I like Postone. I like him a lot. I find him very illuminating. But let me bitch just a bit about Postone. In the lecture below Postone makes what I think is an unforgivable mistake. (Okay, perhaps not unforgivable, but stupid anyways.)
At about 25 minutes into this talk Postone says:
“There is no way you can prove it going down. That isn’t the way value theory works.” –Moishe Postone
What possible good is a theory that cannot be verified or falsified? Marxists are such complete idiots that it is painful to watch them sometimes.
I love reading Postone, but he spends far too much time hanging out with useless German value theorists. It is beginning to rot his judgment. If he had any goddamned sense, he would have entitled his paper, “The Anachronism of Labor”, not “Value” — or, better yet, “The Anachronism of Wages”.
What makes Postone’s view so frustrating is he makes a number of rather startling assertions regarding capital that he then states cannot be proven. These assertions include his assertion that there are patterns to events we have witnessed that can only be explained only when we adopt his reading of Marx. A reading that includes the assumption that Marx does not employ the categories of political-economy transhistorically but only as they appear within the capitalist mode of production.
This means, among other things, that the commodity Marx refers to in Capital is solely labor power; that value Marx refers to is the value of this labor power; and, that labor Marx refers to is wage labor. Thus Marx:
- is not talking about commodities in general, but only about labor power;
- is not talking about value transhistorically, but only the value of labor power, which is expressed in the price of labor power, i.e., wages;
- that labor power is social relation that mediates the production of material wealth and all other social relations in capitalist society;
- that labor power reconstitutes itself as necessary even as it renders itself anachronistic;
- that this self-reconstitution explains both the lack of vision of the future and has enormous destructive consequences presently;
- that wage labor is specific to capital and cannot be the basis for a future communist society;
- that wage labor has rendered itself anachronistic — a statement that was not true in Marx’s day;
- that labor power may be the only commodity whose value is equal to the socially necessary labor time required for its production;
- that labor within the specific historical conditions of capital specifically produces the value and use value of labor power itself;
- that socially necessary labor time refers to the labor time required for production of labor power alone;
- finally, that the wage labor of the worker reproduces her absolute dependence on the sale of her labor power.
These are some pretty extravagant claims in any case, but they become quite incredible when Postone expects us to take them on face value without offering any proof or evidence of their validity save the rather nebulous, and moreover specious, argument of a bourgeois simpleton economist like Piketty, who once argued the Marx’s “Das Kapital, I think, is very difficult to read and for me it was not very influential.”
Postone can to do better than this. He has to spend more time linking his ideas to the empirical evidence or at least explain how his ideas might be expressed concretely. Without this, the idea that wage labor is now anachronistic will never get standing among communists. Most communists will continue to rely on bourgeois neoclassical theory.
The Real Movement 
Since you no longer have a social media inbox, I’ll use this space to recommend Errol Morris’s new documentary ‘Wormwood’. While you certainly know of the MKULTRA story, the larger context it really incredible.
https://thepiratebay.org/search/wormwood/0/3/0
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Thanks. I am going to binge watch next weekend.
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What he says is “There is no way you can prove it going STRAIGHT down.”.
Which in Postonian lingo simply means that the abstract insights and trends that value theory produces and predicts have to be supplemented with a concrete historical analysis in each case.
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I am not sure I see the difference. In any case Postone should clarify what he meant. Unlike Marx, he isn’t dead, yet. He can speak for himself.
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At the risk of sounding pedantic (yet again), I’m afraid your argument here might be a better fit for the Althusserian, “Scientific Marxism” side of a very definitive split in the reception of Marx, which insists that his work can only be valid to the extent that it is epistemically grounded in an evidentiary basis, and that his categories are not critical, but methodologically transhistorical and positive.
