Bourgeois Economists Research Articles

Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (review)

REVIEWS 109 the chronology of Fielding's life and the annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources. As an added bonus, the edition includes four reproductions of Thomas Stothard's illustrations to the 1782 Novelist's Magazine edition, one engraved by the young William Blake. Readers of eighteenth-century fiction will be delighted that Sarah Fielding's edition has been restored in a volume that is accessible, responsibly edited, and handsomely produced. Christopher D. Johnson Francis Marion University Liz Bellamy. Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. vii + 233pp. US$59.95. ISBN 0-521-62224-7. In Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Liz Bellamy argues that civic humanism, bourgeois economics, and moral philosophy constitute an unsettled ideological mix that novels continually try to sort out as the eighteenth century proceeds. The difficulty with Bellamy's text is that its thesis develops at so high a level ofgeneralization that terms such as "economics" continually confront the reader without adequate intellectual underpinning. Sometimes economics is seen as feminizing when compared to the brute masculinity ofepic; at other times as suppressing the feminine with overbearing patriarchalism. Moreover, while the thesis is illustrated through a series of novels, one is never quite sure whether such novels constitute a coherent discourse or are merely scattered, coincidental shots aimed at a moving target. Even if ideology were unsettled along the lines suggested by Bellamy, she has not proved that novels really try to sort out or even register this unsettlement in a systematic, deliberate way, or even in unconscious ways that can be convincingly demonstrated. Of course novels are about struggle and tension—when have they not been? Bellamy makes claims that are often facile, as if her generalizations did not require adequate analysis of subject texts. Speaking of Tom Jones, for example, she asserts that "by repeatedly suggesting the absence of a consensus in the interpretation of the novel, despite the presence of the narrator, it creates an impression of the absence ofa unifying ideology within society" (p. 94). Does it? Anyone familiar with Fielding criticism could offer several reasons for the cognitive tug-of-war between narrator and reader. Speaking of Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Bellamy notes that while the hero is respectable, he fails to merit the praise he receives, and she ascribes this disjunction to a "cultural uncertainty over the definition of male virtue" that is over-simplified and radically inaccurate: "the epic concept of heroism and public endeavour was being undermined by the emergence of economic analysis, with its denial of the importance of any kind of civic humanist notion of the public, and its elevation not only of private and domestic virtue, but also of mercenary acquisitiveness" (p. 108). Who among eighteenthcentury economists counselled "mercenary acquisitiveness"? Certainly not Adam 110 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 12:1 Smith, whom Bellamy examines as a pivotal figure. Moreover, the type of "civic humanism" that we have come to understand through the writings ofJ.G.A. Pocock stood in opposition to certain forms of mobile wealth attained through speculation and enterprises unassociated with traditional landed concerns. As Pocock has shown, it did not necessarily oppose the market economy in all its forms. BeIlany 's argument here is another instance of the unstable, insufficiently explained categories that drive the reader to say "Now wait a minute...!" There are so many such instances that they continually detract from the case that Bellamy is attempting to make, since they signal to the specialist that Bellamy's analysis is superficial. Speaking ofa visit to the Royal Exchange in Sarah Fielding's David Simple, Bellamy observes that it provides the occasion for a set-piece, "a satirical portrayal of the debased and corrupted values of the contemporary financial system, in a style which was familiar from periodicals such as Daniel Defoe's Review or the Spectator" (p. 133). If anything is characteristic of the Review, it is that Defoe said as many wonderful things about "credit" and the necessity for well-run markets as he said adverse things about jobbery and AirMoney . Lady Credit epitomizes Defoe's love-hate relationship with the financial system, which persisted throughout his...

New Investigations of Marx's Method

The contributors to this stimulating collection of thoughtful essays examine the philosophical principles and logical structure underlying Marx's economic theory in Capital. The essays deal with many methodological issues including: the meaning of dialectic logic, the relation between Marx and Hegel, the historical specificity of Marx's concepts, the emphasis on social forms, the commodity as the starting point of Capital, the theory of money, the distinction between capital in general and, competition, and Marx's critique of bourgeois economics.

