Karl Marx - Science topic

Dear Ange, good day, Thank you for writing and see you are familiar with related material by me. My goal this year is to expand those ideas in terms of equality and freedom.

I have written and share several articles on how to give structure to all possible dominant component based development models, and link those structures to paradigm shift and paradigm shift theory from the point of view of dominant component equality and freedom.... For example, red socialism as you know it is a social equality without freedom model so you can represent it by a social dictatorship structure. Democratic capitalism is an economic freedom without equality model so you can represent it as a liberal economy model. Non-democratic capitalism is an economy without freedom and equality so you can represent it as an economic dictatorship.

Once you know how to write or express those structures in terms of dominant component equality and freedom, then you can provide analytical support to all the things you listed in your comment as well as be able to answer the current question using this freedom and equality thinking.

One of my goals this year is to expand these ideas and apply them for example to state the paradigm evolution path of red socialism had it had been able to win the cold war by going economy friendly and what would have come next and what is at the end or to state the paradigm evolution path of non-democratic capitalism if it were to outsmart democratic capitalism and what would come next and what is at the end or what is the paradigm evolution path of democratic capitalism if it loses to non-democratic capitalism and what comes next and what is at the end.

Attached I shared the figure 3 of a paper I am working on to present the theory on where to base and complete those goals of the year mentioned above, notice that democratic capitalism(DC), red socialism(RS), and non-democratic capitalism(NDC) are not yet represented there in terms of equality and freedom yet:

How the models needed to answer the relevant question here can be stated in terms of equality and freedom and how paradigm evolution in this case is expected to work can be found at:

I think, as organizational theories, among many others, supposing to keep capitalism alive, propose to demolish alienation as such, as alienation in capitalism begins first and happens between the employee (worker) and employer (capitalist), secondly- worker and work process, thirdly - worker and his colleagues, worker and his family (after return from work). Alienation after its crush has to be replaced by worker's involvement, participation, co-creation, efficiency and effectiveness under capitalism.

"marxism targets only flawed forms of capitalism" This statement makes no sense to me at all. Marxism provides a critique of capitalism in ALL its forms; there are no "unflawed" forms of capitalism in Marx's analysis. Furthermore, I don't read those talking about taking Nature more into account than Marx did - what I assume you mean by "green Marxism" - as juxtaposing that (as you are doing) to some preoccupation with " saving society". Even in Marx's own analysis society and nature are analyzed as interwoven and part of his critique of capitalism was a critique of how capitalism ruptures the natural metabolism of human/nature inter-relations. So your "yellow Marxism", defined as "saving society and nature at the same time from capitalism" has been there from the get-go, in both Marx and Engels' writings. The neglect/exploitation of Nature by what you are calling "red" Marxists, which I take to mean Soviet-style Marxists, flowed from their abandonment of Marxism as anything other than a convenient ideology serving to hide their pursuit of the same goals as Western capitalism, i.e., maximum exploitation of workers AND nature via increased management by the state, which resulted in a new form of "state capitalism". Lenin, after all, was frank about following the German model of state capitalism, with the Soviet Union differing only in the ASSERTION (but not the reality) that the state would be controlled by workers instead of capitalists. Result: the same kind of exploitation of both humans and nature as the rest of capitalism.

You are an original thinker and researcher; I have taken your works on sustainability into account. Astronomy replaced astrology, chemistry replaced alchemy; the same process is currently in the making, with respect to social science: what is now understood as economics (mainly a mathematized derivate of private wealth accumulation and subsequent management practices) will be replaced by a more scientific model of human economic action, cleaned up from ideological wishlists. I do regard the profound study of other authors as a precondition of learning, dear Lucio Muñoz Most of my articles and books, i.e. my own work and views, are on my RG account (e.g.

).

Dear Lucio,

Interesting question. To answer your question: Does green market paradigm shift avoidance opens the door for green socialism ideas to flourish? - I say so.

