Four
Standpoints on Truth, Reason and Freedom.
We can't begin the contest between the standpoints unless there are rules of the game. Otherwise anything goes and we have nihilism. The trouble is that many people don't play by any rules, or change them at will. They say that Truth does not exist as a way of telling us what is or ought to be. Reason and Freedom are also looked on with suspicion not as a means (reason) to an end (freedom) but as the road to serfdom, to tyranny and concentration camps. I argue here that all of these concepts are rules of the game that are vital to human existence. Without these rules there could be no social life itself. I argue here that each of the four main Standpoints of contemporary social thought advances a version of truth, reason and freedom (even when pretending no to do so). So the question is: how to decide which version best accords with our views on how to arrive at what is good and not bad for human development. Rather than a game with no rules, where debate is fruitless, I say there is much common ground on which to stake our claim to truth, reason and freedom.
The tools of knowledge.
The purpose of this chapter is to present an analytical framework which allows four competing standpoints,1 (or perspectives) on truth, reason and freedom to be tested and evaluated. These three concepts are central to modern social thought.2 Truth is a claim to represent reality. Without the idea of (relative) truth we cannot claim to know anything. Reason, is the capacity to use our knowledge to follow a course of action which is ‘good’ and leads to an end which serves the common good (for someone). Freedom is the end to economic scarcity which allows the full development of (at least some) human potential.3 It follows that truth is necessary for any rational action, and that rational action is most rational when it leads to freedom. The measure of the success of this rational means-end process can be called ‘progress’.
These three concepts are today seen as the key to the Enlightenment Project –the bourgeois world vision of building a perfect world. They are today widely rejected as fraudulent by those who blame the Enlightenment for the the underdevelopment of the third world, 4 Stalinism, or leading to the Nazi totalitarianism.5 But this sort of 'reasoning' is self-contradictory. While maquerading as anti-modern, or anti-Eurocentric, it also must make claims to truth, reason and freedom. So we should not let such criticisms detain us here.6
First, then, we need to examine how truthful knowledge is possible and how we decide on the truth-value of knowledge.7 Our basic tool kit is a model of society as a layer cake (see diagram below) which is real and accessible to scientific analysis. This layer cake represents a snapshot of society at any one time in a freeze frame, but it can also be turned into a video screen to reveal life in motion as a moving picture.
Looking down from above the box we see the surface of society at the top layer. This gives us immediate impressions but not in-depth knowledge. As Marx said: "All science would be superfluous if the outward appearances and essences of things directly coincided".8 The further we penetrate down into the layer cake the more complete our knowledge, the closer to the truth we get, and the more likely that our actions are based on reason and lead to freedom.
So true knowledge of society cannot be based on what we directly sense. If we limit our explanations to everyday impressions, our concepts and language are based on common sense.9 Therefore knowledge of this sort which claims to represent the truth, some notion of reason or freedom, falls far short of a full knowledge of reality. This is because society as part of nature, operates on causal laws which are not immediately apparent and which have to be uncovered by a method of peeling back the outer layers to reveal the inner structure. If we try to fill in this gap in our knowledge by invoking existing pre-conceptions [myth, folklore, religious dogma] or if we retreat into relativism (there is no agreed cause or ethical standard to guide us all) then our concepts and language remain ideological. That is, we select concepts that ‘work’ by tradition or experience - that allow us to manipulate our environment to get what we want in terms of our class or particular interests. Most accumulated social knowledge is ideological and is challenged only when it doesn’t ‘work’ so that we get what we want.10
Only then do we seek explanations for events which cannot be explained by our existing pre-conceptions. We look for new conceptions which we ‘think’ may explain the cause that we observe. We may plug that gap with a new mythology which serves our immediate interests. In which case we do not break from ideological thinking. A good case is the appeal to neo-liberal market ideology to 'explain' the need to revive competition. The problem is economic recession. Profits fall and the immediate interests of capitalists suffer. How do solve the problem? Anwer: revive competition to drive out weak, non-performing firms, and strengthen the best performing firms.11
Using the same example. If in the process of 'rethinking' a problem (why the post-war boom ended) we develop some knew knowledge based upon an understanding of historical laws e.g. which explains that booms and busts both occur because of an inherent tendency for the rate of profit to fall, then we shift the level of knowledge from appearance to a deeper understanding of social structure. When we do that, and subject the new conceptions to tests of their validity, we are engaging in the practice of science. 12 What is valid is a matter of scientific practice. Science tries to explain events by finding causes which can be isolated and evaluated according to rules accepted by those who call themselves scientists.
Scientists as intellectuals serve class interests. But they also have an interest in pushing the boundaries of knowledge forward to discover new laws. They may chose to reject any link between 'fact' and 'value' but the 'fact' is that historically science is never 'pure' and is harnessed to the interests of the ruling class. Where those interests coincide with applying knowledge progressively, then the search for truth opens up the possibilities of the application of reason to the goal of freedom.13
Common sense, ideology, science
There are, then, three sorts of knowledge which combine in any world-view - commonsense, ideology and science. My argument here is that common sense accounts of society are based on everyday experience which is sufficient to allow us to fulfil most social roles, but which falls far short of explaining cause and effect. At this level, when we want to ‘explain’ our impressions, we simply apply assumptions about universal drives, needs etc which are part of nature. Were these don't fill the gap in day to day knowledge we invoke chance, fate, free will, or supernatural causes outside society or nature. For most of our daily lives we rely on habit(us) or norms in which our behaviour conforms to such cultural codes (or discourse) without any conscious self-reflection.
