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ALB: “Can we use that in the Socialist Standard”?
Of course, with these corrections/modifications:
- Insert “Part IV” before “Volume 3”
- Replace “Lothar Mayer” by “Lothar Meyer”
- Replace the final sentence by
Postscript
I excerpted the contents of Marx’s science notebooks from a paper by MEGA scholars Somnath Ghosh and Pradip Baksi http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/26/173.html
LBird: “And Engels got his notions of ‘science’ from Robert Owens [sic] (a well-documented autocrat, who wanted to help workers, not be under their control), and overlaid Marx’s core ideas of ‘democracy’, ‘social production’ and ‘critique’, with an elite ‘science’ which studied eternal matter to produce a final ‘Truth’.”
I will defer consideration of LBird’s problematic claim about Robert Owen’s notions of ‘science’ and consider here only the incontrovertible evidence for where Engels got the content, rather than the notions, of his science.
Engels
Engels studied mathematical physics in many sources, including the classic 18th century “Traite de dynamique” by Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (co-publisher with Denis Diderot of the great French Encyclopédie).
However, his primary modern source for mathematical physics was the Feynman lecture course of his day, the celebrated 19th century “Treatise on Natural Philosophy” by Thomson and Tait (popularly known as “T&T”).
Engels’s primary modern source for chemistry was the celebrated “Treatise on Chemistry” by Roscoe and Schorlemmer. Readers familiar with the Marx-Engels correspondence will have met organic chemist Carl Schorlemmer as a Marx/Engels comrade-in-exile from ’48 and their trusted scientific consultant.
The two “Treatises” that Engels primarily studied happened to be the standard university textbooks from mid century right up to the First World War.
Marx
LBird assures us that Marx took no interest in the progress of natural science.
Why then did chemistry professor Carl Schorlemmer and evolutionary biologist Ray Lankester attend the private funeral gathering of nine persons to mourn the passing of an obscure economic scientist whom Engels eulogized as “the best hated and most calumniated man of his times”?
The new/forthcoming “Marx Engels Collected Works MEGA(2)” Volume 31 [not yet translated into English] lets us glimpse the extent to which Marx took an active interest in the progress of natural science.
Marx’s Chemistry Notebooks (1877-83)
Notebook 1. On the Atomic Theory
- atomistic principle as propounded by John Dalton
- related stoichiometric laws of chemical combination of elements
- determination of atomic and molecular weights of elements and compounds—J. L. Gay-Lussac; L. R. A. C. Avogadro; ‘vapour density’ and ‘molecular weight’, etc.
Notebook 2. Tabular summaries of inorganic and organic chemistry
Notebook 3. Tables of chemistry
Notebooks 4 & 5. Tables of inorganic and organic chemistry
Notebook 6. Formulae of organic chemistry
Marx’s Tabular Summaries/Tables include
Inorganic Chemistry Tables
- Non-metals and metals
- Periodic system of Lothar Meyer (independent discoverer of the Periodic Table but ceded precedence to Mendeleev)
- Quantitative valency
- Oxides, hydroxides, acids and salts, etc.
Organic Chemistry Tables
- Paraffins, carbohydrates, aromatic compounds, alkaloids, uric acid, carbonyl and sulfocarbonyl compounds, etheric and anhydride substances, ammonia and derivatives, organic acids, etc.
Studies in electromagnetism: Edouard Hospitalier
- Power sources: Voltaic piles, Galvanic batteries
- Electric current: Ohm’s law
- Physical Units: electrical current, voltage, resistance, etc.
Marx’s Notebook Sources include
- Chemistry: Lothar Mayer, Henry Roscoe, Carl Schorlemmer, Friedrich Kekule
- Modern chemistry: Marx attended August Hoffmann’s lecture course at the Royal College of Chemistry, London
- Agricultural Chemistry: Justus Liebig
- Physiological Chemistry: Wilhelm Kuhne
- Human Physiology: Ludimarr Hermann; Johannes Ranke
- Physics: Benjamin Witzschel
- Geology: Joseph Jukes
Forthcoming natural scientific materials (perhaps now published) include Marx’s notes and excerpts on Physics, History of Technology, Geology, Soil Science, History of Agricultural Plants, Agricultural Chemistry, Physiology of Plants, of Animals and of Human Beings, parts of Mathematics and on the interrelationships of the Natural Sciences and Philosophy. One day we will discover just what the mature Marx actually wrote about the latter.
Atoms
LBird assures us with his customary air of authority that (1) Engels thought only in terms of atoms while (2) Marx never thought in terms of atoms.
Re (1). In fact Engels adopted a field (non-atomic) approach to electricity (of course, the electron had yet to be discovered, but so too had quantum electrodynamic field theory).
Re (2). To deprive Marx of atomic theory is to ignore his Ph D dissertation on Epicurus. Marx famously defended Epicurus’s statistical atomic “swerve” (a Greek pre-echo of quantum indeterminism) for allowing free will to arise within a primarily deterministic atomic world.
* * *
I will return to Robert Owen on another occasion.
“Modern Socialism” by R. C. K. Ensor (Harper, London: 1910) gives you access to some key Party platforms, speeches, documents etc. The book is now out of copyright and was digitised (photographically) by Microsoft in 2007.
The book is available on-line from the University of Pennsylvania:
You can download it in PDF format:
It includes the objects and programs of the
- Social Democratic Federation,
- Independent Labour Party,
- Fabian Society
For comparison, it includes the object and programs for continental parties: the German, Austrian and Belgian Social Democratic Parties; the French Socialist Party.
It is a pitiable spectacle indeed to compare what these self-styled “socialist” parties claimed to have stood for then and what their descendant parties claim to stand for now against the forever-current Oject and Declaration of Principles of the World Socialist Parties (SPGB, etc.) we stood for then and stand for now.
ajj wrote:Are we too dismissive of the religious liberal left?No!
ajj wrote:Should we now be much more pro-active in engaging the Churches?No!
Fascinating! Wallerstein staked his economic reputation on opposing and improving Marx’s theory of value — just like Postone.
Fine, but the Party literature is not under immediate consideration in the context of your original post.In keeping with that context, I chose to amplify Wallerstein’s encouragement (in your quote) for us to read, and to re-read, Marx by recommending some of his most significant and accessible mature works that reveal how indispensable Marx is for comprehending capitalism and for supplanting it with the world socialism our Party literature advocates so well.Reading, and re-reading, both are indispensable. But it is Marx’s literature that is under consideration and that laid the indispensable foundation for our own.Read, and re-read, it.
Excellent advice.For starters, read and re-read…The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels to comprehend the significance of class struggle in human history.The Preface to Marx’s A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy to come to grips with Marx’s guiding principle of his studies.Marx’s Prefaces and Afterwords to his Capital Volume I before venturing into the work itself.These texts are available on-line: (1) https://…Manifesto.pdf, (2) https://…Critique_of_Political_Economy.pdf, (3) https://…Capital-Volume-I.pdf.
Correction My assertion that Böhm-Bawerk “was in no mood to recognize conditional methodology in Marx” misrepresents his case.Böhm-Bawerk recognised Marx’s conditional methodology but he viewed its content and development through marginalist spectacles:“I cannot help myself; I see here no explanation and reconciliation of a contradiction, but the bare contradiction itself. ”https://mises.org/files/karl-marx-and-close-his-systempdf/download?token=_cPu9SFP (p. 30)
Andrew Kliman, in Reclaiming Marx’s Capital, §8.4 “Postone’s Counter Critique”, reveals Postone’s scientific incompetence on the subject of Marx’s value.To set the context of Marx’s Capital…Capital Volume I is a critique of the political economy of capitalist production, conceived by Marx as the process of producing value as capital.In Volume I, Marx investigates capitalist production under idealized conditions in which commodities sell at their values.Capital Volume II is a critique of the political economy of capitalist circulation, conceived by Marx as the social process of circulating value as capital.In Volume II, Marx investigates capitalist circulation under idealized conditions in which commodities sell at their values.Capital Volume III is a critique of the political economy of capitalist distribution, conceived by Marx as the social process of distributing value as capital.In Volume III, Marx investigates the interconnected capitalist processes of producing, circulating and distributing value as capital under realistic conditions in which commodities do not sell at their values.Just after Engels published Capital Volume III, a marginalist economist and Austrian Minister of Finance, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, in his book “Karl Marx and the Close of his System”, famously claimed that Marx unconditionally contradicted himself: price = value in Volume I, but price ≠ value in Volume III.Böhm-Bawerk had been scientifically trained in conditional methodology, where a scientist investigates idealized conditions before progressively investigating more realistic ones, but he was in no mood to recognize conditional methodology in Marx.Postone is scientifically naive. He blithely sidesteps the “unconditional contradiction” by claiming that…Marx never intended “to write a critical political economy”.Marx never intended to use “the law of value to explain the workings of the market”.In other words, Postone wriggles out of his “unconditional contradiction” by unconditionally contradicting Marx’s thoroughly well-known intention, already announced in his well-known Contribution — Marx’s unconditional subtitle to Capital: “A Critique of Political Economy”.To this extent Postone has nothing of value to contribute to Marx’s value.Andrew Kliman proceeds to consider Postone’s emphasis on Marx’s intentions in Capital — which is philosophical guesswork on Postone’s part — as follows…“The crux of the problem, once again, is that Postone is discussing Marx’s intentions and method when the point at issue is instead the logical consistency of his arguments….”“I suspect that [Postone’s] misplaced emphasis on intentions and method is due in part to the influence of relativism within much of the humanities and social sciences. If our presuppositions fully determine the conclusions at which we arrive, as relativism holds, then the logic of our arguments is irrelevant; presuppositions lead to conclusions directly, not through logical argument. If that were so, one could bypass the logic of Marx’s arguments and acquit him of error simply by explaining “where he was coming from.” It seems to me that this is the methodology of Postone’s discussion. I do not mean to suggest that he is a relativist; his text indicates otherwise. My point is simply that, if Postone had been working in a different milieu, he might have been more cognizant of the need to respond to allegations that Marx’s arguments are logically flawed.”
Dear Ike,Use value and exchange value are not abstract.The use value of a spade is its social function as an instrument for digging.The activity of digging is socially concrete. What social practice does it abstract from?Capitalist vendors throw use values — like a spade or a bike — for consumption onto their market, and vendors concretely commensurate their incommensurable use values by sticking concrete exchange values on them.By your turning use values and exchange values into abstractions — thoughts — you fail to appreciate that through necessity, first and foremost, we are compelled to understand concrete processes:concrete processes are what we must investigate and comprehend,concrete processes can only be comprehended by thought that abstracts from them.That is Marx’s dialectic — the way the human mind grasps dynamic processes.For you, sensuous phenomena are abstract thoughts that arise from hypothesis.Thus, you pontificate, without a blush, that “socialism is only a hypothesis” and that marxian value = exchange value!* * *Value is Marx’s abstraction from the concrete social process of exchange. It is the foundation of his abstract political economic science of concrete capitalist society.Exchange value is the concrete form — the price tag — of value.What the market abstracts from when it commensuratesthe exchange value of 20 spades = the exchange value of one bikeis precisely their incommensurable use values.And that is why another incommensurable use value money can arise, naturally, out of the market, to concretely function as the abstract measure of all use values — the “substance” they all express their exchange value in.And that is why marxian value expresses abstract human labour, i.e. labour that abstracts from its concrete social practice.* * *Hence the sorry concrete capitalist spectacle of the abstract labourer seeking abstract work, pitted against abstractly commensurable humans, and settling for an abstract wage, in an existence that abstracts from all concrete human possibility.
Bitcoin is not money.Bitcoin was never designed to function as a social means of exchange.Bitcoin was designed to function as a means of speculation.It was designed to be a virtual embodiment of speculative desire that is carefully restricted to privileged speculators, but marked out to evoke unrealisable desires in the enthusiasts who would fan its essential speculation from the fringes.Bitcoin is intentionally dynamic. It is intentionally too unstable to function as a trustworthy standard of wealth, to function as a means of general payment, to function as money.Even if it were stable, bitcoin would be at war with money. “A double standard of value is inconsistent with the functions of a standard” [Marx Capital Vol. 1].Bitcoin is far easier than material wealth (such as speculative artworks, jewelry, etc.) to effect commercial transactions with. It embodies fictional price, freed from the burden attendant upon having to assume an actual physical body.Social faith in a non-currency like bitcoin ultimately rests on its convertibility into social currency, i.e. so long as it is convertible into money.Dynamic bitcoin can only function as speculative desire because it rests on stable money.Bitcoin is not its own ground.It is not money.
The committee of the problematic Nobel Prize for Economics would never award it to Marx:Per Strömberg (Chairman), Professor of Finance. https://ideas.repec.org/e/pst18.html#articles-body Jakob Svensson, Professor of Economics, http://www.jakobsvensson.com/uploads/9/9/1/0/99107788/cv_1page.pdf Tomas Sjöström, Professor of Economics, http://economics.rutgers.edu/component/content/article/86/224-sjoestroem-tomas Peter Gärdenfors, Professor of Cognitive Science, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_GärdenforsPer Krusell, Professor of Economics, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Krusell Torsten Persson (Secretary), Professor of Economics, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torsten_Persson And Marx, of course, would refuse it.
The claimI followed up on your reference to Anthony C Sutton’s book The Federal Reserve Conspiracy which claims that the pirate Jean Laffite was “an agent of American banking interests [who] financed the Communist Manifesto”. I had never come across this claim before.Incidentally, the Collected Works of Marx and Engels don’t mention Jean Lafitte, but they do mention an unrelated banker, “Jacques Laffitte”, the French prime minister who gloated after the July Revolution of 1830—the one immortalised in visual art by Delacroix painting Liberty leading the people—“Now we, the bankers, will govern” [Engels].The Journal of Jean LaffiteThe Sam Houston Library in Liberty, Texas, holds the “Journal of Jean Lafitte”, supposedly written by the pirate in 1845–50, though from internal evidence written later.The Laffite Journal was claimed to have been passed down from the pirate as a “family heirloom”. The library obtained it indirectly from the pirate’s great grandson, a certain (or perhaps, uncertain) John Laflin.Given that most historians agree that the pirate Jean Laffite was killed and buried at sea in 1823, any account of his European activities in 1845–50 must be considered to be as imaginary as his buried treasure.Suspicion was heightened when it was learned that the presumed great grandson John Laflin had changed his name to “Lafitte” by delayed birth certificate.This invited accusations, fairly or unfairly, over John Laflin’s involvement in the counterfeiting of letters presented as being written by Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Davey Crockett.The book Great Forgers and Famous Fakes: The Manuscript Forgers of America and How They Duped the Experts by Charles Hamilton devotes considerable space to exposing John Laflin’s letter forgeries.The upshot is that Wikipedia sums up the consensus that “most historians now believe the Lafitte Journal to be a forgery.”Forgery or HagiographyThis might have been the end of the story had not the Laffite Society of Galveston published an article Who Wrote the Journal of Jean Laffite: The Privateer-Patriot's Own Story by Reginald Wilson https://journals.tdl.org/laffitesc/index.php/laffitesc/article/download/247/230.Wilson gives grounds for identifying the Journal’s author as Jean Laffite’s son, Antoine, who lived with his father on the Galveston commune (1818–20) before his father torched it and turned to piracy.Antoine never saw his father again, for Jean Laffite died an unmourned pirate at sea, three years later.Wilson concludes that Antoine wrote the forgery sometime after 1860 (in his twilight years) adopting his father’s name in an act of filial piety to set the bent family record as straight as he could—with an eye to redeeming his father’s and his family’s reputation in the eyes of his descendants.If so, the Laffite Journal is not a modern forgery concocted by the great grandson.Lafitte’s son Antoine had travelled to Europe and mixed in socialist circles, and so was able to embellish his story with the fantastic claim that his father—though buried at sea a quarter of a century earlier—actually met Marx and Engels in 1848, and bankrolled the Communist Manifesto.Clever CounterfeitOn the other hand, a French article Barataria: the Strange History of Jean Laffite, Pirate by Louis-Jean Calvert https://journals.tdl.org/laffitesc/index.php/laffitesc/article/viewFile/201/184 makes the alternative case that the Lafitte Journal is the modern forgery of John Laflin “in search of acceptance and confirmation of an assumed identity for almost thirty years”.The Journal contains too many checkable errors to have been penned by Jean Laffite himself.What to make of bankrolling of the Communist Manifesto?And so the Lafitte Journal turns out, on generous estimation, to be at best untrustworthy or, considered ungenerously, to be barefaced fiction. In either case, it merits no great reliance being placed on its substantive claim.Of course, even in the improbable event of the Committee of the Communist League having accepted Lafitte’s generous financial offer to bankroll the Communist Manifesto, it remained obviously unswayed politically by whatever authoritarian views Laffite may or may not have tried to impose.And we know that unfolding events prove that the League was neither compromised nor duped, as claimed, by US banking interests.Perhaps future scholarly work will clarify the dubious matter further.Nevertheless, the incomparable Communist Manifesto continues to utterly transcend the tawdry commercial world of US bankers and the mercenary privateering of adventurer Jean Laffite.
