Humanities, capitalism and socialism — continued.
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008I would like to thank you all for gracing this incipient blog of mine with the presence of your readership, and with the quality and robustness of the discussions you have created; it has far, far surpassed the sort of typical expectations one might have about the audience of and its participation in a personal blog, and your unfailingly erudite, thought-provoking comments have provided a lot of stimulating, compelling perspectives for me to consider in detail.
In connection with the immensely fruitful ongoing conversation (amongst myself, Clint, Xon, Andrew, Lisa, etc.) about the relationship between capitalism and the subsistence of humanities and institutions of “high culture” in this article, I have decided to continue it with a separate post in order to better address Xon’s petition to flesh out some of the key differences of opinion and assumption here. I feel this is a sufficiently distinct — yet very compelling — direction to the governing theme that it is structurally appropriate to channel it into a different article.
I think Xon is very correct in saying that the polemic boils down to very fundamental, axiomatic differences between the assumptions about capitalism made by people such as myself, exponents of Marxist intuitions to some extent, and advocates of what he has opted to term the “free market libertarian” (FML) worldview. As he says, “one of us is playing chess, and the other is playing checkers,” because, metaphorically speaking,
“[W]e have taken such different roads so many miles that now we have lived in different countries for three generations, taught all of our kids to speak different languages, read propaganda that caricatures each other without knowing what is true and what isn’t, etc.”
So, I agree that to continue the discussion effectively, the focus has to shift from the symptoms to the core premises; it seems clear enough that apart from any technical disagreements about economics participating in an otherwise shared philosophical space, there are two very disparate schools of thought operative here.
Granted that we have sufficient elucidation and acknowledgment of what I see to be a strict constructionist FML view of academia and the humanities as just another economic decision that is and ought to be governed by the same basic market dynamics, and rendered with the same analytical framework, I think it’s only fitting and proper that the premises of the Marxist account be given some explicit voice in response.
Marxism vs. Socialism vs. Anarchism vs. …
First, however, let me grapple with “Marxism” itself terminologically. For one, I am not a Marxist as such. I used to be, but I’m not. I spoke to this here; it would be profoundly disingenuous for me to don the mantle of Marxism’s complex pedigree as an influential body of knowledge and a system of thought in trying to set anything of this sort forth. I fundamentally support free-market society and agree with Xon’s bedrock opposition to government-orchestrated coercion or other intermediation as a prospective remedy to anything.
Also, the affiliation with Marxism here — and the reason for the very invocation of the word — is limited to certain dimensions of the far-reaching critique of capitalism offered by socialistic currents of thought, as well as the ways in which it is brought to bear on sociology, psychology and anthropology. Underneath this umbrella epithet of “Marxist-affiliated,” I am actually superimposing a vastly plethoric repertoire of socialist thinking, including weighty contributions (especially in the area of industrial psychology) by the likes of anarchists such as Kropotkin and Proudhon — recognisably un-Marxist belief systems to those privy to the esoterica of “leftist” ideologies.
Despite that, there is a uniting elixir — a common thread — running through them that goes beyond just mere opposition to capitalism, or even plain advocacy of social organisation involving collective ownership of means of production and/or government by committee and/or anything like that. For all the eclecticism on a technical level (much as often occurs in abstruse theological disagreements), these currents offer a sufficiently integrated, monolithic perspective on capitalism. There’s not really a lot of controversy with respect to the socioeconomic “incumbency” in the descriptive fabric of anarchism vs. Marxism-Leninism vs. old-guard Western European socialism. The differences arise primarily in the prescriptive parts that deal with revolutionary theory — “what to do about it,” rather than “what the situation looks like.”
While — for that very reason — the feathers of my taxonomic ideological pedanticism are not particularly ruffled by the continued use of “Marxist” as a shorthand, catch-all epithet for all of it, you should know that far from all of it is fundamentally Marxist. The most technically accurate designation to hope for is really “socialist,” “left-libertarian,” or perhaps “Marxian,” even though none of those individually really seize upon the essence of this quilted composition well. Still, in the interest of accuracy, I would favour standardising on “socialist” as the umbrella term for the contraposition here. It’s the line of best fit.
