Indeed. What is in Marx that is not in Rawls? The emotional temperature is very different, and likely favors Marx. Rawls does not inspire, and inspiration is necessary for the slow boring of hard boards. Rare is the person of action who can devote their life to maximin. You'll get dozens of Bernies for every Elizabeth Warren.
And what is science actually? Why did it have such high prestige then and so little now? The laws of motion of the universe was a big f’ing deal 150 years ago. Why couldn’t such laws be discovered in human society as well? It sounded modern, up to date to attach the cause of socialism to such an engine. Now, not so much!
Also, I think it was Tawney, in “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” which I reread last year, who located the Labor Theory of Value in - wait for it - Roman Catholic Social Teaching.
There's a lot more to respond to than I can possibly scribble at the moment. A few quickies:
The dialectics thing is something I grew out of. I too had a Hegelian phase for a while beginning in my late teens, but I eventually figured out there's no solution to the "Hegel problem" of the arbitrariness of categories, not in logic (dialectical method) or teleology (Phenomenology of Spirit and its transformation by Marx). When I eventually hooked into Dewey, I discovered he had also gone through a Hegel phase and came out the other side, sort of like I had. This is important for Dewey, underappreciated maybe. Needless to say, Dewey's rejection of metaphysics is a lot closer to science than dialectical Verstehen in any of its versions.
Class is crucial, and history is enriched big time by the study of class formation, class conflict and all the rest. But it ain't everything. (Reminds me of what Lewis Mumford said about Wilhelm Reich and orgasms -- you can look it up.) There are many other dimensions, intertwined with but also separate from class matters, that are also crucial. In the modern world the state has taken on a big regulatory role largely in response to the sheer complexity and far-reachingness of technology that doesn't correspond in any simple way to class inequality.
The metaphysics of labor in Marx are anything but scientific. Yeah, on a purely physical level, you have human effort transforming nature. But to take the content and organization of that effort as given is crazy. You don't have to be a worshipper of John Galt to appreciate that entrepreneurship, innovation, coordination and plain old trial and error are central to the story. **This does not mean we are condemned to capitalism.** But it does mean that simplistic ideas about labor value and surplus are pretty close to useless.
Oh, there's so much more. The question of alienation. Exploitation. What constitutes fairness or justice. This is not a blog post, much less a blog post comment. But I'm in the middle of my Marx chapter in a forthcoming book, so it gives me a chance to expostulate.
Max I am going to be reading Adam’s book at your suggestion soon. Per my own analysis, most of what passes for scientific socialism these days is actually utopian in nature as well as dogmatic.
As to whether Marx or Rawls alone is enough, neither of them get the question of human needs right. We need the best of all philosophy and history and social science, informed by the natural sciences, to think straight about what’s going on in the world around us.
What’s scientific in scientific socialism is that it involves forming and testing hypothesis according to empirical evidence, as opposed to moral exhortations, and ideal-world building with cross-class appeal to “universal” principles.
This answers the question, what’s in Marx that isn’t in Rawls. Rawls offers no serious account of real world capitalist democracy. His social science is mid-20th century neoclassical economics of a now discarded Keynesian sort, swallowed without a peep of critique. Although he makes social stability a sine qua non of a set of principles of justice, he does not seriously consider whether the better off would abide by principles which involved them making material sacrifice for the least well off. As the subsequent history has shown, a lot of quickly than the decay and destruction of socialist movements showed, the answer is decisively NO.
Marx’s theory is not about socialism. It is about capitalism. His magnum opus is called…Capital. There are fewer than 50 pages about socialism in the 50 volumes of the English Marx-Engels Collected Works. Peter Hudson quotes almost all of them in his useful little book Marx’s Conception of the Alternative to Capitalism. Although it was, to say the least, not Marx’s focus, it has been the target of most Marx “criticism”since. I put the word in scar quotes because most of the critics have not even read those 50 pages in fairness they are scattered among Marx‘s writings – much less the scientific aspect of his work, his account of the laws of motion of the capitalist system, and the “critics“ generally skip immediately to inaccurate and exaggerated attacks on the Soviet system, as if that had anything to do with Marx.
Max says correctly that Marxthought that the appropriation of surplus, – only in capitalism. Does it become surplus value – was Central to Martha is thinking about history and, also about capitalism. But the specifics matter. As my qualification about surplus value here indicates. And in order to Understand why Mark’s account is scientific, you actually have to understand at least the main points of his theory of how the accumulation of surplus value works and why it works the way it does in capitalism.
As far as I can tell, literally the only writer in subsequent intellectual history to address this matter fairly and squarely with actual reading and careful of what Marx was about was Eugen von Boehm Baewerk, in his masterly critique, Karl Marx and the Close of his System, published in 1894 after Engels published the last two volumes of Capital. He proved a contradiction in Marx theory as he understood it, which subsequent Marxists, including me dodged and wriggled about for 120 years, until it received what I would consider to be a satisfactory response in Fred Mosley’s Money and Totality.
