11 June,
1977
Professor
Richard Wolff
Mr. Antonino
Callari
Mr. Bruce
Robert
Gentlemen
(and revered colleagues):
I have
read your fine paper, “Marxian and Ricardian Economics: Fundamental Differences,”
with great interest and profit. I found it enormously helpful to me, and in
considerable measure persuasive as regards the significant differences between
the theories of Ricardo and Marx. I am not convinced of the merits of the
rather high-powered methodological assumptions (regarding 'two sciences,' etc.)
through which you express your conclusions, but that is an issue that can
perhaps await exploration at a later date. In this communication, I should like
to focus my attention on two specific, but very fundamental, points. With
regard to the first, I believe that you have gone astray, philosophically; with
regard to the second, I believe that you are absolutely correct, but that your
case can be made stronger, in ways that I shall suggest. I am couching these
reflections in the form of a letter to you three, but I shall take the liberty
of circulating them more widely to other members of our community with similar
interests and concerns. I might say that availability of such a community is,
for me, an experience unique in my intellectual and professional career, and a
fringe benefit of incalculable value at UMass.
The two
points to which 1 shall address myself are these: First, your use of the term
"overdetermined," which I believe to be confused in non-trivial ways;
and Second, your discussion of the fundamental differences between Marx and the
Neo-Ricardians (and Ricardo himself) on the matter of the relationship between
circulation and production.
I.
The
concept of Overdetermination
I believe
that you are using the term "overdetermined" in a way that deviates
both from the meaning of Freud, who introduced it into the literature, and also
(perhaps) front the meaning of Althusser, who acknowledges his debt to Freud,
and to whom you in turn acknowledge your debt. Now, ordinarily there is not
much to be gained front terminological quibbles. Many philosophers have taken
the position of the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, who, when he
used a word made it mean whatever he wished it to mean. Plato appears to have
begun this practice, and virtually every great philosopher since has followed
suit. Nevertheless, I intend to quibble about the meaning of the term, for this
reason: I think Althusser, clearly or unclearly, was on to a very profound,
very powerful, and highly problematical methodological insight when he
described social formations or phenomena as "overdetermined." Your
quite different use of the term loses that power, profundity, and
methodological novelty, reducing the notion to a rather familiar one that has
long been known and used in the social sciences, particularly in functionalist
sociology. It is at least worth trying to recapture the original meaning, in
order to see whether there is something of philosophical value in it worth
preserving. (A similar fate has been suffered by Durkheim's concept of anomie
as well as by the notion of ideology).
The notion
of overdetermination is introduced by Freud, as you note, with appropriate
references),
in order to deal with certain problems in the Interpretation of dreams.
As a
result of what Freud calls condensation and displacement in the dream-work, the
symbolism
or meaning of dreams becomes highly compressed.
Through
processes of association, certain symbols or elements of the dream may take on
several quite discrete and not naturally related meanings in addition, a
certain meaning may turn up in several different elements of the dream.
Although Freud on occasion offers some highly tentative physiological
speculations about the mechanisms of association (including, for example, the
suggestion that thoughts running along spatially contiguous nerve-pathways may
thereby become associated together), he clearly concluded on the basis of his
clinical observations that no useful generalizations could be made about the
specific patterns of association. A patient might, for example, associate
"leaving treatment" with the "leaves of a book", because at
the moment when he was leafing through the book he was worrying about whether
to leave treatment. In the dream, leaves falling from a tree might come to
stand for both the activity of leafing through the book (which, perhaps, was a
gift from someone whom he missed) and the prospect of leaving treatment.
Another patient might associate the leaves of a book with taking a leave of
absence from his job, something he very much wanted to do. And so on. In the dreams
of these patients, the visual image of the leaves of a tree might be a a symbol
with several distinct significant meanings. To say that such a symbol, or the
entire dream, is overdetermined is precisely to say that the symbol has two or
several complete, adequate, satisfactory explanations, each of which is itself
sufficient by whatever criteria of adequacy of explanation one is employing --
to account for the content of the dream or the symbol. The symbol is thus in a
quite natural sense of the word, "over-determined." That is, it is
determined several times over. One can give a complete explanation of the dream
in terms of one of its meanings, so that nothing is left out, no loose ends are
left hanging. Then one can go back and give a quite different and equally
correct explanation of the same dream.