Kind regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Dear Lucio,

Yes, but unfortunately only in theory at the moment. In order for the socio-economic system built on the model of full green, pro-environmental, pro-climate socialism based on a sustainable, green circular economy to be successful in comparison with (as you call it) dwarf green capitalism, it is necessary to significantly increase the pro-environmental awareness of citizens and significantly increase the scale of creation and implementation of new eco-innovations and green technologies on an industrial scale, thanks to which it will be possible to significantly accelerate the efficient implementation of the process of pro-environmental transformation of the classic growth, brown, linear excess economy into a sustainable, green, zero-emission zero-growth economy and a circular economy, and to build a system of economically profitable, pro-environmental and pro-climate economic ventures.

Best regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Alienation precludes the opportunity for the proletariat to achieve self-actualization by removing their autonomy, subsequently causing them to see themselves as nothing more than a cog in an extensive capitalist system run by the bourgeoisie. Alienation at work was described by Marx in the 1840s but continues to be relevant today. The Industrial Revolution forced people into unfulfilling factory jobs. The problem persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly in low autonomy jobs. We can now make clear Marx's claim that capitalism is alienating. The general idea of alienation is simple. Something is alienating when what is (or should be) familiar and connected seems foreign or disconnected. Because our species-being is our essence as human beings, it should be familiar.

Questions of ruling ideas and ideologies call for a more subtle approach than that of Marx. Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia was a step in that direction. Proclaimed ideas may be quite different from what is actually believed, and both may be different from what is implicit in practice. Here be cognitive dissonance galore.

Dear Lucio,

Dear Dariusz,

If You do not analyze in this respect the communist China politically and its capitalism economically nowadays, and Yugoslavian system before 1990-s, which can be characterized as "self-governance socialism" politically and "market socialism" economically, You will lack the main points in Your raised problem. Additionally You need to analyze carefully "the Swedish model" of the seventies in 20-th century with its "functional democratic socialism" politically, Meidner "wage-earners funds" economically and elements which implemented economic efficiency and social justice at the same time (as Saltsjobaden agreement of social dialogue from 1938), etc. Other countries are much less important to analyze in this respect.

Dear Lucio, you are welcome

Outwardly, these two systems may be similar, but they have a different structure of existence. Capitalism must breathe freely. And this is possible only in a democratic society. But democratic capitalism is also not perfect. In any case, internally these two systems are very different, and for example Bolivian capitalism does not look like Chinese capitalism.

Dear Lucio,

Yes, in its pure form, 100%. in terms of both models, neither of them ever existed and never really exists. There was and there is no real economy that would be 100 percent. socialist (according to the theory of Karol Marx) and there is no real economy that would be 100 percent market economy (according to Adam Smith's theory). while the currently existing economies mostly represent different formulas of the model of the social market economy as a mixed economy, i.e. containing specific private and public sectors related to each other in various configurations, market issues with central planning, market structures and public institutions, commercial economic entities and shaped and the socio-economic policy implemented by the government, including social policy, the market financial system present in modern economies (mainly the sector of commercial banks and investment funds) and the public financial system (public institutions, financial transfers, state budget and budgets of local government units), and private products offered on competitive markets and purchased by individual citizens, and public goods offered by the state to society and financed from the sources of the state finance system. In individual countries, the division of the economy into commercial and public sectors occurs similarly in the social market economy model, while in particular, there may be many differences.

Greetings, Have a nice day, Stay healthy!

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Interesting question Henrik. The trouble is that the term 'post-modernism', when used by people who are neither philosophers nor sociologists, has become an empty term used to deride critical social science. It reminds me a little bit of the way that the term 'Marxist' is now used by the American Centre-Right media to designate any politician with a strong redistributive platform - including people like Corbyn and Sanders, whose policies in no way propose to dismantle the Capitalist economy.

In a similar way, people like Jordan Peterson use "post-modernism" as a slur. Peterson's online lectures on the "damages" of postmodern academia clearly show that he does not really understand what the concept really means. He just throws Marxism, cultural Marxism, critical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism, into the same bag.

I haven't read Bloom and I didn't quite understand in your previous post what he defines as post-modernism. I suppose that most detractors of so-called post-modernism object to one or more of the following broad approaches in social science (all of which have at best a loose connection with actual postmodernist philosophy):

1. The notion that contemporary societies are fundamentally shaped by, and continuously reproduce, dynamics of domination, exploitation and repression. Language is an important vehicle for this (see below).

