Defending Marx 4: To All Who Distort Marx (A Popular Lecture on Marxist Philosophy and Economics)
2006/9/7 18:14:41
I. Marx's Research Method
Marx's research method constitutes a major revolution in human history. Before Marx, people were accustomed to proceeding from proposition to proposition—first assuming logical premises, then deriving conclusions according to logical rules. Reality and theory thus became dislocated.
Marx was the first to make it explicit that the only foundation for any logical premise can be reality. Apart from reality, no logical premise is meaningful. And reality is total, an organism. The categories of reality are not abstract concepts but living things; every category has a real, concrete historical process of birth, development, and death. Take labor, for example: there is no abstract concept of labor detached from reality, only the real, historical category of labor. Labor takes different historical forms under different historical conditions, and the secret of reality is concealed within these concrete historical forms.
As for logical rules, they are likewise neither a priori nor abstract. For instance, the law of excluded middle does not hold unconditionally—it has real, historical premises. That real relations determine real logic and not the other way around is Marx's fundamental position. Modern mathematical research has also demonstrated that ordinary logic is merely one type within a particular mathematical structure known as a lattice, determined by the corresponding concrete relations of that mathematical structure.
In studying capitalism, if one follows ordinary logic, one could first assume the proposition: "All phenomena that appear must disappear." And "capitalism is a phenomenon," therefore "capitalism must inevitably perish." But this research method is not Marx's. Marx would never assume a premise and then derive conclusions from it, because the essence of this method is to make reality conform to logic, and real logic is merely an abstraction of real relations—substituting the abstract for concrete reality is not Marx's position.
Therefore, propositions like "productive forces determine the relations of production" and "labor determines value" are not abstract in Marx but represent a total grasp achieved through the dissection of real relations. Stalin and others who logicized and abstractified Marx have nothing to do with Marx.
Marx's research proceeds only from real phenomena. For instance, he first identifies the most universal phenomena of capitalism—commodities, exchange, labor power as a commodity, capital, money, etc.—then analyzes the real connections among these phenomena: the horizontal totality and the vertical history, ultimately forming the basic categories that reveal the real relations of capitalism. These categories are all historical, concrete, and real—they are not pure theoretical abstractions. Categories detached from history, concreteness, and reality are utterly meaningless.
Any a priori premise is non-Marxian. Every Marxian category has a rich real and historical background. Once the corresponding real relations disappear, all analysis regarding that category becomes invalid. For example, before and after the emergence of capitalism, the value category is meaningless. And detaching from real and historical backgrounds while attempting to use abstract logical methods to study, support, or oppose Marx is shooting at nothing—it has nothing to do with Marx!
II. The Methodological Foundation of Marx's Economic Theory!
Every science has its limits. Marx explicitly pointed out that the limit of theory lies in reality. No theory can be built on a priori premises detached from reality. The only foundation for any logical premise can be reality; apart from reality, no logical premise is meaningful. And reality is total, an organism. The categories of reality are not abstract concepts but living things. Every category has a real, concrete history—a process of birth, existence, decay, and extinction.
Marx has no abstract propositions, only a total grasp of real relations; Marx has no a priori premises, only reality as his sole foundation. All who distort Marx, whether from the left or the right, treat Marx's economic theory as a word game from concept to concept, similar to Western economics. Marx's economic theoretical research has an entirely new foundation—a real, historical, total foundation.
Marx's labor theory of value is essentially the real theoretical unfolding of historical materialism under capitalist historical conditions. The labor theory of value is the specific form of historical materialism under capitalist historical conditions. Without historical materialism, there is no labor theory of value, nor can the labor theory of value be understood! Value is essentially the historical movement of capitalist exchange relations. Value is not an abstract concept. Some people who can only parrot textbooks, following those Stalinist so-called Marxist economic theory textbooks, treat value as an abstract concept corresponding to abstract definitions like "abstract labor crystallized in commodities," yet completely fail to understand the real, total historical movement of capitalist exchange relations behind this theoretical abstraction.
The value category is not a mere theoretical abstraction but a real process of value movement, corresponding to the movement of commodities' exchangeability and their exchange ratio relations in capitalist exchange relations, embodied in every single commodity exchange process. The exchangeability of commodity exchange forms the category of a unified value dimension across different units in commodity exchange; the exchange ratio relation forms the exchange value category. It must be specially noted that the exchangeability of commodities does not come from some a priori premise but from a concrete historical movement process. And the formation process of commodity exchange's exchangeability and exchange ratio relations is the formation process of the value category. Value is essentially the theoretical abstraction of commodities' exchangeability and exchange ratio relations. It is absolutely not the case that commodities can be exchanged because value exists; rather, it is because the historical movement process formed commodities' exchangeability and exchange ratio relations, thereby forming the value category!