Let us
very clearly differentiate this remarkable notion of Freud's from two quite familiar
notions that play a major role in social scientific explanations in sociology,
economics, and other disciplines. The first is multiple causation (or, to use
your terms, multiple effectivity); the second is reciprocal causality, or
reciprocity. To say that an event is multiply caused, or determined by a
multiplicity of causes, is simply to say that not one but a number of events,
phenomena, etc, must be invoked in order to provide a complete explanation of
it. Or, sometimes it is to say that phenomena or events from a number of
different social spheres must be invoked, such as political causes, economic
causes, cultural causes, psychological causes, institutional causes, etc. The
key point here is that an explanation in terms of only one of these factors
will be inadequate, incomplete, and hence demand some enlargement or supplement
before it can be explained. For example, an historian attempting to explain the
particular course of the French revolution might feel the need to invoke facts
of the special and particular history of the French peasantry, in addition to
economic facts common to the French and other economies, in order to account
for the details of (or even the broad outlines of) that course. To say that
there is reciprocal causality, or reciprocity, between two events or phenomena
is simply to say that each influences or acts on the other, and also perhaps
that each then reacts on the other in response to the action of that others. Just
as multiple causality is invoked in order to rebut the claims of single-factor
explanations in the social sciences, so reciprocity is invoked to counter the
claims of single-direction explanations. Notoriously, the simple-minded "base-superstructure"
model customarily (and, of course, incorrectly) imputed to Marx is both a
single-factor and a single-direction mode of explanation. Modern functionalist
sociology, and also modern economics, decisively reject both single-factor and
single-direction explanatory models. That is not peculiar to Marx, and it
certainly is not peculiar to Althusser's reading of Marx. Max Weber, and
following him Talcott Parsons, offer explanations replete with multiple
causality and reciprocity.
Perhaps
the most familiar explanatory model totally embodying both multiple causality
and reciprocity is the original Newtonian mechanics. Each mass in the universe,
through the gravitational attraction that it exerts, has an effect on each
other mass in the universe. Thus, the behavior ([i.e.] motion) of a mass is multiply determined (by the effects on
it of every other mass) and that behavior stands in reciprocal interaction with
the behavior of each other mass. Note, by the way, the enormous power of
Newton’s claims.
He does
not say that some masses are multiply determined, or that some masses are in
reciprocal interaction with one another. He says that all masses are multiply
determined, and that every event in the universe affects every other event,
however remote. There are really only four ways one could sustain such a
universal claim. Either by appeal to some theological revelation; or by appeal
to some a priori metaphysical principle (such as that invoked in the opening
section of Kant's Inaugural Dissertation of 1770); or by appeal to an
epistemological principle such as the transcendental unity of apperception (see
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: "Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding");
or by appeal to a methodological principle of the formation of theories. In any
case, it is illegitimate to move from the indisputable observation that events
frequently are multiply determined or in reciprocal interaction to the
conclusion that every event is affected by every other event„ or that all
events are in reciprocal interaction or, more precisely, it is illegitimate to
make that move without an explicit and powerful argument adequate to so
far-reaching a conclusion.
Let us
return to Freud. If overdetermination means a multiplicity of complete and
adequate explanations for a given symbol or dream, three questions immediately
force themselves forward and demand answers. First, how do we know when there
is more than one explanation, when, that is, the dream is indeed
overdetermined? Second, how do we know which of the endlessly varied and many possible
explanations for a dream or symbol are the correct one? And third, how do we
know when we have found all of the correct explanations of the dream, and thus
have exhausted its significance? Freud gives the same answer to all three of
these questions, and it is so important that I shall dwel1 on it for some time.
It is, indeed, the key to all of Freud's thought.
