Sydney Ideas
Key Thinkers Lecture Series
Karl Marx
Overheads used by John Buchanan
12 August 2009
1
Introduction
•
The pleasure of ideas and thinking
•
Arts revival
•
Consumer-driven approach
•
Question: Why is Marx still relevant and
exciting?
2
The Challenge: Where do you begin?
•
Marx as historical figure
•
Marx as political influence
•
Academic ‘Marxism’ Industry
•
The two Marx’s
•
Revolutionary / activist
•
Researcher / analyst
3
Bases for evaluation
•
Disciplines: history, law and economics
•
Outlook of an applied labour market researcher
•
Former environment, student and union activist
•
Understanding social reality
ie contributions to analysis/systematic thinking
•
Case studies from the world of work
4
Structure of Presentation
•
Essentials of his life and politics
•
The essentials of his analytical legacy
•
•
•
•
Assessing his analytical legacy
•
•
•
•
•
Social philosophy
Historical materialism
Political economy
analytical outlook (ie predisposition)
analytical leads (ie history and political economy)
analytical mode (ie epistemology)
analytical limits (ie closures)
Conclusion
5
Essentials of his life
• Remarkable career
• Remarkable support (friend + wife)
• Remarkably common weaknesses
6
Analytical Essentials (I) : Social Philosophy
•
Connoisseur of paradox + contradiction
=> grasping dialectal dynamics
•
Key human traits
- need to consume
- ability to produce
•
Key features of human existence
- scarcity
- surplus
•
Distinctiveness of human potential
- capable of so much more
- projective consciousness
7
Marx’s Essentials (II): Historical Materialism
Superstructure
Projective
Consciousness
Cooperates in
setting of
scarcity and
surplus
Forces of
production
- materials
- technology
- labour
Politics
+
Law
Ideology
+
Culture
Relations of
Production
Social
formation
ie property
relations
Mode of
production
- Asiatic
- Ancient
- Feudal
- Capitalist
8
Analytical Essentials (II):
Historical Materialism
• Example: Brenner on role of the peasantry –
causality contingent
9
Analytical Essentials (III):
Political Economy
• Marx’s great project
• Distinctiveness of capitalism: world of
commodities
• Three distinct dynamics of capitalism:
– trade cycle [Capital Vol I]
– growth dynamics [Capital Vol II]
– falling rate of profit [Capital Vol III]
10
Distinctiveness of Capitalism: outwardly a
world of commodity exchange
• Markets long predate capitalism
– but primarily for use values
–C
M
C
• Under capitalism markets predominate
– Overwhelming for exchange value
–M
C
M’
11
Trade Cycle: understanding booms/busts
[Capital Vol I]
Wages
Profits
Employment
Employment
New Technology Investment
Unemployment
Profits
Wages
12
Growth theory:
Understanding how output, income and
expenditure rise (Capital Vol II)
Two Sector example: capital goods and
consumption goods (ie Departments I+II)
→ Key issue: flow of capital, labour and surplus
investment, wages and profits
: provided capital and labour replenished +
profits ploughed back in necessary ratios
=> steady state growth possible
13
Growth theory:
→ But challenges are real
: differential rates of productivity
growth between sectors
: consumption patterns don’t
automatically adjust
: surplus can be misallocated
=>
Potential for crisis of ‘structural
adjustment’
14
Falling rate of profit: The Key
Driver [Capital Vol III]
• Capitalists ↑ investments to ↑ profit by
↓employment
- BUT: if surplus does not rise, profits fall
“Wages must not rise faster than growth in
productivity”
=> Crisis in profitability is always potentially there
15
Falling rate of profit: The Key
Driver [Capital Vol III]
• This is a tendency, not a certainty. Counter
trends include:
– New inventions  cheaper goods + ↑ demand (Marx)
– Mergers & acquisitions  concentrations of capital and scale
economies (Marx)
– Wages fall below subsistence level (Earned income tax Credits)
– Foreign trade: export capital, import raw materials and consumer
goods (“Globalisation”)
=> Crises can be avoided
16
Marx’s three cardinal facts of
capitalist production
1. Concentration of means of production
 abolish private property
2. Labour constantly reorganised:
co-operation, re-divisions of labour + united with science
 abolish private labour
3. Creation of a world market
Capitalism grows but in a contradictory way via crises and cycles.