Marx’s Value

(1998). Marx’s Value. International Journal of Political Economy: Vol. 28, The Enigma of Value, pp. 84-96.

Social Relations, Commodity-Fetishism and Marx's Critique of Political Economy

Starting from Marx's theory of value and commodity-fetishism, I address the question of how fetishised categories of bourgeois economics are organically linked with the reality of the capitalist class relation of work and of class struggle. The paper is thus structured. I first point out that Marx's critique sees the limitation of classical political economy in the confusion between "substance" and "form" (the case of Smith) or in the inadequate treatment of "substance" and therefore the lack of a theory of "form" (Ricardo). I then discuss Marx's notion of substance of value and relate it to his theory of commodity-fetishism. In this discussion my central reference point is the category of abstract labor as a social relation. Consequently, I discuss the category of commodity-fetishism as cognitive apprehension of this social relation from a particular class perspective, that of capital. I go on to critically evaluate Rubin's interpretation of Marx's theory of fetishism in light of my interpretation of commodity-fetishism and its relation to the category of value. I then illustrate my argument by using the theory of commodity-fetishism to shed light on the social meaning of some economic categories. Finally, I move beyond Marx and suggest a general theoretical understanding of the evolution of economic theory in relation to these struggles and in the organic connection with the capitalist relation of work.

Geography and Mentality Some Aspects of Max Weber's Protestantism Thesis

AbstractIn his essays on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber proceeds from the observation that in Germany there is a clearly recognizable difference between the economic behaviour of Catholics and Protestants. As one of the reasons for this difference, the essays reveal-as a guiding principle for people's conduct of life-the principle of worldly asceticism inherent in Protestantism. This, Weber said, especially contributed to the formation of modern bourgeois capitalism in the occidental world. This thesis was mainly developed on the evidence of phenomena which Weber observed in Western Europe and North America and which he himself related to Calvinism. The problem now is that the Germany of Weber's time, as a leading industrial state, participated in modern western capitalism without Calvinism playing for the German Protestants a role which would have been in any way comparable to its role in the more western countries. Detailed examination of governmental, economic, and social conditions in the history of the denominalisation of some German territories and the comparison with the living conditions of Protestants in Western Europe and America leads to the conclusion that the later development of bourgeois economy and what I would like to call "Word Culture" (cf. p. 176f.) depended on the following factors: on with what methods and with what severity the rulers of the Reformation Era succeeded in imposing their own personal choice of faith upon their subjects or how far they allowed things to take their course without interference; then on whether they in this way curtailed, permitted or even supported the development of that capitalist and bourgeois economic spirit and "Word Culture" which had its roots as far back as the pre-Reformation era and which had then been boosted by Calvinism. Both individual belief and the rulers' power over this belief influenced equally vigorously and lastingly the mentality of all people concerned. Even more generalized: depending on whether and to what extent the religious and intellectual culture of a society are subjected to state oppression and coercive formation over a long period of time, the intellectual culture and economic attitude and potential of this society will develop. Life-style, economic ethic and cultural profile of many later generations depend on this.

After the Rectifying Revolution: the contradictions of the mixed economy? The political-economic transformations in central and eastern Europe

The events of 1989–92 and the flood of advice from bourgeois economists is critically examined in the light of the Hegelian-Marxist theory of the mixed economy. The (sometimes catastrophic) failures of transition are laid at the door of the neglect of civil society.

Some controversies in the development of rent theory: the nature of oil rent

Bina's article is both a contribution to the theory of rent and an attempt to explain the ‘oil crisis' of the 1970s. Addressing classical and modern debates, the author argues that bourgeois economics fails to theorise the specificity of rent in capitalist societies and its relation to production and the structure of property relations. By applying Marx's theory of rent to the us oil industry, Bina seeks to provide a coherent explanation of the oil price rises of the early 1970s.

