[lit-ideas] Re: Chomsky
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:01:18 +0000 (GMT)
________________________________
From: Andy <mimi.erva@yahoo.
> The horrific exploitation that went on in the countryside of slaves and serfs
> was not addressed by Marx at all because that exploitation doesn't fall under
> the rubric of capitalism.>
Perhaps so: agrarian slavery is, for Marx, still 'feudalism'. But this does not
affect the point that here we have a historical prophecy/historicism that
feudalism must transform [dialectically of course] into capitalism and only
then with the crisis of capitalism do we get the class revolution:- but this
historicism is doctrinaire and maintained in the face of the facts [where
socialist revolution happened in 'feudal' Russia and China not in the advanced
'capitalist' West] by way of an 'immunising strategem' - to evade the
falsification, the Russian Revolution is classed as not really a revolution but
a holding-pattern as we await proper 'revolution' in more advanced capitalist
countries like Germany. This is an example of what Popper means when we says
that Marxism was initially put forward in a 'scientific' enough form but, as
its predictions were falsified, these 'falsifications' were explained away by
defenders of Marxism and this 'explaining away'
in effect was to defend Marxism by rendering it non-falsifiable and
'unscientific'. [Popper contrasts Marxism which became unscientific this way
with Freud's analytical or scientific psychology which was never properly
falsifiable in the first place (though Adolf Grunbaum has challenged the latter
claim, in a somewhat 'weak' way, by showing how we could construct Freudianism
in properly falsifiable way - but this does not really defeat Popper's thrust
here, as it merely shows that just as Marxism journied from science to
non-science so Freudianism could make the journey the other way)].
From his historicist perspective Marx does not focus on the countryside - not
because he is indifferent to the suffering there but because his theory tells
him that is not the crucible for the next historical stage - the overthrow of
capitalism.
>As far as Hayek predicting in the 30's about the SU's economic system
>collapsing, economists are stopped clocks basically. They're bound to be
>right on occasion, if in fact he was right. >
This is too facile a dismissal. Economist's views can be treated as stopped
clocks and if Hayek had merely made a bare prediction that might be a fair way
to treat it. But he produced, I understand, a very careful and thorough
economic argument or analysis in support of this prediction the core of which
is that the Soviet system would run itself into the ground economically - and
this cannot be lightly dismissed as merely a stopped clock (even if we accept
it may be only one way of telling the time).
> Even the Chicago School, so popular for so long, has now been intellectually
> discredited>
I doubt the level of discredit it attracted is en bloc, en masse and conclusive
- so that all its works might be now safely burnt.
> The banks were bailed
out like irresponsible teenagers of the worst kind.
I suspect many in this school that defends 'capitalism', as a lesser evil to
the alternatives it should be emphasised [asper Hayek and Friedman], would not
have unequivocally supported the bail-out except that they accepted the 'too
big to fail' argument: that the consequences of not bailing out would be worse.
Many free marketers would say reform must focus on ensuring things cannot get
'too big to fail' again so that there is no need for a bail-out again. [Btw,
what are irresponsible teenagers of the best kind?].
> Corporations trade extremely unfairly; they eliminate competition, which is
> the very foundation of capitalism.
This tendency towards uncompetitive practices [or to 'monopoly' in Marxist
terms] is well-recognised by thinkers like Hayek who defend 'capitalism' in
lesser evil terms, and who would say the law must intervene to thwart that
tendency. This shows that no one, whatever their rhetoric, seriously believes
in 'unrestricted capitalism' (which is anyway a paradoxical notion along the
lines of the 'paradox of freedom' that Popper discusses in his The Open
Society). The key question is what restrictions are effective and which are not
in achieving certain ends, like economic efficiency.
>I think if history proves anything, it's that humans are hopeless.
I think history does not show they are hopeless - it shows they are fallible,
and sometimes slow to learn from their mistakes into the bargain.
This anyway is the view of someone like Popper. Popper has also said on a
number of occasions (including a letter he wrote to me when I was a teenager)
that capitalism is a 'fiction' - and that he does not defend the fiction called
'capitalism'. This is an interesting POV. (And there is a very interesting
account of Popper's intellectual relationship with Hayek in Hacohen's excellent
biography of Popper).
Donal
Autumn England
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