Otherwise, what you mainly get is snark like Max offers in his other comment, that Marx is committed to an inevitable stage which was grossly overoptimistic. He was committed to no such thing, and only mentions inevitability as an exhortation to rally the troops. No mechanism that marx suggests would indicate any such thing, including the predominance of the economic in history and social explanation.
So, what is scientific in scientific socialism, an unfortunate misnomer, suggested by Engels, is Marx adherence to science in constructing and testing social hypothesis, rather than in utopian speculation based on ideological premises and untethered to real motivations and interests in bourgeois society in particular, unlike Rawls, for example. Marx’s own term for the economic part of his theory is the critique of political economy, for the historical part, the materialist conception of history.
Finally, so cold “dialectical materialism” plays no role in Marx. He never uses the term, and although it is clearly inspired by end, impressed with Hegel, unlike Engels, he never indicates any support for any metaphysical system apart from a vaguely physicalist “materialism,” never elaborate upon. He seems to have signed off as far as philosophy goes with the 11th thesis on Feuerbach, “ the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point however, is to change it.” after that, he simply dismisses philosophy as ideology and does not discuss it.
I've said I'm not doing Marxology, so I did not venture into what is scientific in Marx per se. The post is addressed to the Engels text, the simplistic themes of which, such as the inevitability premise, suffuse radical politics since Engels wrote, at least in my experience. More broadly, I've been addressing vulgar Marxism, which is the sort of thinking adopted by avowed followers of Marx. That is what matters for politics, not the discoveries of Fred Moseley. Isn't it obvious that hope -- the prospects for victory -- tend to overwhelm analysis and politics?
I doubt the accumulation of surplus needs to be very complicated for a blog post. Output value exceeds cost of production, profits are collected, the capital stock grows. The rule of Capital dominates and corrupts everything. By my amateur historical knowledge, Marx's tracing this through the stages of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism is valuable.
It's hard to get away from the exhortation and inevitability in Marxist discourse, though I'm not going to try and indict Marx himself for it. It is obvious enough in the Engels text.
I think it matters that Marx was right. It’s what allows us to have hope for the future after the simplistic tropes of inevitability and like are rejected.
Capitalism operates very differently from previous modes of production, with value being central to it. Feudal and ancient modes of production, of course involved extraction of surplus, but not the maniacal accumulation of accumulation for accumulation’s sake, which has now put the survival of human civilization in serious question.
It matters but how exactly is not for me to say, beyond my belief that his work is invaluable. His interpretation in contemporary political discourse is my interest. "The point is to change it."
Indeed. What is in Marx that is not in Rawls? The emotional temperature is very different, and likely favors Marx. Rawls does not inspire, and inspiration is necessary for the slow boring of hard boards. Rare is the person of action who can devote their life to maximin. You'll get dozens of Bernies for every Elizabeth Warren.
And what is science actually? Why did it have such high prestige then and so little now? The laws of motion of the universe was a big f’ing deal 150 years ago. Why couldn’t such laws be discovered in human society as well? It sounded modern, up to date to attach the cause of socialism to such an engine. Now, not so much!
Also, I think it was Tawney, in “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” which I reread last year, who located the Labor Theory of Value in - wait for it - Roman Catholic Social Teaching.
There's a lot more to respond to than I can possibly scribble at the moment. A few quickies:
The dialectics thing is something I grew out of. I too had a Hegelian phase for a while beginning in my late teens, but I eventually figured out there's no solution to the "Hegel problem" of the arbitrariness of categories, not in logic (dialectical method) or teleology (Phenomenology of Spirit and its transformation by Marx). When I eventually hooked into Dewey, I discovered he had also gone through a Hegel phase and came out the other side, sort of like I had. This is important for Dewey, underappreciated maybe. Needless to say, Dewey's rejection of metaphysics is a lot closer to science than dialectical Verstehen in any of its versions.
Class is crucial, and history is enriched big time by the study of class formation, class conflict and all the rest. But it ain't everything. (Reminds me of what Lewis Mumford said about Wilhelm Reich and orgasms -- you can look it up.) There are many other dimensions, intertwined with but also separate from class matters, that are also crucial. In the modern world the state has taken on a big regulatory role largely in response to the sheer complexity and far-reachingness of technology that doesn't correspond in any simple way to class inequality.
The metaphysics of labor in Marx are anything but scientific. Yeah, on a purely physical level, you have human effort transforming nature. But to take the content and organization of that effort as given is crazy. You don't have to be a worshipper of John Galt to appreciate that entrepreneurship, innovation, coordination and plain old trial and error are central to the story. **This does not mean we are condemned to capitalism.** But it does mean that simplistic ideas about labor value and surplus are pretty close to useless.
Oh, there's so much more. The question of alienation. Exploitation. What constitutes fairness or justice. This is not a blog post, much less a blog post comment. But I'm in the middle of my Marx chapter in a forthcoming book, so it gives me a chance to expostulate.
Hi Max!
Max I am going to be reading Adam’s book at your suggestion soon. Per my own analysis, most of what passes for scientific socialism these days is actually utopian in nature as well as dogmatic.
As to whether Marx or Rawls alone is enough, neither of them get the question of human needs right. We need the best of all philosophy and history and social science, informed by the natural sciences, to think straight about what’s going on in the world around us.