This has given rise to a view of the evolution of human society in which social norms and institutions are seen as natural,universal, or biologically given, functioning to integrate individuals into society as if it functioned like a biological organism. It is assumed that society evolves from simple to more complex forms along a path of ‘social development’ which expresses in some way, some progressive path of human evolution from tradition to modernity. Analysing what constitutes 'development' the most common measure is the saving of necessarylabour time, or labour productivity.14 In other words, without always recognising the fact, it is clear that bourgeois thought understood that labour (power) produces value and that the conservation of necessary labour time is a measure of human progress. So the labour theory of value is vindicated.15
This evolutionary story can be summarised thus. Individuals are social beings. They do not exist outside society which is part of nature and they act collectively on nature to meet their socially defined needs. Thus individuals act on nature and develop its forces of production within social constraints called social relations or a division of labour. When the existing social relations prevent new ideas from bringing advances in labour productivity, revolutionary changes occur which allow society to leap ahead in reducing necessary labour time.
The generally accepted account of such progress is that historically individuals responded to the challenge of scarcity by adapting existing concepts or developing new ones, applying new techniques to production, and creating a division of labour which allowed labour productivity to advance. This allowed society to escape the dominance of nature as 'scarcity' and to begin accumulating surplus product. During the ‘golden age’ of European civilisation, individual producers created economic surpluses which they then exchanged giving rise to the modern market. This marked an evolutionary shift from tradition to modernity.16 No doubt much of this general account is ‘true’ and serves to define ‘reason’ and ‘freedom’ since society as a whole progresses by increasing its labour productivity and collective welfare. Most importantly the market became a means of allocating social labour in a much more efficient way than in pre-market society. 17
But this view is also partly ideological, because it contains implicit or explicit assumptions about human progress meeting the general interest. That is, the evolution of the market is assumed to ensure the greater good of all [the collective interest] and become the natural and universal standard of welfare and freedom in the post-scarcity society.
This is where the bourgeois and Marxist standpoints part company. For Marxists the ‘truth’ of this evolutionary account can be seen to be ideological when it projects back into history the European-centred bourgeois view of progress that became dominant in the 19th century. Thus the whole of human history becomes judged against the ‘golden age’ of the successful bourgeois entrepreneur in the market. Some of the 'truth' of progress at a given historical stage, becomes falsely abstracted or ideologised to become the timeless 'truth' of the golden age mythology. The heroic entreprenuer produced his (sic) own value, and saved his own 'capital' so that he could become a capitalist. His reward for saving capital was that he could then command the means of production which allowed others to be employed to produce value. So was born the 'holy trinity' version of history in which capitalists, landlords and workers all produce value and get their reward, or 'factor incomes' in the form of profits, rents and wages.18
In this mythology capitalists do not exploit workers, since capital, land and labour are rewarded for their contribution to production. But what if this ideological view of the 'common interest' masks an underlying class exploitation and a conflict of class interests?19 So instead of a universal truth perhaps we have a partial, class-biased truth. This 'truth' masks the 'primitive accumulation' of capital by means of theft, and supresses the labour theory of value in which only labour produces value, so that revolutionary penetration of the market and its ‘civilising mission’ of smashing pre-capitalist society can be dressed up in the name of the common good.20 Therefore, modern bourgeois soiety becomes the realisation of universal progress and the market becomes the only means towards the the general welfare and freedom. In the process the 'truth' of the ‘rationality’ of capitalism as a progressive step towards freedom, becomes dehistoricised, naturalised and universalised.
What is masked by bourgeois ideology is the fact that the fundamental conflict of class interest in the production and the distribution of social wealth becomes a barrier to the true universal welfare and freedom. The bourgeois ideology which passes off its class interests as the general interest suppresses the knowledge that to realise universal welfare and freedom it is necessary to to go beyond capitalism to socialism.21 It follows that a radical/Marxist critique of bourgeois ideology would assert that, the concept of ‘reason’ is ‘rational’ only :
(a) if it can be shown to be the cause of progress as defined by an advance in productivity, in which increased value is also equitably shared by all who produce it. That is, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need". The freedom from scarcity becomes absolute freedom itself – that is communism. Or: (b) failing that, it creates the pre-conditions for, and is not itself a barrier to, future equality. That is, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their work." That is relative freedom from need – or socialism. 22
Hence the question becomes, how to prove the truth that progress is really universal? For example, if as radicals claim, the market, by destroying a pre-industrial society locks it into under-development, is this rational? No, because on none of the above measures of progress, i.e. equality and relative freedom now, or at least in the acheiveable future, is this reasonable. Or, as Marxist critics argue, if market relations appear equal but in reality mask unequal production relations where one class exploits and expropriates the labour of another, is that rational? No! Not unless these market relations create the conditions for their replacement by social relations of equality and freedom.23
Here then, we are anticipating the most basic objections from radicals and Marxists to the conservative and liberal ideological use of 'truth' 'reason' and 'freedom'. Obviously we have a clash of standpoints in which these categories are contested.24 Yet the differences between radicals and Marxists on the one hand and old fashioned conservatives and liberals is over the question of how to interpret the material view of modernity and the the measure of progress. But there is a current of liberal ideology which rejects materialism and modernity, and in fact society itself on the grounds that modern society is no more than a collection of isolated individuals or particular groups.
The End of Reason?
Today much so-called post-modern thought rejects ‘reason’ as wholly ideological, denying any of the progress of 'modernity'. Essentially post-modern social theory argues that ‘modernity’ i.e. the rise of the market as a mechanism for the allocation of social labour, has not delivered its Enlightenment promise of ‘liberty’, ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’. 25
In that sense then, perhaps post-modernism is a radical critique of the failure of rationality to realise equality and freedom so far. Yet instead of criticising the failure of modern capitalist society to deliver on its promises, post-modern scholars reject the possibility of social forces bringing about such progress. They fall back on individual actions as the only hope of moderating the random forces and individual drives, such as the will to power or desire, which in their view accounts for human behaviour.