All right, it’s high time I jumped into some substance here. With these presidium.org people paying me by the word, I can comb and braid the “meta-informative” portion of this quaint symposium, define the terms, etc. until the sun comes up. But it’s very late, and I’m just a wee proletarian, so I’ve got to go to work in the morning and do my bidding for The Man, whose appreciation for drowsy, lagging production in telecommunications systems engineering should not be overstated. 
“Naked Economics”
It’s got nothing to do with late-night pay-per-view programming.
When I was in Austria with my parents in the summer of 2003 in connection with my dad’s teaching stint on a summer abroad program for American students, I recall at one point sitting on a tour bus in Germany next to a woman reading some book of which either the title or subtitle involved “naked economics.” It wasn’t this one; maybe it was the title of a chapter, now that I think about it? Anyway, the gist of the text’s pretension was to condense the “nonsense” that is overlayed on top of economics by “politics,” governments, constituencies, special interests, “biased media,” etc. and give you the low-down on the real deal, the “objective,” scientific economic facts underlying it all. I can’t remember much from my furtive glances, but a lot of it seemed to dwell extensively on removing the whole, you know, “people factor” so that we can get an “undistorted” view of the economic realities that humans blunder through with such seemingly reckless abandon.
While perhaps a noble aim from an FML vantage point, socialism — and the Marxist strain most emphatically — steadfastly refuses to make this type of distinction.
Rule #0 of the socialist account of reality: Economics and politics are inextricably bound up. They are not separate subject matter and do not benefit from hermetic treatment.
Where FML, as I understand it, would hold that politics and power are all impositions — things that people do with the underlying “raw material” of economic relations — socialism sees certain political realities as fixtures of economic systems. Economic systems create class realities and distribute political power; the relations of production — the manufacture of the social product — and the mechanics of its appropriation are economic projections.
The discipline of political economy, whose origins are formally chalked up to Adam Smith, represents a worldview developed by Marxism. Except where political economy in capitalistic analytical terms amounts to an “interdisciplinary” exploration of the interplay of economics + law + politics + history + geography, etc., Marxism sees these as indivisible elements of a holistic, systemic critique whose broad scope best accords with the requirements of scientific completeness.
Thus, the structure of political institutions under a capitalistic, FML-type system is not just a “cultural” or “social” or “moral” phenomenon that plays out in parallel with the basic laws of the economy’s operation, but is truly part of the same horizontally integrated conceptual space. Politics is not just what people “do” with the economy according to their values; it is an actual facet of the economic system.
In precisely this sense, socialists are not endeared to the view that the power inequalities or injustices that are borne out in economic terms are simply aberrations upon an intrinsically immaculate, morally ambivalent clean slate that can be employed for good or evil, equitably or corruptibly.
I suppose that from an FML perspective critical of this visualisation, one of the possibilities is to accuse Marxism of simplistic economic reductionism that neglects the distinct weight of cultural, personal and moral factors. In fact, Marxism cannot be reasonably accused of ruling too many things outside the purview of economic activity, as though something truly participates in an “extra-economic” kind of way. If anything, the tendency is the very opposite; everything is economic. It’s just that the scope of coverage associated with “economic” is defined far more broadly than is customary or acceptable in FML literature.
The Class Character of Economic Dogma
While truth itself does not literally possess a class character, socialist thought holds that the observational language in which economic relations and their political adjacencies are conveyed issues from very different narratives that correspond to the distinct roles that different positions of privilege and agency play in society. These positions are formed from the economic stratification imposed and perpetuated by capitalism.
The precise nature of these classes, their delineation, and the movement of people through them is a topic of considerable detail and widely varying opinion. What is important for the moment is to acknowledge the existence of classes in principle.
Thus, the sort of sunny, optimistic FML talk that would have everyone conceptualise themselves as an equally empowered agent in the free market is intensely dissonant to the ear of the socialist intuition. As the socialist account would have it, different constituencies in society are able to access very different parts of the economic landscape and relate to them in profoundly different ways.
Seeing life’s possibilities in the rosy light of career advancement, income mobility and personal entrepreneurship is something that only acquires meaning (rather than mere “practicability”) at and above a certain social stratum — the one typically labeled “petit bourgeoisie” in legacy Marxist-speak.