Postone is very much on the other side of this split, and relies on the German language readings that stretch from Rubin, Lukács, Korsch and Grossman, through Adorno, Sohn-Rethel, Mattick, Rosdolsky, Reichelt/Backhaus, and arrive at Kurz/Trenkle, Lohoff, Heinrich and Murray, among others. While these authors diverge on several questions (e.g. the status of the tendency of the rate of profit), and Postone doesn’t cite them all as influences, one thread that holds them together is the complete rejection of any attempt to empirically “prove” Marx’s critique (see Mattick, jr.’s recent talk on Michael Roberts’ work for a recent example). This is why Postone always takes pains to emphasize Marx’s historicism, as well as the “situatedness” (I think you mocked that term a few posts back, if memory serves me) of the matter under scrutiny (capital, commodity, wage, value, etc). I’m afraid it was Althusser who “stepped on his dick” when he told his students to skip the first part of Capital.
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How do you convince people to fundamentally change their approach if you offer no evidence that your highly unconventional reading of Marx is right? And let me put this in the most graphic terms possible: people are going to die fighting the fascist state. Can you show them that your ideas will make their deaths worthwhile.
Or are you just interested in debating fucking professors?
#edit: Stop listening to fucking intellectuals. They don’t live in the real world and don’t have to face the often deadly consequences of their stupid fucking ideas.
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“Can you show them that your ideas will make their deaths worthwhile?”
No, I cannot. Nobody’s death is ever “worthwhile,” just inevitable.
Should they require justification from me?
Theory should not be developed to the end of providing social actors with a blueprint for making the world a better place. I’m afraid we are, all of us, faced with the overwhelming and disorienting task of taking a “leap into the unknown,” to borrow from another “intellectual” who has no fairy tale ending for you (Jappe).
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Fuck Jappe. No one is convinced by this sort of nonsense.
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Not even gonna type a little refutation to this. Basic fallacy and sophistry so dishonest it’s obviously troll time.
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Let me try to restate what I think are the key points of Postone’s hypothesis about the current state of capitalist society:
1. There is a crisis of valorization that is manifest as an expanding debt with no apparent limit.
2. This crisis of valorization is hidden from the economic actors.
3. Because the crisis of valorization never confronts the economic actors, the drive to expand value is unchecked.
4. A lasting crisis of valorization suggests that increases in surplus value are in relative form, not absolute.
5. The relative increase in surplus value, being a relative decrease in the socially necessary labor time required to reproduce labor power means that labor itself is increasingly superfluous.
6. The growing superfluity of labor is a superfluity of people – which socially points towards a rise in violence both as social control and horizontally.
7. The decrease in socially necessary labor time means that to produce the same amount of value requires producing increasing more material output. The resulting demand for energy and raw materials is a primary driver of environmental catastrophe.
8. Our job is to ask if Marx’s theory of value sheds light on the situation in a way that enables us to imagine a way of life without without labor, specifically, a life in which not only is distribution independent of wages, but so too is production.
——–
Some notes on these:
1a. “expanding debt”.
For example, US debt as a fraction of GDP since 1970.
1b. “crisis of valorization”.
This is more or less by definition the name of a condition in which “savings preference” skyrockets.
1c. “with no apparent limit”.
As noted in MMT: Since debt is not any longer measured as a definite quantity of any commodity – but is just “paper” currency – the money-printing authority simultaneously possess the ability to borrow without limit.
That shows that an expanding debt without limit is *possible* but it doesn’t show we are in a debt expansion process with no end in sight.
The prediction that this valorization crisis won’t end can be falsified (if the crisis ends).
The prediction has foundation Marx’s theory of value although not necessarily in a simple way. A transient crisis of valorization is possible whenever the productivity of labor grows faster than society’s capacity to deploy the expanded output in ways that further expand surplus value.
2. “This crisis of valorization is hidden from the economic actors.”
I take Postone not to mean that the economic actors can not theorize the existence of this valorization crisis. I take him to mean that the crisis is hidden from the actors in that they are not directly confronted with it thanks to the money-printing authority’s unlimited capacity to borrow and spend non-productively.