Briefly,
the answer is that the analyst is guided by the patient's associations to the
dream. As you know, the analyst asks the patient to associate freely to the
dream. In this way, the unconscious content that underlies the dream is slowly
revealed. In effect, the patient follows back along the pathways of association
by which the mind constructed the dream. In general, Freud thought, dreams are
triggered by sensory memories of events from the preceding twenty-four hours. These
memories are interpreted, compressed, distorted displaced, etc, etc, by the
mind, in the course of which long-repressed wishes and fantasies find a safe or
"acceptable" expression in disguised, symbolic form. Dramas, like slips
of the tongue and symptoms, are generally unimportant in themselves, but they
are indispensable doorways into the unconscious.
Because of
the purely adventitious, or accidental and entirely individual character of
associations,
it is impossible either for all patients in general or even for one patient in
particular to compile a dictionary, a lexicon, of dream symbols. A snake may
stand for a phallus in one dream, and for a man named King (e "king
snake") whom one doesn't like in another dream. The approach to the
unconscious is thus necessarily dynamic rather than static. It proceeds by way
of the actual associations of the patient, rather than by an a priori deduction
of the possible meaning of a symbol. Through the process of association, one
ascertains that a symbol is overdetermined, what the precise set of overlaid
meanings are that have become attached to it, and when the unpacking of the
meaning is finished and the symbol has been exhausted. Without this dynamic
process of association, the notion of overdetermination would be vacuous. There
would be no reason to suppose that a symbol was overdetermined, to way of
knowing whether an explanation of the symbol was correct, and no way to determine
whether one had identified all the meanings of the symbol or not.
There are
two points to be noted about Freud's theory of overdetermination of dream
embolisms First, there is no place here for what we have called reciprocal
causality. There is, of course, multiple causality (assuming, for the moment,
that we can treat meanings or reasons as causes -- more of that in a moment). But
the dream does not in its turn react back on the repressed content, or at least
not so far as Freud knew. Social theorists in general, and you in particular,
wish to make strong claims for reciprocal causality (or effectivity), and to
that extent, therefore, you deviate from Freud’s notion. Second, Freud speaks,
most of the time, not of a multiplicity of causes or of an overdetermination of
or causes, but of overdetermined meaning. Symbols in a dream have cognitive
meaning they refer [to?], they have what philosophers call intensionality. One
explains a dream by identifying the repressed wishes that find expression
through it. As Richard Wolheim makes beautifully clear in the opening chapter
of his invaluable book, Sigmund Freud's original formulation of the notion of
the unconscious, from which all the rest of his work flows, depends precisely
on the distinction between physical causes and meanings or intensional referring,
thoughts. (The point, you will recall, was that patients suffering from
hysterical paralysis exhibited limbs that were paralyzed over a physical extent
that did not correspond to any natural neurological, anatomical unit, but did
correspond to what the patient
typically a woman -- in an unscientific way thought was such a unit. So
she might have a paralyzed "leg," when the neurologists knew that the
portion of her body paralyzed did not correspond to a portion controlled by a
single major nerve, etc, etc.).
Having
said all this, let us now turn to the sphere of social phenomena, and ask how
and why someone might wish to Import the notion of overdetermination into it. I
suggest the following possible explanation. As detailed historical studies begin
to pile up, and in particular as the results and insights of anthropology begin
to filter into the study of western European history, the following sort of
problem is liable to crop up. Someone does an exhaustive study of, let us say,
a series of wildcat strikes and other outbreaks of labor militancy, in which it
is quite persuasively shown that the behavior of the workers is fully explained
by appeal to their objective economic interests (perhaps dialectically related
to the development of their awareness of those interests). Then another
historian plows the same soil, and produces a study showing that the behavior
of the workers is explainable in terms of certain traditions of peasant and
worker behavior, going back hundreds of years, and reinforced by certain local
religious traditions. Yet a third historian, drawing on diaries, letters, and
other such materials, produces a psychological explanation of the very same
behavior.