Scientific knowledge is rejected for pre-modern preconceptions about nature as chaotic. Attempts to order nature to improve equality are seen to be necessarily at the expense of individual freedom. It is a pessimistic, anarchist view which rejects the liberal enlightenment view of progress, despite the irony of sharing in its, admittedly uneven, benefits.26 In actuality, post-modernism is a brand of modern liberalism which draws on its roots in 19th century philosophy of the monad – the isolated individual. It has re-emerged in the last twenty years as an ideological accessory of the neo-liberal revolution in the West and the Third World. It is, then, a disguised form of liberalism which smuggles into its discourse hidden assumptions hostile to progress and freedom measured against 'intuitive' criteria of individual freedom.27
In summing up, each of the four standpoints, including the anti-rationalist post-modern variation, shares a belief that under capitalism modernity fails in varying degrees to meet the ‘general interest’ as the measure of progress. But they differ on their reasons for this. They differ on what constitutes historical truth; on the historical application of reason; and on the goal of freedom. I argue that these differences are rooted in a given class position and that each standpoint represents its particular class interest as the general interest. In doing so each standpoint adopts a particular method of analysis, ranging from common sense to science, to advance or reject claims to truth, reason and freedom. Therefore we need to distinguish clearly between these four standpoints so that we can test and evaluate them to see how far they rely on common sense, ideological or scientific views of social development.
Evolutionary Assumptions
How do we evaluate competing standpoints in modern society? Each theory has to be put to a series of critical tests. First, lets criticise evolution as history. What are the assumptions each has of evolution-as-progress? Evolution requires a beginning, middle and end [though that may be in the future]. Studies of many diverse human societies show that all have some evolutionary story. Most of these stories can be seen as myth or part-myth that apply to ‘pre-industrial’ societies.28
Most are founding myths and do not include the concept of progress. They deal with redemption from evil or the liberation of subject peoples from tyranny, and so on. Typically after the founding, there is static world view and a natural order of things. Not until the rise of capitalist society do we find progress with past, present and future mapped out. It soon becomes clear that this is the world view of the revolutionary and modernising bourgeoisie who set out to overturn feudal society and remake the world anew rather than relive the past in the future. Its founding myth is the golden age in which the modern individual emerges out of traditional society. The driving force was the possessive individualism of economic man i.e. the small proprietor who produces a surplus product for exchange on the market.
These entrepreneurs accumulated their own surplus labour as capital without exploiting anyone. Thus the rationality of the market established the pre-conditions for individual freedom. The modern bourgeois philosophers provided a 'moral cover' for the economic man by identifying individual interests with the general interest. Kant and Hegel both argued in favour of progress as inherently 'good' and natural, and therefore supernatural. The absolute idealism of Hegel makes God the final cause of modern bourgeois society.29
The political economists who acted as economic advisers to the bourgeoisie had more practical concerns. Adam Smith and Ricardo took for granted the modern philosophy that the market was the best means of realising the common good. This was because they started from an understanding of the law of value – that is was labour time that constituted value. But both were worried about economic problems which could limit the production of value and the distribution of wealth. For Adam Smith, it was high agricultural prices that raised the cost of production and set limits to profits and income shares. In the case of Ricardo, it was his view that the decline in soil fertility would cause agriculture to fall in productivity and hence bring about a fall in the rate of profit. As it turned out, their fears proved groundless, as modern capitalism was easily able to overcome both limitations by developing the productivity of labour on the land as well as in industry.30
Bourgeois sociologists also had practical concerns. Sociology came into existence with capitalist society in order to provide a rationale for progress and machinery for social harmony. Hence 19th century evolutionary sociology contrasts traditional with modern society. While evolution was progressive, the bourgeoisie feared that the problems of maintaining social order would threaten the future of industrial society. The question became: how to overcome the 'hangovers' of pre-modern traditions which came into conflict with modern society and created social problems And how to integrate individuals who, wrenched out of feudal or kinship ties, were isolated and anomic in mass society. From Comte to Spencer and Durkheim, methods of maintaining social control in industrial society were high on their agenda.31
Modern Sociology
Evolutionary theory, then, unites ideological and practical concerns. As capitalism developed and the European powers became expansionist and imperialist, a new set of problems arose which brought into existence a problem-solving state. Sociology became a social control agency funded by the state. By the end of the nineteenth century, modern sociology was focussed on growing state intervention in the market.
Twentieth century developments of this sociology accept this view of human history progressing, becoming more rational, with the rise of the individual in the market - economic man.32 These individual actions combine to create a developing division-of-labour established by the market, which matches supply with demand, allowing the harnessing of science and technology through mass education to develop the productivity of labour.33 As we shall see this mechanism is shared by all evolutionary theory, though the social relations which make this progress possible are interpreted very differently.
Two main sociological schools emerged. One school, modelled on marginalist economics, the market liberals, rejected the state’s interference in the market. However, market rationality was now based on the vulgar marginalist economics which rejected the classical labour theory of value – for a marginalist law of value – the value of a commmodity is determined by supply and demand. Progress was no longer openly measured by the economising of labour time though increasing labour productivity could lower the labour price as a cost of production. The main measure of progress became the value of output in the firm and GDP in the nation. Marx ridicules this inversion of the nature of value into its alienated form – the value of commodities in "The Trinity Formula". In marginalist (or vulgar in Marx's language) economics, the market, became the ideological, or fetishised, surrogate of value, and the substitute law of supply and demand replaced the historic labour law of value.