3. “Because the crisis of valorization never confronts the economic actors, the drive to expand value is unchecked.”
I take this to mean that, because of unlimited borrowing, the circulation of capital does not collapse in the way it did in the 1930s.
This is again predictable within the logical framework of Marx’s analysis, but could perhaps be falsified if capital did abruptly stop circulating in spite of debt expansion.
4. “A lasting crisis of valorization suggests that increases in surplus value are in relative form, not absolute.”
Arguably, this can be directly observed as the fall of wage share relative to overall output.
5. “The relative increase in surplus value, being a relative decrease in the socially necessary labor time required to reproduce labor power means that labor itself is increasingly superfluous.”
Arguably, this can be directly observed as the global fall in wage share of output since about 1970.
6. “The growing superfluity of labor is a superfluity of people – which socially points towards a rise in violence both as social control and horizontally.”
This could be observed by looking for patterns in various sociological facts. It would be important to note that, in context, Postone is referring to a rise since 1970 and relative to the mid-20th century.
7. “The decrease in socially necessary labor time means that to produce the same amount of value requires producing increasing more material output. The resulting demand for energy and raw materials is a primary driver of environmental catastrophe.”
This could be observed by gathering concrete measurements of consumption of various raw materials and forms of energy.
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This is good stuff. Do you have a more detailed exposition of this somewhere?
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For a clear explanation of why Postone did not “step on his dick”, and why any reference to German theory as being to blame is a display of at best, confusion, and at worst, ignorance-driven prejudice, see the discussion by Paul Mattick Jr on this matter
from 28mins on, but especially from around 36mins.
Paul Mattick Jr does not approach capital and value in quite the same manner as Postone, but he makes clear in quite simple terms why you can’t prove Marx’s ideas empirically, without recourse to German critical theory.
In the same dialogue, and over many articles of late, you hold to the politicist (Kautsky-Lenin) conviction that revolutionaries alter (and must work to alter) the consciousness of the working class (understood as an object for the party), that the job of revolutionaries is consciousness raising, in contradiction with the strict determinism to which you adhere about the inevitability of communism. On the one hand, an extreme objectivism, and on the other an equally extreme subjectivism.
I would suggest that this indicates a problem you are not confronting.
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Thanx, Chris. I will look at Mattick’s argument. Kautsky-Lenin? Moi? You are giving me the vapors, dude.
PS: I listened to it. You’re kidding, right? Mattick is so full of bullshit. How long have I been saying that the TFRP school is fundamentally on the wrong track.
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Empirical evidence for a rise in relative surplus value:
From 1970 to 2016, wages as a percentage of GDP declined.
Nominally, GDP is a measure of V + S, and wages are a measure of V. Thus, the 46 year decline means that V / (V + S) has steadily gotten smaller.
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2016/06/2393/?utm_source=series_page&utm_medium=related_content&utm_term=related_resources&utm_campaign=fredblog
Note: This is true even if the measure of value is not the same between periods. If in a given period, t, values are converted to a standard (say gold) by an exchange rate of Xt, then note that (Xt V) / (Xt V + Xt S) = (Xt / Xt ) (V / V + S) = 1 (V / V + S) = V / V+S. Ratios of values are unit-free.
By algebra, a falling V / V + S indicates a falling 1 / (1 + S/V)
A falling 1 / (1 + S/V) indicates a rising S/V.
By definition, a rising S/V means a steadily rising relative surplus value.
Now, if you hate using bourgie measurements that way, you’ll hate the next even more:
1960-1980, a steady growth in the nominal value of all US assets is given by this Wikipedia chart:
more info in this entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States#Gross_domestic_assets,_and_related_gain_(or_loss),_at_end_of_2011
Interpreted as a measure of C / (V + S), the chart has some suspicious qualities — namely that it includes all fictional capital. For reasons I could go into separately, I would argue that this *is* an appropriate measure since it accurately expresses the socially agreed upon value of the total capital.
