One interesting thing about the version of historical materialism set out in footnote 45 is that Marx *agrees* that in non-capitalist societies something other than economics plays “the chief part”. His argument is that (1) every society must produce, in interaction with nature, its necessities for its own reproduction. (2) While this necessity is “natural”, no way of meeting it is more “natural” than any other, although that tends to be the assumption of conservative ideologues in each system.
A sound implication is that the official self-understanding of a society with antagonistic interests within it will tend to be vulnerable precisely where the naturalness of its way of generating the social product is assumed. An unsound implication would be that the most important thing in a society is its “economy” (especially since the separation of the economy from the state or religion is something that only makes sense where commodity production prevails). You can’t deduce that something is most important from the fact it is a pre-requisite.
Lots of amazing things in that footnote, including a theory of the comic novel (Don Quixote is funny because he takes the ideology of feudalism seriously in a post-feudal society).
It is interesting to read Aristotle’s account in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, ch. 5. Aristotle explicitly has a demand (“chreia”) theory of the magnitude of value. He doesn’t discuss slavery here, but he does explicitly say that the value of each type of craftsman (presumably for unit of time) varies in proportion to how much they contribute to chreia. (Chreia can also be translated as “usefulness”).
Bukharin, in his polemic against Austrian economics, argued that demand/utility theories of value make sense from the perspective of a leisure class since it is primarily a consumer class.
Smith took the opposite position, and this could be seen as part of the anti-Aristotelian perspective of Scottish Calvinism that the Scottish Enlightenment inherited but also for the more egalitarian kind of literate commercial society that Lowlands Scotland represented at the time. For Smith, there is no difference between a porter and a philosopher except for training - training which in principle everyone could get. This reflects Scotland’s experience of being the first fully literate society and one in which people who worked with their hands were making significant scientific and engineering discoveries.
Marx, I believe, was claiming that “abstract labour” is simultaneously what Smith believed and Aristotle denied (the ultimate equivalence of human beings’ productive capacities) and a social-historical development that hadn’t happened when Aristotle wrote. So for Aristotle, differences among humans must (except in pathological cases) represent a telos because he hasn’t experienced the bourgeois revolution.
Interesting that contemporary ideology is closer to Aristotle than Smith (except for the slavery thing). Differences in usefulness of labour are attributed to “merit” which is an intrinsic feature of the human beings. The left version is that this natural division is pathologically distorted by sexism or racism, but if these were removed than the true nature of all workers would be properly rewarded.
One interesting thing about the version of historical materialism set out in footnote 45 is that Marx *agrees* that in non-capitalist societies something other than economics plays “the chief part”. His argument is that (1) every society must produce, in interaction with nature, its necessities for its own reproduction. (2) While this necessity is “natural”, no way of meeting it is more “natural” than any other, although that tends to be the assumption of conservative ideologues in each system.
A sound implication is that the official self-understanding of a society with antagonistic interests within it will tend to be vulnerable precisely where the naturalness of its way of generating the social product is assumed. An unsound implication would be that the most important thing in a society is its “economy” (especially since the separation of the economy from the state or religion is something that only makes sense where commodity production prevails). You can’t deduce that something is most important from the fact it is a pre-requisite.
Lots of amazing things in that footnote, including a theory of the comic novel (Don Quixote is funny because he takes the ideology of feudalism seriously in a post-feudal society).
It is interesting to read Aristotle’s account in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, ch. 5. Aristotle explicitly has a demand (“chreia”) theory of the magnitude of value. He doesn’t discuss slavery here, but he does explicitly say that the value of each type of craftsman (presumably for unit of time) varies in proportion to how much they contribute to chreia. (Chreia can also be translated as “usefulness”).
Bukharin, in his polemic against Austrian economics, argued that demand/utility theories of value make sense from the perspective of a leisure class since it is primarily a consumer class.
Smith took the opposite position, and this could be seen as part of the anti-Aristotelian perspective of Scottish Calvinism that the Scottish Enlightenment inherited but also for the more egalitarian kind of literate commercial society that Lowlands Scotland represented at the time. For Smith, there is no difference between a porter and a philosopher except for training - training which in principle everyone could get. This reflects Scotland’s experience of being the first fully literate society and one in which people who worked with their hands were making significant scientific and engineering discoveries.
Marx, I believe, was claiming that “abstract labour” is simultaneously what Smith believed and Aristotle denied (the ultimate equivalence of human beings’ productive capacities) and a social-historical development that hadn’t happened when Aristotle wrote. So for Aristotle, differences among humans must (except in pathological cases) represent a telos because he hasn’t experienced the bourgeois revolution.
Interesting that contemporary ideology is closer to Aristotle than Smith (except for the slavery thing). Differences in usefulness of labour are attributed to “merit” which is an intrinsic feature of the human beings. The left version is that this natural division is pathologically distorted by sexism or racism, but if these were removed than the true nature of all workers would be properly rewarded.