Only exchange vales can represent values, because they are the form that value takes in capitalist society and value is the content. In contrast, use values are the bearers of exchange value. Represent and bear do not mean the same thing.
8. A use value cannot be subjective. This is because it is the quality of the commodity that allows it to fulfil some socially mediated human need. It is the quality, the socially mediated human appeal, that allows it to enter exchange in the first place. Without it, no equivalence of, say 2 shirts for 1 exquisite tie, on the basis of their containing the same amount of abstract human labour, could take place.
9. The marginalists start with scarcity and find the explanation in variations in value in individual psychology, in individual tastes. For them the external world of material things and the subjective world of the mind (ie of individual tastes) are radically separate. For Marx, on the other hand, the two are inseparably part of the same whole, the same totality.
10. "It is in the various use values that value is expressed". No, value is expressed as exchange value. Use values are carriers of exchange value. These are two ideas that are fundamental to understanding the LVT, before you decide whether the the criticism of it are true or false.
11. The secret of Marx's analysis, as he used it, is that socially objective factors—such as exchange value—are themselves the outcome of previous clashes of subjective and objective factors. That's why the subject-object formulation holds. In practice, it is not a theoretical question, but a scholarly-practical question, the end result of scrupulous and detailed investigation at more and more concrete levels of social reality, at lower and lower levels of social reality, spiralling downwards to follow the inner relations (not causative relations!) of the mutually conditioning sides. Thus, even if the LTV aims at social scientific objectivity, it does not aim at class objectivity. On the contrary, it aims to punch a series of holes in classical political economy, in this way placing itself wholeheartedly in the service of achieving working class power.
12. On the Jewish Question. Marx, in his argument with Bauer on the insufficiency of mere religious emancipation, adopts—mock-naively and for (heavy handed) satirical purposes—the characteristic denigrating epithets commonly heaped on Jews to suggest that they would be more appropriately heaped on the chief denigrators, the respectable bourgeoisie. Also, he's just emerging from pure Hegelianism (I think he's 25) so that the language makes it difficult for the casual reader to grasp what he's saying. He's saying social emancipation should be the revolutionary democratic goal.
13. The two basic point where today's "anti-imperialists" go wrong, is that, on some occasions, in relation to some kinds of regime, some forms of western Imperialism are relatively progressive; the partial advances in democratic and social control, though insufficient, are not illusory, but are real. This leads them into all kinds of reactionary contortions.
14. Marx never repudiates the idea that capitalism is progressive relative to some kinds of social formation. He certainly uses some of the (to us) loaded phrases of the day. He is also inevitably Eurocentric, despite his very serious attempts to get to grips with other cultures (on India, he probably read as much as was available in the day, even if this wasn't very much or very good). But "progressive" and "civilising" do not mean the same thing. The earlier passages on India merely note that, despite all the human horrors and destruction wreaked by colonial domination, at the same time the social basis of a stultifying social form, of "oriental despotism" is shattered. In a way, he is arguing against the romanticisation of social forms that severely check human development. The later passages on the Russian mir is not about changing his mind on the accidentally progressive aspect of colonialism (I don't think he had a fully-worked out view on what we would call imperialism, just hints here and there), but on there being the possibility of multiple trajectories towards social advance, rather than a single one suitable for all times and places.
15. The point about Marx's earlier quote about India and the one about the mir is his ability to see alternative potential futures immanent in existing social structures—notwithstanding that, based on the inadequate sources of the day, his picture of pre-colonial India has since been superseded. In contrast, the dogmatist sees only one possible path—whether that be inevitably positive or negative. But both are attempts at "a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical", but neither are really much to do with Marx's Marxism—ie, Marxism at its most powerful. That's why the "bleeding dry" of the later Marx fits perfectly well with, and is not cancelled out by, the earlier argument of progressive potential of destruction of repressive social and or state structures—whether we wish to apply it to historical societies or Saddam's Iraq—because in between the two are the actions of the main actors, the oppressor and the oppressed, which fulfil or nullify possibilities that were previously present. That's why Marx's views on the mir wasn't cancelled, in this sense, by the actual history of the development of capitalism in Russia.
16. Just as he saw the potential for the break up from the outside of social relations restrictive of human developments—but perhaps thought this potential closed off following the Indian mutiny—so he saw the potential for social progress on the basis of the Russian commune in a context of globalising capitalism. Ie neither of the potentialities he thought he saw materialised and, in fact, both have had to undergo full scale capitalisation or recapitalisation—in India's case, in part owing not just to transfers of technology and knowhow, but more importantly to the transformation in social relations, of the dominant property form, the precise trajectory of which owes in part to the imperial inheritance.
17. No expurgation of the possibility of Indian agency from the dynamic political picture:
"All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation? The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether. "
O yes, and tell us, clever clogs, by what processes do you propose might lead to the Indians being able to throw off the English yoke themselves?
"The political unity of India, more consolidated, and extending farther than it ever did under the Great Moguls, was the first condition of its regeneration. That unity, imposed by the British sword, will now be strengthened and perpetuated by the electric telegraph. The native army, organized and trained by the British drill-sergeant, was the sine qua non of Indian self-emancipation, and of India ceasing to be the prey of the first foreign intruder. The free press, introduced for the first time into Asiatic society, and managed principally by the common offspring of Hindoos and Europeans, is a new and powerful agent of reconstruction. The Zemindari and Ryotwar themselves, abominable as they are, involve two distinct forms of private property in land — the great desideratum of Asiatic society. From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up, endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science. Steam has brought India into regular and rapid communication with Europe, has connected its chief ports with those of the whole south-eastern ocean, and has revindicated it from the isolated position which was the prime law of its stagnation."
So: some historical errors on the nature of Indian property systems, owing to inadequate sources, but no “imperiocentric” siding with the English against the Indians, or denying that they would have to be the agents of the own political destiny if they were to enjoy the benefits of the destructive and self-serving interference of the imperialists.
"All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation? The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether. "
O yes, and tell us, clever clogs, by what processes do you propose might lead to the Indians being able to throw off the English yoke themselves?
"The political unity of India, more consolidated, and extending farther than it ever did under the Great Moguls, was the first condition of its regeneration. That unity, imposed by the British sword, will now be strengthened and perpetuated by the electric telegraph. The native army, organized and trained by the British drill-sergeant, was the sine qua non of Indian self-emancipation, and of India ceasing to be the prey of the first foreign intruder. The free press, introduced for the first time into Asiatic society, and managed principally by the common offspring of Hindoos and Europeans, is a new and powerful agent of reconstruction. The Zemindari and Ryotwar themselves, abominable as they are, involve two distinct forms of private property in land — the great desideratum of Asiatic society. From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up, endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science. Steam has brought India into regular and rapid communication with Europe, has connected its chief ports with those of the whole south-eastern ocean, and has revindicated it from the isolated position which was the prime law of its stagnation."
So: some historical errors on the nature of Indian property systems, owing to inadequate sources, but no “imperiocentric” siding with the English against the Indians, or denying that they would have to be the agents of the own political destiny if they were to enjoy the benefits of the destructive and self-serving interference of the imperialists.