2. The idea that people's behaviours, preferences and notions of what is True largely derive from deeply rooted narratives and linguistic structures that (mostly) unconsciously shape people's minds. These narratives and other linguistic structures are socially constructed - i.e. they do not reflect some fundamental truth of 'human nature'.

3. The idea that racism and other malevolent forms can inhere not just in individuals' consciousnesses, but also in institutional structures and collective representations that are ostensibly value-neutral.

4. Methodologically, the belief that knowledge about society is found through qualitative forms of social analysis, like for example discourse and narrative analysis, grounded theory, ethnography, etc. Social analysis relying on logical-positivism and mathematical inductivism are viewed with suspicion.

Now the funny thing is that Most/all of these elements existed in social science decades before postmodernism as a social theoretical movement came to the stage. I also suspect that real postmodernist thinkers would probably object to the first element in the above list, since postmodernism is at heart an approach to knowledge that questions any inherent connection between belief systems and the world as is. Be that as it may, the point I'd make here is that the "Leftist takeover" of some social science has little to do with the (mostly imagined) popularity of "post-modernism". Many social scientists are Left Wing not because they discovered postmodernism but for a variety of reasons.

LIkewise, I would question whether your colleagues in social psychology and Business studies manifest a "post-modernism"-inspired Lefty-ism. As a discipline social psychology remains firmly moored to logical-positivism and statistical inductivism. And similarly, I don't see how your Business studies colleagues could be Left-Wing. There's some good research on business school curricula and teaching that actually shows the opposite. Perhaps you meant to say that your colleagues are Left wing and/or influenced by postmodernism in a purely private capacity? This is definitely the case in economics - the discipline in and of itself is criticized by sociologists for being methodologically uncritical and right-wing; yet the majority of American Economists in the US are actually on the Left side of the political spectrum. See for example:

So I guess one would need to understand what you are concerned about more precisely.

- Is it the feeling that most social scientists (or specific disciplines therein) are politically Left-Wing?

- Is it the feeling that most social scientists are specifically 'postmodernist' Lefties?

- Is it the feeling that social sciences DISCIPLINES tend to reflect/defend Left-wing views of the world?

- Is it the feeling that social science DISCIPLINES tend to reflect so-called POSTMODERNIST epistemology?

More generally, methodological and epistemological pluralism is generally a good think, so to the extent that there is a "takeover" as you say, that's probably bad. That said, from what I see in sociology, which perhaps is the most "non conformist" discipline in the social sciences, the "take over" by "postmodernism" is far from reality. The top journals in the discipline mostly favour articles employing standard statistical methods. The arguments in such studies do not usually take serious account of narratives, hermeneutics and historicity - all of which would be amply found in so-called postmodernist research. What IS true, however, is that the vast majority of sociologists have Left-wing political views. And I'd guess that most research does seem to align itself with Left-wing concerns (e.g. women's rights, equality, racism research, migrant issues, etc). I'm not sure what the consequences are of this on the general state of the discipline. The damages I've seen have to do with the harshness of debates taking place between more radical social thinkers and their less radical (though still largely left-wing) colleagues. Perhaps the answer to your question is that politics and the media in most countries already give disproportionate space to Centre-Right and Right-wing thinking, without ever allowing serious discussion of more genuinely left-wing stances. Hence, the Left positioning of social sciences is kind of a corrective.

Dear Paul. my apologies if I sound too rough, I am here just to share ideas, not to impose ideas.

Just as red socialist countries missed the opportuniy to transition from economy unfriendly red socialism to economy friendly red socialism to close the social sustainability gap step by step as Karl Marx wanted pure capitalist countries have not find the way to shift properly either to socially friendly capitalism or green capitalism.....in both cases the shift came and they did not see it coming just as Thomas Kuhn said it happens....those inside the box do not see it, those outside the box will see it,,,in borh cases we are now trying to fix what they left us....

But China under this red market knowledge gap made some key moves way before the 1991 fall of red socialism that allow it to maintain political control of a dwarf red socialism model left as they slowly allowed capitalism in....

