ECONOMIC-PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPT OF 1978, AS IT WERE PART I

[This hand-written manuscript appears to have been prompted by Ian Steedman’s 1977 book, Marx After Sraffa.  I recall reading the book when it appeared, but I have no recollection of having written the manuscript.  I found it in a folder with a stack of other unfiled materials.  It is presented here exactly as it was written, without corrections or emendations.]

Preliminary Notes for a Critique of the

Physical Quantities Model of Reproduction

I.  An apparently irrelevant digression on irony

            Paul Samuelson tells jokes.  Even Immanuel Kant tries a turn of wit from time to time.  But neither of them is thereby an ironist.  Wherein lies the difference?  Kant’s discourse [and, by and large, that of “scientists” – such as Aristotle, Ricardo, etc.] presupposes that the object of discourse [nature, the mind, society, the economy] is universally and unambiguously what it is [even though, pace Kant, its structure may be mind-imposed], so that straightforward declarative sentences suffice to describe it.  There is only one audience for these descriptions [though it may, as in the case of Kant or Aristotle, be a small and select audience], and the utterances are susceptible of only one correct interpretation.  It is, by some of these “scientists,” supposed that there is a correspondence between the formal structure of the discourse, as exhibited in Logic or Mathematics, and the formal [and necessary] structure of the object of discourse; and that there is, as well, a correspondence of an a posteriori sort between the content of the discourse and the matter, or particularity, or individuality, of the object of discourse.  Hence the doctrine of the Critique of Pure Reason, or the Metaphysics, or the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.  From the assumptions here summarized, it follows that although graceful turns of phrase and literary figures may find their way into a work of science – or, alternatively, although scientific writers may permit themselves expressions of scorn, of anger, of sarcasm, or resentment --- ironic communication as such will have no place there.

           

            Plato and Kierkegaard [and, as we shall, in good time, see Marx] are, by contrast, ironists. They communicate by means of discourse that posits multiple audiences at different levels of enlightenment, those at the higher aware of those at the lower.  This complex structure of speech, they believed, is required by the complex structure of the object of discourse, by the internal complexity of the subject or speaker, and by the necessity that knowledge-claims capture the relation between those two complexities in the structure of the discourse itself.  When Socrates says, “I am ignorant,” he speaks, to be sure to several audiences [two in the dialogues, but also a third, namely we who read the dialogues].  But in that utterance, he also, at the same time, expresses his inner nature.  He gives voice to [but does not assert the existence of] the divided character of his self.  A part of him is arrogant, confident that he is wiser than his fellow Athenians, sure of the truth of the exhilarating accolade of the Delphic oracle; another part of him is uncertain, weighed down with an awareness of inadequacy, truly doubtful that he knows anything; and yet another part of him [it is understood that I use the language of “parts” metaphorically] is wearily wise, sadly aware – as in the pathetic scene with Crito – that he will go to his grave without having communicated the full measure of his insight to those who – in the bitterest of all ironies – style themselves his disciples.

All of these are truly Socrates.  One is lower, another is higher, but all are truly Socrates.  None is merely a mask, a pose, a role, a suit of clothes donned for tactical purposes public appearances, and doffed when alone or among friends.  Irony is the mode of discourse by which the inner complexity is fully and correctly expressed.  Were Socrates to explain himself as I have just done, he would, by so doing, deny the reality of the lower elements in his soul, just as he would be denying the truth of the superficial interpretation of his utterance.  By adopting as his voice one of the elements of his soul, he would thereby be asserting – whether he wished to or not – that he was [fully, essentially] that part, and that the other parts were not real, or were not really himself, or were, perhaps, merely himself as he once had been.

Nor could Socrates have achieved full and precise expression of his true nature by the devices of indirect discourse, parenthetical asides, [or, as we know them now, footnotes], or parodic bits of self-deprecating humour.  At best, he might thereby have demonstrated that he was Jewish, rather than pagan.  All such measures constitute hedges, attempts to identify one voice as the true voice and to deny to the other voices any epistemological legitimacy at all.  Or else, they are embarrassed attempts to evade acknowledgement of those portions of oneself of which one is ashamed.  It is, after all, one thing to say “I love you,” and quite another to say, casually [or heatedly, as the case may be], “I was thinking last night that I love you,” or “I find it hard to tell you that I love you,” or “Even though it sounds sentimental, I would like you to know that I love you.”  Just so.  Nothing would do for Socrates, save the simple sentence, “I am ignorant,” said, however, in full awareness of its ironic complexity.

            Irony, when it is used seriously and not frivolously, thus carries ontological and epistemological presuppositions.  To employ irony as one’s most serious mode of discourse is implicitly to assert that the object of discourse is layered, complex, internally related to itself and divided in itself according to higher and lower, or more and less real; To employ irony is also implicitly to assert that the subject of discourse, the speaker, is similarly internally complex; and to employ irony is to claim that only by such a mode of speech can the complexity of the speaker, the structure of the object, and the relations between the two, be given precisely adequate expression.  The truth – the essential truth – about the object and the subject cannot in any other way be stated.  In particular, the truth cannot be decomposed into a succession of unironic component declarative statements and then reassembled by means of the additional assertion that these are the elements, and that their relationship is – ironic. As though “ironic” were a codeword for a set of instructions – “this bit of knowledge is sent to you partially broken down – assembly instructions included.”