Given that assumption, the rise in total assets relative to GDP is an increase in C / (V + S). What can cause such an increase?
If V+S is constant, then C has gone up and therefore C/V and therefore there has been a rise in organic composition.
Similarly, if V+S has increased then C has increased by an even larger amount, so again C/V has gone up.
Lastly, if V+S has gone down it could a priori be possible that C/V has stayed constant while C/S fell … but we have a separate ex post facto observation that at the same time, S/V has risen.
If S/V has risen while S + V has fallen, then V has fallen. So again, C/V has risen.
In short, the data also show a rise in the organic composition of capital.
A rise in the organic composition of capital is *by definition* a tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
The data are consistent with both an observable TRPF and an observable countervailing tendency, namely, a rise in relative surplus value.
A couple of final notes on this:
It seems to me that a rising relative surplus value is a reasonable definition for a growing superfluity of labor.
The figure that V is about 40% of V + S suggests that 60% of all labor time is spent is, in effect, spent on the project of reproducing the imperative to produce that 60% surplus. Most of the work we collectively do has the function of making sure we have to keep working this way.
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Spot on Chris.
Glad someone else is encouraging Jehu to confront his own developing aporias.
Marx was a subject. Jehu is a subject of Marx (somewhat confused IMHO) attempting to create more subjects (post-capitalist tributary subjects perhaps)
But this is Thesis III. Revolutionary Praxis (or perhaps Reactive Practice on Jehu’s part, hence the aporias)
Used to think he was just fucking around with people. One month one thing. One month another. But I really think it’s because of isolation. I used to have a colleague like that. Very book-intelligent in some ways but his conceit prevented him from engaging the community. The key is looking back and looking forward at the same time.
Thomas,
Just some quibbles:
1) he said “IF you have financialization WHILE you have a crisis of valorization, unbeknownst to the actors”, then the debt can never be paid back, and financialization becomes increasing frantic (running off a cliff like a cartoon character) and is going to try to turn ANYTHING and EVERYTHING into a source of wealth. Autoimmune financialization.
Unbeknownst doesn’t mean hidden. It means without knowledge of. This could be due to arrogance, greed, conceit, stupidity, ignorance of what to look for, self-interest. But hidden means that the evidence of the crisis of valorization is concealed. By whom or in what manner is it concealed? It is clear the real world is damaged and is more damaged by the frantic financialization for surplus/fictitious capital goes into overdrive.
I’ll add to your list that Postone’s main issues in this talk are:
1. There is no competing post-proletarian vision and that is leading to demagoguery fueled populist politics and a failure to address significant environmental problems.
2. Environmental problems are themselves fueled by Capitalist addiction to the surplus value component, not necessarily the material wealth generated by increases in dead labor ( socially general but capitalist/state directed knowledge…the encyclopedia).
3. This is “evidence of”, not proof of, the capitalist specific anachronism of value. When value should by any rational society be done away with. The harmful enclosure of everything to provide more money capital to pay more and more service on debt, to extract more and more surplus value “regardless of the level of productivity.” This is borrowing from the future (in resources and the environment), to continue to play the game today (in surplus value), and hope (or just not care) that science figures out solutions to the damage in time (or there is always recourse to massive depopulation).
4. Unless a vision emerges there will be more violence due to social control or “horizontal” competition…at the individual, societal, and interstate levels.
Barbarism or a new vision.
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While I do wish I had said “hidden” rather than “unbeknownst” I think that Postone, of all people, did NOT mean: “But hidden means that the evidence of the crisis of valorization is concealed. By whom or in what manner is it concealed?”
Rather: “Hidden” in the sense of obscured. As in: during the daytime, the stars are hidden by the glare of of the sun in the atmosphere.
Specifically, I object to any suggestion that an abstract characteristic of capital is personified or embodied in some villain. What capitalism is guilty of we are all guilty of.
https://libcom.org/library/anti-semitism-national-socialism-moishe-postone
It seems to me that the crisis of valorization is “hidden” in the sense that it does not confront people – it does not force them away from “business as usual”. What could that mean?