Instead of freedom being measured by freedom from necessary labour, the free market became the measure of equality and freedom as expressed in individual choice in investment and consumption.Max Weber expresses this current well. Reason is to be found in the process of historic rationalisation which was embodied in the development of the market. He argued that the rise of social democracy - and its extreme form socialism - threatened to put bureaucratic controls on the actions of individuals in the marketplace. State and society, which should be limited to institutions which facilitate the market, would then become totalitarian.34
By the 1930’s when world capitalism had been assailed by socialist revolutions and the rise of fascism, a whole new school of modern sociology (derived from Fred Hegel’s ‘civil society’ by way of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber) was fashioned by Talcott Parsons to celebrate the ‘functional’ role of society in reproducing the market based on the universality of individual choice. To meet the challenges of mounting disorder of 'totalitarianism', it was Talcott Parsons who founded the structural-functionalist (S/F) theory of society as a self-equilibrating evolutionary order, which came to dominate sociology in during the post-war boom and the cold war. For Parsons, Truth, Reason and Freedom were those established by the Weberian process of rationalisation, in which the USA, rather than Germany, represented the evolutionary high-point. In Parsons' view, socialism (including national socialism) represents a retreat back to traditional values and practices, undermining market rationality.35 He held that if individuals were marginalised by the market, this was their own fault because they subscribed to non-market values e.g. socialism, tribalism, Islam etc. and not that of the market. The purpose of applied sociology was to ‘integrate’ such individuals, and groups, into the market by means of applying `social policy’.
In the 1950's C.Wright Mills lead a social liberal charge against S/F. His famous democratic critique of ‘cold war’ sociology as a combination of grand theory and abstract empiricism, exposed the ideological limitations of S/F. Mills established a set of criteria by which he could judge truth, reason and freedom in the context of post-war USA, and questioned whether Enlightenment Reason had failed and been replaced by a post-modern condition.36
Social Democracy
A second school of thought, the social liberals, took a different view of state intervention. While it also accepted the marginalist rejection of the law of value, and its substitution by the law of supply and demand, it did not worship market rationality as a means or an end. It argued that market rationality left to itself did not work for the common good and required state intervention to overcome the inequalities resulting from the operation of the market. This progressive school of sociology saw the need for rational political intervention to reform the anarchic market. The problems of capitalism were to do with artificial scarcity which could be overcome by state intervention. Therefore while the social liberals subscribed to all the main assumptions about evolutionary progress, they saw progress resulting from conscious human actions outside the market. Progress did not result simply from the sum of market transactions, but required enlightened public policy. Fabian sociology, and the Chicago school represented this current.
Today, much of mainstream sociology is within this broad social democratic tradition, drawing historically on a ‘left’ Weberian sociology and Keynesian economics. Tony Giddens is the best known sociologist of this perspective today.37 Both Weber and Keynes are be interpreted to say that the individual interests of capitalists are not sufficient to guarantee the optimal working of the market. Their decisions to invest must therefore be augmented by state taxing and spending policies to ensure equal opportunity and participation in the market. This becomes easily translated into public policies which ‘intervene’ in the market mechanisms for allocating capital, labour and land, to ‘smooth out’ the business cycle and moderate booms and busts. I have a more detailed critique of Keynesian economics the Chapter on Welfare Dependency. Of course social liberalism of this sort is seen to be wanting under conditions when state intervention fails to prevent the onset and development of social disorder, crises, and wars.
The social liberal school is also concerned with how maintain social order in bourgeois society. Its reforms are designed to stop the marginalised masses moving against the market. Hence it shares the conservative assumption that the market, though suitably regulated, can be made to work for the common good.38 The inability of social democracy and its social liberal apologists to prevent the end of the post-war boom, and the onset of a long period of structural crisis, exposes its fundamental weaknesses. Liberal Rationality is judged to have failed to advance the cause of progress and freedom. Its failures then became the subject of radical and Marxist critiques from the ‘left’.
Radical critique
The radical critique of conservative and liberal sociology is not of its evolutionary perspective but the uses to which this is put. The radical critique says that the conservative and liberal view of evolution as rational, is self-serving; that it represents the interests of the rich, or ruling class, at the expense of the poor and oppressed in society. Liberal sociology by attempting to reform the market, far from breaking with conservative ideology, merely glosses over the real causes of inequality and the real limits of the market in overcoming scarcity.
Radical sociology comes out of the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. First, it adopts the scientific status of the labour theory of value which states that labour, and not scarcity, is the basis of value. Second, it follows from this law, that modern society must therefore be based on the exploitation of labour of producing classes by non-producing classes. The radical position clearly breaks with the vulgar marginalist ideology, but it still subscribes to the Smithian view that the limits to progress are inherent in natural, rather than social, barriers to labour productivity. This means that not only does capital fail to realise its promises, it actively works against equality and freedom in maintaining scarcity and continued exploitation. The capitalists are concerned with one thing: how to increase their profits and stop producers from resisting their exploitation?
For the radical the real limits to the market lie in its inability to sustain profits without social breakdown. No amount of state intervention or reform will permanently avert crisis. For David Ricardo the crisis would result from falling productivity on the land. For neo-Ricardians today, the crisis has only been postponed because of the ability of capitalists to extract more profits from workers in the underdeveloped world and the suppression working class resistance. This has been possible; first, because of the increased exploitation of Third World workers and peasants; second, increased productivity and state intervention has allowed some workers to benefit from rising wages; third, employers have been able to introduce new work practices which neutralise working class organisations; fourth, the ruling class has control over the production of ideology and ensures that it dominates working class culture.39
Theoretically, radical sociology also draws upon the neo-marxism of the Second International, of the Stalinist Comintern and Western Marxism. Within this latter tradition we find the Austro-Marxists, the Frankfurt School (also critical theory) the structural marxists, Modern World System theory, the Regulation School and Rational Choice marxism.40 In all of these schools the familiar evolutionary assumptions are shared. Progress results from a growing division-of-labour and rising labour productivity. However, unlike the liberals, radicals and neo-marxists believe state intervention increases exploitation of the working class by a state bureaucracy. Reforms can only be genuinely progressive if the exploitation of one class by another is replaced by a society in which everyone benefits equally from their own labour.