Because the privileged elements of society — and, in this particular stage of history, more significantly, the entire globe — control the society’s means of production, the mythos they author percolates through them to educational and cultural institutions to become dominant and authoritative ideology. This process, notwithstanding straw men that conjure impressions of a sophisticated, intricately diabolical back-room conspiracy of elite propagandists waging deception upon the proletariat-at-large, is rather organic and automatic - simply a logical consequence of their seeing and experiencing their worldview as normative and simultaneously occupying the position to bestow upon it endorsement via the hierarchical means by which knowledge becomes authoritative — another consequence of privilege and stratification. But it does not correspond to the way this reality is experienced by those whose lives do not share their class character.
The take of the InfoShop Anarchist FAQ is helpful and illuminating:
Rather than scientific analysis, economics has always been driven by the demands of the wealthy (”How did [economics] get instituted? As a weapon of class warfare.” [Chomsky, Op. Cit., p. 252]). This works on numerous levels. The most obvious is that most economists take the current class system and wealth/income distribution as granted and generate general “laws” of economics from a specific historical society. […] [T]his inevitably skews the “science” into ideology and apologetics. The analysis is also (almost inevitably) based on individualistic assumptions, ignoring or downplaying the key issues of groups, organisations, class and the economic and social power they generate. Then there are the assumptions used and questions raised. As Herman argues, this has hardly been a neutral process:
Needless to say, economics is a “science” with deep ramifications within society. As a result, it comes under pressure from outside influences and vested interests far more than, say, anthropology or physics. This has meant that the wealthy have always taken a keen interest that the “science” teaches the appropriate lessons. This has resulted in a demand for a “science” which reflects the interests of the few, not the many. Is it really just a co-incidence that the lessons of economics are just what the bosses and the wealthy would like to hear?
It is really surprising that having the wealthy fund (and so control) the development of a “science” has produced a body of theory which so benefits their interests? Or that they would be keen to educate the masses in the lessons of said “science”, lessons which happen to conclude that the best thing workers should do is obey the dictates of the bosses, sorry, the market? It is really just a co-incidence that the repeated use of economics is to spread the message that strikes, unions, resistance and so forth are counter-productive and that the best thing worker can do is simply wait patiently for wealth to trickle down?
Why such rigidity, immutability, and seeming lack of dynamism and fluidity? Because …
Socio-economic determinism
Socialists are steadfastly opposed to the view that objective outcomes in people’s lives are simply the meritocratic outcome of intrinsic choices, and refuse to resign themselves to a compatibilist interpretation that starts with individual choice as a departure point for analysis of socio-economic position in individual situations.
I think what I had to say in this comment basically sums it up:
Many are very dogmatic in their assertion of free-will, and tend to repeatedly assert that qualitatively inferior outcomes in people’s lives (isn’t it all relative, anyway?) are the result of poor choices over which the actor(s) apparently had both complete control and unlimited epistemic privilege. I tend to see it more as, look, if you or I grew up in a crumbling ghetto with extremely lacking to nonexistent parenting, and in general reproduced a certain generalisable pedigree commonly associated with people of that fate, then in all likelyhood we would not be having this conversation–although it’s not logically impossible by any stretch, and there are plenty of anomalies. But in principle it seems rather obvious to me this is unlikely.
Socialism is also acutely attentive and emphatic on the point that poverty — like wealth and privilege in opposition to it — is, in the main, self-perpetuating qualities that are not defeated by spontaneous or intangible means. The sorts of circumstances in which rapid social mobility occurs are of intense interest to socialists for the factors that occur in the background of an individual’s life to bolster that possibility.