You may find the following article interesting as you are familiar with things on the ground in China....

Nationalization as Privatization in Reverse: Understanding the Nature of the Commons to Identify a Possible Point of Optimal Nationalization.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281244564_Nationalization_as_Privatization_in_Reverse_Understanding_the_Nature_of_the_Commons_to_Identify_a_Possible_Point_of_Optimal_Nationalization

Feel free to comment any time

Respectfully yours;

Lucio

I think that to understand what Marx wrote about "the firm" and its "boundaries" - in order to compare his thinking with that of Coase - you have to take into account far more than Chapter 15. I'd start by moving back through chapter 14 (division of labor) through chapter 13 (cooperation) to chapter 12 which launches the whole discussion of increasing profits by increasing productivity. But also forward, all the way to Chapters 23-25 in which "the firm" is situated within the framework of accumulation or the expanded reproduction of the antagonistic class relationships of the system. Coase-the-economist's question about the nature of the firm and his answers are designed to lead to better economic theory to help manage capitalism - solve its problems and figure out how to make it work better. Marx-the-revolutionary's analysis - of particular elements of capitalism (including the firm) and of the system as a whole is designed to reveal its crimes, vulnerabilities and possibilities of transcending it. So since Coase, economists concerned with the "boundary of the firm" discuss such matters as transactions costs, questions of efficiency and "hold up" primarily in terms of the relationship within and between firms. Marx's analysis, even when it includes some analysis of the relationship between firms (competition and the spread of new technologies), is concerned with the relationship of these matters to the struggle of workers against their exploitation by capitalism (and the injuries, deaths and alienation that result) - how workers' struggles force changes in capitalist methods and the impact those changes have on their struggles. What do I draw out? Mainly that we are dealing with two diametrically opposed world views in which the questions asked and the theories formulated to help answer them are quite different. In Thomas Kuhn's terms we're dealing with two very different paradigms. Not surprisingly the resulting "normal science" in each case evolves quite differently.

Jacob,

My response was that the mathematics make no sense; the only thing to understand is that some Marxists have tried to turn Marx into an economist, have interpreted his theory as economics and therefore see it as susceptible to being restated in terms of modern mathematics. For some critiques of what you call "modern Marxian scholars", see https://www.akpress.org/rupturing-the-dialectic.html (which is also available as a pdf here on RG). BTW to write, as I did, of "the centrality of technological change in accumulation (growth)" is not the same as seeing technological development as a "driver" of economic growth as you have rephrased. That's a very Solowesque way of putting it. In Marx, technological change is central to the dynamics of class relationships because capital's relative surplus value strategy involves manipulating technology in its efforts to retain control over workers. Because accumulation is the accumulation of antagonistic classes, the "driver" of accumulation is class struggle. Sometimes the dynamics of that struggle generates growth, sometimes it generates recession and depression. When and where and under what circumstances is the subject of "crisis theory" understood in terms of crises in the class relationship.

While I would not class myself as a fundamentalist Marxist or fundamentalist anything, I do think it is important to have clarity in terms of what we are trying to do in our work. For me, the main point of Marxism is to use the ideas of Marx and contemporary Marxist theory and research to locate weaknesses in the rule of capital. To pinpoint capital's fragilities, contradictions, and crises. All the better to generate a politics which focuses on those weaknesses, fragilities, contradictions and crises.

Dear Yuri, thank you for commenting....

You should keep in mind, I am not a traditional economist/neoclassical or otherwise; and I am not in the Marxist's camp, I am an outside the box thinker looking from the outside at both paradigm shifts, the  1991 paradigm shift from red socialism to socially friendly capitalism/red markets/the end  of the world of Karl Marx; and the 2012 paradigm shift from the traditional market model to green markets/the end of the world for perfect market thinking...

I can see things that those inside the box can not see as when there is a paradigm shift the knowledge base of the previous paradigm is left behind and no longer works in the new paradigm....