A socialist revolution would be needed to free workers from economic exploitation, political repression and ideological domination. This extends to the liberation of women and other groups oppressed by capitalism. This is why radical socialism advocates coordinated struggles at three levels; economic, political and ideological.41 More recently, neo-Ricardian socialists have advocated the nationalisation of capitalist property (being the unpaid back-wages of workers), workers control of industry, and employee profit-sharing.
Each of the various neo-Marxist schools listed above have contributed to these plans in various ways. Thus neo-Ricardian economics adopted by Regulation Theory stresses workers control over the wage. The Austro-Marxists, structural marxists, and World System theorists, all emphasise working-class political struggle. The Frankfurters and Gramscians identify counter-hegemonic struggle against bourgeois hegemony as the key. Here critical theory draws on Freud and phenomenology to break through the unconscious mechanisms which are manipulated by bourgeois ideology. All are agreed on the importance of combating workplace exploitation and repression as necessary to create the conditions for successful workers struggles at every level. The Autonomists go further to reject work itself. These versions of neo-marxism are discussed further in later Chapters.
Marxist critique
At one level Marxism is also an evolutionary theory. It too subscribes to the view that human progress is measured by the productivity of labour. This is expressed in the concept of the development of the forces of production. However this is not a crude, mechanical evolutionism. While capitalism and the market are a definite advance on pre-capitalist society, these advances turn into their opposite and become a barrier to human progress. These barriers are not just minor problems that can be solved by state intervention and enlightened public policy. This is because they do not result from the exchange theories of exploitation and repression identified by radicals.
Though partly correct, neither liberal nor radical sociology explains scientifically the underlying cause of this barrier to further progress. The barrier is the contradiction between the development of the forces of production, and the capitalist relations of production based on the private ownership of the means of production. This contradiction expresses itself concretely as the destruction of the forces of production (unemployment, waste, environmental degradation).42 This means that progress based on reducing necessary labour time stops and is even reversed.
Today private property blocks further social progress under capitalism. We can see this clearly in the growing surplus population, the environmental destruction, and a widening gulf between the impoverished billions who cannot get enough to eat, and the fabulously rich 5% who consume a third of the wealth, and the Western ‘middle classes’ who consume another third, of the worlds resources. So it is the contradiction between the forces and relations of production which creates scarcity and not nature or politics. To overcome scarcity it is necessary to transform these social relations.
Marxism makes it clear that further evolution requires revolution.43 So while liberals try in vain to reform an unreformable capitalism by fiddling with distribution, and while radicals attempt to win control of capital by using the state to nationalise production and restore workers control over their own labour-time, Marxists understand that capitalist relations of production must be ended by means of the overthrow of the state apparatus. The state cannot be the means of transforming capitalism because its nature is to defend capitalist private property. Therefore, it cannot be used to expropriate capitalist ownership of the means of production. I will take up these issues in the chapters on the State and the Welfare State.
The decisive role of class struggle in
history means that Marxism is not, unlike bourgeois sociology, a fatalist
theory of history. It is class struggle over the division of the value
produced by labour power, perceived by workers and capitalists as a struggle
over wages and profits, that motivates the development of the forces of
production, and imposes the barrier of private property. And it is this
struggle which also leads to the final overthrow of capitalism, as the
drive for profits comes more and more into contradiction with the basic
needs of workers and peasants.
Schematic representation of Four Standpoints
Level A Conservative.
Level of Consumption alone is active. Method based on common sense appearance. Production/Exchange/Distribution levels are ‘frozen’ as 'natural'. Natural economy evolves by individual market choices to consume which generates rational evolution of division-of-labour. Strong biological universalist assumptions about human nature. Eurocentric. Dominant common sense ideology of reason and "golden age". Classical Law of Value rejected at end of 19th century for marginalist law of supply and demand. Modern neo-liberal Bourgeois standpoint of ruling class. Postmodern versions reproduce bourgeois individualism.
Level B Liberal.
Consumption and distribution levels active. Production and Exchange ‘frozen’. Method recognises distributional social relations of wealth and power grounded in historic mobilisation of ‘classes’ which have differential assets and power and which struggle over the distribution of the product. Enlightenment assumptions about human perfectibility through state intervention in market to ensure social equality. Law of Value rejected as metaphysical. Marginalist law of supply and demand needs to be supplemented by state regulation. Weberian liberal sociology. Keynesian social Democracy and reformist politics of redistribution representing interests of petty bourgeois and lumpen bourgeoisie.
Level C Radical.
Consumption, distribution and exchange levels activated. Method penetrates surface to exchange relations. The classical law of value becomes a natural universal law as production relations are frozen in time. Conservative common sense assumptions about biology and the liberal myth of state intervention rejected. Neo-Ricardian concept of exploitation as unequal exchange informs radical socialist politics. Applies to class in labour market, men vs women, core vs periphery etc. Politics corresponds to spontaneous trade-union, socialist feminist, and post-colonial consciousness of labour aristocracy and bureaucracy.
Level D Marxist
Production, Exchange, Distribution and
Consumption all active and operate as complex unity determined finally
by capitalist production relations. No common sense assumptions, or ideological
distortions remain. Law of value accepted as a historical law which determines
social development. Scientific analysis can predict 'laws of motion', tendencies
and counter-tendencies of capitalist development. Marxist science corresponding
to the real interests of the proletariat, the vast majority, since it explains
and predicts the necessity of replacing capitalism with socialism as a
necessity of survival, and not just as a moral ideal.