Exchange value is likewise not an a priori concept. The historical movement of exchange value ultimately forms the money category, and price is the monetized expression of exchange value. This real pathway of historical development is theoretically expressed as the logical movement from the commodity category to the value category to the exchange value category to the money category to the price category. A widespread misunderstanding of Marx is treating the value category as an a priori premise, not knowing that the value category is the result of the historical movement of the commodity category, which in turn is the result of the historical movement of the economic category, which is the result of the historical movement of the labor category. Without human labor, there is no economy at all.
Marx's theory profoundly dissects the historical movement beginning from the labor category, and this historical movement unfolds within the total, real historical process of human social development. Apart from all this, discussing Marx can only be shooting at nothing. For example, those who impose Proudhon's view that "labor time determines value" onto Marx are merely repeating the habitual approach of first distorting Marx and then opposing Marx. Marx's economic theory has nothing to do with morality, because the moral category is also historical. It is not the moral category that determines the economic category, but the reverse. The idea of overturning capitalism through moral critique or human nature reform is childishly laughable and non-Marxian!
III. What Is a Category!
A category is not a mere concept—not an abstract, a priori thing that falls from the sky out of nothing. A category is rooted in reality; it is the theoretical synthesis of the totality of real relations. Without reality, there is no category. Reality comes first; the category comes second.
Theoretical inquiry necessarily involves theory's naming of reality. The greatest significance of human existence lies in the naming of the world—a humanity that cannot name is meaningless. Human history is the history of naming; a person without theoretical activity cannot be truly human. But before Marx, theoretical activity mostly proceeded from abstract concepts. Marx changed all this. Marx established this sole premise: only reality can be the sole possible premise of theory.
And categories are connected with the various relations of reality. For example, it is the totality of real human labor relations that constitutes the labor category, not that labor first has an abstract definition and then labor comes into being. If there were no labor phenomena in reality, where would the labor category come from? Without reality, there are no categories; without totality, there are likewise no categories. A partial, accidental relation cannot constitute a category—only the totality of related phenomena can constitute a category.
Beyond reality and totality, categories also have historicity. No category is innate; every category is a historical phenomenon—even the category of history itself is a historical phenomenon. So-called history is the process of coming into being, developing, and perishing. In the earliest stages of human development, it was not possible to summarize the category of history. A category's theoretical existence depends on a certain development of the corresponding relations in reality. Without a certain development of capitalist social relations at the time, Marx could not possibly have studied capitalist society. The reality, historicity, and totality of categories are inseparable.
IV. The History and Reality of Real Economic Categories.
Every real category has its growth history—this is the history of real categories. The historical form of any real category is not eternally immutable. Even the category of humanity will present different historical forms; there is simply no eternally immutable human nature that makes a person human. Likewise, the categories of human nature, human society, human labor, human social economy, and so on, will also present different forms in history and reality.
There is a very laughable view that once a historical category evolves into a new category, the original category ceases to exist. This is somewhat like saying that once a tree grows a trunk from its roots, the roots no longer need to exist; or that since the Earth also evolved, once it evolved humans, the Earth no longer exists? Are all Earthlings supposed to go to Mars and become Martians? The root of this laughable idea is the severance of the relationship between the history and reality of real categories.
Using the evolution of economic categories as an example: from the labor category the economic category develops, then the commodity category, the value category, the exchange value category, the money category, the price category, and so on—corresponding to the growth process of the real economic logic tree. In reality, the most dazzling is undoubtedly the price category. Modern people deal with various prices every moment of every day. It's like when we look at a tree, the most dazzling part is the crown, but no one would deny the existence of the trunk and roots for the sake of the crown.
The logic tree of real economics cannot discard any category from its historical development. This trick of discarding intermediate links of historical development is frequently played by Western economics. For example, in Western economics, the supply category and demand category are subcategories in the development of the price category. The price category is far richer than the mere supply and demand categories, but in Western economics, a historical, real category is turned into an a priori concept and premise, then crude mathematical models are formed to fabricate a picture of reality, and in the end they turn around to slander and defame the price category as well as the value, exchange value, money, and other categories. This is their usual trick.