You are showing your age in the passage below:
"... but we are a long way from the stark economic divide foreseen a hundred AND FIFTY years ago."
What’s scientific in scientific socialism is that it involves forming and testing hypothesis according to empirical evidence, as opposed to moral exhortations, and ideal-world building with cross-class appeal to “universal” principles.
This answers the question, what’s in Marx that isn’t in Rawls. Rawls offers no serious account of real world capitalist democracy. His social science is mid-20th century neoclassical economics of a now discarded Keynesian sort, swallowed without a peep of critique. Although he makes social stability a sine qua non of a set of principles of justice, he does not seriously consider whether the better off would abide by principles which involved them making material sacrifice for the least well off. As the subsequent history has shown, a lot of quickly than the decay and destruction of socialist movements showed, the answer is decisively NO.
I wrote a paper of this at the end of the 1990’s:
https://philarchive.org/rec/JUSRRE
I still think it’s quite good.
Marx’s theory is not about socialism. It is about capitalism. His magnum opus is called…Capital. There are fewer than 50 pages about socialism in the 50 volumes of the English Marx-Engels Collected Works. Peter Hudson quotes almost all of them in his useful little book Marx’s Conception of the Alternative to Capitalism. Although it was, to say the least, not Marx’s focus, it has been the target of most Marx “criticism”since. I put the word in scar quotes because most of the critics have not even read those 50 pages in fairness they are scattered among Marx‘s writings – much less the scientific aspect of his work, his account of the laws of motion of the capitalist system, and the “critics“ generally skip immediately to inaccurate and exaggerated attacks on the Soviet system, as if that had anything to do with Marx.
Max says correctly that Marxthought that the appropriation of surplus, – only in capitalism. Does it become surplus value – was Central to Martha is thinking about history and, also about capitalism. But the specifics matter. As my qualification about surplus value here indicates. And in order to Understand why Mark’s account is scientific, you actually have to understand at least the main points of his theory of how the accumulation of surplus value works and why it works the way it does in capitalism.
As far as I can tell, literally the only writer in subsequent intellectual history to address this matter fairly and squarely with actual reading and careful of what Marx was about was Eugen von Boehm Baewerk, in his masterly critique, Karl Marx and the Close of his System, published in 1894 after Engels published the last two volumes of Capital. He proved a contradiction in Marx theory as he understood it, which subsequent Marxists, including me dodged and wriggled about for 120 years, until it received what I would consider to be a satisfactory response in Fred Mosley’s Money and Totality.
Otherwise, what you mainly get is snark like Max offers in his other comment, that Marx is committed to an inevitable stage which was grossly overoptimistic. He was committed to no such thing, and only mentions inevitability as an exhortation to rally the troops. No mechanism that marx suggests would indicate any such thing, including the predominance of the economic in history and social explanation.
So, what is scientific in scientific socialism, an unfortunate misnomer, suggested by Engels, is Marx adherence to science in constructing and testing social hypothesis, rather than in utopian speculation based on ideological premises and untethered to real motivations and interests in bourgeois society in particular, unlike Rawls, for example. Marx’s own term for the economic part of his theory is the critique of political economy, for the historical part, the materialist conception of history.
Finally, so cold “dialectical materialism” plays no role in Marx. He never uses the term, and although it is clearly inspired by end, impressed with Hegel, unlike Engels, he never indicates any support for any metaphysical system apart from a vaguely physicalist “materialism,” never elaborate upon. He seems to have signed off as far as philosophy goes with the 11th thesis on Feuerbach, “ the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point however, is to change it.” after that, he simply dismisses philosophy as ideology and does not discuss it.
I've said I'm not doing Marxology, so I did not venture into what is scientific in Marx per se. The post is addressed to the Engels text, the simplistic themes of which, such as the inevitability premise, suffuse radical politics since Engels wrote, at least in my experience. More broadly, I've been addressing vulgar Marxism, which is the sort of thinking adopted by avowed followers of Marx. That is what matters for politics, not the discoveries of Fred Moseley. Isn't it obvious that hope -- the prospects for victory -- tend to overwhelm analysis and politics?
I doubt the accumulation of surplus needs to be very complicated for a blog post. Output value exceeds cost of production, profits are collected, the capital stock grows. The rule of Capital dominates and corrupts everything. By my amateur historical knowledge, Marx's tracing this through the stages of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism is valuable.
It's hard to get away from the exhortation and inevitability in Marxist discourse, though I'm not going to try and indict Marx himself for it. It is obvious enough in the Engels text.
I think it matters that Marx was right. It’s what allows us to have hope for the future after the simplistic tropes of inevitability and like are rejected.
Capitalism operates very differently from previous modes of production, with value being central to it. Feudal and ancient modes of production, of course involved extraction of surplus, but not the maniacal accumulation of accumulation for accumulation’s sake, which has now put the survival of human civilization in serious question.
It matters but how exactly is not for me to say, beyond my belief that his work is invaluable. His interpretation in contemporary political discourse is my interest. "The point is to change it."