How to test these competing standpoints?
Each of these standpoints is the product of the development of capitalist society. They all see the emergence of capitalism out of pre-capitalist society as progressive. Capitalism is progressive because it allows wealth to be produced more efficiently by increasing growing productivity of labour and economising on social labour time. However, at this point explanations begin to diverge. Why? The answer to this question requires a scientific investigation of the historical origins and purpose of the competing knowledges as representing particular class standpoints under capitalism. What made these competing explanations of modern capitalist society diverge? And how can we say which is the best explanation?. We can evaluate these standpoints only if we agree on some benchmark of Truth, Reason and Freedom; that is, if we are agreed on what constitutes social progress.
As we have seen there is agreement among all (except the anti-rationalists and postmodernists) that progress can be measured by the saving of social labour time. Though of course the class standpoints differ on the question of whose labour should be counted! Therefore the main issue on which these theories diverge is the question of what causes progress, and therefore what limits progress? Who or what are the agents of progress? Let's briefly present the four standpoints again and work out a procedure for applying them in the case of Australasia. In the remaining chapters of this book I will try to test each of these competing standpoints against the others.
The conservative standpoint (or market liberals) represented by Fred Hayek, for example, takes the individual entrepreneur in the market as the agent of progress. Is this true? For this explanation to work it must show that the individuals actions combine as a ‘hidden hand’ to bring about economic development which is genuinely in the common interest. That is, progress is supposedly shared by all who participate in the market and not just the bourgeoisie. Is this true?
What’s more, from this standpoint, the state plays no important role in this process. Is this true? Lets see what evidence there is in Australasian history for this ideal of market rationality actually operating as Fred Hayek describes it and meeting the criteria of Truth, Reason and Freedom that are implicit in the notion of progress. It is certainly the case the the neo-liberals repudiate the interventionist state. But would they be around today to decry the state if not for its historic interventionist role?44 While accepting the important role of the individual, nineteenth century social liberals like Max Weber, and their twentieth century followers like Tony Giddens, say that the market is not sufficient. Collective action through state intervention is necessary to make development happen which meets the criteria of reason and progress. In other words, the hidden hand needs a ‘helping hand’.
This is the orthodox 'progressive' explanation in Australasian history , given that the central role of the colonial state has continued to the present in the form of highly interventionist welfare states. To what extent is this undeniably important role of the state a necessary if not sufficient explanation for the development of capitalism in these countries? Has such intervention been able to overcome, or can it yet break in a renewed social democratic assault on globalism, the scarcity barrier to progress?
Radicals such as Pierre Bourdieu and Jurgen Habermas, on the other hand, while agreeing with individual agency as the ideal, argue that under capitalism, while economic progress results from the development of production, some individuals profit from the surplus-labour of others. A system of power relations and cultural dominance reproduces this relationship of exploitation. To restore the ideal situation where there is no exploitation or domination, the expropriated surplus-labour must be ‘reclaimed’ by democratic social movements in the common interest.45
Various currents in both Australia and New Zealand adopt the radical nationalist explanation of decolonisation in the nineteenth century in which surplus pumped out by Britain was retained at home. Today some see New Zealand or Australia 'ripped off' by imperialism and the need for a further decolonisation. This is the school of Ted Wheelright in Australia and Bruce Jesson in New Zealand. Some Maori and Aborigines argue they were and are subject to internal colonisation by the dominant nation. How far do these and other radical accounts represent truth-claims which explain the breakdowns of reason in a lack of progress for the marginalised masses? How far do they go in explaining sufficient causes and offering realistic solutions?
Finally, Marxists argue that individuals do not exploit one another, rather classes do. This does not mean that classes act as conscious entities – the imaginary ‘totalitarian essence’ much maligned by the anti-marxists from Fred Nietzsche to Max Weber, from Fred Hayek to Jacques Derrida. More concretely, they are a set of social relations which constrain individuals to act within the framework of class and class interests in the historically specific social formation of Australasia. Therefore, history is not made by transhistorical agents, but by the collective behaviour of individuals inside given social relations of production under conditions of white settlement, of dominion capitalism and today of the open deregulated state. Can Marxists prove such truth-claims? I believe we can. The agency [or subject] of change is not a 'class' or society in general, or the isolated individual, but the proletariat engaged in class struggle against the capitalist class. The working class struggles to retain as much of the value it produces as it can to meet its needs. This sets in motion the basic causes of progressive capitalist development, in the semi-colonial setting, which partially develops the forces of production, as well as its periodic crises which increasingly destroys the forces of production.
However the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution in Australasia means that progress today is under threat as the semi-colony finds itself subject to super-exploitation at the hands of imperialism. To 'make progress' today capitalist social relations have to be replaced by socialist social relations. As the global capitalist system begins to go into self-destruct mode, the Australasian working class must unite with workers and the oppressed internationally to open the way to socialism.
So how can these standpoints be tested against one another to find which serves the standard of progress best? In each of the chapters which follow I will compare the four standpoints. In every chapter, from discussing the causes of Colonisation to the present Crisis and to of a socialist future, I will try to show that the deeper we go with our analysis of the social relations of capitalist society, the less ideological and the more scientific our explanations become. This does not mean that these explanations are ever final and complete, only that they are the best were have so far.
There is no academic 'goldern rule' against which to judge which explanation is 'best'. As Marx said in his 11th thesis on Feuerbach, "The Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point is to change it". 46 So the best explanation is the one which allows us to understand, predict and intervene in social life so we can serve 'truth', 'reason' and 'freedom'.