Any category, before its historical mission is completed, will not disappear—it will only change its form according to concrete real conditions. Marx's correctness does not lie in whether he can a priori predict the future forms of various categories, but in whether he places various categories at the intersection of history and reality to study their logical relations in their totality. For example, regarding the money category, today's form has of course changed greatly from the form in Marx's time, but the logical relationship of the money category within the category of capitalist social formation is unchanged, because this web of logical relations is the real foundation upon which capitalist society exists.
All who sing praises for capitalism fear Marx precisely because Marx reveals the secret and the evil hidden in the web of real historical logic among the categories of capitalist society—the real foundation upon which capitalist society exists. The more they proclaim Marx's obsolescence, the more they use every trick to whitewash the situation, the more they prove the correctness and profundity of Marx's analysis!
Marx's primary concern is the most fundamental relations among the categories of capitalist society within this web of real historical logic. As for the concrete real forms of these categories, these must of course also be attended to, but such attention must be premised on attention to the former. Because, no matter how the canopy of the capitalist relations tree changes with the seasons, the fundamental relations among roots, trunk, and canopy remain unchanged—unless the tree dies. Otherwise, a tree cannot have only a canopy, nor will the canopy turn into roots and grow into the soil.
But the fundamental relations among the roots, trunk, and canopy of this capitalist relations tree are not an a priori premise but the real result of historical development. It is not excluded that human societies on other planets may have other fundamental relations, but on Earth, capitalism has historically manifested this real logical structure. This structure is not eternal, but neither can it be altered at will. The attempt to break the real logical relations of capitalism by sheer force of numbers, or to let capitalism perish through slogans, is an expression of extreme ignorance and has nothing to do with Marx!
V. Value Dimension and Commodity Exchange
Marx's theory is not an imaginary castle in the air but comes from concrete real phenomena. Likewise, the value dimension is not a baseless hypothesis but comes from a concrete real phenomenon: commodity exchange.
The simplest commodity exchange is barter. Take an example: three apples exchanged for five pears. In this exchange, there is this relation: three apples = five pears. The premise for this relation to hold is that "per apple" and "per pear"—these two different units—must have the same dimension. Units and dimensions are different, but different units can have the same dimension. For example, in the relation 1 meter = 100 centimeters, meters and centimeters are different units but both belong to the same dimension of length. Quantities of different dimensions cannot be equal—for example, no number of light-years can equal one year, because the former belongs to the dimension of length and the latter to the dimension of time.
Since the relation "three apples = five pears" exists in reality, it means that "per apple" and "per pear"—these two different units—have the same dimension. The existence of this dimension is due to the relation "three apples = five pears" holding in reality. The existence of the value dimension is not a theoretical a priori hypothesis but the total abstraction of all such concrete phenomena in reality. This unified dimension of different exchange units, gradually formed in the historical development of commodity exchange's concrete phenomena, is the value dimension. The value dimension can have many units, just as the dimension of length can have kilometers, li, meters, chi, cun, etc. The value dimension can also have many units—for example, the "per apple" and "per pear" above are both concrete, historically existing units.
But just as having too many units in the dimension of length is inconvenient and ultimately requires an international standard, units in the value dimension also gradually move toward unification. It must be emphasized that the gradual unification of units in the value dimension is not an abstract theoretical process but corresponds to the historical development of real commodity exchange. Eventually, history develops to a period where money appears. When money ultimately becomes the universal equivalent, widely appearing in real commodity exchange, the value dimension also acquires a more universally used unit—the monetary unit. The dimension of value and the dimension of money are consistent; they are the same value dimension.
The universal appearance of real phenomena involving equations such as "one computer = 10,000 yuan RMB" is absolutely not because the value dimension is an abstract theoretical deduction or a priori premise, but is a real result that evolved in the historical process of real commodity exchange. Only in a society with fully developed money do similar equations corresponding to real exchanges universally appear, thereby allowing the money category to gradually mature. In Marx, all categories are not innately eternal; they must be examined in their developmental process within historical context.
From "three apples = five pears" to "one computer = 10,000 yuan RMB" encompasses the historical process by which the commodity category gives birth to the money category. Marx further points out that the money category will further incubate and give birth to the capital category, and subsequently the surplus value category.
VI. That Value Dimension Measures Labor Is One of the Most Universal Phenomena of Capitalism!
All of Marx's theories are historical and real; they require no a priori assumptions. For example, the measurement of labor by the value dimension is one of the most universal phenomena of capitalism—it is not an abstract theory!