There are
at least four different things we might want to say about such a state of
affairs. First, we might say that the economic interests are the real causes of
the workers' behavior, and that everything else is merely epiphenomenon,
reflection, expression or effect of those economic interests. This, I take it,
is the vulgar marxist position. Althusser rejects it, and so did Marx. So too
does everyone else with any brains. Second, we might wish to say that the
behavior of the workers was multiply determined by economic, traditional
religious, cultural, psychological, and other factors. This is the position
most historians automatically take. You seem to take it from time to time in
your paper. The trouble with this position, in the present case, is that by hypothesis
in our imaginary example, each historian has provided a complete explanation of
the phenomena under investigation. Of course, if each had offered only a
partial explanation, if each had left same significant features of the events
unaccounted for, then we could infer that each explanation needed fleshing out
or supplementing by other explanations, and that would lead naturally to a
multi-causal account. Now, there are some historians (and same philosophers of
science and of history), who would deny that the sort of situation I have
imagined could ever really occur. There couldn't be two or more complete explanation
of the same set of events. Perhaps so. But 1 am pursuing for the moment the
thought that there might at least seem to be, and that we might therefore need
an especially complex methodological move to deal with that odd fact. Third, we
might wish to seer that in fact there was not merely a multiplicity of causes
of the observed events, but a reciprocity of causality, so that none of the
factors could be identified as independent variable and none as dependent
variable. The religious beliefs, we might argue, were both caused by and were
causes of the economic interests of the workers, etc etc etc. This too is a
fairly standard notion among historians and social scientists. Indeed, I should
think that it is, today, the dominant view [as you?] clearly espouse it in your
paper, along with the notion of multiple causation.
Finally,
someone (for example, Althusser) might wish to say something quite distinct
from these first three positions, something powerful„ paradoxical, and
striking. Someone
might wish to say that this historical event (and, by extension, all other historical
events) is overdetermined, not determined, not multiply determined, not reciprocally
determined, but overdetermined. How could this be? Clearly, natural events cannot be
overdetermined. But historical events are not natural events, and society is
not
nature, not even second nature. If society can be understood as a structure of meanings,
not of objects, and if we can make sense of the vexing notion that society is a
structure of meanings which are not to be identified with the thoughts in the
minds of any specific
individuals (without sinking into the Durkheimian mistake of positing a group mind),
then perhaps we can elaborate a notion of social overdetermination analogous
to Freud’s notion of the overdetermination of dreams.
Now, I am
not certain that this approach will stand up. But it seems to me highly
suggestive and original, and I would hazard a guess that it is what Althusser
has in mind. Two points, before I close this part of my remarks. First,
Althusser is well known for rejecting the "subjective" approach to
the study of society. Pretty clearly, whatever his reasons for taking that line
(his fight with Sartre, who knows --), he is never going to succeed in
defending the notion of overdetermination without some serious. acknowledgement
of the idea that society is a system of meanings, not a set of objects. Second,
we saw that Freud leaned on the method of free association as a key to the
overdetermination of dreams. What, in the study of society, takes the place of
free association in psychoanalysis? In what way do we discover that a social
situation is overdetermined what the actual (as opposed to possible)
multiplicity of determinations are, and when we have exhausted the unpacking of
a social situation into its component determinations?
It may be,
after all, that by overdetermined you really mean nothing more than multiply
and reciprocally determined. If so, there is nothing more to be said. But if it
is indeed so, then you must recognize that your methodological position is thus
far indistinguishable from that of countless functionalist sociologists,
anthropologists, and political scientists and also from that of standard economic
theory. After all, any system that can be characterized by a set of
simultaneous equations is correctly describable as both multiply and
reciprocally causally interrelated.
II.
Production,
Circulation, and the Neo-Ricardians
The
preponderance of your remarks are devoted to the differences between Marx and
Ricardo (and the neo-Raicardians), with particular emphasis on the different
analyses of the relationship of circulation to production. I think you are correct,
both about the difference between Marx and Ricardo and about the difference
between Marx and the neo-Ricardians. What is more‚ I think you are right to
insist that this is a central difference. Without accepting your
methodologically powerful and unsupported invocation of the idea of "two
sciences," I will simply agree that this is a big enough difference to constitute
a decisive difference.
