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Karl Marx in America: Readings for the Current Global Economic Crisis

Karl Marx in America: Readings for the Current Global Economic Crisis. Joseph W.H. Lough, Ph.D. Filozofski fakultet Tuzla Blog: http://www.newconsensus.org/MarxInAmerica/ Twitter: @jwhlough email: joseph.lough@gmail.com phone: +387 603375497. Review.

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Karl Marx in America: Readings for the Current Global Economic Crisis

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  1. Karl Marx in America:Readings for the Current Global Economic Crisis • Joseph W.H. Lough, Ph.D. • Filozofski fakultet Tuzla • Blog: http://www.newconsensus.org/MarxInAmerica/ • Twitter: @jwhlough • email: joseph.lough@gmail.com • phone: +387 603375497

  2. Review • D Landes, Revolution in Time (Darijan Ajdin) • Capitalism arises out of a "deficiency" in Western European culture and political institutions • Capitalism does not arise out of exceptional "greed" or "intelligence" or "foresight" • EP Thompson, Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism (Адис Садиковић) • I Kant, Prolegomena (Emin Eminagic)

  3. Review • EP Thompson, Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism (Адис Садиковић) • Time and Work Discipline do not come naturally • Workers naturally resist time and work discipline • Time and Work Discipline become enforced values • I Kant, Prolegomena (Emin Eminagic)

  4. Review • I Kant, Prolegomena (Emin Eminagic) • Insofar as our experience is structured by the isolation of abstract value from its material form of appearance; and • Insofar as our interpretive categories correspond to this experience; • Our interpretive categories reinforce and corroborate the isolation of abstract value from its material form of appearance.

  5. Preview • A Smith, Wealth of Nations ( • GWF Hegel, Philosophy of Right ( • K Marx, Capital (

  6. Preview • A Smith, Wealth of Nations • the natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange • labor the source of all wealth • labor – like every other commodity

  7. Preview • GWF Hegel, Philosophy of Right • particularity and chaos • the universal character of the system • the conditions for particularity to grasp the universal • freedom: the goal of the system

  8. Preview • K Marx, Capital • the social constitution of use value and commodity fetishism • the central contradiction within capitalism • the categories of bourgeois economics • labor and freedom

  9. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • Why might it have taken political economists so long – 1776 – to recognize the comprehensive integration and interdependence of land, labor, and rent?

  10. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • Later, in 1871, C Menger will conclude that human beings are naturally utility maximizing beings; but to what did A Smith ascribe our utility maximization?

  11. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • Why might it have taken natural philosophers so long to recognize the natural human propensity to truck, barter, and exchange?

  12. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • To what does A Smith attribute individual differences?

  13. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • A Smith acknowledges the contributions that knowledge and power make constituting individual differences • Why does A Smith count individual differences a good thing? Does he like différance? Is he into diversity?

  14. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • If all individuals enjoy a natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange, then to what does A Smith attribute the exceptional advantage England and North America enjoy in the production of wealth?

  15. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • If each of us only commanded our own labor, how great would differences in wealth be? • To accumulate and enjoy wealth, what does A Smith feel we must lay our hands on?

  16. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • To whom do we owe the labor theory of value?

  17. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • Which did A Smith feel was more dangerous and more common; the combination of employers (cartels and monopolies) or the combination of workers (trade unions)? • Why?

  18. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • Did A Smith feel that laborers should be compensated liberally or modestly? • Why?

  19. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • Later, when we read G Arrighi and J Lowinger, they will adopt K Polanyi’s view that labor, land, and money are “fictitious commodities” since they are not themselves produced by labor. • Is anything a “natural” commodity? • What makes a commodity a commodity?

  20. A Smith, Wealth of Nations • We have arrived at the comprehensive integration of all parts of the capitalist social formation; which now also includes that commodity: commodified human labor • A Smith theorizes this integration; he also acknowledges that knowledge and power are children of habit • But he does not theorize how his own categories arose from the social formation he was theorizing

  21. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • What do these terms “individual” and “universal” mean for Hegel? • What is the problem with particularity “for itself”?

  22. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • Let us suppose that I am a businessperson; • What must I know about the world around me in order to maximize the return on my investment?

  23. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • What does GWF Hegel mean when he says that the bourgeois individual treats the universal as a mere means? • The bourgeois individual encounters and acknowledges the universal in a way that individuals not engaged in the world do not • What does it mean to say that the member of civil society’s freedom and universality of knowledge and volition are formal?

  24. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • What role does education play for GWF Hegel? • What is GWF Hegel’s term for the system that A Smith has described? • Why does GWF Hegel feel that he must “go beyond” A Smith?

  25. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • What is “the actuality of the universal of freedom contained” in the “system of needs”? • How is “property” freedom?

  26. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • How might a particular interest be a common interest? • How might the police or the corporation care for this particular/common interest?

  27. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • How might a particular interest be a common interest? • How might the police or the corporation care for this particular/common interest?

  28. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • If my needs and desires are potentially infinite, then why might this pose a problem? • How do we escape the problem of potentially infinite needs?

  29. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • What end or goal does A Smith find in the division of labor? • Where is the division of labor moving for GWF Hegel?

  30. GWF Hegel, Civil Society • We now have a universal system in which knowledge, power, education, and the social play intimate, mutually constituting roles • The system is based on labor orchestrated by a non-laboring universal class – the civil service • It imagines a future in which all workers will be able to step aside and install machines in their place • If society is mediated by abstract value, when will this occur?

  31. K Marx, Capital • Does K Marx believe a commodity must be a material or physical thing? • Is K Marx’s understanding of “usefulness” utilitarian? • Is a commodity’s “usefulness” proportional to the amount of labor expended producing the commodity? • What makes a commodity under capitalism unique?

  32. K Marx, Capital • Why might a commodity whose immaterial value is inseparable from its material form of appearance seem to be a contradiction in terms? • How do we determine price?

  33. K Marx, Capital • Why is it possible for us to weigh the relative values of so many disparate commodities with such accuracy? • What is it that all commodities contain that makes them comparable?

  34. K Marx, Capital • Why is it possible for us to weigh the relative values of so many disparate commodities with such accuracy? • What is it that all commodities contain that makes them comparable?

  35. K Marx, Capital • Is abstract, homogeneous, undifferentiated, universal labor a good thing in Marx’s book?

  36. K Marx, Capital • Does K Marx feel that labor time expended is social and flexible or fixed? • Does K Marx feel that value is social? • Can technology reduce labor time expended? • Can the cost of a factor of production increase/decrease value?

  37. K Marx, Capital • Can an artifact be a use-value without having value? • Can an object have value if no one finds it useful? • Does labor have a use-value? • Does labor have an exchange value? • What is the exchange value of labor?

  38. K Marx, Capital • What problem did Aristotle try to solve, but could not, and why? • What is it that grants the commodity its magical character?

  39. K Marx, Capital • Why does K Marx not reject the categories of bourgeois economics?

  40. K Marx, Capital • GWF Hegel in his Phenomenology calls attention to the Weltgeist, the Self-Moving Substance that is Subject. • Some Marxist theorists have identified the industrial proletariat as this Subject. • With what does Marx associate this Subject?

  41. Immanent Critique • This means that K Marx is inside the social form that he is theorizing • He is not theorizing a path outside the form; he is theorizing its transformation into something else

  42. Preview • The first cycle of capital accumulation: Back to Genoa • The world system

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