Category: Theory

Kliman vs Heinrich: An Exercise in Marxology

by Matthijs Krul

The annals of Marxist political economy, c.q. the critique thereof, show a great deal of abstruse, opaque, and downright remote argumentation about minutiae. Much of this can be blamed on the persistent habit of Marxist arguments to take the form of disputes about the ‘true Marx’, about what Marx ‘really said’, rather than being arguments on the merits of theories in their own right. This substitution of philology and exegesis for direct debate cannot fail to make already quite abstract arguments even more confusing and distant from everyday political concerns, and thereby even less accessible to the average activist or intellectual interested in developments in Marxist theory. That’s deplorable, and it is incumbent on all those concerned to end this sorry tradition.

That said, the latest round of such argumentation is that between Michael Heinrich and Andrew Kliman and his collaborators on the nature and meaning of the ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’.(1) Heinrich is the main exponent of a German school of interpretation of Marx, known as the Neue Marxlektüre, that is heavily philological. Various members of this school including Heinrich himself are involved in the project of the new scientific complete editions of Marx and Engels’ works in German (and the other original languages), known as MEGA2, which perhaps furthers this exegetic mindset. Kliman and his colleagues, on the other hand, are more prominent in the Anglosphere and represent a particular school of Marxist political economy there, best known for developing a powerful critique of prevailing assumptions about the ‘transformation problem’ that has obstructed Marxist economic thinking for so long. This approach, known as TSSI, has made quite an impact and has contributed to clearing the way for actually moving ahead with more novel and empirical work in Marxist economics, in lieu of the repetition of moves that had been the norm for most of the 20th century. Continue reading “Kliman vs Heinrich: An Exercise in Marxology” →

Book Review: Wolff & Resnick, “Contending Economic Theories”

by Matthijs Krul

One of the core principles of scientific theory is that all theory is specific and limited in its domain. A theory which attempts to explain everything, explains nothing. Equally, the mere observation that ‘everything depends on everything else’ is, while undoubtedly true, useless for scientific inquiry – the virtue rests in identifying the specific and causal connections where possible, or at the very least a model or theory that can explain some subset of the totality of connections in a way that helps us solve problems. To point this out may seem banal, but Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick would have done well to keep it in mind when writing their book, Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. As the name implies, this is a work of comparative economic theory, presenting the elementary (say, undergraduate level) versions of each of the theories in a way that allows novices in economics to compare and contrast their methods and approaches.

Such a book is a great idea, as there is a real shortage of clear and accessible comparative material that gives an overview of the different theoretical conceptions and methodological justifications that exist in economics, both orthodox and heterodox – not least because the interaction between method and content is perhaps nowhere as important as in that discipline. Moreover, as Marxist economists of some recent popular renown – at least in the case of Richard Wolff, as Stephen Resnick sadly died earlier this year – you’d expect the authors’ heterodox view of economic theory to make such a comparison more fair and useful than it would be if undertaken by an orthodox neoclassical historian of economics. Continue reading “Book Review: Wolff & Resnick, “Contending Economic Theories”” →

What is Wrong With Marxism Today? A Polemic

by Matthijs Krul

“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” – Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

In this post, I will attempt to identify a number of in my view underappreciated or insufficiently recognized problems in the main modes of inquiry of Marxism today – in particular in the Marxism common in Western countries, where it is dominated by the activities of academics and small party formations, sectlike or otherwise. These points cannot be but generalizations, and as the Dutch saying goes, ‘whoever fits the shoe should put it on’. Nonetheless, I hope that in discussing these issues it will open up some room for more critical reflection not just on our present conditions on the left, which is perhaps weaker than it has been at any point since the early 20th century, but also on the methods used in the process of transforming a Marxist understanding of the world into politically applicable ideas and praxis. In order to keep these as clear as possible as conceptually distinguishing closely related issues will allow, I will simply present them as a series of points. Continue reading “What is Wrong With Marxism Today? A Polemic” →

The Many Forms of Kenneth Rogoff: A Study in Neoclassical Economics Today

by Matthijs Krul

The opposition to austerity worldwide has been much strengthened by the loss of academic prestige incurred by the austerity camp in the field of economics. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, both prominent neoclassical economists at Harvard University, were revealed to have made serious data errors in their influential paper on the history of public debt and its relation to economic growth. In this paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt”, the authors had argued that when “gross external debt reaches 60 percent of GDP”, a country’s annual growth declined by two percent, and “for levels of external debt in excess of 90 percent” GDP growth was “roughly cut in half.”(1) This has been widely seen as a major intellectual support for the austerity drive worldwide, and therefore the denouement of this paper has had a considerable impact. Not only did the paper leave out important data, but it also contained simple errors in spreadsheet calculation. This is all the more intriguing, and delicious for the press, because the counter-article’s co-author Thomas Herndon is still a graduate student, whereas Rogoff is one of the world’s most eminent neoclassical macroeconomists. Continue reading “The Many Forms of Kenneth Rogoff: A Study in Neoclassical Economics Today” →

Book Review: Michael Heinrich, “An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Marx’s Capital”

by Matthijs Krul

The first thing to note about the recently much discussed An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Marx’s Capital is that it is no such thing. What Michael Heinrich has done in this work is not give an introduction to the book for the new reader, but provide a critical summary of its contents seen from the point of view of the so-called ‘new critique’, also known as the ‘value-form’ analysis of Marxism. This particular analysis focuses, as Heinrich says in the introduction, on a particular interpretation of Marx’s value theory. This is not illegitimate: there are various major interpretations of Marx’s value theory, not least because of its complexity and opacity, and it makes sense for an author to be clear about his or her commitments to a particular one so that the reader knows what is going on. However, throughout the book the structure of the argument is more often than not polemical, explicitly or implicitly, against rival interpretations of Marx – both the attempts to make Marxism into a more general theory than Heinrich finds warranted, which he describes as “worldview Marxism” or “traditional Marxism”, and rival interpretations of Marx’s value theory specifically. While polemicizing, however, he declines to identify any of his opponents or opposing currents by name, making the exercise both fruitless as an effective counterargument – because a newbie would not know what it was a counterargument against – and as a contribution to the debate. Attacking opponents without naming them or explicitly citing their viewpoints is a dishonest strategy, but one sadly common in Marxist polemics, even about such seemingly abstract topics as value theory.(1)

The risk of such an approach is that it either agitates against straw opponents, making the author seem more convincing by arguing against views that his main interlocutors do not really hold, or that it creates any number of false dichotomies: making the author’s viewpoint seem strictly contrasting to those of others, when it is by no means certain that they cannot be compatible or reconciled. Heinrich does both of these to some extent. Now this may also follow somewhat from the generally philological style of argument that pervades the book, and is not a reflection on Heinrich’s ill intent or conscious deception. But it does further take away the purpose of the book as an ‘introduction’, rather suggesting it should be read more as a polemic in the form of a restatement or reinterpretation of Marx’s theories. That is of itself fair enough, and happens plenty; but it would be better to explicitly advertise it as such, certainly in a time when many are newly seeking out radical understandings of economic theory and may encounter this as a guide to Marx’s magnum opus, which it simply is not. Of course, with a work of this type, one can always find any number of expressions and formulations of issues that one would have written differently. Nitpicking such things is not helpful; I will therefore not mention all of the minor points of disagreement or different emphases I would have, but outline a few of the central issues. Continue reading “Book Review: Michael Heinrich, “An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Marx’s Capital”” →