A classical valorization crisis is a depression – a breakdown in the circulation of capital. Capital can not be profitably extended for production and so it is hoarded.
Prior to a classical breakdown, fictional capital may circulate that is ultimately doomed to become worthless. The process by which it becomes observably worthless is a run. For example, in the early 1930s there was a run on gold held by U.S. banks as people doubted the dollar and wanted their gold before the banks went bust.
Events like runs make manifest a valorization crisis in a way that can not be ignored — business as usual *can not* continue, much as anyone might like. That is what I mean by saying a classical valorization crisis “confronts” the economic actors. They do not have the option to continue with “business as usual”.
A valorization crisis is “hidden” in a situation where that confrontation doesn’t occur — e.g. that all-encompassing run to convert fictional to real capital is perpetually postponed.
What would it mean for a valorization crisis to both exist as a real thing and to be hidden in the manner described above?
Since Postone links this to debt I agree with you that the hypothesized hidden crisis has the form of unbounded increase in the amount of fictional capital, relative to real capital, where that fictional capital would not survive a run. MMT theorists have amply explained how the general acceptance of a fiat currency as the world standard,
But if the evidence of a *possible* “hidden crisis” is just a lot of fiat currency fictional capital circulates, how do we know the crisis is real? That is, how do we know the fictional capital could not survive a run but that a run never comes? And then the next question: And what does that imply socially / materially? What does it mean that such a crisis exists.
I think Postone is very sketchy on these questions. I think his position is very plausible. It would be interesting to fill in more.
Postone’s hypothesis in this area entails both rising organic composition and a rising relative surplus — hence my contribution above of noting that both of these are at least surface-apparent in even “official numbers”. (For deeper reasons, when those official numbers are used to examine rations of value to value, I think they may be valid — but that’s a separate argument.)
I agree that Postone’s call for a “new imaginary” alternative to capital is urgent but I think that the question he is posing there is not the same as “what is to be done?” In other words, the “new imaginary” is not necessarily in the form of a plan.
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@thomaslord
That shows that an expanding debt without limit is *possible* but it doesn’t show we are in a debt expansion process with no end in sight.
The prediction that this valorization crisis won’t end can be falsified (if the crisis ends).
The prediction has foundation Marx’s theory of value although not necessarily in a simple way. A transient crisis of valorization is possible whenever the productivity of labor grows faster than society’s capacity to deploy the expanded output in ways that further expand surplus value.
–
Is it really a crisis if it can go on without limit? Nothing sustainable is a crisis.
If the factors for this crisis are hidden but will emerge, out of a failure of the ruling class to manage it, then this is conspiracy theory.
If they will emerge out of basic productivity progress, then they should not be hidden but could be priced in to the market already.
@video guy.
Not gonna click on a video you don’t say what it’s about or make your idea clear beforehand. I’m bored and have time but I’m not THA bored and I don’t have THAT kind of time.
@guy who said that current debt inflation proves society is “damaged”
There is only damage if you take a conspiracy theory approach. Someone has “done this to us” and done something “against society”. You obviously suffer delusions of revolutionary violence as the solution to what ails you. I think the isolation is getting to YOU.
A totally subjectivist position is also worthless. How are we supposed to come to an agreement as a society, when we are all different. It’s such a waste of time and a masturbatey form of political theory, when you don’t even specify any appeals that would be made to different people. Just the assumption that we are all disheartened grad students, eager to go out on another march and break a window or toss a garbage can over. I can only assume you are another “communist” who has a blog and begs people for money so you can pay yourself a nice house to teach them to be “revolutionaries”.
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That’s just what happens when you have a long-ass dick.
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Hehehe Or really short legs. 🙂
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I have taken Postone to be TFRP. In what way is he not?
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I don’t think TFRP school has anything to offer Postone. Why do you think he is in that camp?
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