The labor power commodity category is formed in the historical movement whereby the value dimension—that is, one of the most important aspects of the value category—measures the labor category. The establishment of the value category's dimension as the monetary dimension historically corresponds to the emergence of the labor power commodity category, corresponding to the phenomenon of using money to purchase others' labor and thereby appropriate their labor products becoming universal. This phenomenon only truly becomes universal under capitalism, and this phenomenon persists to this day—Marx's analysis of this phenomenon remains valid.
In the capitalist historical period, measuring labor with the value dimension is not an abstract theoretical premise but a real, universal phenomenon. When every person sells their labor in exchange for wages to sustain themselves, this phenomenon is constantly repeating. This measurement is very concrete—when your wages are set, increased, or decreased, it corresponds to a new measurement, and the procedure of measurement is related to the concrete conditions under which this phenomenon occurs. For example, in the United States and Cuba, this procedure may differ greatly. But one thing is the same: all measurements of labor that take the form of labor power commodities in the capitalist historical period ultimately have a unified dimension—the monetary dimension, a concrete historical form of the value dimension. Whether one's wages are in dollars, euros, or rubles, they all exist within the same monetary dimension, just as meters, centimeters, and millimeters all exist within the same dimension of length. And the fact that the value dimension uniformly takes the concrete historical form of the monetary dimension is not a priori or eternal, but corresponds to the historical development of the money category in capitalist society.
"Why must the result of measurement by the value dimension be the monetary dimension?" This kind of question is not a theoretical question but a concrete real phenomenon. Measurement must not be treated as an abstract theory—measurement is real and concrete. In reality, as long as the phenomenon of selling labor power in exchange for money or money equivalents is not universally changed, then the result of measurement by the value dimension must be the monetary dimension. "The result of measurement by the value dimension must be the monetary dimension" is not an abstract theoretical conclusion but comes from the universal real phenomenon of selling labor power for wages. Once this phenomenon changes, "the result of measurement by the value dimension must be the monetary dimension" will no longer hold. However, in capitalist society, at least up to the present, this phenomenon still universally exists—even if one receives stock shares instead of wages, the conclusion does not change in the slightest.
If one feels that measuring labor by the value dimension violates so-called logical common sense and opposes capitalism on this basis, such opposition has no substantive meaning. Regarding the relationship between the weapon of criticism and the criticism of weapons, Marx clarified this long ago. The reason capitalism must inevitably perish is not that capitalism violates any divine commandment, logic, or morality, but that universal phenomena like "the value dimension measures labor" will ultimately incubate historical categories corresponding to concrete real relations that cause capitalism to perish. The development of the concrete real relations corresponding to these historical categories will ultimately make the social structure of capitalism unable to contain their existence. But before capitalism's last possibilities are exhausted, capitalism will not perish. Capitalism will not perish because of slogans. The factors of capitalism's demise are all incubated by itself alone—the only thing that can kill capitalism is capitalism itself!
VII. Value, Exchange Value, Price
All who distort Marx, whether under the banner of the left or the right, share one thing in common: they treat Marx's theory as a word game from concept to concept, just like Western economics. Marx's labor theory of value is essentially the real theoretical unfolding of historical materialism under capitalist historical conditions. The labor theory of value is the specific form of historical materialism under capitalist historical conditions. Without historical materialism, there is no labor theory of value, nor can the labor theory of value be understood!
Value is essentially the historical movement of capitalist exchange relations. Value is not an abstract concept. Some people who can only parrot textbooks, following those Stalinist so-called Marxist economic theory textbooks, treat value as an abstract concept corresponding to abstract definitions like "abstract labor crystallized in commodities," yet completely fail to understand the real, total historical movement of capitalist exchange relations behind this theoretical abstraction.
Value movement corresponds to the movement of commodities' exchangeability and exchange ratio relations in capitalist exchange relations. In every commodity exchange process, these two aspects necessarily manifest. These two aspects are not theoretical abstractions but a real value movement process. The former forms the category of a unified value dimension across different units in commodity exchange; the latter forms the exchange value category. Note: the exchangeability of commodities is not an a priori premise but a process of historical movement. The formation process of this exchangeability and these exchange ratio relations is the formation process of the value category. Value is essentially the theoretical abstraction of commodities' exchangeability and exchange ratio relations. It is not that commodities can be exchanged because value exists; rather, it is because the historical movement process formed commodities' exchangeability and exchange ratio relations, thereby forming the value category!