The Asiatic Mode of Production in History as Viewed by Political Economy in Its Broad Sense

Political economy exists in two senses: one is political economy in a narrow sense, or that which is specifically devoted to the capitalist mode of production; the other is political economy in a broad sense, that is, "as the science of the conditions and forms under which the various human societies have produced and exchanged and have always correspondingly distributed their products."1 Marx was the creator of political economy in the broad sense. To make an overall critique of bourgeois economics, "it was not enough to be acquainted with the capitalist form of production, exchange and distribution. The forms preceding it or still existing alongside it in less developed countries had also to be examined and compared, at least in their main features."2 This was why Marx, while examining the capitalist mode of production, also carefully examined the various precapitalist modes of production. In addition to writing the results of his examination of the different precapitalist modes of production into relevant chapters of his most important work—Capital—Marx mainly included them in his A Critique of Political Economy, in the section entitled "Precapitalist Economic Formations." This latter work has now been translated and published in China in part 1, volume 46, of the Chinese edition of The Complete Works of Marx and Engels. Of all Marx's works, this is one of utmost importance.

Bourgeois Economists on Scientific and Technical Progress under Socialism

The dominant thesis in Western literature devoted to the economic problems of scientific and technical progress [STP] under socialism is that real socialism supposedly does not have an effective mechanism for implementing the advances of STP in production. Bourgeois Sovietologists claim that an immanent feature of the socialist economic system, which is based on public ownership of the means of production and centralized planning of the national economy, is its inability to innovate quickly and efficiently: to develop new technology and equipment and to use them to produce new products.1

Labor and Labor History in Africa: A Review of the Literature

No subject has in recent years so intruded into the scholarly literature on Africa as the African worker. Labor has become a fundamental issue to those who seek to develop African economies or to revolutionize African polities. The elucidation and debate about the relationship of labor to historical and social issues is currently under way over an impressive range of places and in a number of languages. It is thus highly appropriate at this juncture to assemble some of the themes that emerge most sharply in contemporary writing on Africa. A broad range of opinion would concede that the worker, when organized in the pursuit of specific objectives or as a class, necessarily takes on a special political importance. One aspect of the literature on African labor is thus political, studying in particular the organizations workers have created, their significance and direction. Whether or not such organization exists, labor has a fundamental economic role to play. In bourgeois economics, labor is generally categorized as a factor whose productivity, contribution, and wages need to be assessed to understand the broader picture. Marxist economics gives labor a fundamental position; it is from the surplus extracted from the worker that the ruling class ultimately lives while the form of extraction determines more than purely economic relationships. In particular, Marxists thus emphasize as well the broader social significance of labor. They have been responsible for introducing laborrelated questions to a broad range of historical and societal discussions typical of much recent literature on Africa.

The transatlantic economic disaster

The stagnating seventies saw a steady haemorrhaging of support for Keynesian economic propositions amongst bourgeois economists compared with the buoyant sixties. With the elections of 1979 and 1980 this trend penetrated state policy making in a strident form in both Britain and the United States. Now, with over three years of Thatcher's monetarist experiment and nearly two years of Reaganomics behind us, the end of the recession has been indefinitely postponed on both sides of the Atlantic. Simon Mohun looks at the results of theoretical departures in practice.