Notes (go to bibliography)
1 I prefer standpoint to perspective. In German standpunkt also means social class perspective
2 I use the term ‘modern’ to mean the capitalist epoch of which we are still part and the social thought of this epoch which includes radical rejections of such notiions as truth, reason and freedom as well. See Teraine (1996).
3 I take Marx's postion on freedom. Marx takes the 'realm of freedom' to be "beyond the sphere of actual material production". i.e.beyond necessary labour. The realm of freedom expands as necessary labour contracts and is relative to shortening of the working day which comes with growing labour productivity allowing a reduction in necessary labour-time as well as an expansion in the development of new needs. For Marx this can only happen in classless society where the surplus labour time freed up by the minimising of necessary labour time, can be freely expended. (Capital, Vol 3 Chapter 48 'The Trinity... 959)
4 See Wallerstein 'Eurocentrism...'
6 i.e.to prove that there is no truth is a truth claim. To prove that there is no 'reason' requires reason. To prove that there is no progress requires a measure of progress. See notes 26, 27 below.
7 The position I take can be called after Marx 'dialectica materialism' or even 'critical realism' (See Bhaskar, Philosophy...) based on materialist premises ("Being determines consciousness") dialectics of the subject/object, ("...the point is to change it") whereby humans living in determinate social relations become conscious of these relations and transform them. (See Marx,The German...p. ).
8 Capital Vol 23 Chapter 48 "The Trinity Formula"
9‘Common Sense’ here is used in Gramsci’s sense of the taken-for-granted everyday knowledge which is not questioned. Marx uses the term 'empiricism' to mean the same thing and accuses the 'philistines' and 'vulgar economists' of seeing only the "direct form of manifestations of relations...not their "inner connection" (Letter to Engels, 26 June 1867)
10 Ideology for Marx means knowledge that is limited or distorted by class interests and which therefore serves those class interests. He makes a clear distinction between Ideology and Science. Scientific socialism is not merely an ideological expression of the particular interests of the working class, but represents the universal interests of humanity in realising 'freedom'; from want. See Eagleton Ideology.
11 As we shall see neo-liberal ideology explains the role of competition in absolute, universal terms. It covers the deeper knowledge that the law of value is a historically specific law of capitalism
12 The term ‘science’ is highly contentious. I use it in Marx’s sense in which scientific knowledge reflects, albeit partially and incompletely, existing social reality, as opposed to those who argue that science cannot reveal any one truth, only a number of truths which reflect the subjective perspective of the scientist.
13 A contested position! Relativists say that all science is ideology since no one truth is more valid than any other. I argue that this position is one which actively prevents further knowledge of social structures. It is an eclectic or pragmatic approach where, as Richard Rorty argues, "one does not view knowledge as a matter of getting reality right, but rather as a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping with reality" (Objectivity...). Constructivists, say that 'truth' is defined by the social context. This is true as far as it goes, but because it does not define the social context as relations of production, it becomes a charter for petty bourgeois notions of cultural indeterminacy. Marxists, argue that the social context which defines what is valid is that of historically specific class society – namely capitalism.Capitalism can be scientifically understood as also part of nature, subject to laws of motion which account for the tendencies and trends of events of time, and transformed by social practice. Hence the term scientific socialism. See Bhaskar (Philosophy...)
14 Classical liberals like Ricardo (Rubin, A History...) Modern conservatives like Parsons (Evolutionary....) social liberals like Runciman, (Social Animal) or Giddens (The Third Way) and Marxists are agreed on this basic point. The reduction of necessary labour-time allows society to overcome the problem of reproducing itself through a dependence on nature where scarcity dominates society, to a transformation of nature, so that basic social needs are met with the expenditure of less labour, and a surplus from nature allows the development of new needs in a post-scarcity society. Of course apart from Marxists, all theses standpoints claim that capitalism can become (has become) as post-scarcity society.
15 As understood by the classical economists, this theory (law) of value states that value is the product of labour. Marx refined this law to state that value is the product of labour-power. Value was measured by the classical economists by the labour embodied in the commodity. Marx discovered that it was was labour-time and not labour that was the measure of value. For Ricardo and Marx this law was a natural law, as fundamental to the working of society as Copernicus' discovery that the earth moves around the Sun. However with the development of capitalism the labour theory of value was replaced by a marginalist theory in which value was determined by supply and demand (Rubin, Essays...) See also Chapter In Defence of Marxism.
16 This is the view known as Enlightenment Reason. It claims that modern society brings progress in the form of the market and of political democracy. Weber and Parsons conceive of this progess as 'rationalisation' or the rise of the market. Unlike the utilitarians (and today's neo-liberals) who thought that morality (freedom) would automatically spring from the market, Weber and his successors worried about the emergence of a moral vacuum in modern society that might be filled by totalitarian methods of social(ist) engineering.
17 Prices formed by competition moved around the value of commodities and tended to push capitalists to introduce new machinery to reduce the labour-time and therefore the value (and hence price) of each commodity. The resulting allocation of socially necessary labour-time meant less labour-time to produce more commodities to meet more needs.
18 See Marx. Capital, Vol 3 Chapter 48.
19 For Marx, all ruling classes in history justify their particular class interest as the ‘general interest’. See The German Ideology, Chapter 1, section 3 on Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas pages???.