Exchange value is likewise not an a priori concept. The historical movement of exchange value ultimately forms the money category, and price is the monetized expression of exchange value. This real pathway of historical development is theoretically expressed as the logical movement from the commodity category to the value category to the exchange value category to the money category to the price category. A widespread misunderstanding of Marx is treating the value category as an a priori premise, not knowing that the value category is the result of the historical movement of the commodity category, which in turn is the result of the historical movement of the economic category, which is the result of the historical movement of the labor category. Without human labor, there is no economy at all.
Marx's theory profoundly dissects the historical movement beginning from the labor category, and this historical movement unfolds within the total process of human social development. Apart from all this, discussing Marx is entirely shooting at nothing. Those who impose Proudhon's view that "labor time determines value" onto Marx merely repeat the habitual approach of first distorting Marx and then opposing Marx.
VIII. Formal Logic, Dialectical Logic, Real Logic
The essence of logic is a certain mode of combining relations. In formal logic, for example, the law of excluded middle means that the relation between a proposition and its negation is connected by an absolute mode of combination—namely, they cannot both be true. Without relations between propositions, so-called logical rules do not exist.
In the early development of formal logic, people believed that logical rules were absolute and even objective, not knowing that this absoluteness of logical rules was merely an a priori assumption. After the start of the last century, owing to research in axiomatic systems, people began to view the laws of formal logic from the perspective of axiomatization and formalization. The formal logic system was seen as a special mathematical structure with certain special relations, and the absoluteness and a priori nature of logical rules became history. Various formal logic systems were constructed, and the usual first-order predicate system lost its original status.
Due to the development of philosophy, in Hegel's hands, dialectical logic was developed. The emergence of dialectical logic was relative to formal logic. Hegel believed that history operates according to the laws of dialectical logic, and the so-called three laws of dialectics, among others, are reflections of these logical laws. If formal logic was once the foundational rule for constituting and organizing knowledge, then dialectical logic became the foundational rule for constituting and organizing history, possessing absoluteness and a priori status.
Marx profoundly pointed out that neither formal logic nor dialectical logic possesses the absoluteness and a priori nature they presume; both are merely partial reflections of real logic. Attempting to explain the world with these absolutist, a priori logical assumptions is futile. Philosophers' task is to interpret the world, but more importantly to change it. Reality is the sole premise of all logic; without real relations, no logic has meaning.
Marx was the first to establish the sole, premises-providing status of the real world. Marx's theory only examines the totality of relations in the real world, analyzing and summarizing from within the fundamental logical relations of reality. But more importantly, Marx never considers these fundamental real logical relations to possess any absoluteness or immutability. In Marx, any real logical relation is historical—neither has it always existed, nor is it eternally indestructible. But before these fundamental real logical relations are broken by historical development, the real categories they constitute will present different historical forms, and before the ultimate breaking of this real web of logic, changes in the historical form of a single real category have no decisive significance.
To understand Marx, one must stand on the foundation of real logic, not use the a priori rules of formal logic or dialectical logic to play tricks from concept to concept, from idea to idea.
IX. The Historicity of Real Logic and the Revolutionary Nature of Marx
A Marx without historicity is not Marx; a Marx without revolutionary character is equally not Marx. And Marx's revolutionary character does not come from thin air—Marx's revolutionary character is built upon the historicity of real logic!
For Marx, anything detached from real logical relations has no real significance. Before Marx, revolution likewise existed, but pre-Marxian revolutions were all built on a priori logical premises—equality, fraternity, etc.—and the purpose of revolution was also to realize these abstract goals. But for Marx, the so-called revolutions that emerge under such abstract concepts and ideational premises all in fact have profound real logical foundations, and any revolution that does not take the transformation of the real logical foundation as its premise will ultimately be constrained by the real logical foundation.
The real logic and the totality of real relations it corresponds to are likewise products of history, possessing no a priori nature. It is precisely because of the historicity of real logic that any real logic has only a temporary character and must ultimately be changed. For example, no matter how powerful the real logic of capitalism is, it must ultimately be changed.
But totality is one of the most important characteristics of real logic. This also means that revolution is equally total. A revolution detached from totality is likewise abstract. For example, the practice of attempting to achieve total revolution by merely changing the superstructure will ultimately be proven a failure—this is determined by the totality of real logic.
Marx's theory is a rigorous system. Please do not make reckless pronouncements about it!