However,
as I read the paper, it seemed to ne that you never went beyond observing and
documenting the difference. You never presented an argument designed to show
that the Ricardian and neo-Ricardian theories, by slighting circulation in the
way they do, produce thereby an inferior theory. Now, don't start in with
"framework" and all the met of that. Don 't give up the fight so
easily! I think one can offer powerful arguments to show that the Ricardian and
neo-Ricardian theories are deficient, not merely different, precisely by virtue
of their failure to take the proper account of the rate of circulation. Let me
sketch one such argument very briefly (you will immediately notice at this point
that I get in way over my head. My apologies.)
In the
familiar, standard physical quantities model (to use Stedman’s term for it), we
are presented with a system of n equations in n2 unknowns, namely the n [?]
prices,
the wage rate, and the profit rate. One of the n prices is arbitrarily chosen
as numeraire, or standard of value, and set equal to unity. The system then has
one degree of freedom, and we can study the inverse relationship between the
wage rate and the profit rate. This, I take it, is what Sraffa does.
Now, the
attention has been focused on the so-called transformation problem, which it
turns out, when cast in the proper mathematical form, to have a relatively
straight-forward solution. (Needless to say, I did not find it easy or
straightforward, but I feel 1 must maintain the standards and conventions of
this new field into which I have wandered, and people like Pasinetti, Steedman,
Morishima, etc seem to consider the theory of eigenvalues and eigenvectors to
be about on a par, conceptually, with baby talk.) But to me, the real heavy
freight rests on that barely noted preliminary move whereby one of the n prices
is arbitrarily chosen as numeraire and set equal to unity. To proceed in that
way is, in effect, to say that there is no real money in the system under
analysis. There is an accounting system, but no one of the commodities over
separates itself off from the others„ becomes functionally divorced from
whatever use-value it might originally have had (as gold and silver did), and
thereby becomes, in the full sense of the term, money.
It seems
to me that in Capital, and even more clearly in the first three or four
hundred pages of the Grundrisse, Marx is insisting that the emergence of
money, and subsequently the transformation of money into capital, is neither
trivial nor a merely formal and stipulative occurrence. The emergence of money
capital requires enormous historical changes, of course, to which are conjoined
major psychological and conceptual changes. But in addition (their being merely
in the category of background), the emergence of money requires essentially a
fully-developed sphere of circulation, without which there could be no capital,
since any formal model of a capitalist economy that treats the sphere of
circulation as a mere accounting-world, a place of relative prices and hence
merely of highly complex barter, must be inadequate to the reality of
capitalism.
If I am
correct, then a neo-Ricardian model would be wrong, not just "in a
different framework or a different science." How would it be wrong? Well,
it would certainly fall to explain the emergence or money capital as such; it
would presumably be unable to give a coherent account of realization crises; it
would be unable to explain why problems of accumulation in different sectors of
the economy would lead to unequal development; and it would simply have nothing
to say about such phenomena as the fetishism of commodities. What is more, the
neo-Ricardian model seems more appropriate to a planned economy than to an
actually functioning capitalist economy. Its claim to serve as a model for a
capitalist economy would thus constitute an implicit assertion that a planned
economy is simply a more perfect, more rational form of a capitalist economy, a
claim that seems manifestly false and also rather heavily laden with powerful
political implications.
Finally,
let me simply report that I could not follow your mathematics in the last
several pages. It seemed to me, although I was unable to determine whether I was
correct that a dimensional analysis of the equations on page 66 would reveal
that the terms on the left hand side are of different dimensions, or units,
from the terms on the right hand side.
Well, it
should be obvious that your paper stimulated me to a considerable response,
whether fruitful or not I leave it to you to decide. Many thanks for letting me
read it.
All the
best,
Robert
Paul Wolff
1 comment:
This transcription error is too good to correct: "There are two points to be noted about Freud's theory of overdetermination of dream embolisms."
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