FML sees such adherence to social determinism as a negation or trivialisation of the role of institutional freedom of transactional choice. It is a necessary condition of FML reasoning, in my opinion, to adopt an ahistoric posture in which a given scenario’s status quo is the point of departure for empirical analysis. How it is that worker and employer came to the bargaining table in the manner that they did is of negligible interest; the point is, they’re here, so here are their incentives, here is their respective calculus, here is the marginal utility they perceive in each other, here is the demand curve…
FML theorists generally consider all background issues to reside in the realm of — I dunno, some kind of sociology or something [waves hands dismissively]. At any rate, definitely a realm of criticism that cannot be brought to bear on the inherent justice or ethical character of economic activity as such as seen by FML. This account of economics is limited to the technical mechanics of its exchange functions, where power inequalities and issues of social justice participate indirectly, rather than its social basis, where the objective disparities — consequences of class — are of central concern. In other words, FML economists care about the transaction; they do not care about how any social inequality of the involved parties is brought to bear on the transaction, or how they got there. Any compulsions or pressures experienced by the parties that are not of an expressly quantitative character are deemed peripheral to the economic discussion, thus insulating economics itself from any indictment based on the moral ramifications of such exigencies. It may be politics, it may be morality, it may be religion, it may be social status, but whatever it is, it isn’t economics that makes all that other stuff tick at the essence.
Socialists see all these factors as being comingled — yea, bonded — in the overall superstructure of a social order, inasmuch as the interplay of social power and wealth is the narrative of its preoccupation. FML sees all that as needless psychologising that is disingenuously and non sequitur-ially shifting the focus away from the real heart of matters, the “naked economics” playing out in Exhibit A.
To make an analogy with a concept that enjoys greater currency within the discipline of philosophy, FML takes a compatibilist view of economic relationships akin to the Compatibilist view of free will. Compatibilists see the dichotomy between metaphysical free will and hard determinism as unnecessary at best, and utterly contrived at worst. The real issue is not the essence of human volition, but rather whether an abstract container — an encapsulation — of free will can be devised that provides a sufficiently viable concept of “will” at some operative level for government work, including the all-important business of putting people in jail for crimes they committed as a result of deliberate choices for which they can justifiably be held accountable and so on.
Subordination of Economy to the Common Welfare
Socialism affirms the ability of man to transform and manipulate the natural world to suit his needs, from the anthropological beginnings of social division of labour and the movement beyond subsistence farming or hunting and gathering.
As such, it is not especially endeared to the view that “the economy” ought to be some organic “thing” that moves according to the internal incentives its particularities create. This pillar of libertarianism strikes socialists as rather “anarchic.” The Invisible Hand on its own terms is not good enough; it has to make sense and do the right things for people.
From the very beginning, “economies” were there to make people’s lives better and maximise expression of human potential. Therefore, economic relations ought to be subordinated to the collective needs of man with a view to welfare, freedom and creativity. To the maximum extent possible, economics should not encumber man.
Economics With a Human Face
Socialism sees the way that production is rendered in FML theory as a simplistic, technocratic reduction that altogether ignores the humanity of the process and contemptuously dismisses industrial psychology as a “normative” question. Socialism sees these issues as the central pillar of ethical validity and (in)justice that characterises an economic system:
As David Lazonick puts it in Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor:
“[N]eoclassical theory of the ‘capitalist’ economy makes no qualitative distinction between the corporate enterprise that employs tens of thousands of people and the small family undertaking that does no employ any wage labour at all. As far as theory is concerned, it is technology and market forces, not structures of social power, that govern the activities of corporate capitalists and petty proprietors alike.”
As the InfoShop.org anarchist FAQ adds:
Production in this schema just happens — inputs go in, outputs go out — and what happens inside is considered irrelevant, a technical issue independent of the social relationships those who do the actual production form between themselves — and the conflicts that ensure.
Humanities
And what bearing does any of this have on the position of academia, humanities, and jobseeking students, again?
Well, for one, it means that the qualitative parameters of the situation cannot be fully described purely in terms of academic supply outstripping academic demand. At least, it cannot be so done in a way that satisfies socialism’s need for a humanistic account.
More concretely, society’s dominant ideologies are subordinated to the imperatives of the owners of its general ways and means. It is not reasonable to expect that in a profit-maximising system that rewards the maximally efficient production of commodity goods and services, the biases of those ideologies should skew in favour of sitting around reading An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding or The Canterbury Tales.
More an identification of the problem from a particular angle than a robust proposal for a brilliant solution, to be sure. But, I already acknowledged that in my original post. However, how we perceive the problem has everything to do with how we settle the question of its remedy.