Fortunately for physics there is an independent determinant of mass, that is gravitational acceleration which, in turn, is determined by the gravitational field. So this provides a way out of this particular circularity. Is it too much to claim that the concepts of labor, labor-power and the historically determined reproduction value of labor serve a similar function in political economy?
-----Original Message----- From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:17 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] ' Subject: [PEN-L:22516] RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism Ian Murray wrote: > As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of > it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? Carrol Cox wrote: >I suspect I'm over my head here both re political economy & epistemology, or whatever is at stake, But I think I'll butt in anyhow. >In _German Ideology_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory) M/E claim they do have premises -- namely, actual living individuals. ("Actual living" is my insertion to allow for the repudiation of the abstract individual in the Theses on Feurerbach.")< in the GI, M&E are pretty clear that they're talking about actual living individuals, not abstract ones. > I gloss this as affirming that wherever and whenever we find outselves we are already caught up in, constituted by, action (social relations), indepently of which we have no existence. So now the question is how, under given historical conditions, those actual individuals (defined by their social relations at any historical point) allocate their living activity; how do they transform their condition while reproducing it. And I think that starting out there, we get a LOV totally different from (e.g.) Ricardo's, and moreover, the only place to start is with that living human activity, whether or not following it up brings us back to our premises. In other words, we must _either_ hold to some form of LOV as fundamental, or we must place outselves outside of time and space, in a Platonic empyrean, examing the world from outside as Plato attempts to do in the _Republic_. >Not only neoclassical but all bourgeois forms of political economy (economics) lead us back either to Plato or to William James's blooming buzzing chaos. (Quote not accurate but makes the point.)< that makes sense to me. >P.S. A philological note: _G.I._ does not, I think, have any independent validity as a source of Marx's or Engels's thought -- i.e. it is valid (as a source) only as corrected looking backward from their mature work. When used in isolation from or independently of that later work it makes one wish the mice had done a better job of criticism.< yes, but the GI and THE THESES ON FEUERBACH present the clearest explanation of M&E's materialist conception of history. -- Jim Devine