The “Marxism” of Claude Levi-Strauss

form only as a category of the most modern so? ciety (p. 144). At the same time, we must keep in mind a "simple abstraction" of this sort "by no means begins at the moment when it is discussed as such" (p. 146). What is the difference between the idea of the "sensible abstraction" (verst?ndige Abstrak? tion) with which we began and the idea of the "simple abstraction" (einfache Abstraktion) to which we have been led? Marx uses both terms with a gentle irony, for it has turned out that there is nothing very "sensible" about the sen? sible abstraction, whereas the "simplicity" of the simple abstraction conceals a considerable historical complexity. In fact the latter category amounts to nothing but the former category employed now with a self-conscious recognition of the provisionality of its own abstraction. No longer tied to the four economic factors tradi? tional to academic investigation, Marx offers us the clarifying example of the category "la? bor." "Labor in general," although an ancient mental category, achieves its fulfillment only when classical economics abandons the idea that various specific forms of labor create wealth, in favor of the abstract universality of "labor as such." Such an economics "presup? poses a highly developed complex of actually existing kinds of labor, none of which is any more the all-important one. a form of so? ciety in which individuals easily pass from one type of labor to another,... [a society in which labor] has ceased to be tied as an attribute to a particular individual" (p. 144). Thus bour? geois "labor" does indeed reflect and presup pose rudimentary, pre-capitalist material condi? tions. But it can do this only, as it were, retro? actively, by virtue of a material development sufficiently advanced to permit the formula? tion of abstract concepts that "comprehend" both the rudimentary and advanced states. The abstractions of capitalism provide the best example of what is, nevertheless, funda? mental to all historical life: the inseparability of diverse social formations within the dialec? tical continuum of history, and the will of each to regard itself with a "narrow" partiality, to cut itself off from the continuum: Thus, although it is true that the categories of bourgeois economy are valid for all other social formations, this has to be taken cum grano salis, for they may contain them in an advanced, stunted, caricatured, etc. form, that is al? ways with substantial differences. What is called historical evolution depends in general on the fact that the latest form regards earlier ones as stages in the development of itself and conceives them always in a one-sided manner [literally, "it always views itself one-sidedly," einseitig], since only rarely and under quite special conditions is a society able to adopt a critical attitude towards itself... (p. 145). In the hands of the dialectician, the simple ab? straction loses this one-sided partiality by in? corporating a critical attitude toward itself. This attitude may usefully be characterized in two related ways. First, it is a knowledge that the capacity of the simple abstraction to collect other forms under itself or to divide itself apart from them bespeaks not only a real material development, but also a willingness to slice the historical continuum according to certain favored criteria. Second, it is a knowledge that just as the significance of the economic factor "consumption" is a real but a partial truth achieved by its provisional separation from the prior determinacy of "production," so the ab? stractions of consciousness are autonomous and determinant of material life only from a "narrow" and partial perspective. Encapsulat? ing the living contradiction of mental and ma? terial reality within its shell, then, the simple abstraction provides the proper starting point This content downloaded from 157.55.39.32 on Mon, 10 Oct 2016 04:21:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Keynes as Critic of Capitalism

In the 1962 essay "Keynesian Economics—The First Quarter Century" (reprinted in Modern Capitalism and Other Essays, MR Press, 1972, pp. 79-91), I wrote: Bourgeois economics, I fear, has irrevocably committed itself to what Marx called the "bad conscience and evil intent of apologetic." If I am right, Keynes may turn out to be its last great representative, and further scientific progress will have to come from the socialist camp (though not necessarily from the socialist countries).This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Export-Led Industrialization in the Third World: Manufacturing Imperialism

The failure of import-substitution industrialization has led many bourgeois economists to prescribe for Third-World nations a strategy of indus trialization based upon the export of manufactures to the developed capitalist world. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, for example, are following this strategy and, according to these economists, are beginning to achieve indigenous capitalist development. Other Third-World nations are now starting to look upon these nations as models for Third-World industrialization.

The Context of Foreign Aid: Modern Imperialism

Foreign aid is seldom seen by bourgeois economics for what it actually is — one method by which capital and capitalism are internationalized. Bourgeois economists argue over aid's effectiveness in promoting development, while in business and political circles its defenders make the only really telling arguments; that markets and resources are secured, and a climate conducive to world wide private investment is created and strengthened. Those arguments fit quite well into the Marxist concept of imperialism, an analysis of which is in cluded here, while a study of U.S. aid flows from 1958 to 1974 confirms such a hypothesis.

Division of Labor in the Computer Field

Throughout the 1960s there was intense academic debate about the effects of automation, particularly as represented by the computer, on the labor process. Bourgeois economists and sociologists,while admitting that automation frequently reduced skills among many kinds of workers, pointed to the growing employment in the computer industry itself as a bright spot for labor. Many of the new jobs in this growing field were categorized as technical and professional and were considered illustrative of labor-force upgrading.… What was missing from these early evaluations was a firm understanding of the labor processes of capitalism. Marx's analysis is no less applicable to an occupation that could not have been conceived of in his day. In a short twenty-year span, work in the computer field has been transformed by capitalism to suit its needs, through carefully planned division of labor.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-28-number-3" title="Vol. 28, No. 3: July-August 1976" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