Whether crises are terminal is an empirical not conceptual
question
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Assessing the analytical legacy
• Predisposition
• Analytical leads
• Mode of inquiry and presentation
• Closures
18
Analytical Predisposition I
• The power of paradoxes
non-linear thinking
• Understanding dynamism/tendencies and
countervailing tendencies
19
Analytical Predisposition
•
The great taboo: What is wrong with the private
property system?
ie. Questioning of established social relations
•
Legacy
- opens up space
: analytically
: politically/policy
•
Example
- Swedish union wages policy + Wage Earner Funds
20
Analytical Leads
•
The importance of production and social surplus
•
Legacy
- offers powerful leads for inquiry
•
Example
- rising non-standard employment
+ accumulation based on inequality
21
US net profit rates, 1948-1999
0.35
(adjusted for indirect business taxes)
NONFARM
NONFARM NONMFGR
MFGR
0.3
profit rates
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
years
Source: Robert Brenner (UCLA) "The Boom and the "Bubble" (Verso 2002)
22
Distribution of US profits in manufacturing
Retained earnings, interest and dividends
1950-65 - 1990-1996
195065
(%)
1990-96
(%)
Retained Earnings
75
40
Dividends
25
36
0.01
24
Interest
Source: Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global Turbulence, New Left Review, No 299, June,
1990
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Macro circuits: households and firms
Composition of Demand
Distribution of income
Tastes
Distribution System
Households by Type:
Size/no. of persons
Economically active
Welfare/private pension
Firms by Sector
Manufacturing
Services
Public
Composition of Employment
Manufacturing/services/government
Full-time/part-time
Temporary/permanent
Male/female
Manual/non-manual
Source: Froud etal 1997, ‘From Social Settlement to Household Lottery: Economy and Society’, Vol 26, No 3, 1997 pp340-72
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Analytical Mode (epistemology)
•
•
Pragmatic realism
Legacy
- conceptual precision: historical + logical
- immense appetite for the empirical
- validation through practice
•
Example
- skill formation problems in Victorian
manufacturing
25
Marx’s method of inquiry
2. Historical analysis
3. Structural analysis
1. Research
4. Presentation
5. Validation
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The Challenge for Victorian Manufacturing:
Deployment Crushing Development of Labour
Fuels new
revitalised
growth path
“Farmers
eating
their
seeds”
Excess
capacity
Intense
competition
•‘Turning the
tide’
Breakdown
in on + off
job training
Skill
impacts
•Direct
•indirect
New
organisational
forms
Scenario A:
Upward Spiral
Changing
role of large
workplaces
Implications:
(i) limited
capacity to
handle:
•New skill
requirements
•Established
skill
requirements
(ii) Victorian
innovation
provide
future
pointers
•Building new
capacity
•Modernising
existing capacity
Scenario B:
Downward
Spiral: steady
slide of
manufacturing
Method of presentation
•
Drew on all realms of human understanding to grasp the
dynamism of capitalism
•
Combined both ‘science’ and art
‘Capital’ as a work that captures all facets of social
complexity
-
Interest in the ‘artistic whole’
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Analytical Closures
•
Technicist and reductionist (tendencies)
- problem shared with liberals (eg Adam Smith)
•
Legacy
- limits analytical and political possibilities in the current
situation
- neglected dynamics of consumption
•
Examples
- labour as a commodity (Biernacki 1995)
- consumption and status anxiety (Schor, Frank, de Botton)
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Conclusion
Why is Marx still relevant and exciting?
•
Analytical predisposition ► opens up space
•
Analytical categories
► powerful leads in inquiry
•
Analytical approach
► links theory, data and
practice
•
Analytical closures: can be transcended
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Conclusion
Basically:
Marx offers powerful pointers for understanding
the past and present to better guide the struggle
for a more just future
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References:
K.Marx & F.Engels:The Communist Manifesto, originally published 1848
K.Marx: Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, originally published in 1859 (especially preface and
introduction)
Commentaries:
(a)
General overview
Francis Wheen, Karl Marx. A Life, Fourth Estate, London, 2000
Jonathan Wolff, Why read Marx today?, Oxford UP, 2002
(b)
Historical materialism
John McMurtry, Structure of Marx World View, Princeton UP, 1978
(c)
Political economy
Michael Lebowitz, ‘Karl Marx: The Needs of Capital vs. the Needs of Human Beings’ in Douglas Dowd (ed),
Understanding Capitalism. Critical Analysis from Karl Marx to Amartya Sen, Pluto Press, London, 2002 pp
17 - 36
Francis Wheen, Marx’s Das Kapital. A Biography, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2006
(d)
Marxian Analysis of the current situation
Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge. The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, Verso, London
2002
Robert Brenner, ‘Towards the Precipice’, London Review of Books, Volume 25, No 3, 2003.
Robert Brenner, JeongSeong-jin, ‘Overproduction not Financial Collapse is the Heart of the Crisis: The US, East
Asia and the World’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 6-1-09, February 7, 2009
[http://www.japanfocus.org/articles/print_article/3043]
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