20 See the chapter on White Settler Colonisation
21 Thus bourgeois notions of 'reason' or 'rationality' are inevitably ideologically loaded. See Max Weber’s (see Gerth and Mills From Max Webe pages ) famous rationalisation as a version of the hidden hand of Adam Smith, is echoed in Fred Hayek’s concept of ‘individual reason’, against ‘teleological reason’ (Critique of Scientific Reason page )
22 This classic definition of bourgeois 'right' is not equality since not everyone can labour equally. It is a condition of relative freedom because some work more to support others under socialism. But it is ability that limits work not class. All in society must contribute to necessary labour to the extent of their ability. That is necessary labour time is not equally shared. However, it is a precondition for further developing the forces of production and overcoming scarcity which would allow equality on the basis of need i.e. an absolute freedom from scarcity under communism. cf. the classic liberal Hayek who rejects the idea of equality of outcome for all, since not everyone is equal and it is necessary for the weak to go to the wall to allow the strong to survive. (The Constitution of Liberty, p.299)
23 Opposed to the unhistorical method of the bourgeois, Marx recognised the historically progressive development of capitalism in developing the forces of prodution to a new stage. However, capitalist social relations would necessary put a limit on this development. When this happens and capitalism ceases to create the preconditions for socialism and destroy the forces of production, bourgeois society is no longer historically progressive. (cite main source)
24 A related question very much to the fore today is, to what extent has the failure of ‘actually existing socialism’ proven as ‘true’ that the market is superior to state planning? The prevailing view is that ‘socialism’ was a deviation from the evolutionary path of progress, as it suppressed the market mechanism, and bourgeois democracy replacing it with centralised state planning. The assumption is that only the market organised democratically can deliver the goods. Since the collapse of these so-called ‘socialist’ states, arguments of this sort have been common. But what proof exists to show that the market is actually superior to state planning in allocating social labour to produce social equality?
25 See for example the debate between Habermas (an old fashioned liberal) and Rorty (a post-modern pragmatist)in Niznik and Sanders, Debating... MargaretThatcher's famous statement "there is no such thing as society" and the post-modern adoption of this view, is another way of promoting individual 'freedom' in the market without reference to social determinism of any kind.
26The post-modern rejection of ‘reason’ can be traced back to Neitzsche, (Will...;Beyond...;) and Weber (title) and more recently Hayek’s rejection of enlightenment reason (Critique...). Giddens recent (Beyond....) rejection of ‘productivism’ as Enlightenment Reason, and his celebration of pre-capitalist resistance to Reason as a pre-cursor to post-scarcity reflects a retreat to pre-modern concepts
27 For general critiques of postmodernity (ism) see Jameson, The Cultural Logic...; Harvey, The Condition...;Callinicos, Against... For a critique of antirationalism which has its roots in the mid 19th century see Lukacs, The Destruction ...Lukacs argues that from Nietzsche through to Heidegger anti-rationalism developed as an attack on Marxism as a science which defended progress as capitalism entered its imperialist phase and could not longer sustain progress or be sure to retain its grip over the minds of the masses.
28 These stories vary according to the level of development of the forces of production i.e. the degree of control over nature. See Marx/Engels, The German...p .
29 Today neo-Hegelians such as Fukuyama return to the absolute ideal in the form of bourgeois democracy as the realisation of human progress . See Anderson, End of History and Derrida, Specters of Marx, for critiques of the "end of history" argument.
30 Marx solved this problem by overcoming the false duality between labour and labour-power. Smith had abandoned his early labour theory of value for a cost of production approach. Ricardo had correctly explained value as materialised labour, but could not explain the origin of profit except as a deduction from wages in exchange. Marx method allowed him to show that the wage represented the exchange-value of labour-power, which had the use-value to the capitalist of createing more value than its own value. Hence marx was able to develop the labour theory of value to explain the 'secret of profits'. (See Chapter In Defence of Marxism )
31 It is instructive to compare the usual "founding fathers" approach to the history of sociology with the neo-liberal critique of Hayek, (CRIS, p).
32 It was sociology that had the task of promoting bourgeois progess in the face of crises and wars. Compare this to the irrational philosophy of elements of the petty bourgeoise that competed with marxism for theminds of the despairing masses. Sociology's brief was to attribute the failures of capitalism to the anti-individualist pre-capitalist survivals and socialist collectivism. (e.g. see Parsons analysis of the causes of German fascism and Soviet socialism).
33 Weber, Parsons, Eisenstadt, Runciman.
34 See Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber. p 49-50
35 Note on Parsons schema and the liberal-left critique of Mills, etc of the 'sunshine boys. et al.
36 Mills The Sociological Imagination etc.
37 Giddens Beyond Left and Right develops the left Weberian themes of rational intellectual intervention in the market to overcome the defects of ‘productivism’ and open the way to a post-scarcity society.
38See the recent concerns of George Soros and Tony Giddens to intervene internationally in the world financial markets to prevent social breakdown and a challenge to the system
39 See Amin (Capitalism...) See alsoOffe (Beyond...)and Bourdieu (Acts...) who include most of these assumptions about changing capitalist production, but who emphasise the political andcultural/ideological factors.
40 See the discussion of these schools in the chapter 'In Defence of Marxism'.
41 Proudhon was one of the earliest neo-Ricardian socialists to come up with a programme to reform capitalism to end worker exploitation. Each would be paid chits equivalent to the labour-time used up, representing the full value of their labour. There would be no possibility for workers having part of their wages deducted by capitalists. Since then many radical, socialist and anarchist schemes have been promoted for eliminating the capitalists from capitalism. Up to and including post-modern anarchism in a variety of versions, including Derrida’s radical anarchism. (see Marx’s critique of Proudon in Grundrisse)
42 Quotes from Marx and Engels Socialism Utopian and Scientific last few pages.
43 The "10 Plagues" is Derrida's term for all the ills of modern society (Specters of Marx)
44 On state intervention, see Chapters on Settler Colonisation, and the several chapters on the state.
45 Summarise the basic political position and limits of Habermas and Bourdieu