China was lucky in my view, the started allowing some capitalism, and even tried to advice the soviets in doing the same, and then when the soviet bloc fell they allowed more....because they allowed capitalism in a control manner and they allowed from starting at the bottom/local/assets  they retain political power centrally.... and because the soviet bloc refuse to allowing capitalism in even in a controlled manner there was not choice after the 1991 soviet breakup other than allow capitalism to come in at force/little control....China keep political stability and the other former red socialist countries went into an initial period of economic chaos...

Point is:

All former socialist countries including China shifted from red socialism to socially friendly capitalism or economy friendly red socialism....in the new market...Marxist ideas do not work and traditional economic ideas, micro and macro, do not work either...therefore there is a red market or economy friendly red socialism knowledge gap right now....The same in all old capitalist countries the shift to green markets has created a green market knowledge gap as traditional economic theory do not work here, in green market you need perfect green market theory and green pricing....

Yuri you may find these articles interesting as food for thoughts:

a) China appears to have been doing the right moves to keep power since before the  1991 fall of soviet bloc....they have follow the principle of inverse action without knowing..."when you go from full nationalization to privatization you need to start allowing capitalism slow, from local assets/assets of no national relevance  up to national assets/assets of national relevance"...until achieving a point of optimal nationalization...

Nationalization as Privatization in Reverse: Understanding the Nature of the Commons to Identify a Possible Point of Optimal Nationalization

Adam Smith and Karl Marx Under the Sustainability Eye: Pointing Out and Comparing the Sustainability Gaps Behind these Two Great Simplification Failures

Adam Smith Vrs Karl Marx: Stating the Structure and Implications of the Paradigm Clash that Led to the Death of Karl Marx’s World, to the Fall of the Soviet Bloc, and to the Rise of Socially Friendly Capitalism.

Karl Marx Vrs Sustainability Markets: Who would have won the cold war then? Would the World of Karl Marx Have Existed Then?

Paradigm Evolution and Sustainability Thinking: Using a Sustainability Inversegram to State Paradigm Death and Shift Expectations under Win-Win and No Win-Win Situations

Have a nice day Yuri

Lucio and Giulio,   A fundamental issue here is how the word "efficient" should be defined.  Capitalist economics defines an efficient outcome as "Pareto optimal," which means no further mutually beneficial exchange is possible.  It measures value according to exchange value or market price. 

Socialism defines "efficient" in terms of an entirely different type of accounting, but it is presumably based on physical input-output relationships (maximum physical output per unit of physical input).  This is the way engineers in most countries think of efficiency.  It is my impression that an engineering concept of efficiency is still the standard method used in China,

An extreme example of how these competing ideas of efficiency affect actual decisions would be the "ghost cities" in China: entire cities of tall buildings with only 1% occupancy.  It is quite possible that these buildings were constructed efficiently from an engineering perspective, even though they are not efficient from a market value perspective.

 According to Prof. Dr. Eckhard Hein :  The principle of effective demand – Marx, Kalecki, Keynes and beyond, Institute for International Political Economy Berlin,

"The respective price levels for consumption goods and investment goods and the weighted average price level for aggregate output are determined by mark-up pricing in incompletely competitive goods markets. Marginal and average variable costs which are marked up by firms are constant up to full capacity output, and prices are hence constant as long as the sectors of the economy operate below full capacity utilisation. Subtracting wages from both sides of equation .

Profits are thus equal to consumption out of profits plus investment minus saving out of wages. If workers do not save and rather spend their income entirely on consumption goods" pages 5 and 6

Hi Chidinma

Try a web search using the term 'critical theory health inequalities' and you should get some useful hits. For example, here is one article that came up on the first page:

best wishes with it

Peter

Try here: https://es.scribd.com/doc/117823646/Marx-vs-Bretano

Also, Max Weber: Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus

Sorry I have no idea about your topic of research

Thank Omar,

it was interesting to know how the Islam scholars are thinking about international trade.

Yoshinori

Michele, FYI. I was born in Berga (Barcelona province) in a half Catalan-half non Catalan SPANISH family. I do not want to say half-Catalan half Spanish family since I consider both sides (whatever others may think) Spanish. Moreover, modern homo sapiens lhas been around for 50000 years (almost nothing). We should be concerned about poverty, inequality in ANY part of the world since we are all the same despite some minor cultural differences (trasmited by education) and forget other worries.