Capital Shortage: Fact and Fancy

One of the great ironies of our time is that precisely when all signs point to an overproduction of capital, a great hue and cry is being raised over an alleged shortage of capital. At least 25 percent of manufacturing capacity is standing idle (in some industries unused capacity is over 35 percent), residential construction is down 50 percent from its previous (1972) high, and there are far more unemployed than would be needed to operate the idle plants and machinery and to build new homes. Yet in the midst of the most severe economic decline since the Great Depression the business community and bourgeois economists are zeroing in on capital insufficiency as the most crucial problem facing U.S. capitalism. Here are some of the outcroppings of this new ideological departure.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Law of Uneven and Combined Development and Latin America

David Romagnolo makes two main criticisms of law of uneven and combined development. First, it supposedly disregards leading principle of historical materialism that mode of production determines nature of a social formation. It thereby bases itself upon superficial peculiarities, exceptional features, of historical development instead of its general and fundamental ones. Second, law of uneven and combined development focuses on exchange rather than productive relations, thus lapsing into errors of vulgar bourgeois economists. Neither contention is factually correct. The law of uneven and combined development proceeds from premise that mode of production, constituted by level of productive forces and corresponding relations of production, is underlying determinant in all social structures and historical processes. Nor does law subordinate relations of productin to exchange relations, although it recognizes that in generalized commodity relations intrinsic to capitalism exchange relations have far greater importance than in pre-capitalist societies where sale and purchase of products is economically marginal. However, these two elementary Marxist principles provide points of departure and serve as guidelines for analyzing historically developed social formations in their full concreteness. With their aid it is necessary to go forward and explain why a particular mode of production manifests itself in such different ways and develops to such disparate degrees under different How is it, as Marx pointed out, that the same economic basis shows infinite variations and gradations of appearance? This can be ascertained, he tells us, only by analysis of empirically given circumstances. In this case we must ask: what empirical circumstances account for variations and gradations of appearance of modes of production in Latin America after its conquest and colonization?

"Human Resources" in Bourgeois Political Economy

In the face of the scientific-technological revolution and the competition of the two social and economic systems, bourgeois economists are forced to devote much attention to the study of the role of man and live labor in social production. Bourgeois economic science is researching the economic significance of the qualitative state of the work force (its educational and skill level, mobility, etc.) within the framework of the theory of so-called capital. This conception is one of the varieties of the bourgeois theories of the transformation of capitalism in which the working class is counted among the owners of human capital.

Praxis: The dialectical source of knowledge

In his Phenomenology, Hegel makes an at? tempt to restore ontology to the center of philosophical investigation. In the course of this endeavor he attacks the "subjective" idealism of Kant and Fichte for substituting a philos? ophy of abstract universal forms for a philoso? phy of reality, and for juxtaposing a universal ethical imperative with the actual world of human experience. Thus, Hegel insists, philoso? phy becomes deprived of real content. It is essentially from a similar perspective that Luk?cs, in History and Class Consciousness, criticizes Kantian formalism. He argues that commodity production and the capitalist divi? sion of labor engender a corresponding frag? mentation in philosophy and in the sciences. This fragmentation results in narrow specializa? tion and in an effort to interpret all the special? ized sciences in terms of an abstract and mathematically oriented system of formal "laws." The more highly developed a specific scientific endeavor is, the more it tends to be? come a formal, closed system of its own partial laws. Thus, the specialized sciences lose sight of the "whole," and more and more consider their own concrete ontological or material base as lying outside of their sphere of investigation. For example, bourgeois economics, as well as the neo-Kantian interpreters of the psycholog? ical and philosophical-anthropological implica? tions of economic life ? such as Simmel in his Philosophie des Geldes ? divorce the particular manifestations of the capitalist economy (money, exchange value, capital, etc.) from their real social and historical foundation and consider them as if they were the eternal model of human relations in general. However, by disregarding the real, social foundation of economic life, and by excluding all data that do not lend themselves to strict formalization, formal systems create a limit to their own rationality. In the field of economics, this "limit" becomes especially explicit at times of crisis. As Luk?cs writes: