“The historical justification of this method of procedure, its scientific necessity in the history of economics, are evident at first sight, but so is, at the same time, its scientific inadequacy. This inadequacy not only shows itself in the method of presentation (in a formal sense) but leads to erroneous results because it omits some essential links and directly seeks to prove the congruity of the economic categories with one another.” (p 164 – 5)
Adam Smith had provided such comprehensive analysis of political economy that Say was able to summarise it in a single textbook.
“The only investigations that were made in the period between Smith and Ricardo were ones of detail, on productive and unproductive labour, finance, theory of population, landed property and taxes.” (p 165)
As seen previously, in Marx's analysis of Smith's work, in Capital II and III, and in Theories of Surplus Value I, however, there was a duality in Smith's analysis that led him into continual contradiction. That can be seen in his theory of value, where at one time he correctly determines value on the basis of labour time, and at another on the basis of cost of production. It can also be seen in his two different definitions of productive labour. And these contradictions, inadequacies and misconceptions are carried forward to his successors who simply tried to reconcile them rather than to resolve them.
“On the one hand he traces the intrinsic connection existing between economic categories or the obscure structure of the bourgeois economic system. On the other, he simultaneously sets forth the connection as it appears in the phenomena of competition and thus as it presents itself to the unscientific observer just as to him who is actually involved and interested in the process of bourgeois production. One of these conceptions fathoms the inner connection, the physiology, so to speak, of the bourgeois system, whereas the other takes the external phenomena of life, as they seem and appear and merely describes, catalogues, recounts and arranges them under formal definitions. With Smith both these methods of approach not only merrily run alongside one another, but also intermingle and constantly contradict one another.” (p 165)
This is justifiable for Smith, Marx argues, because he did have a dual task. He did need to dig into the physiology of bourgeois society, like an early an anatomist cutting open corpses to see what was inside, and trying to fathom what each different organ did, and how each related to the others. But, he also needed to present a picture of what was then something new, more like an artist painting a detailed picture of some new landscape, which necessarily could only depict the visible features, and not the underlying botanical and geographical processes.
In addition, as with any new science, Smith had to create a specific economic jargon, so that the names given to categories and concepts could be understood in their specific scientific context, which often differed from the use of the same words in general usage. As with any new science, the development of such a specific nomenclature for these categories leads to a separate logical and mental process whereby what began as material aspects of the real world can be transformed, by a process of abstraction, and thereby lead to a series of mental constructs, hypotheses and thought experiments.
“The one task interests him as much as the other and since both proceed independently of one another, this results in completely contradictory ways of presentation: the one expresses the intrinsic connections more or less correctly, the other, with the same justification—and without any connection to the first method of approach—expresses the apparent connections without any internal relation.” (p 165)
Smith's followers invariably jumbled together these two approaches.
“But at last Ricardo steps in and calls to science: Halt! The basis, the starting-point for the physiology of the bourgeois system—for the understanding of its internal organic coherence and life process—is the determination of value by labour-time. Ricardo starts with this and forces science to get out of the rut, to render an account of the extent to which the other categories—the relations of production and commerce—evolved and described by it, correspond to or contradict this basis, this starting-point; to elucidate how far a science which in fact only reflects and reproduces the manifest forms of the process, and therefore also how far these manifestations themselves, correspond to the basis on which the inner coherence, the actual physiology of bourgeois society rests on the basis which forms its starting-point; and in general, to examine how matters stand with the contradiction between the apparent and the actual movement of the system.” (p 166)
In doing so, Ricardo cut the ground from beneath all those, like Say, who were unable to deal with this requirement for honest scientific analysis and exposition of the contradictions. Not surprisingly, it provoked a response from Say, who wrote, that ““under the pretext of expanding it” (science) “it had been pushed into a vacuum”.” (p 166)
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